Roger Boyd - Böcker

Great Power Politics, Elites & Energy explores the dynamics between great power politics, elites and energy, utilizing a critical political economic and historical materialist perspective that moves away from a Western-centric viewpoint and dominant International Relations methodologies.The book highlights the reality of national ruling class competition and domination that is at the core of the dynamics of the international system, and the dependence on ever-increasing amounts of energy to bolster state power. A great power politics that locks in a power-up and ongoing usage of fossil fuels, when a power-down and energy transition is actually what is required. The way in which elites dominate their own society, and can dominate other societies, is fully theorized, together with the fundamental clash between Chinese and US political economic models and elites. The internal dynamics of China, the US and Russia are investigated through historical materialist analyses which take full account of their specific historical development. The book links the imperative of economic growth both for elite legitimacy and relative national power to the dependence on ever increasing amounts of energy required for that growth; rejecting the fallacy at the core of eco-modernism. It covers the inability of the international community to act effectively with respect to the energy transition while the dynamics of great power politics play out, and identifies possible interim measures.Great Power Politics, Elites & Energy provides a provocative alternative to both mainstream international relations and eco-modernist scholarship in its representation of the dynamics of the international system. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, politics, environmental studies, sociology, economics, and public policy.

This book profiles Simon Dalby’s academic contributions in the fields of critical geopolitics, environmental security and the intersection of international relations and the Anthropocene. It includes reprints of key essays that highlight innovations in critical thought at the intersections between geopolitics, environment and security.Starting with an analysis of American reconstructions of the Soviet threat in the 1970s, an early contribution to the emerging field of critical geopolitics, subsequent papers focus on the emergent formulations of environmental security in the aftermath of the Cold War and the environmental costs of globalization. Focusing on the implicit geographical framing in discourses of globalization offered a critique that extended the ambit of critical geopolitics to grapple with the issues of environmental security and the rising concern with climate change as well as the political identities invoked in that debate.In the aftermath of 9/11, similar arguments about contextualization applied to the American global war on terror and the revival of discussions of empire and its geographies, both in arguments for invading Iraq, as well as the wider discussions in policy discourse and popular culture. Simultaneously, the emergence of earth system science and the concept of the Anthropocene offered another way to highlight the dangers of fossil fueled economic activities. The necessity of fundamentally rethinking the premises of security policy in light of this recontextualization is emphasized in more recent contributions on climate security and the current ecological crisis.Critical geopoliticsEnvironmental securityGlobal war on terrorFirepower in the Anthropocene