Effects of the September 11th attack on the geopolitics of the US Essay

Introduction

The geographical structure in global politics has been greatly challenged by various issues such as new technology like the internet, globalization, environmental degradation, and terrorism. This paper will seek to explain how the geo politics of the USA were affected by the terrorism attack of September 11^th 2001. It will also discuss the effect of the “New map” by Barnet and how it has been used to visualize the worldview by The USA.

Effects of the September 11^th attack on the geopolitics of the US

The terrorist September 11 assail on the United States has distorted the geopolitical scenery in major ways. U.S. reaction to the attacks has provoked it to create new premeditated relationships and take on new military schemes that have had an effect on old alliances and associations. This shifting setting of global relations will have considerable consequences for the geopolitics of oil and other major resources in the imminent decades.

Already, the terror assault and also the realization of the ensuing U.S. “War-on-Terror” has unnerved a focus on the innate risks allied with heavy dependence on oil provisions from the Middle East. At the same time, as tactical policies are evaluated, many countries, like the U.S. as well as other European, and Latin-American powers, are re-evaluating their energy safety policies (Department of Defense 2008).

The budge in geopolitical relations that is mounting as the U.S. acts in response to the attacks on its people is already pressurizing oil trades and supplies relationships and also changing ways can be anticipated in the coming years. Almost suddenly, Russia publicized its willingness to lend a hand to the West in order to diversify its oil basis to comprise a growing torrent of Russian crude oil.

The war in Iraq that resulted from the September 11 attacks resulted to a reconfiguration of the geopolitical landscape globally in very many ways. Some of this ways may not be noticeable for quite some years or even some long time to come.

The effect has had an alteration of the relationship between the United States and other countries in the Middle East and Iraq. However, its blow goes well further than this. More than everything else, the warfare discloses that the new-fangled central turn of world antagonism is the south central region of Eurasia (Department of Defense 2008).

The expression “geopolitics” seems to come on or after another epoch, from the tardy nineteenth century. By geo-politics or geo-political antagonism, this paper means the conflict between immense powers and wannabe great-powers for management over territories, resources, and also important physical positions, for instance ports and at times harbors, river systems, canals, and other causes of prosperity and authority.

Looking back, you will discover that this sort of contest has been the motivating force in world and global politics and in particular world disagreement in much of the precedent few centuries. Geopolitics was very popular in the 19^th century and grew in the same trend towards the beginning of the 20^th century.

It is imperative to make a note that this is a course of action that began ahead of 9/11. September 11 speeded up the progression and gave it a fashionable authorization, but this was utterly unanticipated from a point of view of U.S. thinkers. President bill Clinton is well remembered to have built strong links with some countries of the Arabian origin and made the arbitration of the Persian Gulf a reality. The U.S. triumph in Iraq was not a win of Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld; this was Clinton’s labor that prepared this conquest possible.

The war in opposition to Iraq was wished-for to endow the United States with a dominant place in the Persian Gulf/ Caspian Sea area, and to serve up as a launch pad for further take-over and declaration of power in that region. To add on this, the war was also meant to show countries such as Russia, China, and Europe the US mighty power. It is part of a larger process of emphasizing overriding U.S. power in the south central Eurasia, in the exceptionally heartland of this mega continent.

The main question is the reason behind this region. In fraction, this is so for the reason that this is where the majority of the world’s residual oil is located where it has approximately 70% of recognized petroleum reserves. The major reason as to why oil has been the contentious issue is because it is a source of power above being just a source of fuel. As U.S. strategists see it, the one who controls Persian Gulf oil reins the world’s financial system and, consequently, has the definitive lever over all contending powers (Graham 2006).

Dick Cheney, the former US secretary of data forewarned the senate that it was dangerous for Sadam Hussein to capture the Kuwait and other Middle East oil territories as this would enable him to have control over the global economy. This was the most important rationale, he confirmed, why United States was obliged to send armed forces to the area and keep at bay Hussein’s forces.

It is however very clear that the United States has to retain a strong hold on the world’s economy by scheming this area. This is also as imperative, in the administration’s point view, as keeping hold of the America’s benefit in military machinery (Kaplan 2008).

Ten years from this time, China is also expected to be entirely reliant on the Persian Gulf and also dependent on the Caspian Sea locale for the oil that it will require to maintain its economic expansion.

Japan and South Korea and also Europe are bound to have quite some good deal if they were to be in similar conditions. Utter control over oil faucet may be to some extent a very funny image, but it is an illustration that has aggravated U.S. course of action since the closing stages of the Cold War and has vehemently gained even more distinction in the Bush-Cheney government.

This expanse is also the solitary area in the whole world wherever the interests of the supposed great powers smash together. In the Caspian Sea region which is the bones of contention, major powers are tending to have more increasing powers. They include the United States, china and Russia.

There is utterly no other region in the world which is like this. They are under pressure with one another deliberately and enthusiastically The Bush government is determined to control this region and to subsidiary these two prospective challengers and avert them from figuring a common frontage against the United States.

What then are the insinuations of this immense repositioning of U.S. geo-political strategy made potential by the Cold War overwhelm of the then Soviet Union?

It is apparently much too premature to draw any ultimate conclusions on this delicate matter; nevertheless, some things can be retaliated on. First, Iraq is presently the commencements of a U.S. take into this region. It is possible that people will see further additions and appearances of U.S. authority in the area.

This will tend to bring forth ripples between the United States and other regimes who are contending for dominancy. However, the United States will most likely also become entangled in confined conflicts that were there even long before America’s participation in the area (Connolly 2006).

For instance, the disagreement amid Armenia and Azerbaijan, and also the one stuck between Abkhazia and Georgia, both of which are known to have quite a long history will draw closer to brunt on U.S. defense as the United States gets dependent on some newly constructed trans Caucasian pipeline for transporting oil. In all such disagreements there is a possibility of tortuous or straight, stealthy or obvious interventions by the United States and most likely from the other contending supremacies (Campbell 1998).

The new map: the visualizations

The Pentagon’s New Map by Barnett is a cutting edge advance to globalization, which combines security, financial, opinionated, and intellectual factors which above other things predict and gives details on the environment of war and that of peace in the 21^st century. The map makes a straightforward distinction where it divides the globe into two parts: the first part is “the functioning-core” and the other part being the “non-integrated-gap.”

The core comprises of economically sophisticated or emergent countries that are associated to the global-economy and bound to rule sets of worldwide trade. The remaining part of the world is the non integrated-gap exterior to the global economy, and is not bound to those rule sets of the international trade,”

According to Bartlett disconnection is not only a problem which is handled by these societies only: “In this century, it is disconnectedness that defines danger. Disconnectedness allows bad actors to flourish by keeping entire societies detached from the global community and under their control. Eradicating disconnectedness, therefore, becomes the defining security task of our age” (Barnett 2004).

Disconnection from the international community as Roberts et al. (2003) states, the global economy also conveys with it extrication from the ‘‘rule-sets’’ which are concerned with the governing of proper international behavior: “enunciating that rule set is the most immediate task in this global war on terrorism, and promoting the global spread of that security rule set through our use of military force overseas (e.g. pre-emptive war against regimes that openly transgress the rule set) is our most important long-term goal in this struggle” (Barnett 2005).

As noted in the preceding statements, the American’s role in the articulation of a fresh global rule-set has turned out to be the guiding concern of the scheme for the “New American Century” from the time of its inception: a concern which has been made visible contained by a quantity of the National-Security strategies. It is far a bit far from the selfish tasks, however; Barnett asserts that it is America’s moral responsibility to make sure that it shares the rule-set.

America seeks to sell abroad this new defense rule-set called preventative war, we should then be very careful in making certain this tactical concept is in the approved manner understood. In short, preemptive warfare is not a gizmo for re-ordering the Core’s safety structure as some might fear. Rather, it is a gadget through which the centerpiece hereby being referred as the Core should as groups seek out to expand its stable defense rule-set into the fundamentally lawless Gap (Barnett 2004).

With the above arguments in place, it is therefore worthwhile o note with conviction that the assertions made Barnett in his book are correct visualizations of the current worldview by the USA. This is further supported by the variety of ways in which he has invoked the integration concept which is more or less way much similar to the current policies of both domestic administration and also foreign administration (Agnew 2003).

Conclusion

In the after effects of September the 11^th, it has evidently become usual to argue that the world over has essentially changed in various ways. President Bush asserted as much during the time he declared the assaults of that day preordained “the doctrine of containment just doesn’t hold any water” and the premeditated vision of the United States had to shift considerably (Bush 2003).

As a consequence, incorporation into a westernized and American values and a modus operandi has come out to be the new tactical concept. Dissimilar from the shallow binaries of the erstwhile Cold War, incorporation nonetheless engages its own exclusions sets, with structures of violence in anticipation of those who are maybe reluctant or incapable to be incorporated.

References

Agnew, J. (2003) Geopolitics: Re-visioning world politics. London: Routledge.

Barnett, T. P. M. (2004) The Pentagon’s new map: War and peace in the twenty- first century. London: Putnam Publishing Group.

Barnett, T. P. M. (2005) Blueprint for action: A future worth creating. New York: G.P. Putnam’s and Sons.

Bush, G.W. (2003) President Bush meets with Prime Minister Blair, January 31st. Web.

Campbell, D. (1998) National deconstruction: Violence, identity and justice in Bosnia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Connolly, W. (2005) The evangelical-capitalist resonance machine. Political Theory, 33(6), 869-886.

Department of Defense. (2008) Strategy for homeland defense and support. Washington D.C.: Department of Defense. Available at: https://www.defense.gov/

Graham, S. (2006) Cities and the ‘war on terror’. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 30(2), 255-276.

Kaplan, A. (2008) Homeland insecurities: reflections on language and space. Radical History Review, 85, 82-93.