Intersecting Technology and Geopolitics

Geography has played important roles in various studies. Its loose disciplinary boundary has manifested in various interdisciplinary fields of study, such as Cultural Geography, Historical Geography, Political Geography, and Economic Geography to name a few. Geopolitics as a subfield of International Relations has had to deal with this loose definition of Geography. Heavily drawing on the realist focus on territorial control and integrity, earlier geopolitical concepts were bound by the territorial spaces (on land) and the surrounding frontiers that were available for competition and control (such as the seas). The notion of geographical frontiers has expanded three-dimensionally with the advent of new technologies, turning such new spaces as the airspace, deep seabed, and outer space into competitive domains. Key developers of new technologies have not been limited to the states and their militaries. This dual character of technological development results in both concentration and diffusion of technologies across state and private corporate actors. Industrial policy by state actors has also blurred this distinction between state and private corporate actors. The intersection of geopolitics and technology has thus presented the scholars numerous opportunities to examine the theoretical field that stretches between the liberal interdependence school and the geopolitical realist school. This panel will gather papers that address either contemporarily (now) or historically (then) cutting-edge technologies and their implications on geopolitics. Technology does not have to be treated solely as an independent variable, as its interrelation with geopolitics is often reciprocal. The “cutting-edge” will be treated as a geographically bound concept, for availability of a particular technology to a specific geographic location (or state) often takes place with a differing time frame—although globalization may have significantly reduced such a gap. (For example, invention of steam-powered engines in the 19th century has significantly altered naval warfare and strategies, requiring navies of the world to quickly convert into steam-powered navies. Such a catch-up has not yet reached anywhere near universality in terms of adoption of nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers.)