GEOPOLITICS QUARTERLY
Year:2006 | Volume:2 | Issue:1 (3)|Papers Count:6

Passing through many ups and down, Political Geography as an academic discipline, has experienced significant and noticeable growth and development during the last hundred years especially Geopolitics, which as a subject of Political Geography, has attracted the attentions of political and scientific circles. While the actual topics of Geopolitics i.e. review and study of relations among political units in local, national, regional and zonal scale, there are much similarities with proposed topics in the knowledge of international relations especially at national, regional and international levels and the same matter cause ambiguity between two knowledge, their relations with each other as well as common definition, topic and particularly specific knowledge between students and researchers.The present article tries to pose the major question such as what are the main reasons of resemblance and proximity between Political Geography (especially Geopolitics) and International Relations. In addition to this, numerous questions have been propounded which are as follows: a) What are the relationship between Political Geography, International Relations and Geopolitics? b) What are their specific and common concepts?c) What is the resemblance and differences in this two knowledge, with reference to methodology?The present article has attempted to reply the questions through comparative methods. According to the accumulated results, the main reason of similarities and proximities of Political Geography, Geopolitics and International Relations is the presence of key concept of country or the state in both the knowledge.

The present article attempts to study one of the key factors of national security threat i.e. urban disparity. The present Iranian condition that is passing through its historical stages cause the irregular growth of urban population and increase of inequalities in its various zones and thus, have create a particular model for urban political geography. This study is an attempt to assess those disproportionate phases through the help of employment and dwellings indicators of 22 zonal units of Tehran. The result of the current research shows that there is considerable variation in 22 zones of Tehran with reference to the job opportunities. As a matter of fact, major concentration of ordinary work force is in the southern parts in comparison to northern half of the city. Thus, with reference to the scattered poverty, the studies were conducted by using the sample of four and more people living in one-room highlights that poor concentrated zones are also not scattered on equal footing. As such, southern zones form the concentrated domain of the poor. With due attention to the indicators of the proposed study, one of the important sources of social and national security threat in Tehran is inequality in dispersion of initial employment and poverty and their concentration in the southern city. With attention to the above points, it must be acknowledged that inequality and urban deprivation are counted as the direct threat to social security.

Iran is a country whose political set up has long historical background and historically, the initial efforts to divide the national territory dates back to Achaemenid era. Despite the fact that adherence to administrative divisions and political stability from the aspects of continuity of sovereign government and nation-state at different level have always been considered as the final goal in the planning system, here question arises that why the pattern of administrative divisions especially in the contemporary era have failed in accessing to this goal? Hypothetically, it has been assumed that with reference to the failure of this pattern, one of the factors which has not been fully taken into account is the formation modern internal political divisions as well as none execution the fundamental legal principles that was started under the aegis of central government with the coup-d’etat of 1920 by Reza Khan. Actually, fostering his authoritarian way that was contrary to the constitutionalism had fulfilled the basis for political development in the previous era, lead to empower national and cultural movements and collapse of the first and second autocracy, instance of which can be seen in the Kurdistan and Azerbaijan crises of 1920s. This research aims to study the relationships between the pattern of administrative divisions and political instabilities between two constitutional revolutions and Islamic revolution, using literature survey and content analysis methods.

The Narcotics has a profound effect on individual and the world communities. While, individually, they endanger health and personal security, nationally the narcotics crimes cause brawling, social intricacies, weakness of the states and backwardness of the country. The poor countries are highly vulnerable to narcotics and need cooperation because they lack the necessary resources to counter the cycles of crimes and delinquency.Internationally, narcotics problems have important significance. The narcotics markets have no boundaries or limitations and their transnational nature shows that none of the states whether rich or poor could gain access to the boundaries of these markets.From their initial classification, narcotics are of two kinds i.e. their natural origin are from poppy seeds, coca, and if manufactured in laboratory these are Meta amphetamine/ Amphetamine, which are the most destructive narcotics. Opium and especially heroine is the narcotics, which has its largest production in Southwest Asia especially Afghanistan. Narcotics production and smuggling has seriously affected Iran, Pakistan as well as Central Asian countries. The lucrative and profitable smuggling has caused the formation of groups and mafia networks. The collective nature of smugglers requires sophisticated programs with the ambitious objectives to accumulate enormous money, complex programming, active at national, transnational and international levels, use of strong information networks, inclination to influence political system, intervene in policy- making, organizational culture etc. This paper tries to describe the present conditions of narcotics in the southwest Asia and their geopolitical challenges.

Recently, geopolitical competitions have very important role in convergence and divergence of economic blocks because states have learned that they lack all requisites for economic prosperity and having a flourishing economy needs to form economic-political institutions. History proved that economy is not an independent issue rather it is closely interlinked to politics and culture.Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are two major politico economic blocks, which in spite of common history have produced different results.Both organizations are alike and were established with the aim to have distance from communism, under western encouragement. ECO member states have been lacking the necessary political and economic coordination thus has not proved a dynamic organization, whereas ASEAN has taken lead on many fronts.Through applying geopolitical and international political theories especially the model of Cantori, Louis J. and Steven L. Spiegel, this article tries to study and comparatively analyze the weaknesses and potentials of both organizations. The findings show that ASEAN benefits more than ECO in economic, political, cultural, organizational and communicational coordination. Furthermore, the role of major powers and geopolitical factors in ASEAN has been more constructive than ECO. Geopolitics in ECO has made this region as vulnerable for great powers interference, and therefore the integrity of the region cannot be shaped properly. In sum, ASEAN economic integration has been more developed than ECO.