Le retour d’une géopolitique des ressources ?

• Main Author: Kattalin Gabriel-Oyhamburu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université de Reims Champagne-Ardennes 2011-02-01
• Series: L'Espace Politique
• Subjects: globalization; emerging nations; scarcity of resources; geostrategic nodes
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/espacepolitique/1796

The history of geopolitics is completely dependant on the moment in time it is related to. Historically linked to the State and the principle of national sovereignty, it is today in reformulation. Although, the scarcity of the resources in energy, water, and agro-alimentary, related basically to the market access of the emerging nations, restructures the architecture of the world and gives new priorities to geopolitics. At the beginning of the 20th century as during the Cold war, to calculate the degree of power of a given territory, whether it is regional, national, or supranational, it was enough to examine its expansionist goals. Today this analysis is obsolete. It is necessary to reconsider the point of view and to think geopolitics differently. The vectors of any power depend more and more on the policy of securitization of the resources. Is this a come back to the resource-position of Kenneth Waltz? Partially. We are in the presence of a new configuration, that of two States, America and China, two hyper powers that build more and more their power on the control of such resources, and not, as one could imagine, on the control of knowledge. This soft competition creates new spaces, geostrategic nodes, controlled by the United States and China. In this second phase of the third globalization, it is not a matter of controlling the Heartland or the Rimland but that of being present, through flexible strategic planning, in areas of strong production of the resources.