Geopolitics and Geostrategy

About

This course maps the changing nature of geopolitics and geostrategy over the past century to consider how traditional understandings of war, conflict and risk more broadly have been fundamentally transformed. In a moment in which ‘everything is geopolitical’, we will assess what that term has meant in practice, and how different approaches to geopolitics shape understandings of risk and insecurity – and the strategies designed to counter them.

The module begins with an overview of the histories of geopolitical thought from colonial times to the present day, with a focus on the histories of seapower and its transformations. We will critically assess the distinction between ‘grand strategy’ and ‘geopolitics’, since the two are often (mistakenly) used as synonyms, and then move on to explore the different scales of geopolitics – from the international to the domestic, including the ways in which insecurity enters our daily lives as ‘geopolitical anxiety’.

This course is organized and co-taught by lecturers from Ca’ Foscari, Warwick University and the Italian Naval Staff College (ISMM). Some of the course will be held at the ISMM building in the Arsenale.

Target group

Anyone interested in this topic.

Fee info