فصلنامه بین المللی ژئوپلیتیک
سال یازدهم شماره 4 (پیاپی 40، زمستان 1394)

The group calling itself the Islamic State poses a grave threat, not just to Iraq and Syria but to the region more broadly and to the United States, as well as its global coalition partners. A deadly and adaptive foe, the Islamic State seemed to come out of nowhere in June 2014, when it conquered Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city. However, the Islamic State of today is the direct descendant of a group that Iraq, the United States, and their partners once fought as al-Qaida in Iraq and then as the Islamic State of Iraq.Analysts and specialists had already spent years studying the group and actually knew quite a bit about it: how it financed and organized itself, how it established control, how it responded to airpower, and what its ultimate goals were. The Republican meme is that every problem, including in the Middle East, is Barack Obama’s fault. Although emphasizing independence and self-reliance for America, they deny responsibility and accountability for their party. According to the GOP, George W. Bush left America and the world secure. The feckless Obama administration allowed the collapse of Iraq and rise of the Islamic State.For instance, Jeb Bush defended his brother’s policies. He cited the “brilliant, heroic, and costly” success of the Iraqi troop surge, asking “why was the success of the surge followed by a withdrawal from Iraq, leaving not even the residual force that commanders and the joint chiefs knew was necessary?” He complained that “now we have the creation of ISIS.” In contrast, he contended, “had we kept the 10,000 troop commitment that was there for the President to negotiate and to agree with, we probably wouldn’t have ISIS right now.” Bush declared that “The one thing about my brother: he kept us safe.”

A proper understanding of the field spatial justice depends on understanding the interrelationship between politics and space and their dynamic mechanism. The mutual mechanism underpins the subject-matter and also the philosophy of spatial justice scheme in political geography. In political geography, the concept of justice has moved away from its objective level and has been reach to its subjective level. In other words, the concept of justice becomes operational. From this perspective, geographical or spatial justice is the relative equality of comprehensive development indexes (Economic, Infrastructural, political, cultural, social, security and health care) in the geographical places and spaces (micro and macro) of a country with indexes corresponding with development at the national level based on principles of need and equality. The paper tries to conceptualize spatial justice in political-geography studies using descriptive- analytic method, and data gathering procedure is based on library findings.

This study examines the evolution of state systems in seven developing world regions, including Central and South America, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Central and Southeast Asia, from the date of political independence to the early twenty-first century. The theoretical framework incorporates two propositions: that the central problem of Third World state formation has been the relative absence of the consolidation of geographic boundaries in response to external military threats, and the limited ability of governments to project their authority over sparsely inhabited territories. Additional hypotheses address the role of population and topography in public administration; the impact of ethno linguistic divisions on governance; the dynamics of domestic protests and violence; the political effect of external challenges to territorial integrity; and the relationship between boundaries and interstate conflict. These are applied at three levels of analysis. The domestic-level model introduces a measure of internal power projection capability that indicates the ability of political elites to administer taxation across territorial space. A second international-level model estimates the impact of these domestic structural variables on the extent of state participation in militarized interstate disputes. The final level addresses possible interdependence between internal and external variables. The outcomes suggest that while several predictors have had a significant impact on trends of consolidation and conflict across systems, there is considerable variation in effects between regions, calling into question common generalizations about the intrinsic qualities of developing states.

U.S foreign policy toward Iran had been so uncertain and variable since the beginning of this relation, but alongside fluctuations, some kind of consistency is distinguishable. Until the Islamic revolution of 1979by the Iranian people, Iran was playing a major role in the U.S. anti-communist strategy in the Middle East. U.S grand strategy was based on its confrontation with USSR and Iran was the key for controlling the Middle East and process of underpinning Iran’s power as a liberal ally in the region was at the core of U.S considerations in Iran. After the 1979 revolution, Iran’s priority had changed as a regional actor and it no longer identified itself as a member in the Western coalition based on American foreign policy. On the other hand, U.S. also stopped to identify Iran as a friend and started to demonize the new role Iran was playing in the Middle East and the world. By having these trends in mind, a very fundamental, important question strikes the mind: Did U.S has a turning point in its foreign policy toward Iran after the 1979 or the principle of its foreign policy was fixed and only tactical changes occurred? In order to answer this question I’m going to examine the history of U.S foreign policy toward Iran, particularly the post-revolutionary period. This analysis will be conducted according to the Copenhagen school definition of security and concept of securitization. This theoretical frame work brought us a comprehensive understanding of security and also a relative, useful categorization of security strategy in foreign policy. Different methodological approaches could be used in these frameworks but in this research I have used the discourse analysis method to explore the subject of research. Conclusion of the research shows us that American strategy toward Iran covers both permanent and variable factors but the permanent element was the key and variable factors made changes only in tactical level. U.S foreign policy was basically directed toward securitizing Iran but the world system, regional and national events also made it more powerful. It means that after the Islamic revolution of Iran, U.S. has continuously made an attempt in persuading other actors to securitize Iran. Before the Cold War, this securitization was in a low level but after the Cold War it can be classified as a high-securitization.

The integrative process of cooperation between countries in a region is an increasing discussed issue in area studies. The reality of international politics today is based on how regions are inter-connected. International trade or other international regimes are indeed the developed models of integrated structures and processes among countries within a region. Therefore we are facing with a regional extended version of some regimes at global level. Organization of Islamic Cooperation as a regional and intraregional organization is the main theme of current research in which will be analyzed and compared with Association of Southeast Asian Nations to understand dynamism of regional cooperation and progress in economic and security issues. Comparative regionalism is our tool to understand the two organizations and an analytical framework for comparison.

The end of the cold war has changed world order in terms of the distribution and structure of power in international system. Following the growth of regional powers and international system’s shifting from bipolarity to multipolarity, regional powers, undertaking key tasks in the crisis management, are likely to play an active and determining role in new world order and change world management trends with a view to securing their region as well as their own interests. According to this article, the end of the cold war between the East and West and transition to multipolar structure has carried opportunities for the newly emerging regional powers as regards the enhancement of the their capabilities in the management and establishment of regional order as well as entrance to the global decision-making structures. This article reviews the nature of regional powers, their reasons to support regionalism, and the role of the regional order in re-defining the world order.

Shanghai cooperation organization, is a regional multilateral cooperation organization the permanent and observer members of which account for about 44% of world population, 20% of oil reservations and about 40% of world gas reservations. Also, permanent and observer countries of this organization have a significant share in oil and gas production. 24% world oil production as well as over 30% of world gas production is done in Shanghai region. Therefore, given the aggregation of the largest energy producers (Iran and Russia) alongside the largest energy consumers (China and India) in this organization and its huge energy potential, one of the cooperation fields is energy. As such, in order to provide some recommendations for Iran about the manner of membership in the organization using scenario planning method, this research investigates the impact of scenarios facing Iran and Shanghai organization on energy geopolitics and concludes that if Iran become a full member of Shanghai organization, it can take advantages from its positive consequences on energy security (acquisition of demand security, eliminate the threat of sanctions, foreign investment and access to technology).