Europa y Japón: socios con valores comunes en un mundo incierto

En un escenario internacional cada vez más incierto, en el que todavía no se ha dejado atrás la pandemia de Covid-19, a lo que se suma la necesidad de gestionar la ilegítima invasión rusa de Ucrania, así como unas relaciones entre Estados Unidos y China cada vez más tensas, Europa y Japón han reafirmado sus vínculos históricos, económicos y políticos con dos acuerdos de asociación, uno de carácter económico y otro estratégico, en vigor desde 2019. El continente asiático se ha convertido, además, en el principal eje geopolítico del mundo, y Japón quiere tener un papel relevante en el nuevo escenario al que ha respondido mediante su iniciativa del Free and Open Indo-Pacific, a la que Europa ha respondido con ciertas reservas. ¿Deben Europa y Japón seguir profundizando en su relación? ¿Cuáles son los ámbitos susceptibles de mejora? El marco adecuado debe ser, en nuestra opinión, el "orden internacional basado en normas" del que ambos actores son claros defensores, y los valores comunes de democracia, Estado de Derecho y protección de derechos fundamentales que los unen.Alternate :In an increasingly uncertain international environment, in which we are still trying to put the Covid-19 pandemic behind us while trying to manage the illegitimate Russian invasion of Ukraine as well as the increasingly tense relations between the United States and China, Europe, and Japan have reaffirmed their historical, economic and political ties with two association agreements, one economic and the other strategic, in force since 2019. In addition, the Asian continent has become the geopolitical axis of the world, and Japan wants to play a relevant role through its Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) initiative, to which Europe has responded somewhat hesitantly. Should Europe and Japan continue to deepen their relationship? What are the areas for improvement? The appropriate framework, in our opinion, should be the "rules-based international order" of which the two actors are firm defenders, and the shared values of democracy, rule of law, and protection of fundamental rights that unite them.

Geopolitics and Political Geography in Russia: Global Context and National Characteristics

Against the backdrop of global trends, the main directions, methodological approaches, and the most striking research results in the field of geopolitics and political geography in 2011–2021 are considered. Political geography is being widely integrated with adjacent scientific areas. Russian political geography and, to a much lesser extent, geopolitics are based on a wide range of concepts known in world literature. Researchers in these areas are promptly responding to current foreign policy and other challenges, including the coronavirus pandemic. Particular attention is being paid to geopolitical publications about the pivot of Russian foreign policy to the East and the Greater Eurasia concept. Since the 2010s, the theory of critical geopolitics has become more widespread in Russia, operating not with speculative reasoning, but with large amounts of information analyzed by modern quantitative methods. The flow of studies of state borders and frontiers is growing. In such publications, a large place is occupied by works devoted to the growing gradients in the pace and directions of economic development between former USSR countries. Shifts in the topic of border studies are associated with the deeper study of security issues. Many works reflect the desire to preserve the positive experience of cross-border cooperation between Russian and European partners in a deteriorating environment. The greatest number of Russian publications on regionalization at different spatial levels involve the Baltic Basin. There is a growing body of research on territorial conflicts and separatism. Russian geographers and representatives of related sciences have made a significant contribution to studying the problems of uncontrolled territories and unrecognized (partially recognized) post-Soviet states. Conflicts around unrecognized (partially recognized) states in the post-Soviet space are considered in relation to their internal differences, complex composition, vicissitudes of formation and identity of the population, influence on neighboring regions of Russia and in historical retrospect. © Russian Academy of Sciences. All Rights Reserved.

Investigation of Risk Factors Influencing the Safety of Maritime Containers Supply Chain: In the Period of the Pandemic

Maritime security is facing many challenges due to war conflicts, geopolitics, sanctions, and pandemics. The supply chain for maritime containers has faced considerable obstacles as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Numerous factors, such as port closures, travel restrictions, and a decreased workforce, have impacted the supply chain. The risk of cargo theft, piracy, and other security events has increased as a result of these difficulties. Therefore, it is essential to look at the risk variables that may affect the security of the marine container supply chain during the pandemic. This research paper highlights those risks through the following three indexes: the likelihood index (LI), severity index (SI), and average risk index (ARI) by analyzing 64 risk factors that were prepared and designed by incorporating the Delphi expert survey technique to prepare a systematic questionnaire. The article addresses worries over the COVID-19 pandemic's effects on international supply networks. The causes of the most recent global shipping industry disruptions and their impact on supply chains have been thoroughly examined. In order to reduce the number of disruptions in global supply chains and lower the direct and indirect costs for consumers, the authors have also mentioned the necessary actions that must be implemented. The results concluded after the analysis pointed to "management activities,” such as human resources or the working environment as having the highest possibility of going wrong, whereas "operation activities” were judged to likely be the fatal ones if the security of maritime containers was ever compromised. The main objective of the study is to evaluate how the COVID-19 epidemic may affect international shipping, particularly container shipping, which is currently the most important link in the world's multimodal land–sea supply chains.

A cold war text for the COVID generation

Not only do the early pandemic fads of sourdough baking and mushroom foraging make the narrator's frontier-style life now seem less removed from reality, the loneliness, uncertainty, and subdued terror that form the backdrop of her daily routine perhaps for the first time will be relatable to students. [...]their loneliness begets deeper woes: the most recently released Youth Risk Behavior Survey (2023) issued by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention shares that almost half of high school students in 2021 reported "persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness," a significant increase from prepandemic times. In a variation of an American Association of Teachers of German sponsored public graffiti event created by my colleague several years ago to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall, I will repeat her prompt: "Which walls hold you back?" Key to her question was the understanding of a "wall" as any kind of social, physical, or mental impediment that prevented students from fully realizing their goals. In particular, the moment at which the narrator encounters the wall is jarring;a comparison of the literary versus cinematic description of this event offers students the opportunity to consider the power and/or limits of the written word.

Lt Gen Kamal Davar says... India and the new geopolitical churnings

According to the WHO, this virus still exists in many parts of the globe in some form or the other. After the end of the Cold War in the early 90s, the global geopolitical and geo-economic divide, consequent to the ongoing Russo-Ukraine War, has never been so harshly polarised. [...]it is pertinent to note what President Xi had spoken recently in the National People's Congress stating that he will endeavour to "more quickly elevating the armed forces to world-class standards-and make it a great wall of steel." Importantly, for decades, India does carry some moral authority with itself with its foreign policy based on the Nehruvian concept of nonalignment now aptly called 'strategic autonomy' which has been long respected by the 'third world' now referred to as the 'global south'.

Unwitting Agents: Representations of Chinese International Students in US-China Geopolitics.

As part of a larger study, this paper presents findings from my exploration of discourses about China-US geopolitics through popular discussions on Chinese international students (CIS) who are attending American universities during the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic. The study seeks to advance scholarship for international students attending American colleges, with particular implications for Chinese students, as agents of geopolitical relations. In doing so, it investigates (a) how these students are represented in American media and (b) the criticality of international geopolitics in the mobility of international students. The findings reveal that American popular media sources assume a tone when writing about CIS that may stem from a deeper anti-Chinese sentiment that exists in the US. They also suggest that American institutions of higher education, and American companies that employ CIS after graduation, treat these students as imported subjects/objects that support America's intellectual and economic advancement. In doing so, the media perpetuates narratives of geopolitical tensions between the United States and China, while representing CIS as unwitting agents of those tensions. The study seeks to advance scholarship on international students attending US colleges, particularly those from China, during an era of rising populism and right-wing movements in the US coupled with rapidly deteriorating US-China relations. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12140-023-09409-5.

When green recovery fails to consider coal pushback: Exploring global coal rebounds, production, and policy retrenchment post Covid-19

The global green recovery is facing a significant threat due to the escalating consumption of coal and the announcement of new coal development plans by several leading nations. This study presents an overview of post-pandemic coal activities and identifies three types of coal rebound, namely coal use rebound, coal production or power plant expansion, and climate change policy retrenchments, that pose a challenge to global green recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic. We delve into the major short-term and long-term factors that underlie the coal rebound by analyzing case studies from eight countries, namely Vietnam, Zimbabwe, China, India, the United States, Germany, Australia, and Indonesia. The findings indicate that in the short-run, energy price volatility induced by the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical crises are the primary factors driving the coal rebound in most countries. We also highlight that the climate-induced coal rebound due to extreme weather could backfire and emerge as a major short-term factor to impede decarbonization efforts. This round of coal rebounds can be attributed to several long-term factors, including the anticipated economic growth in phase-in and established countries, the abundance of coal endowment, the reliance on the coal economy resulting from it, the political influence of coal sectors, the resurgence of geopolitics, and concerns around energy security. It is noteworthy that the return of geopolitics is likely to impact the energy transition for decades to come. The study provides policy recommendations to mitigate coal rebound and enhance the post-pandemic green recovery.

Earth Power in the New Geopolitics

The best way to think about the climate emergency is to imagine humanity has just arrived at a new planet somewhere in a distant galaxy. After all, as scientists tell us, our planet Earth will soon look like a new planet, with conditions radically changed from the 'climate niche' of the past 10,000 years, during which human civilization developed. Once settled on the new planet, our task is to terraform it, to build a new natural environment fit for human life and human flourishing. My general approach to the politics of climate change thus differs from the most common view among environmentalists. I do not believe we can speak of climate change as a product of the Anthropocene, the human-built world. Our inability to control the consequences of climate change shows this is still at heart a natural process, one triggered by human beings or, more specifically, by our limited ability to control natural processes and therefore by our incapacity to control the unintended consequences of our actions and choices. The solution to the climate emergency is not to exit the Anthropocene but, intriguingly, to enter it for the first time. The world building is a task significantly full of existential meaning and urgency.

Border hotels: Spaces of detention and quarantine

'Border hotels' have come to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic as spaces of detention and quarantine. Despite the longer history of using hotels for immigrant detention, efforts to contain outbreaks have led to the proliferation of hotels used for border governance. Ad hoc quarantine facilities have been set up around the world acting as choke points for mobility. The use of hotels as sites of detention has also gained significant attention, with pandemic related restrictions impacting on access to services for detained refugees and asylum seekers. Inhumane conditions and mobilisations against these conditions have recently received substantial media coverage. This symposium initiates a discussion about 'border hotels', closely engaging with these developments. Contributors document the shifting infrastructures of the border, and explore how these sites are experienced and resisted. They draw attention to divergent experiences of immobility, belonging, exclusion, and intersections of detention and quarantine. In exploring different - and controversial - aspects of 'border hotels', this symposium theorises modalities of governance implemented through hotels. Following in the footsteps of the 'hotel geopolitics' agenda (Fregonese and Ramadan 2015) it illustrates how hotels become integrated into border regimes. In doing so, it contributes to debates on the material and infrastructural dimensions of bordering practices and specifically to the literature on carceral geographies, polymorphic bordering and the politics of mobility.

Common Immunity or Microbial Xenophobia? Nation-State Boundary Controls and the Spread of Disease in the Era of Covid-19

In the era of Covid-19, governments and commentators alike have argued that border controls are a necessary tool in the fight against disease. Indeed, for much of 2020, the Trump administration in the United States adopted an almost singular focus on limiting transnational mobility as the lynchpin of its pandemic response. Ironically, this strengthening of border controls, combined with the uninterrupted operation of immigration detention and deportation, incubated the virus and amplified its circulation in the United States and abroad. Such outcomes raise many questions. How did the policing of national borders become embraced as such a pivotal tool in the fight against disease? What work does the border accomplish vis-a-vis pandemic control? And how do these public health outcomes shed new light on the nature of border controls? In this article, we argue that the principal contribution of border controls to the unfolding of contagion emerges from their role in the differentiation and policing of unequal legal and political status. We explore how this differentiation has demonstrably come to drive patterns of risk, harm and vulnerability during the era of Covid-19. As a contrast, we also discuss various grassroots and official interventions that have instead woven relationships of solidarity, care and cooperation across differences of nationality and legal status and their associated territorial expressions. Together, we read these efforts as cultivating a kind of "common immunity,” one based on a recognition of mutual interdependence that is foundational to collective life, health and wellbeing © Published with Creative Commons licence: Attribution–Noncommercial–No Derivatives

Covering conflicts and risks: Chinese newspapers' peace-loving discourse and their use of risk language

The process through which people and society begin to see and frame something as risky is complex. As risk communication practitioners play a critical role in fostering real-world risk governance, this study emphasizes the performative role of language in mobilizing symbolic resources to build and control risks from a communication standpoint. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) was used to reveal patterns of how two events - the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine dispute - were covered by the Chinese media, and speculate about the relationship between risk communication practice and its wider geopolitical context. Results revealed different frames were used for the two events, and that 'threat' was most frequently used when addressing the Russia-Ukraine dispute, whereas 'risk' was adopted for most COVID-19-related articles. Two themes were generated when interpreting the discourse through a critical geopolitical approach: 'From the COVID-19 Approach to the Political Systems' and 'China as a global Player through its peaceful Rise'. While China prefers to maintain peace in its interaction with other global actors, the Chinese government does not simply accept adversity, particularly when it comes to geopolitical conflicts derived from arbitrary ideological disagreements. The study adds to the current literature on the relationship between the practice and context of risk communication, as well as to the underrepresented regional online news coverage of risks and conflicts that focus on China.

Multi-Regionalism: Coherent and Realigned Caribbean Geopolitics for Sustainable Development and Sustainable Security Post-COVID-19

The existential risks of continued reactiveness by smaller Caribbean States in the post-COVID-19 global environment call for a coherent and realigned regional approach to geopolitics. The zero-sum strategic security predisposition of both existing and emerging great powers does not prioritize Caribbean interests that remain persistently elusive. Caribbean states need a multilateral cooperation framework that prioritizes their geopolitical interests above this predisposition for extra-regional influence and investments by great powers that pursue their often exclusive, and inequitable global geopolitical and governance interests. Acknowledging arguable progress after six Decades of Development, or Poverty Eradication Decades (PEDs) since 1961, including adoption of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, this discussion reviewed the experience of small Caribbean states at the Organization of American States (OAS), a 1948 multilateral environment, still substantially reflective of Cold War and post-Cold War geopolitics. Multi-regionalism emerges as an alternative geopolitical framework for the coherent and realigned pursuit of Caribbean sustainable development and multidimensional security interests post-COVID-19. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Mapping a Country Image from Global News Reports about COVID-19 Pandemic.

The outbreak of the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has infected hundreds of millions of people worldwide and caused millions of deaths. This study used media analysis and correlation analysis to elucidate the significant differences in the ways in which news reports from 228 countries discussed a specific country when covering the COVID-19 pandemic. Media reports analysed in this study were collected from the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone project (GDELT). These differences were found to be deeply embedded in the economic, socio-political, and cultural contexts of different countries. The findings reinforced the hypothetical assumption in framing theory and promoted a measurable and upscaled use of framing theory into macro geography studies. This study highlights the urgent need of a geo-political examination of COVID-19 in the global context-an area with insufficient interest from interdisciplinary perspective beyond epidemiology. Further research can be of great value for the promotion of an effective international cooperation mechanism to curb the spread of COVID-19. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12061-022-09498-4.

Recalibrating EU Foreign Policy Vis-à-vis Central Asia: Towards Principled Pragmatism and Resilience

With China and Russia acting more assertively vis-à-vis Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan have gradually moved to the core of contemporary Eurasian geopolitics – albeit to varying degrees. The European Union (EU) has purposefully sought to promote its norms and values in the region for quite some time in the past. However, considering the ongoing Western "polycrisis" exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic most recently, our paper investigates how the EU has been recalibrating its relationship towards Central Asia – within the timespan of its two EU Central Asia Strategies, dating from 2007 and 2019, respectively. We argue that the reformulation of EU policy towards Central Asia is pragmatically taking its lead from the growing constraints of EU foreign policy as well as Chinese and Russian intervention in the region;it is, in the end, geographical proximity that continues to shape geopolitics in Central Asia. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Geopolitics is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

MEASURING THE IMPACT OF GLOBALIZATION ON COUNTRIES USING COMPOSITE INDEXES

Consumers, regulators, government institutions, and the media are all directly affected by globalization. Globalization is a recognized economic phenomenon that is often seen as a catalyst for national economic growth and development. The economy, politics, and society have become more intertwined in the last two decades. A trend in one part of the world quickly influences development in other parts. The COVID-19 epidemic is an excellent example of this interdependence. The purpose of this study is to systematically review the literature which deals with the study of composite indices measuring globalization and its impact. This is accomplished by collecting and classifying 65 peer-reviewed publications, primarily from Scopus, Web of Science, and Science Direct, and augmented by a search of existing databases and bibliographies. This review elaborates on the six widely cited globalization indexes. The study will contribute to existing literature and theories by documenting and comparing currently used composite indices. Findings show that despite its shortcomings, the KOFGI is the most popular index with sixty three percent of globalization studies citing it followed by ATK/FP as second most cited index.

An intermestic approach to China's public diplomacy: a case study of Beijing's COVID-19 communication in the early stages

PurposeThe aim of this study was to examine the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak and the international communication management of Chinese diplomats as a case for extending the definition of intermestic public diplomacy. The goal was to reveal how Beijing subtly used both domestic and foreign social media to organize a network for communication about COVID-19 and purposefully soften the highly centralized and hierarchical political propaganda of the Communist Party of China (CPC).Design/methodology/approachBased on the literature on digital public diplomacy, the authors applied the existing concept of intermestic to Chinese politics in order to demonstrate the digitalization of public diplomacy, along with its forms and strategies under an authoritarian regime. A hybrid methodology combining quantitative network analysis and qualitative discourse analysis permits examination of China's intermestic online communication network dynamics, shedding light on how such an intermestic practice promoted Chinese values and power to international publics in the early stages of the COVID-19 crisis.FindingsThe authors' findings extend the implications of intermestic public diplomacy from a democratic context to an authoritarian one. By analyzing the content of public diplomacy and para-diplomatic social media accounts in China and abroad at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, the authors outlined China's early crisis management, explaining its intermestic public diplomacy transmission modes and strategies. Moreover, the authors identified changes in the narrative strategies of Chinese diplomats and journalists during this process.Social implicationsThe findings of this study underline that Beijing established a narrative-making virtual communication structure for disseminating favorable Chinese strategic narratives and voices through differentiated communication on domestic and foreign social media platforms. Such intermestic communication strategies were particularly evident and even further weaponized by Beijing in its large-scale Wolf Warrior diplomacy in the spring of 2020. Thus, the study's findings help readers understand how China digitalized its public diplomacy, its digital communication patterns and strategies.Originality/valueOn the one hand, geopolitical uncertainty and the popularity of social media have contributed to the evolution of the intermestic model of public diplomacy. This model allows actors to coordinate homogenous and differentiated communication practices to deploy their influence. On the other hand, the authors did not examine how intermestic audiences perceive and receive public diplomacy practices. In future studies, scholars should measure the agenda-setting capacity of diplomatic actors by examining the effects of such intermestic communication efforts.

Climate Change and the Great Power Rivalry in the Arctic

The world politics of the 2020s seems to consist of two realities: People are concerned about an ecological catastrophe, as tion kills and climate change threatens societies. The focus of this article is to discuss climate change, and state politics in the Arctic in the context of the two realities. Behind this is the assumption that climate change mitigation is a challenge to state politics and national security. The commentary assumes that, although in world politics, there is a new (East-West) great power rivalry with its related conflicts, no armed conflicts appear in the Arctic, but environmental degradation and rapid climate change still threaten the people. The study firstly analyses how environmental issues came onto the political agenda of States, in particular, that of the Arctic states;secondly, it discusses huge investment packages and great power rivalry as substitutes for climate change mitigation, revealing the political inability of states;thirdly, it examines the Arctic from the point of view of functional cooperation on environmental protection, and that on science;and finally, it concludes what has possibly gone wrong in state politics related to the environment, and could be taken as the biggest challenge.

The politics of Chinese immigrants' double unbelonging and deglobalization

This study theorizes the politics of belonging, drawing on the case of Chinese immigrants. In the heyday of globalization, Chinese immigrants used to enjoy a high degree of transnational mobility and multiple belongings. Now, in the wake of China–West geopolitical contestations and during the time of COVID-19, many Chinese immigrants are experiencing double unbelonging due to marginalization in both the host society and China. By analyzing double unbelonging, this study makes three theoretical contributions. First, it expands the conventional cultural–humanistic framework of belonging to incorporate political analysis. Second, it discusses why and how to replace the positivist approach to belonging as exemplified by acculturation theory with a social constructionist approach to the politics of belonging. Finally, the study theorizes unbelonging—its epistemological advantage, its dialectical relation with belonging, its production by the nation-state and media, and how polarizing geopolitics produce double unbelonging.

Love of Empire by Dissociations

In the past two years, as the whole world has been deeply mired in the COVID-19 pandemic, we may have observed neoliberal capitalism's crisis of care: exposed and exacerbated by the global pandemic, made explicit alongside examples such as the collapsing of health systems, the shortage of care labor and overwork of nurses, the serious outbreaks in aged care facilities, the increased burden of domestic labor and care work due to school closures, and the worldwide rise of domestic abuse. Feminist calls for economic independence for (mostly middle-class) women to work for equal pay as men certainly do not resolve the care problem but, instead, further obscure colonial divisions of labor under which the racialized labor mostly from formerly colonized nations is made to fill up the gap.2 I consider the discursive formations of love as a point of departure to review how the global pandemic bears on our everyday practices of intimacy. The historical effects of racialized displacement can be seen as consisting of three sets of often-dissociated social relations during the pandemic crisis: archetypical angel-heroines in white (nurses), angels in the house (housewife and mother), and fallen angels (prostitutes).3 During the pandemic, many of us constantly experience fears about the health systems being overwhelmed, even while we express growing appreciation for the essential care provided by health workers. The virus eventually spread to the teahouses of Taipei's Wanhua neighborhood—also known as an adult entertainment red-light district in Taipei. Since Wanhua was reported as the center of a major cluster, the workers in the sexual venues, in particular, became a singularized target of public criticism.