Geopolitics, the Revolution in Military Affairs, and the Bush Doctrine
| dc.contributor.author | Dalby, Simon | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2008-07-14T19:21:55Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2008-07-14T19:21:55Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2008-05 | |
| dc.description.abstract | Beier (2006) argues that the framing and selection of targets has changed the social depth of warfare; enlarging the potential participants in warfare, not least because ‘surgical strikes’ with precision guided weapons supposedly reduces collateral damage, and hence allows their use where previous technologies would not have been employed. This paper suggests that this is also a matter of the geopolitical framing, of the representation of the world as a military arena at the largest scale which is implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, about a new understanding of geopolitics where war can now happen anywhere and anytime. To make this argument the paper turns first to classical geopolitical thinking, nuclear strategy, and the theme of the containment of Soviet power in the Eurasian landmass. Then it looks to the military technologies of the RMA and their development in the latter stages of the cold war. Subsequently the paper examines the geopolitical logic of the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review and the popular articulation of the Bush doctrine in Thomas Barnett’s (2004, 2005) writing, with its explicit remapping of the world as the context for understanding the doctrine and the necessity of warfare in the Middle East and elsewhere. Much of the commentary on the war on terror, American foreign policy, the Bush doctrine, and Middle Eastern politics has bypassed these most basic geopolitical ideas that structure American strategy. Including these themes explicitly in the discussions matters not only for completeness, but because thinking about alternative formulations of security after the Bush doctrine requires, among other things, a coming to terms with its geopolitical categories. | en |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10315/1308 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://www.yorku.ca/yciss/documents/WP49-Dalby.pdf | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en |
| dc.publisher | YCISS | en |
| dc.relation.ispartofseries | Working Paper | en |
| dc.relation.ispartofseries | 49 | en |
| dc.rights.uri | http://www.yorku.ca/yciss/ | |
| dc.subject | geopolitics | en |
| dc.subject | revolution in military affairs | en |
| dc.subject | nuclear strategy | en |
| dc.subject | military technologies | en |
| dc.subject | 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review | en |
| dc.title | Geopolitics, the Revolution in Military Affairs, and the Bush Doctrine | en |
| dc.type | Working Paper | en |