Geoffrey Gresh: Eurasia & the New Great Power Competition at Sea
Geopolitics & Empire
Geopolitics & Empire
4.2 • 568 Ratings
🗓️ 26 December 2020
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Professor Geoffrey Gresh joins us to discuss the strategic maritime shifts under way from Europe to the Indian Ocean and Pacific Asia and the race for great power status as the earth’s changing landscape is rapidly transforming Eurasia and thus creating a new world order. We talk Mackinder, Spykman, Mahan, and cover terrain and sea from Morocco and the Strait of Gibraltar to Djibouti’s Bab el-Mandeb Strait to China’s “String of Pearls” ports (e.g. Gwandar, Pakistan). We look at the merits of the “Thucydides Trap” argument, the “Asian Century”, and the importance of the underwater submarine cables that countries use to connect themselves to the internet.
*”The views expressed by Dr. Gresh are his personal views and do not represent the U.S. government, the Department of Defense, and the National Defense University.”
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Show Notes
Website
Website https://cisa.ndu.edu/About/Faculty-and-Staff/Article-View/Article/2168042/dr-geoffrey-f-gresh
Twitter https://www.twitter.com/GGRESH
Books
To Rule Eurasia’s Waves: The New Great Power Competition at Sea https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300234848/rule-eurasias-waves
About Geoffrey F. Gresh
GEOFFREY F. GRESH is Professor of International Security Studies at the College of International Security Affairs (CISA), National Defense University in Washington, D.C. with a primary research focus on maritime affairs. He has also served as the Department Chair of International Security Studies (2016-2019) and as CISA’s Director of the South and Central Asia Security Studies Program (2014-2016).
Previously, he was a Visiting Fellow at Sciences Po in Paris and was the recipient of a Dwight D. Eisenhower/Clifford Roberts Fellowship. He also received a U.S. Fulbright-Hays Grant to teach international relations at Salahaddin University in Erbil, Iraq. He has been awarded a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship to Istanbul, Turkey and a Presidential Scholarship at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. Most recently, he was named as a Hitachi-CFR International Affairs Fellow, a U.S.-Japan Foundation Leadership Fellow, an Associate Member of the Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies at King’s College in London, and as a term member to the Council on Foreign Relations.
He is the author of Gulf Security and the U.S. Military: Regime Survival and the Politics of Basing (Stanford University Press, 2015), editor of Eurasia’s Maritime Rise and Global Security: From the Indian Ocean to Pacific Asia and the Arctic (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) and co-editor of U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East: From American Missionaries to the Islamic State (Routledge, 2019). His forthcoming book, To Rule Eurasia’s Waves: The New Great Power Competition at Sea (Yale University Press) is due out in the Fall of 2020, including a Chinese-language version in 2021. His research has also appeared in such scholarly or peer reviewed publications as World Affairs Journal, Gulf Affairs, Sociology of Islam, Caucasian Review of International Affairs, Iran and the Caucasus, The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Turkish Policy Quarterly, Central Asia and the Caucasus, Insight Turkey, Al-Nakhlah, War on the Rocks, and Foreign Policy. He has a working command of French, German, Spanish, Arabic, and Turkish. He received a Ph.D. in International Relations and MALD from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
*Podcast intro music is from the song “The Queens Jig” by “Musicke & Mirth” from their album “Music for Two Lyra Viols”: http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Geopolitics and Empire podcast is joined by Dr. Jeffrey Gresh, who is professor of international |
| 0:05.9 | security studies at the College of International Security Affairs at the National Defense |
| 0:10.5 | University in Washington, D.C. I do need to make the following disclaimer that the views expressed |
| 0:16.4 | today by Dr. Gresh are his personal views and do not represent the U.S. government, the Department |
| 0:21.4 | of Defense, and the National Defense University. |
| 0:24.3 | We'll be discussing his excellent new book called, quote, to rule Eurasia's waves, the new great |
| 0:30.1 | power competition at sea, and quote, how are you doing, Dr. Gresh? |
| 0:34.8 | Yeah, great. |
| 0:35.7 | Thank you so much for hosting me and I greatly look forward |
| 0:39.5 | to the conversation. Yeah, thanks for being here. And it's been a while since I've had academics |
| 0:45.1 | of your stature on the podcast to talk deep geopolitics. So I'll have to do this more regularly. |
| 0:52.0 | This may be the last podcast episode of the year, so I hope listeners |
| 0:56.9 | enjoy it. Now, Eurasia is on the rise. I would know I've been living smack in the geographic |
| 1:03.8 | center of Asia the last few years. There's the Russia-China dragon bear that's all the rage, |
| 1:09.9 | the talk of McKinders' nightmare coming to pass, that of Eurasia awakening and taking hold of the world island. |
| 1:18.1 | Or as the Spikeman put it, who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the world? |
| 1:22.7 | You also quote in your book, Sir Walter Rally from, I believe the 17th century, who said, quote, |
| 1:27.9 | whoever commands the sea commands trade and the riches of the world and consequently the world |
| 1:33.7 | itself, end quote. So in your book, you've also said that Russia and China are well positioned to |
| 1:38.8 | unify and control the strategic sea lanes of communication that surround Eurasia or what many call the world island. |
| 1:45.8 | And so, you know, the competition that has emerged in recent years is taking place across maritime |
| 1:50.8 | Eurasia between the continent's main rivals, China, Russia, and India, which is what you focus on |
... |
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