{"id":73256,"date":"2022-08-31T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-31T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/les-voies-de-la-puissance-penser-la-geopolitique-au-xxie-siecle\/"},"modified":"2024-10-31T12:02:12","modified_gmt":"2024-10-31T11:02:12","slug":"les-voies-de-la-puissance-penser-la-geopolitique-au-xxie-siecle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/les-voies-de-la-puissance-penser-la-geopolitique-au-xxie-siecle\/","title":{"rendered":"Les Voies de la puissance"},"content":{"rendered":"
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If there is one paradox of our time, it is surely as Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Encel describes in his latest book, Les<\/em> Voies de la puissance [Pathways of Power]:<\/em> on the one hand, the decline in living conditions may well, in the future, make the race for power appear risible; on the other, power, whose main characteristic is the possession of a credible dissuasive military force, remains the sole guarantor of sovereignty and the capacity to influence.<\/h6>
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Encel<\/span> Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric, Les Voies de la puissance. Penser la g\u00e9opolitique au XXIe<\/sup> si\u00e8cle [Pathways of Power: Thinking Geopolitics in the 21st<\/sup> Century],<\/em> Paris: Odile Jacob, March 2022, 304 p.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n \n \n <\/a>\n <\/div>\n \"\"\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n

As a central concept in geopolitics, an \u201cevolving combination of factors,\u201d power is therefore a subject that merits elucidation by this international relations expert in order to grasp its subtleties and to analyze the conditions for laying claim to it and the means for exercising it. Skillfully backing up his arguments with a wealth of examples drawn from contemporary or more distant history, Encel considers the pathways of power in all their forms. Though at times he risks stating the obvious, he also debunks misconceptions and emphasizes overlooked aspects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No one would deny that a military, with human and material strength and a significant projection capacity, is an attribute of power. The same goes for diplomacy, intelligence, the economy, and access to energy resources. Less obvious is the influence of \u201cthe representation of a collective self\u201d or of geography.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Encel foregrounds these two criteria, building on the work of Yves Lacoste, who was his doctoral adviser. The first because internal unity, cohesion of identity, a sense of belonging to the same nation and of sharing the same fear, hate, or resentment are all founding elements of a will to power: Would Russia be so threatening without its exploitation of a sense of victimhood and deep resentment toward the West? Likewise, would China be seen as a systemic rival were it not for a narrative centered on the greatness and longevity of a Chinese civilization wronged by unfair treaties?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for geography, while strategic insularity\u2014whether total, as in the case of the United States, or relative\u2014is undeniably a factor of power, fertile soil or demographic strength can also be a source of fragility. The author cites the \u201coil and mineral resource curse\u201d of many African and Persian Gulf states, the \u201crampant, disabling demographics\u201d of Egypt and Nigeria, whose populations remain poorly educated and discontented, or conversely the \u201ctiny but spartan high-tech states\u201d of Israel and Rwanda. Location can also play a decisive role. This is the case for \u201cgatekeeper states\u201d such as Singapore, whose strategic location on the Malacca Strait gives it a lever of power out of all proportion to its size or demographics, or Turkey, which benefits from a \u201cgeographical rent\u201d due to its location on a migration route. Other cases involve \u201cupstream countries\u201d located at the source of a cross-border river, which enjoy certain strategic advantages over \u201cdownstream countries\u201d\u2014such as Turkey over Syria, Ethiopia over Sudan and Egypt, or China over India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, realities evolve and, with them, so do the levers of power: Turkey was not a gatekeeper state before the migration crisis; North African states will be even more so in the future as climate change puts the people of the Sahel on the road to exile; Russia is already profiting from the new \u201cPolar Silk Road\u201d opening up in the Arctic, to the detriment of Egypt and the Suez Canal; and China, long considered \u201cthe world\u2019s factory,\u201d may be penalized in the medium term by its demographics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Power, therefore, is not immutable. Yet Encel notes that while the global balance of power has shifted over the last century, it has not undergone a \u201cCopernican Revolution.\u201d The major powers have held on to their power, even if some have weakened in terms of absolute share. Is this because their respective identity representations lead each state to consider itself as the<\/em> great legitimate power and to align its strategy in that direction? Indeed, in the United States, Russia, and China, the national narratives are built around the idea of power: the US because the divine right supposedly conferred upon the first settlers gave them a mission to \u201cdo good on the planet\u201d; Russia because its national victimhood narrative pushes it to secure its border states and increase its zones of influence to counter what it deems to be Western imperialism; and China because it claims the existence of a Chinese civilization that made it the world\u2019s leading power for centuries. Thus, despite their clear weaknesses, which the author analyzes in detail, these three nations remain atop the world\u2019s hierarchy of power. And where does Europe, described as an \u201cunidentified political object,\u201d fit in here? While it possesses many characteristics of power, it lacks the most important one: that subtle alchemy of integrated hard power, the awareness of belonging to a community, and the will to exert influence beyond the economic and commercial sphere alone, which some call sovereignty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is true that, despite its shared institutions, Europe remains an aggregate of states. Yet Encel, after evaluating the new actors on the international scene\u2014and without denying the \u201cinter-socialities\u201d dear to Bertrand Badie\u2014affirms that the state remains the only true actor of power. In his view, indeed, the decisions taken by groups of states, whether political or economic, ultimately fall to the states themselves; private economic, commercial, and financial giants remain subject to the regulations of the state in which they operate; religious groups, factions, or even violence entrepreneurs operate within states to influence or benefit from them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study of geopolitics is meaningful only if it allows us to assess risks and establish certain prospective scenarios. Encel does this by closely examining certain regions of tension where the balance of power may well be redrawn. Thus, he considers the claims of Egypt over Cyrenaica, Turkey over the Aegean and Mediterranean seas, India over the Indian Ocean, Algeria over the Maghreb, and of course Russia over its Eastern European neighbors and China over Taiwan. Such constantly shifting threats, with possibly cataclysmic consequences, must be foreseen and dealt with realistically, yet without renouncing a humanist geopolitics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translated from French and edited by Cadenza Academic Translations \u2022 Translator: Nicholas Lo Vecchio, Editor: Zahira Ransome, Senior editor: Mark Mellor<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If there is one paradox of our time, it is surely as Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Encel describes in his latest book, Les Voies de la puissance [Pathways of Power]: on the one hand, the decline in living conditions may well, in the future, make the race for power appear risible; on the other, power, whose main characteristic … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":24821,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"both","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":301,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[131],"tags":[203,212],"keyword":[952,1048,851,1092],"class_list":["post-73256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-read-seen-heard","tag-geopolitique-en","tag-societe-en","keyword-forces-armees-en","keyword-geopolitique-en","keyword-economie-internationale-en","keyword-pouvoir-politique-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73256"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99201,"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73256\/revisions\/99201"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73256"},{"taxonomy":"keyword","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/keyword?post=73256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}