Russia looms huge on the two-page map that serves as the title page for Robert D. Kaplan’s article “Geopolitics and the New World Order,” published in the March 31^st issue of Time.  The Mercator projection, which significantly exaggerates northern landmasses, is the same map chosen by Cold War propagandists to emphasize the “red menace”; the center of the map is, of course, Ukraine – the focus of the article, which recalls a century-old argument set forth by Halford Mackinder’s famous “Geographical Pivot of History” (1904). Kaplan begins by asserting that “Geography increasingly fuels endless chaos and old-school conflicts in the 21st Century.” Kaplan proceeds, as he has many times before, to show how “geography” explains conflicts across the world. While Kaplan makes a number of good points, his typically dire predictions for a future dominated by chaos in which the bonds of blood and territory are apparently stronger than human reason, cultural development, and consensus should make us pause and consider what is really being said. Does “geography” – defined simply as the areal differentiation of the earth’s surface in terms of physical features, ecosystems, and human population and culture – necessarily mean endless conflict? Or is there more to the story that does not necessarily fall within Kaplan’s conception of geography?

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The conflation of foreign individuals in a country with their country’s political agenda or identity is often used as an explanation for anti-foreigner violence. In South Africa, foreigners – in particular, African immigrants from Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Malawi, Somalia, and Ethiopia (although also many immigrants from Bangladesh) – have been targeted for years in bouts of xenophobic violence. South African voices sometimes cite these immigrants bringing their countries’ lawlessness or poverty with them into South Africa; yet more often, the targeting of foreigners has a strong economic component. Furthermore, it is not only locals who engage in anti-foreigner violence: rumors abound in the South African Somali refugee community about Somali shop owners fomenting violence against shops owned by other Somalis. Anti-foreigner violence takes place under a range of conditions, and itself has the potential to create a unique opportunity structure for foreigners.

To put anti-foreigner violence in context, we can look numerous other places, from attacks on Korean businesses during the 1992 L.A. race riots to attacks on foreigners in Germany in the early 1990s. Yet xenophobic violence in South Africa provides perhaps the clearest example of conditions conducive to violence against foreigners in the African context. Continue reading →