فصلنامه بین المللی ژئوپلیتیک
سال سوم شماره 4 (پیاپی 10، زمستان 1386)

Because of some theories which emphasize on the explanation of the relation between geographical space and power in the direction of control and domination of the world by the great powers, geopolitics was accused that domination seeking behavior of the power is justified by it, and it helps to development of dispute and war, and basically geopolitics is a knowledge which is used by the owners of political power. Perhaps for this reason, somebody believes that geopolitics is an applied knowledge in nature. Also somebody believes that geopolitics is guilty in appearance of the first and second world wars, so they challenge the traditional geopolitics, especially its negative dimension as the imperialist geopolitics. Appearance of the other approaches such as Critical geopolitics, Environmental geopolitics and anti-geopolitics can be evaluated in this direction. The writer of this text recognizes geopolitics as a branch of political geography with scientific nature, which similar to the other scientific disciplines has two dimensions: Basic and Applied. In the basic approach, scientific theorems, propositions and theories can be produced, so the theoretical knowledge and scientific literature of geopolitics can be developed. According to this approach the writer has compiled and published the book of: "The Principle and Concepts of Geopolitics"(Hafeznia, 2006). The applied dimension, emphasizes on the application of geopolitical knowledge to meet the needs of human societies, and to some extent is under the influence of world view, ideology, interest and attitudes of the users. This aspect is the same in the other scientific disciplines, and is not special to geopolitics. In the process of misuse of the knowledge of any scientific discipline including geopolitics the users should be condemned, not the scientific discipline.

The study attempts to enquire into reasons leading to changes in India’s geopolitical code, from non-aligned approach to one of hegemonic and domination, not only at the regional level, but also at the global level. With the world becoming multi-polar, the non-aligned code of the Nehruvian legacy became redundant. India has emerged as one of the poles. Consistent threats and pressures from the smaller and larger neighbours have necessarily compelled India to re-shape her geopolitical code to one of ‘restraint’ hostility. And this, probably, made India an acknowledged power, from a regional power to a ‘weltmacht.’

In this research, the period of political transition has been studied with reference to revolution. The current research applied descriptive and analytical methods with the use of library resources and documents in order to focus on the pattern of post-revolutionary political transition period of the Islamic revolution in Iran. Results show that governmental and constitutional structures in the post-revolutionary period were institutionalized on the basis of elite revolutionary ideology, and most of the incidents after Iranian revolution such as export of revolution, seizure of American embassy, and ethnical internal crises such as those of Kurdistan and Azerbaijan became the layout for the future geopolitical challenges of Iran. Emerging political competition among political groups and revolutionary elites, possession of power ethnical claims, and formation of revolutionary structures etc were happened.

The Caucasus has seen numerous crises since the region gained independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some of these crises have not been resolved yet as evidenced by recent Russia-Georgia conflict. This paper seeks to analyze such crises within the framework of significant geopolitical changes unfolded by the collapse of the Soviet Union. The main thrust of the paper is that in the post-Soviet era, the Russians lost much of their control over the region due to their own domestic problems, but it seems that Moscow is not interested in withdrawing further from the region. The findings of the paper indicate that under current conditions, it seems that as long as all regional and extra-regional powers fail to consider the interests of other powers or try to pose threats to them, the crises will continue to unfold in the Caucasus, while there is no agreed dispute settlement mechanism in the region either.

The United States can be considered as a country that enjoys strong motivation, different instruments, effective structural position to play the security and political role in critical fields. This country has started to play security role in Middle East since the World War 2. Many of U.S presidents had organized their regional policies based on confrontation with the Soviet Union.The U.S role has become especially significant since the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union could have made a safer atmosphere for the U.S to control regional conflicts on the basis of crisis management. But the U.S interventions have led to an increase of security complications in Middle East which has an effective geopolitical role in world politicsThe U.S crisis management model is based on confrontational indexes rather than diplomatic process and balancing model. The United States’ goal of crisis management in M.E can not be considered to be providing equilibrium and stability. Americans prefer to apply the engagement method and this has led to more instability and conflicts in M.E.

Alexander Supan (1847-1920), an Austrian geographer, was a major contributor to German geopolitics with his work “Guidelines of General Political Geography” (Leitlinien der allgemeinen politischen Geographie). The quantitative aspect of his work consists of two innovations: (1) the maritimity quotient quantifying the relation of maritime borders to land borders and (2) the pressure quotient quantifying the relation of external pressure to internal pressure in terms of power. In this paper I use adaptations of these formulas to deliver results for several countries that have relevance for Northeast Asia, explore the relationship to naval expenditure and, in the light of those results, discuss the implications and prospects for the two Koreas.