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Zachary Lavengood is a fourth-year doctoral candidate at Charles University’s Institute of International Studies, Department of North American Studies. His research focuses on Arctic and Eurasian geopolitics with a specific focus on flashpoints and geopolitical evolutions due to climate change. His published works include: The Evolving Arctic in the World-System, China and the 21st Century Arctic: Opportunities and Limitations, and Examining the South China Sea Dispute with General Morphological Analysis

What (or who) prompted the most significant shifts in your thinking or encouraged you to pursue your area of research?

Immanuel Wallerstein has had a significant impact on my academic thought, I might even go as far as to label myself as a fanboy. I first came across his work as I was preparing for my Master’s program, in a textbook on international relations I had picked up from a secondhand bookshop. Excerpts of his writing piqued my interest and over the following years I read through his works. His world-systems theory and its ability to analyze global affairs from an Archimedian point, and indeed the frankness with which it spoke of inequalities and exploitation, changed my outlook on the world around me. Its preference for objectivity over idealism has continued to shape my research. 

What geopolitical challenges and opportunities do you see emerging in the Arctic region? How might these impact international relations in the coming years?

The Arctic is undergoing a fundamental shift in its identity from a geopolitical afterthought to a growing facet of many states’ grand strategy. This has come about due to climate change which has caused the region to evolve from a region of frigid predictability to seasonal climatic extremes; with this evolution comes a bounty of new opportunities such as resources revealing themselves from ice-lock, long sought after shipping routes over Eurasia, and a budding tourism industry. However this comes at a cost, the climactic shift taking place in the Arctic, the fastest warming region on the planet, if left unchecked will cause significant environmental reverberations across the world-system as important........

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