Practicing radical geopolitics: Logics of power and the Iranian nuclear "crisis"

Abstract

The theory of "radical geopolitics" is directly concerned with identifying the roots of U.S. foreign policy from a critical political economic perspective, seeking to determine the relative importance of political factors and economic forces in shaping foreign policy. It builds on Harvey's (2003) conceptualization of two logics of power and deploys a "geopolitical logic" and a "geoeconomic logic" to interpret political events. The former logic arises out of capitalism's tendency to expand geographically and the latter out of officials of statecraft's need to maintain their state's credibility internationally. Post-World War II U.S. foreign policy has largely followed the geoeconomic logic but has also been oriented (in sometimes divergent directions) by the geopolitical logic. A discussion of the Iranian nuclear "crisis" illustrates the radical geopolitics approach using national security documents outlining U.S. policy toward the Middle East and Iran, along with detailed interviews with senior diplomats from Iran, the United States, China, Russia, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and the European Union. The Iranian crisis is a product of (1) American interest in the control of Iranian energy resources (a geoeconomic logic); and (2) American officials' need to reaffirm U.S. credibility in the face of Iranian defiance of U.S. hegemony in the Middle East (a geopolitical logic). © 2009 by Association of American Geographers.