جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه "seapower" در نشریات گروه "علوم انسانی"

Iran is among the countries that enjoy a strategic maritime positioning and has the potential to leverage maritime advantages. Iran’s access to the southern coasts of the Caspian Sea in the north, the Persian Gulf and the Oman Sea, and especially the strategic Strait of Hormuz in the south underscore the potential. In addition to enjoying economic benefits and commercial seafaring, the state can enhance its seapower both regionally and beyond. The present research seeks to explain the geopolitical prerequisites crucial for empowering southern Iran’s coasts as a linking between the national and international spaces – a fact that would enhance the nation’s seapower. The research sets to answer this question: What are the geopolitical requirements essential to empowering southern Iran’s coasts in terms of fortifying seapower? In order to answer this question, the article initially explores the continental nature of the Iranian civilization in various historical eras and the reasons behind the oversight of the southern coasts; it then explains the geographical, geopolitical and geoeconomic potentials and vulnerabilities. Given the above, the current maritime presence and seapower of Iran are elaborated on. At last, proposals for empowering southern Iran’s coasts are presented.

The article attempts to explain the significance and prerequisites vital for empowering southern Iran’s coasts that would enhance seapower. It adopts a foundational-applied approach and utilizes a descriptive-analytical method. Data collection rests on library-based method, which uses library resources and available documents in relation to the subject. Analysis methods include argumentative approaches and qualitative analysis.

The findings suggest that the following factors should be highlighted to empower the coasts and enhance Iran’s seapower: Iran’s continental civilization and the historical neglect of southern coasts; the geopolitical, geographical and geoeconomic capacity of Iran’s coasts; the role of Iran’s southern coasts, particularly Makran, in seapower; and the significance of seas in national documents. Iran’s continental positioning has contributed to continental, land-centric culture and civilization, the expansion of land, limited coastal population and human construction as well as historical backwardness in coastal areas – especially in southern Iran. The result is that Iran is distanced from the sea. Some advantages of the southern coasts that can enhance seapower are the favorable topography and climate, extensive coastlines, proximity to maritime zones, dominance of the Sea lines of communication (SLOCs), crucial transit capabilities, and the potential to bridgehead the southern and northern states. The challenges include: poverty in the region; the region’s underdevelopment; weak connectivity between Makran and the south-east of Iran; distance from geographical centers, population and industrial hubs; and sparse population.

Coasts hold potential for diplomatic and seapower for Iran. Leveraging maritime capacity, Iran can play a significant role in this domain. Adopting the sea-based policy entails a concerted effort in administrative, political, and economic realms alongside the support of the political establishment and development agendas. The proposals suggested in this article to develop the southern coasts and fortify the seapower are as follows: implementing maritime diplomacy in the Persian Gulf and the Oman Sea more efficiently; opting for a foreign policy strategy that guarantees maximal interactions; providing the legal framework for foreign investment; establishing a dedicated ministry for maritime affairs, coasts, and islands; developing coastal economic hubs and land-use planning for coastal regions; necessitating labor division on the national level as well as in the southern coasts.

Strategists and researchers have devoted more attention to the sea and oceanic environments than to the other types due to former’s environmental properties and the vast area they cover. The differing nature of land and sea has been brought to bear upon the opinion of political leaders and scholars over years. Seas, land, air, space and electromagnetic spectrum constitute crucial dimensions of geopolitics. Theories of seapower have always been debated in the academia and the military. The end of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century witnessed remarkable transformations in the military, maritime, and national strategies of states, the geopolitics of seas, and the international and economic orders. The seapower of states should therefore be in tandem with these developments. Nowadays, a purely military approach to seapower is not considered consonant with the multiple purposes of states and the national and maritime strategies thereof. A review of the propounded theories of seapower indicates the fact that they were mostly framed as a description of the nature of seapower, as the elements and factors involved, or as a model.

Adopting a descriptive-analytical approach and using meta-analysis, this study attempts to devise a theoretical model that contains the factors and elements involved in a seapower. It will put forth a critique and assessment of the theories in the light of their structure and content. The aim of the present research is foundational and applied. The literature, both old and new, of the maritime has been extensively assessed. Also, the structure and content of theories and models devised in this scope have been reappraised to fit them into today’s development and circumstances. The research will therefore strive to compile and expand the theoretical foundations of seapower, i.e., the elements and factors, and then propose a theoretical and conceptual model through appraising the theories. The data are analyzed by using a deductive and qualitative method. The resulting model can be applied to evaluating and assessing the seapower of states and various geographical areas.

Following an appraisal of the models and theories of seapower, a model of seapower consisting of seven main elements is proposed. They include economic and industrial, military, political and institutional (be it domestic or international), human and societal, geographical and territorial, geopolitical, technological, maritime infrastructure and IT—each one of which further divides into sub-elements. Informed by both subjective and objective factors, these seven elements do interact with each other, which renders isolating them almost impossible; that is to say, seapower is the output of indiscrete items.

How states with seapower behave in the maritime environment during war and peace, either military or non-military, they go on indicate their seapower. Such a capability in the sea should lead to a change in the way the actors in both sea and land behave. The state with seapower can therefore exercise its political will through the sea on other parties involved, which requires both military and non-military instruments. The latter include geographical and geopolitical elements, and political and economic ones, among others.