Arbitraging geoeconomic and geopolitical logic: the US-Iranian case

Abstract

Through scrutinizing US-Iranian relations through the lens of radical geopolitics theory, it will be shown that a core proposition of radical geopolitics theory is too restrictive, and ought to be weakened to account for the principle of economic substitution. Doing so will incorporate a degree of flexibility enhancing the explanative scope of radical geopolitics. Accomplishing this feat is facilitated with the addition of the following proposition: geopolitics arbitrage -the action of managing risk and transactions costs between geoeconomic logic and geopolitical logic made possible by the economic principle of substitution.