The Changing Face of US-Europe Relations: Geopolitical Causes and Possible Consequences

Relations between the United States and Europe have been quite volatile over the past five years. This volatility is not just a product of disagreements over the American invasion of Iraq. It is tied to a set of fundamental challenges to the geopolitical arrangements and understandings that emerged in the wake of World War II. Three challenges were of particular importance: the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Balkan crisis of the 1990s, and the election of a presidential administration in Washington, DC, which adopted a neoconservative geopolitical agenda. The global impacts of this agenda were heightened by the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States of America. The U.S. response exposed fundamental differences between the U.S. and Europe on the use of international military forces in the “war on terrorism,” the role of NATO, and the U.S. government’s effort to force “regime change” in Iraq. Europe’s reaction to U.S. policy has not been uniform, however. At the governmental level, fundamental differences have emerged among European countries. The United States has sought to highlight those differences, suggesting that the U.S. favors “disaggregation” in Europe, even as it trumpets the virtues of a uniform response to the threat of terrorism. The future trajectory of U.S.-European relations is likely to be shaped by intersections between Europe’s struggles with integration and the U.S.’s evolving global geopolitical posture, which could move in either a hegemonic or a globalist direction.     

Uncertainties of geochemical codes and thermodynamic databases for predicting the impact of carbon dioxide on geologic formations

Numerical codes are applied to calculate chemical reactions following geologic carbon sequestration in deep formations and CO₂ leakage in shallow formations. However, using different thermodynamic databases generates variations in the simulation results, which are referred to as the model uncertainty. The PHREEQC and The Geochemist's Workbench codes were used to simulate anorthite dissolution for storage, retention, transfer, and near-surface formation waters in the respective geological units. For each of the formation waters, a simple one-dimensional scenario was simulated using eight different thermodynamic databases. Groundwaters in shallow aquifers commonly exhibit low ionic strengths (<0.5 mol/kgw) and low temperatures, whereas storage formation waters are characterized by high ionic strength (>1.0 mol/kgw) and high temperatures. In storage formations, mineral trapping is the most efficient process for long-term CO₂ storage. However, with respect to the geological formations and the time needed for anorthite dissolution, the model uncertainties associated with using different combinations of numerical codes and thermodynamic databases were largest (∼90%) for the storage formation waters at 58 °C and I = 6.5 mol/l. Conversely, in near-surface formation waters, the model uncertainty was less than 1%. Due to CO₂ dissolution, the calculated pH of the formation waters decreased to a range between pH 4.0 and 5.5. In this pH range, the dissolution mechanism of anorthite switches from the slow neutral mechanism to the faster acid mechanism, causing dissolution time length variations. The calculated pH variation further increased with rising ionic strength. A detailed examination of the reasons revealed the activity coefficient calculation method of the main aquatic species to have the largest impact on the simulated model results. The calculation method of the CO₂ activity coefficient had the second largest impact. Via calibration with the experimental data, a specific thermodynamic database can be chosen to represent these experimental results. However, the calibration of thermodynamic databases is not possible for all potential reactions in more complex geological systems at large ranges of temperature, ionic strength and pressure conditions. The uncertainties associated with using thermodynamic databases quantified in this study for CO₂ storage systems will therefore persist independently from previously conducted calibrations of thermodynamic databases with experimental or field data. In view of these model uncertainties, the modeller is encouraged to include a routine in the simulations for quantification of the model uncertainty depending on the specific scenario or to assess the simulation results as a range of values that represent a soft outcome.     

Earthquake resistant building design codes and safety standards: The California experience

Seismologists and earthquake engineers have sought to understand and predict earthquakes and to develop better building designs to withstand them for well over a century. In the United States, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake provided the first real impetus for establishing building design codes and safety standards. Subsequent major California earthquakes in Santa Barbara (1925), Long Beach (1933), San Fernando (1971), Loma Prieta (1989), and Northridge (1994) each led to additional seismological understanding and engineering response in the form of enhanced building design codes. Nonetheless, the process to incorporate good seismic design and mitigation efforts has been slow, and by no means failsafe, especially in the Eastern U.S. where much of the building stock predates more recent design codes, and hence where a major earthquake could collapse large numbers of buildings. Even in the absence of catastrophe, it is still important to guard against a false sense of security.     

Hindu nationalism, neo-traditionalism and environmental discourses in India

One of the defining changes India has experienced over the last decade has been the social and political consolidation of the Hindu Right. Critics point to its chauvinist ideologies, the discrimination and violence against religious minorities, and the neglect of the poor. This paper examines the parallels between the discourses of the Hindu Right and those of neo-traditionalist environmentalists. Similarities include gendered and social conservatism; superficial hermeneutic analyses of ancient texts; partial and ‘romantic’ histories; and the essentialisation of science and of East and West. The paper concludes by suggesting that environmental scholars and activists cannot afford to be innocent of the implications of their ideas and assumptions given the social and political contexts of Hindu nationalism in contemporary India.     

The bio-politics of bodies politic: nature and intertextuality in classic US geopolitical discourse

This paper is a discourse analysis of classic US geopolitical texts which appropriate metaphors of the body to describe the state and its defense. While critical political geographers have demonstrated the role of naturalist epistemologies in classic geopolitics, I contribute to critical geopolitics literature by further examining the discursive economy of naturalism within which US geopolitical discourse is embedded. More specifically, I employ the concept of intertextuality, as theorized by Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes in the 1960s, as a key analytical tool. In doing so, I argue that invocations of the ‘body politic’ in 20th century geopolitical texts are a version of bio-politics informed by a proliferating bio-medical discourse over a similar time period. I furthermore argue that such metaphors serve to naturalize territorialized national identities and create a spatial abstraction of a nationalized self in opposition to foreign ‘others,’ a discursive strategy used frequently to justify militaristic state policies. This paper, then, also adds to literature on militarism and the environment by further analyzing the discursive construction of the state in relation to an essentialized, abstracted nature.

环境地球化学模型的应用与发展

环境地球化学模拟是环境科学、地球化学等学科交叉的一个重要领域。这里在总结形态与饱和度模型、表面吸附模型、反应途径模型、逆向模型、复合反应溶质运移模型以及动力学模型原理的基础上,对包含上述模型的各种地球化学模拟软件进行了优缺点比对。总结了各模型在当前环境地化研究领域的重要应用课题,这将为从事相关领域的研究提供一些相对较新、较综合的信息,最后还针对环境地球化学模型的不足进行了相关探讨,对地球化学模型的发展趋势进行了预测。     

Maps, newspapers and nationalism: The Finnish historical experience

Cartography has usually been perceived as an objective and exact science. Maps have been seen as actual presentations of the world or the area they depict. But another angle is also possible: they may be interpreted as social or political statements and tools for policy making. Therefore, it is important to aim at interpreting maps as products of their own time, in their own social and historical context. Iconology and hermeneutic interpretation may prove to be useful tools, especially when historical press maps are concerned. I will explore the ways in which maps were used in the Finnish newspapers, magazines and humorous magazines, with examples from the early 1900's to 1941. In many cases, the map was an essential part of the article or caricature, along with the text and other figures. They were often aimed to affect people's opinions and images, and to support Finland's territorial hopes in the Eastern Karelia. Among the other national symbols, such as the flag, national anthem or coat of arms, the map of Finland can be considered as a symbol of nationhood.     

The head vs. the gut: Emotions, positionality, and the challenges of fieldwork with a Southern nationalist movement

This essay explores the inner process of researching a group that is proudly white, conservative, fundamentalist Christian, and Southern. The recent attention to emotions in scholarship has not extended to the subject of fieldwork with right-wing movements. I discuss my experience interviewing members of the League of the South and explore the extent to which my positionality shaped the interactions that I had with League members and informed my emotional response to the fieldwork.     

The Shatter Belt and the European Core - A Geopolitical Discussion on the Untypical Case of Slovenia

Europe in general is in a great state of change. States uniting with difficulty, states collapsing in pain, newly freed states struggling for new political, economic, and social identities - it is a region in a true transition. The paper is focussing primarily on the European Shatter Belt, formerly known as Eastern Europe. This is in fact a subset of new and old nation-states in the region of Central and Eastern Europe or, to use an older, but increasingly popular term, Mitteleuropa (Ruppert, 1997). Mitteleuropa is reemerging from the commotion resulting from the collapse of the old political order - communism. Our focus in this presentation is on personal experiences and observations. We will note the progress and positive dimensions of the change (transition) in the light of Europe's and NATO expansion. We will address the issues at two scales- at the international/national level and then, at the level of a Slovenian case study. This will enable us to discuss the natural system of the process of enlargement and incorporate supporting material of geographical, historical and social nature as envisioned by Hartshorne. Since the collapse of communism, the region has experienced some serious traumas that vary in intensity across the region. Probably the greatest pain has been experienced in the former Yugoslavia - an estimated 150,000 have perished and about 2.5 millions have been displaced within and outside the country. Chaos still exists despite the protectorate arrangement in Bosnia. The hot spot Kosovo has yet to be calmed down. In parts of the region economic pain has been considerable. Every state of Mitteleuropa experienced absolute economic decline from 1990–1995; high inflation rates, increased economic inequality, high levels of poverty, increase of crime and more. Economic and psychological stress effect demographic processes. Things have partly changed to the better in the most recent years. The adoption of capitalism and a democratic political system has been painful, disorienting, and is still in progress. The democratization process varies considerably across the region and in some states is in jeopardy. Reformed communist parties had staged a restoration in nearly all of the states - in some winning the control of the government, in others gaining strong and influential positions, or both. But, two major processes promise future democracy, rule of law, wealth and stability in general. This is the decision of the member states of the European Union and NATO to incorporate some/several states of the Shatter Belt into their own zone of protection and/or federation. Nation-states of the region tend to follow the EU Agenda 2000 rules with Slovenia one of the first!     

Satellites and the New War on Infection: Tracking Ebola in West Africa

Satellite technologies are increasingly being deployed to manage infectious disease outbreaks. Although there is a substantive literature concerned with the geopolitics of space and the ethical issues raised by the use of remote sensing in warfare and counterinsurgency, little study has been made of the critical role played by satellites in public health crises. In this paper, we focus on the 2014–2015 Ebola virus disease (EVD) epidemic in West Africa, which saw the widespread use of public and commercial satellite-derived data, to investigate how overhead orbital and close-up viewpoints enabled by satellites are shaping attitudes to disease and determining responses to infectious threats. We argue that high-resolution satellite imagery is acting as a spur to a new spatio-temporal targeting of disease that parallels the ever more vertical dimension of contemporary warfare. At the same time, this new visualization of disease is promoting a broader ecological perspective on pathogen emergence. How can these divergent perspectives be reconciled? In addressing this question, we analyze the different uses to which satellite imagery has been put in tracking and mapping Ebola ‘hotspots’ across Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. We also consider the institutional contexts that have enabled the acquisition of this imagery. Given the rapid integration of space technologies in epidemiology and health logistics, there is now a need to examine how and with what consequences remote-sensing and communication technologies may be reconfiguring the practices and scope of global health.     

Hydrocarbons, popular protest and national imaginaries: Ecuador and Bolivia in comparative context

This paper examines contemporary struggles over hydrocarbon governance in Ecuador and Bolivia. Our comparative analysis illustrates the ways that petro-capitalism, nationalist ideologies, popular movements and place conjoin in the governance of oil and natural gas. In the case of Ecuador, state employees drew on their labor relations and political training to oppose the government’s efforts to privatize the state oil company. In Bolivia, urban popular movements opposed the privatization of the hydrocarbons industry and its domination by foreign firms. In both cases, hydrocarbons struggles involved the production of imaginative geographies of the nation and it hydrocarbon resources, which in turn drew on historical memories of nationhood. Whereas neoliberal political and economic restructuring sought to re-organize national hydrocarbons companies, redraw concessions, and draft new resource extraction laws, hydrocarbon movements aimed to counter these processes by re-centering hydrocarbon governance within a populist vision of the nation-state. In contrast to analyses of resource conflict in the environmental security and resource curse literatures, the cases of Ecuador and Bolivia demonstrate that such struggles cannot be reduced to models of opportunity structure, war profiteering, or resource scarcity (or abundance). Rather, these cases show that political economy and cultural politics are inseparable in the context of resource conflicts, which involve struggles over the meanings of development, citizenship and the nation itself.     

Heretical geopolitics of Central Europe. Dissidents intellectuals and an alternative European order

This paper analyses the emergence, spread and demise of a coherent program of radical geopolitical revision developed in East European dissident circles in the 1980s. Its foundation was the insistence on the need to completely overthrow the post-Yalta, bipolar division of Europe, combined with an emphasis on the priority of human rights in political and peace issues, as well as the belief in the value of the CSCE process. It was also marked by explicit consent for the reunification of Germany as well as the insistence on the need for a democratic Russia to be part of a wider European setup. Through seminal documents, such as the Prague Appeal of 1985 intellectuals, like Jaroslav Šabata, as well as his Czechoslovak, Polish and Hungarian counterparts, were able to convince large parts of the western peace movement and some political circles to adopt the “heretic” perspective. The paper also shows how a seemingly “cultural” discourse of Central Europe, put forth by intellectuals and artists can, together with the “Yalta debate” of the mid-1980s, be read as a specific (critical) geopolitical project. Finally, the post-communist foreign policies of the dissident-led governments are investigated in an attempt to explain the partial demise of “heretical geopolitics”.     

Anisotropic dual-continuum representations for multiscale poroelastic materials: Development and numerical modelling

Dual-continuum (DC) models can be tractable alternatives to explicit approaches for the numerical modelling of multiscale materials with multiphysics behaviours. This work concerns the conceptual and numerical modelling of poroelastically coupled dual-scale materials such as naturally fractured rock. Apart from a few exceptions, previous poroelastic DC models have assumed isotropy of the constituents and the dual-material. Additionally, it is common to assume that only one continuum has intrinsic stiffness properties. Finally, little has been done into validating whether the DC paradigm can capture the global poroelastic behaviours of explicit numerical representations at the DC modelling scale. We address the aforementioned knowledge gaps in two steps. First, we utilise a homogenisation approach based on Levin's theorem to develop a previously derived anisotropic poroelastic constitutive model. Our development incorporates anisotropic intrinsic stiffness properties of both continua. This addition is in analogy to anisotropic fractured rock masses with stiff fractures. Second, we perform numerical modelling to test the DC model against fine-scale explicit equivalents. In doing, we present our hybrid numerical framework, as well as the conditions required for interpretation of the numerical results. The tests themselves progress from materials with isotropic to anisotropic mechanical and flow properties. The fine-scale simulations show that anisotropy can have noticeable effects on deformation and flow behaviour. However, our numerical experiments show that the DC approach can capture the global poroelastic behaviours of both isotropic and anisotropic fine-scale representations.     

Beyond nationalism: Three visions of the European Union and their implications for the linguistic regime of its institutions

The linguistic diversity in the European Union is generally viewed as an essential component of the European identity, but the linguistic regime of the EU institutions (with eleven official and working languages) is not undisputed. In addition, the upcoming enlargements will complicate greatly the continuation of the present practices as new Member States bring new official languages. As a result, the debate about possible reforms is likely to be boosted by the necessity to prepare EU institutions for further enlargment. The present regime of institutional multilingualism is criticised from different angles, resulting in three options for the future. In this paper the linguistic regime of EU institutions is discussed in relation to general ideas about the nature of this supranational political system. Supranationalism is treated here as a program to supersede nationalism. Three variants are distinguished: pacified nationalism, neo-nationalism and post-nationalism. The paper examines how these different visions of Europe shed different lights on the issue of multilingualism (in terms of communication, identity and power) and its institutionalisation in the linguistic regime of the core instituions of the European Union. Although the three models are compatible with several arrangements, they support or oppose them for different reasons. Besides, they differ regarding the significance of the linguistic regime of the EU institutions for the whole polity and their ability to steer linguistic practices.     

Issue indivisibility and territorial claims*

Early research on contentious issues in world politics suggested that there is an important distinction between largely tangible and largely intangible issues. Tangible issues are thought to be easier to resolve, while intangible issues can fester for long periods of time through fruitless negotiations and repeated armed conflict. Research on territorial issues has suggested that many territorial claims are driven by both tangible and intangible concerns, though, which complicates the analysis of issue tangibility. The authors argue that territorial issues with greater intangible salience (e.g. historical possessions, important homelands, sacred sites, identity ties) should be harder to resolve peacefully and should produce more frequent and severe militarized conflict. Empirical analyses of 191 territorial claims in the Americas and Western Europe (1816–2001) provide mixed support for these expectations. Territorial claims with high intangible salience are significantly more likely to experience militarized disputes and wars. Surprisingly, though, states are much more likely to strike peaceful agreements with their adversaries over territories that are valued for intangible reasons. *This research was supported by National Science Foundation grants SES-0079421 and SES-0214447.     

Privacy, reconsidered: New representations, data practices, and the geoweb

Blogging, social networking, and other Web 2.0 practices have sparked widespread debate about the status and future of privacy. This paper examines an explicitly geographical aspect of Web 2.0 with respect to these debates: the geospatial web, or ‘geoweb’. As part of fundamental shifts in the kinds of geographic information available, its circulation, and representative forms it assumes, the geoweb implies new objects of privacy concern and subsequent privacy-related negotiations over the aggregate of its component information, technologies, and data praxes. Thus we argue that privacy must not only be revisited, but indeed re-conceptualized. Whereas prior research on privacy vis-à-vis geographic information technologies has tended to question what privacy ‘is’, we focus instead on the constitutive outcomes of societal struggles over privacy. We examine how privacy is being negotiated around two geoweb services - Google Street View and the Twitter GeoAPI - to illustrate that these contestations produce privacy as a social object in particular ways. We show that public discourse around actual or anticipated privacy harms stemming from geoweb services and their uses, as well as the preventatives and remedies proposed or implemented to address such harms, reconstitute the objects and practices of privacy concern, and alter the roles and relationships of state, civil and corporate actors in the construction of privacy. Finally we suggest that the geoweb raises new privacy concerns because some of its representational forms - namely geo-tagged images and self-authored texts - facilitate identification and disclosure with more immediacy and less abstraction.     

Boosted bodies: Genetic techniques, domestic livestock bodies and complex representations of life

This paper focuses on the burgeoning application of genetic techniques in livestock agriculture, examining how these are changing livestock breeding knowledge-practices and the representation of animal life. Conventional livestock breeding relies on visual appraisal of animals and maintaining performance records, whereas genetic and genomic techniques offer the potential to assess particular aspects of animals’ genotypes. Advertising and promotional material produced by organisations involved in developing genetic techniques, and reportage and discussion of such techniques in the agricultural media, are used to examine the ways in which the production and value of living bodies in the future is being mapped out in emerging knowledge-practice networks which centre around particular visions and representations of what livestock bodies are and should do or be. The paper argues that bodies should be understood in part in terms of the wider spatial relationships in which they are entangled. A process of’circulating reference’ [Latour, B., 1999. Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA] is identified in which rounds of simplification occur in relation to the representation of the genetic qualities of livestock animals. However, these attempts to simplify produce new complexities when livestock breeders attempt to make use of genetic knowledge-practices. Identifying different modes of complexity, the paper discusses their spatiality in terms of differences between genetic abstractions from animal bodies and breeders ‘multi-layered ‘lay’ knowledges of their livestock animals.     

Ethnic and political identities and territorialities in the post-Soviet space

The author examines some specific features and the post-Soviet changes of ethnic and political identities. He stresses the existence of supranational, mixed, blurred and `hierarchical' identities and of the complicated overlapping of national (political) and ethnic identities. Factors influencing their evolution in the context of nation- and state-building in the Russian Federation and in the other former Soviet republics are analyzed: language policy, creation of the national informational space, invention of national myths and stereotypes, and economic leverages used by ethnic political elites.