Encompassing everything from great power politics to everyday objects such as smart phones, geopolitics affects citizens, governments, and international bodies, and is far more than simply the impact of geographical features on political developments. This book considers both geopolitics' intellectual historical origins and its current concerns.

Conversations defining the Arctic region often provoke debate and controversy -- for scientists, this lies in the imprecise and imaginary line known as the Arctic Circle; for countries like Canada, Russia, the United States, and Denmark, such discussions are based in competition for land and resources; for indigenous communities, those discussions are also rooted in issues of rights. These shifting lines are only made murkier by the threat of global climate change. In the Arctic Ocean, the consequences of Earth's warming trend are most immediately observable in the multi-year and perennial ice that has begun to melt, which threatens ice-dependent microorganisms and, eventually, will disrupt all of Arctic life and raise sea levels globally. In The Arctic: What Everyone Needs to Know�, Klaus Dodds and Mark Nuttall offer concise answers to the myriad questions that arise when looking at the circumpolar North. They focus on its peoples, politics, environment, resource development, and conservation to provide critical information about how changes there can, and will, affect our entire globe and all of its inhabitants. Dodds and Nuttall explore how the Arctic's importance has grown over time, the region's role during the Cold War, indigenous communities and their history, and the past and future of the Arctic's governance, among other crucial topics.

The Antarctic is one the most hostile natural environments in the world. It is an extraordinary physical space, which changes significantly in shape and size with the passing of the seasons. Politically, it is unique as it contains one of the few areas of continental space not claimed by any nation-state. Scientifically, the continental ice sheet has provided us with vital evidence about the Earth's past climate. In this Very Short Introduction, Klaus Dodds provides a modern account of Antarctica, highlighting the main issues facing the continent today. Looking at how the Antarctic has been explored and represented in the last hundred years, Dodds considers the main exploratory and scientific achievements of the region. He explains how processes such as globalization mean that the Antarctic is increasingly involved in a wider circuit of ideas, goods, people, trade, and governance - all of which have an impact on the future of the region. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Pink Ice tells the compelling story of the political struggles over Antarctica and the South Atlantic. It shows how Britain and Argentina have sought to invest these thinly populated spaces - composed mostly of ice, rock, and water - with cultural and national importance. The author, who has interviewed leading politicians and civil servants including Lord Carrington, Lord Owen, Lord Chalfont, Lord Hurd, and Lord Shackleton, demonstrates how political rivalries may be played out in other competitive arenas such as World Cup football. With the 20th anniversary of the Falklands War in 2002, Pink Ice provides a timely analysis of how territorial disputes simply refuse to fade away.

In Ice, Klaus Dodds provides a wide-ranging exploration of the cultural, natural, and geopolitical history of this most slippery of subjects. Beyond Earth, ice has been found on other planets, moons, and meteors—and scientists even think that ice-rich asteroids played a pivotal role in bringing water to our blue home. But our outlook need not be cosmic to see ice’s importance. Here today and gone tomorrow in many parts of the temperate world, ice is a perennial feature of polar and mountainous regions, where it has long shaped human culture. But as climates change, ice caps and glaciers melt, and waters rise, more than ever this frozen force touches at the core of who we are. As Dodds reveals, ice has played a prominent role in shaping both the earth’s living communities and its geology. Throughout history, humans have had fun with it, battled over it, struggled with it, and made money from it—and every time we open our refrigerator doors, we’re reminded how ice has transformed our relationship with food. Our connection to ice has been captured in art, literature, movies, and television, as well as made manifest in sport and leisure. In our landscapes and seascapes, too, we find myriad reminders of ice’s chilly power, clues as to how our lakes, mountains, and coastlines have been indelibly shaped by the advance and retreat of ice and snow. Beautifully illustrated throughout, Ice is an informative, thought-provoking guide to a substance both cold and compelling.

An enlightening look at contemporary border tensions—from the Gaza Strip to the space race—by one of the world’s leading experts in geopolitics. Border expert Klaus Dodds journeys into the geopolitical clashes of tomorrow in an eye-opening tour of border walls both literal and figurative. In the Himalayas, the Mediterranean, and elsewhere, the tension inherent to trying to divide the world into separate parcels has not gone away. And with climate change shifting our natural borders, from mountains to glaciers to rivers, the question of how we live in a world that’s becoming warmer and wetter and growing in population looms large. With wide-ranging insight and provocative analysis, Dodds shows why we are more likely to see more walls, barriers, and securitization in our daily lives. The New Border Wars examines just what borders truly mean in the modern world: How are they built; what do they signify for citizens and governments; and how do they help us understand our political past and, most importantly, our diplomatic future?

International Politics and Film introduces readers to the representational qualities of film but also draws attention to how the relationship between the visual and the spatial is constitutive of international politics. Using four themes—borders, the state of exception, homeland and distant others—the territorial and imaginative dimensions of international affairs in particular are highlighted. But this volume also makes clear that international politics is not just something "out there"; film helps us better understand how it is also part of everyday life within the state—affecting individuals and communities in different ways depending on axes of difference such as gender, race, class, age, and ethnicity.

Employing thematic investigation and illustrated through case studies, Dodds explores how global politics is imagined and practised by countries such as the US and other organisations including Greenpeace, the IMF and CNN International. In addition, the author discusses how issues such as environmental degradation, terror networks, anti-globalisation protests and North-South relations challenge, consolidate and subvert the existing international political system.

In Ice: Nature and Culture, Klaus Dodds provides a wide-ranging exploration of the cultural, natural and geopolitical history of ice, revealing how throughout history human communities have made sense of ice.

In August 2007 a Russian flag was planted under the North Pole during a scientific expedition triggering speculation about a new scramble for resources beneath the thawing ice. But is there really a global grab for Polar territory and resources? Or are these activities vastly exaggerated? In this rich and wide-ranging book, Klaus Dodds and Mark Nuttall look behind the headlines and hyperbole to reveal a complex picture of the so-called scramble for the poles. Whilst anxieties over the potential for conflict and the destruction of what is often perceived as the world's last wildernesses have come to dominate Polar debates and are, to some extent, justified, their study also highlights longer historical and geographical patterns and processes of human activity in these remote territories. Over the past century, Polar landscapes have been probed, drilled, fished, tested on and dug up, as their indigenous populations have struggled to protect their rights and interests. No longer remote places, or themselves 'poles apart' from one another, the contemporary geopolitics of the Polar regions has lessons for us all as we confront a warming world where access to resources is a concern for states, big and small.