USU Political Science professor, Dr. Colin Flint.
Courtesy: chass,usu.edu/international-studies/aggies-go
LOGAN — On a recent KVNU For the People program (3/24) our guest was Utah State University professor Dr. Colin Flint.
One of his main topics of research throughout his career has been the rise and fall of great powers and especially how, perhaps, relatively smaller wars can build into bigger conflicts as a transition to one power to another.
The big question over the last month has been, will Russia’s war with Ukraine stop with Ukraine? Also how does today’s situation compare to the build-up to the two world wars?
“But as we think about that and try to put this, for me, in some sort of historic comparison, I think there are some similarities with situations that led up to World War I and World War II. There are also some fundamental differences as well. And the biggest difference there I would say is the existence of NATO along with other alliances,” Dr Flint explained.
He said as well as economic relations, the European Union in addition to close relations across the Atlantic, both with military through NATO as well as economic and cultural ties.
Dr. Flint is a specialist on geopolitics and has spoken and written on the geography of war.
“The invasion of Ukraine is Vladimir Putin’s attempt to recreate the geography of the borders between Ukraine and Russia and to perhaps create one bigger country out of those, rather than having Ukraine as an independent country. This is a creation of geography. So our actions take place within different geographic settings and what we do can very much change the nature of those settings.”
If any are interested in learning more not only about this conflict but geopolitics as well, there is something called an Aggie’s Geopolitical Observatory that Dr. Flint says is perhaps his favorite project of his whole career.
“The essays on Aggie’s Geopolitical Observatory, or Aggie’s GO, as we like to call it, are all written by undergraduate students. They take a current issue of the time, and they choose to write a very short, we hope accessible, essay which just gives a geographic perspective on that issue of the day. Just to hopefully help readers gain a bit more understanding of it.”
To access the site, he said, simply google Aggie’s Geopolitical Observatory.