Mackinder Forum Virtual Seminar #72: Mr. Rodger Baker, "The Return of Multipolarity"
On Feb. 5, 2023, 1:30-3:00 p.m. Eastern U.S. time, Mr. Rodger Baker addressed the Mackinder Forum on “The Return of Multipolarity.”
Abstract: Rising U.S.-China competition is reviving assertions that the world is heading back into another Cold War. But the Cold War was an anomalous period of modern world history, one that emerged at a particular moment in history, with a world destroyed and ready to be rebuilt, and economic and ideological power concentrated in a small handful of nations. What created the conditions that allowed the bifurcation of the Cold War? What are the similarities and differences today? What strategic challenges and opportunities emerge in a multipolar system? How are these enhanced by modern technological and demographic trends?
Biography: Rodger Baker is the Director of Stratfor Center for Applied Geopolitics. He has spent more than two decades with Stratfor/RANE where he focused on the Indo Pacific region with special attention to China and the Korean Peninsula. He addresses the strategic dynamics of an evolving world system—looking at great power competition, the role of middle powers, and the impacts of technological, environmental, and demographic changes on geopolitical relationships. His core emphasis is the multidisciplinary approach to geopolitics to develop mid- and long-term forecasts to assist companies, governments, and other globally engaged organization make informed decisions. Rodger is a Senior Fellow at the George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations, a Steering fellow for the Mackinder Forum, and teaches a certificate program in Geopolitical Analysis at Florida Atlantic University.
Participants may be interested in Rodger’s podcast: ttps://worldview.stratfor.com/article/applied-geopolitics-reviving-geopolitics. In this episode of the Applied Geopolitics podcast from RANE, host Rodger Baker talks with David Criekemans, an associate professor of international relations and geopolitics at the University of Antwerp in Belgium and the editor for the new Brill Geopolitics and International Relations series, about the trends in geopolitics as a field. They discuss how geopolitics is experiencing a revival among internationally engaged businesses and organizations as a global multipolar system reemerges. And even academia is rehabilitating geopolitics as a viable and important field of study, particularly in Europe, but more recently in the United States.