Geoeconomics: Navigating the New Global Landscape
with a Data Science Twist
Preface
Geopolitics, in its most elementary sense, designates a systematic reflection on the relationships between geography, power, and collective organization. Its etymological roots in the Greek geo (γῆ), referring to the Earth, and politiká (πολιτικά), denoting the affairs of the city, already signal an intrinsic connection between spatial constraints and political authority. Although the term geopolitics was formalized at the turn of the twentieth century—most notably through the work of Friedrich Ratzel and later through Halford Mackinder’s emphasis on strategic “pivot areas”—the underlying intuition is far older. Classical philosophy had long recognized that environment, material conditions, and spatial organization shape social order, political stability, and the exercise of power.
Within this tradition, Epicurus and his followers articulated the ideal of ataraxia (ἀταραξία), understood as a state of tranquility achieved by distancing oneself from external disturbances, including political life. While this notion retains philosophical appeal at the individual level, it offers little guidance for understanding political and economic systems. States, societies, and economic actors cannot withdraw from the structures in which they are embedded. Geography, institutions, and material constraints continuously condition strategic behavior, making conflict, negotiation, and adaptation enduring features of historical development. In this respect, Heraclitus’ insight that tension and struggle are constitutive of becoming remains analytically relevant: stability is not a natural equilibrium, but a contingent outcome of ongoing contestation.
In the contemporary period, this logic has become increasingly visible through the rise of geoeconomics. Whereas classical geopolitics privileged territory, borders, and military capability, geoeconomics foregrounds the strategic use of economic instruments and economic networks as vectors of power. Trade policy, investment regimes, financial infrastructures, technological standards, data ecosystems, and supply-chain chokepoints now operate as mechanisms through which influence is exercised and vulnerabilities are managed. This shift does not displace geography; it transforms it. Geography now encompasses the spatial organization of production, logistics, energy systems, and digital infrastructures. Interdependence, once celebrated primarily as a source of mutual gain, has thus become a central site of strategic leverage and exposure, as economic connectivity can be selectively exploited for coercive purposes (Luttwak (1990); Blackwill and Harris (2016); Farrell and Newman (2019)).
Global power is consequently shaped by the capacity to organize, secure, and reconfigure economic connectivity. Established powers such as the United States, China, and Russia continue to exert influence through combinations of military strength, industrial capacity, financial reach, and alliance structures. Yet the contemporary landscape cannot be reduced to a small group of dominant states. Emerging economies, regional hubs, and large firms increasingly shape outcomes through regional value chains, demographic scale, regulatory strategies, and control over critical nodes of connectivity. These forms of influence are distinctly geoeconomic in character, grounded less in territorial control than in the governance of networks and infrastructures.
This book proposes an analytical framework for making sense of these transformations by integrating geopolitical reasoning with geoeconomic mechanisms, while explicitly incorporating data science as a methodological extension. The objective is not to replace interpretive analysis with computation, but to enhance analytical precision in a world where the relevant phenomena—trade flows, investment networks, migration dynamics, energy dependencies, digital infrastructures, and climate exposures—are increasingly observable through large and heterogeneous datasets. A geoeconomic perspective becomes operational when it is paired with tools capable of mapping interdependence, identifying asymmetries, and assessing how shocks propagate across interconnected systems.
Accordingly, the book mobilizes network analysis, predictive modeling, and Geographic Information Systems to render power relations empirically tractable. Network approaches reveal the topology of trade, finance, and technological relations, making visible patterns of centrality, dependence, and asymmetric exposure that are often obscured in aggregate statistics. Predictive methods provide a disciplined way to reason under uncertainty, particularly when geopolitical outcomes depend on interacting risks such as demographic change, resource constraints, institutional fragility, and climate stress. GIS anchors these dynamics spatially, connecting abstract interdependence to concrete infrastructures such as ports, corridors, production clusters, and urban systems. The methodological ambition is straightforward: to move from qualitative claims about vulnerability and leverage to indicators that can be measured, compared, and replicated.
The thematic core of the book addresses major contemporary challenges—including inequality, digital transformation, climate change, global health, and violent conflict—not as exogenous shocks, but as arenas in which geoeconomic instruments are actively deployed. Cyber operations, for example, increasingly intersect with economic competition, as attacks on data infrastructures and intellectual property can generate strategic advantage without conventional military engagement. Climate change similarly functions as a geoeconomic driver, reshaping energy systems, commodity markets, insurance regimes, migration patterns, and the distribution of economically viable territory.
The analysis then turns to emerging frontiers where geoeconomic rivalry is likely to intensify, notably artificial intelligence, space-based infrastructures, and the contest over technological standards. In these domains, strategic advantage depends less on isolated breakthroughs than on sustained access to data, computing capacity, critical inputs, and skilled labor. Measurement, modeling, and anticipation therefore become central capabilities, reinforcing the relevance of data science as a complement to geopolitical and geoeconomic analysis.
Finally, the book situates national strategies within the broader architecture of interdependence. Countries are not treated as autonomous units, but as nodes embedded in dense systems of trade, finance, technology, and logistics. National power, in this perspective, derives not only from internal attributes such as demography or industrial composition, but also from positional advantages within global networks.
As global power shifts and economic interdependence becomes increasingly politicized, the need for analytically disciplined and empirically grounded frameworks grows more acute. This book seeks to contribute to that effort by bridging traditional geopolitical thought with contemporary geoeconomics and the analytical possibilities offered by data science. Its ambition is not to offer an illusory escape from conflict, but to provide a structured cartography of the mechanisms through which competition, vulnerability, and resilience now shape the global landscape.