The militarisation of politics and essentialisation of identities in Europe

On 11 November 2015, Stefano Guzzini presented the main findings of his research on the ‘return of geopolitics in Europe’ to the Higher Research seminar at Stockholm University. Geopolitical thought returned or was strengthened in several European countries already in the 1990s just after the end of the Cold War and hence well before 9/11. He shows how such a revival is best understood in two ways. On the one hand, it is connected to foreign policy identity crises in several European countries whose foreign policy elites had to re-imagine their self-understanding, role and function in the European political order. On the other hand, the parallel revival of geopolitical thought is not just a passive registration of world affairs, but an active intervention into it. It mobilises the reversal of Clausewitz when now politics becomes the mere prolongation of war with other means. And it essentialises identities, hence putting walls around allegedly homogeneous selfs and others. Oddly, it is the disorientation after 1989 - the biggest peaceful change in Europe in the 20^th century - that created the conditions for a revival with opposite effects.