Rivalry

This article illustrates the fact that the U.S. administration's behavior toward Africa has always been shaped by the conception of rivalries' presence, rather than the potentials of the continent. In recent years, with the emergence of America’s rivals, such as China and Russia in Africa in the continent, who have invested not only in the African economy, but also in its security and military sectors, the notion of rivalries' limitation has been exaggerated in U.S. decision making toward Africa. Using a neoclassical approach, by analyzing the dynamism of the U.S. foreign policies toward Africa and Trump's rivalry-based policies, this article concludes that Trumps' African policy has not been different from that of his predecessors, and that the U.S. has always adopted a neoclassical realism approach toward Africa, which has been invigorated by the presidency of Trump.

Although the goal of all regional organizations is to strengthen cooperation between member states, in some cases there are apparent or hidden rivalries in minor or major levels, which sometimes leads to stagnation and inefficiency of the regional organization and hinders effective cooperation. The need for cooperation in South West Asia to benefit all developing countries in the region became the main driver for the foundation of the Economic Cooperation Organisation (ECO) in 1985. This study aimed to identify the areas of rivalries among the member states of this organization resulting lack of cooperation and success, from a political geography and geopolitics point of view. Contexts of rivalries classified into four political, economic, cultural, and geopolitical factors containing eighteen sub-variables. The results showed geopolitical, political, cultural factors, and economic factors respectively have a positive and significant effect on rivalries in ECO

This study reviews the relationship between geopolitics and geo-economics of the Eastern Mediterranean gas resources and Turkey’s perspective on it. The dispute over the region’s resources has entered a dangerous phase in 2019, and the coastal countries are trying to discover new gas resources in areas that overlap with other countries’ marine basins. This has caused a new conflict in the region at two levels. The first level is the dispute between Turkey and Greece over the Cyprus issue, which has also been drawn to this issue. The second one is the fierce geopolitical rivalry between Turkey and other coastal actors such as Egypt and Israel. For showing its decisiveness, Turkey signed a maritime border agreement with Libya in 2019 to neutralize its rivals on the gas issue. In this context, it may be asked, what does motivate the Turkish authorities in their strict policies towards the Eastern Mediterranean? According to the findings, Turkey is trying to take legal-political and military steps to faze the unity of rivals, and this has enabled the Turkish authorities to project and adapt their power in order to enhance their role and presence in the region.