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The Eurasian Politician - Issue 3 (February 2001)
Summary of lectures given in Tallinn, invited by
Prof. Iivi Zájedová, 3rd-4th October 2000.
By Anssi Kullberg
* * *
Contents:
INTRODUCTION: CONSTRUCTED IMAGES IN WORLD POLITICS
TYPES OF GEOPOLITICAL PLAYERS AND THEIR STRATEGIES
GEOPOLITICAL THOUGHT
THE INTERWAR SITUATION
CENTRAL EUROPE
PANEUROPE
TRIUMPH OF TOTALITARIANISM
THE COLD WAR
THE POST-COLD-WAR SITUATION
REVIVAL OF REGIONAL CONSTRUCTIONS
REVIVAL OF GEOPOLITICS
MULTIPOLARISM VS. REALISM
CONCLUSIONS
Literature
As we are going to speak about Europe today, it is appropriate to start with Afghanistan. Just some time ago (on 27th Sept.), the American strategic research institute Stratfor published an article on the reversed policy of Russia towards the fundamentalist Taliban regime of Afghanistan. Stratfor’s article repeated many such images on world politics that are being taken as granted, although the reality might be something quite opposite. For instance, the Stratfor report repeats the usual Russian propaganda claim that the fundamentalist Taliban movement would be assisting Chechen freedom fighters. The aim has been to create a connection between Chechens and the Taliban in people’s mind - and generally branding all Muslims, especially those resisting Russian power, as something like the correctly negative image of the Taliban.
In fact, the Taliban is a very exceptional example of fanaticism and cannot be assimilated with Islam in general, let alone the secular Muslims of Turkey and the Caucasus. Creating such image, however, has been useful for Russia, and once swallowing the hook, even an American strategic institute now has to be "confused" of the fact that Russia is suddenly openly approaching the Taliban. For those who have followed the situation in Afghanistan (and in Caucasia) for a long time, know that the Russian policy has not been so much "reversed": In the Taliban leadership former Afghan communists are highly represented, while the same freedom-fighter, Ahmad Shah Masoud, who used to fight against the Soviet occupation, is still fighting against the Taliban. And of course the Taliban and the Chechens would have very little in common. Rather, the Chechens have not been supported by any Islamist states, but predominantly Christian Georgia, while countries like Iran, Iraq and Syria have been Russia’s allies.
But in the world media, where there are images based on religious prejudices and ideas of religion-based blocs called civilizations by Samuel Huntington, it suits the expectations of journalists - and even Stratfor, as it appears - that the conflicts that actually have very little to do with religious antagonism but rather with national liberationism, as in Chechnya, can be associated with the Afghan civil war and Russia’s role there only because Muslims happen to be involved. This is a consequence of constructing reference groups and other expressions of world politics that finally get cartographic form. The whole question of geopolitics is to construct expressions of politics that are based on some geographical but also on "cultural" - or as in our first example, religious - images.
Today I will make comparisons of the European situations of interwar and post-Cold-War periods by discussing what such constructions have been presented and for what geopolitical interests. At first it is necessary to remark of the differing strategies of constructing these images. First, there are the empires whose foreign politics are especially driven by geopolitical aspirations and images, often leading to expansionist and hegemonic missions. China is a classical example, but in our context, Russia naturally represents this imperialist tradition. Russian geopolitics have traditionally been divided up into three groups that partly overlap: the Zapadniks, the Slavophiles and the Eurasianists. Russian view over Eurasia has, however, traditionally been based on the ideas of centre (power) and periphery (that is explicitly or implicitly claimed as a dominion to be conquered). Russian hegemonic drives against West (Zwischeneuropean countries) and South (Caucasus, Central Asia and Middle East) have traditionally formed the strongest concern of the small intermediate countries. Modern Russian geopoliticians like Dugin and Karaganov continue to emphasise this highly imperialistic, centralist and hegemonic quest in Russian geopolitical thought. Rhetorics is dominated by mythical elements and constructing the "evil" out of Islam and the West.
On the other hand we have the distant West, whose view has often repeated the very pragmatic and rational interests of classical geopolitics, concerned of natural resources and strategic facts. Anglo-Saxon geopolitics has traditionally paid attention on the objective facts, even so that "geopolitically important" countries like Poland and Ukraine ("the heartland") have been favoured in disproportionate proportions over let’s say Baltic countries, Hungary, Romania and Moldavia. Poland got all its foreign debt excused, while for instance Hungary did not. Ukraine has been gaining much American attention, although its independence on Russia is both materially and culturally on a much weaker basis than for example Romania’s, which would however possess much of that geopolitical strategic importance that interests the U.S. in Ukraine (location, size and potential strength, natural resources, shield between Central Europe and Black Sea, and between Russian and Serbian troops). On the other hand, Anglo-American geopolitics has also traditionally appeared as much more "nationally unselfish" than the openly nationalistic geopolitics of Russia and other empires. Anglo-Saxon geopolitics, since the times of Mackinder and Spykman, has appeared as "searching for the good of the whole world". Anglo-Saxon geopolitical rhetoric is dominated by speak about democracy, liberty and human rights.
Thirdly, we are specially interested in the strategies of the countries situated in the European middle-zone, Zwischeneuropa between the West and Russia, or historically between Germany and Russia. The geopolitical constructions used by the intermediate European strategies can be divided into three levels, in accordance of the reality-level of the suggested construction: 1) Construction of a reference group (for example "Europe", "Central Europe" and so on for many post-communist countries); 2) Regional co-operation (for example Baltic or Visegrad co-operation); 3) Alliance (fully realised and institutionalised form of geopolitical expression). These types of construction, in defence against the threat imposed by the empires, are in our special interest.
Typically, the attempts of inter-zone regimes to construct reference groups, regional co-operation and alliances, have not occurred as much and as successfully between themselves, as dividing the regimes into two blocs: those who seek association with the West, and those who act as vassal regimes of the East. This has occurred both in the interwar and in the post-Cold-War situation, as we shall notice. The choice directly influence in the political system the regime adopts: Those wishing association with the West seek to strengthen liberal democratic polity, while regimes leaning to great authoritarian neighbour (in the interwar period the fascist regimes and the Soviet Union; in the post-Cold-War period Russia) typically adopt authoritarian polity. The rise of fascist and Bolshevik regimes in Zwischeneuropa in the interwar Europe can be paralleled to the regimes of Milosevic in Serbia, Lukashenka of Belarus and Meciar of Slovakia. Also the security deficit of intermediate position in geopolitics is likely to bring about authoritarian regimes, like the regimes of Hort, Antonescu, Pilsudski, Päts, Ulmanis and Smetona in the interwar period, and Tudjman, Berisha and Iliescu in post-Cold-War period.
In this lecture, I do not intend to concentrate in the classical geopoliticians. However, it may be proper to mention some of their names for your further search of information: The German Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904) is the founder of a geopolitical school known as anthropogeography. The Swede Rudolf Kjellén (1864-1922) is the one who first introduced the concept "geopolitics". These, along with the German geopolitician Karl von Haushofer (1869-1946) who later inspired the Nazis with his Lebensraum ideas, basically believed in state as an organism. Another kind of view was offered by the classical Anglo-Saxon geopoliticians, who had a strategic view. The most important names were sir Halford Mackinder (1861-1947) and Nicholas Spykman (1869-1946), not to forget Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914) who concentrated in the naval power. The notion of European or Eurasian "heartland" was especially emphasised by Mackinder. A French geopolitical school of "possibilists", for example Lucien Febvre and Vidal de la Blanche, argued that geopolitics should not impose imperatives on people.
One elemental feature of geopolitical thinking has traditionally been division of the world into regions. This tradition has been emphasised in newer geopolitics. Constructions to divide up the world into blocs has been given for example by Saul Cohen and latest by Samuel Huntington. The empires like to add their ideas of interest spheres into such models, and because of that, especially Huntington’s civilization model has greatly contributed to Russian and Chinese demands of multipolarism (world divided between "great powers"), although more traditional realist school of geopolitics, Zbigniew Brzezinski being an eminent representative of it, has continued in the Anglo-Saxon strategic geopolitics emphasising the chance to exploit American supremacy for the best of liberty and democracy in the world. Another trend of new geopolitics is constituted by the historical-structuralist theories (Immanuel Wallerstein, George Modelski) and critical geopolitics (especially Gearóid Ó Tuathail).
After the Balkan Wars and consequent WW I, Europe had witnessed enormous geopolitical changes. Most significantly for our interest, four empires had fallen: the Hohenzollern Empire of Germany, the Habsburg Empire of Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire of Turkey, and the Romanov Empire of Russia. The Wilsonian idealist doctrine of national self-determination had ruled over eastern parts of Europe and plenty of new states had appeared or reappeared to the European map - most importantly, to the middle-space between Germany and Russia, forming an intermediate zone, Zwischeneuropa, from Finland to Albania, Ukraine and Azerbaijan.
Two of the fallen empires, Austria-Hungary and Turkey, had been neutralised in a way that they had gone through a metamorphosis that changed their geopolitical nature (and consequent behaviour) as states from the imperial form into more symmetric players within Europe. The Austro-Hungarian Empire had been split into many new East Central European countries, however, leaving many German (Austrian) and Hungarian minorities in newly independent states. Turkey had lost all her European dominions except East Thrace in the Balkan Wars and throughout the interwar period became Westernised by Atatürk’s reforms into a nation finally having more in common with her European neighbours than with the eastern Muslim neighbours.
The two other ones, however, stayed as security threats for the interwar European stability: Russia had been re-modelled into an openly aggressive totalitarian Soviet state - Lenin being the first in world history to establish the model for totalitarian dictatorship and tyranny based on large-scale terror against civilian population. Weimar Germany, although appearing as a liberal democratic republic, contained smouldering revanchism, and as seen by later events, the Bismarck state-idea had its continuum in Germany, finally becoming incarnated in a most distorted totalitarian form in the national-socialist regime. During the interwar period, it became ever clearer for small European states that both the Soviet Union and Germany were most instant security threats for them.
Besides, they represented two new and most aggressive ideologies, two totalitarian schools of socialism: fascism and communism. The ideological threat was manifested by several communist attempts for rebellion and coup d’état in i.a. Berlin, Munich and Budapest, and the growing fascist and later national-socialist counter-reaction to the threat of communism. In such a situation, however, the interwar Europe brought about several regional and geopolitical constructions that deserve our attention. It can be basically put into a simplified form that the regional constructions were inspired by the threat constituted by Russia and Germany and the two rising totalitarian ideologies, while the geopolitical aspirations of the wannabe hegemons were given their own shape in the form of the geopolitical theories, myths and ideas employed by the Italian fascists, the Nazis, and the Bolsheviks.
The first construction that we need to notice appeared already before the WW I. In 1915, a German priest and politician Friedrich Naumann presented his idea of Central Europe in his book "Mitteleuropa" which became immensely famous and discussed both before and after the WW I. Naumann’s idea of Mitteleuropa, where the German language and culture would have a natural core position, was attacked very fervently by English, French and Slavonic thinkers, and Naumann’s name as well as the whole conception of Mitteleuropa became - in a partially distorted and purposefully misinterpreted way - connected to the ideas of German hegemony and imperialism. This kind of attitude does not make justice to Naumann (who, by the way, was a close friend of much more famous Max Weber). Naumann’s theory never inspired the Nazi ideology, like has been claimed later, as the Nazis were rather inspired by the expansionist geopoliticians like Haushofer, and by general mythical nationalism, copied from Italian fascism and further developed into a unique set of racism and ethnic and religious paranoia.
Naumann’s model of constructing a united Mitteleuropa with German cultural and economic primacy and free trade would have basically been made real by a unification of the pre-WW I German and Austro-Hungarian monarchies. Naumann was economically a liberal, but otherwise he was rather a conservative with value conservative ideals, and admiration for the monarchic empires of Central Europe. He was concerned of the nationalist and separatist tendencies that were threatening especially the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Naumann’s idea can partly be seen as an attempt to preserve the falling Habsburg empire by subjecting it to the economic strength of Hohenzollern Germany.
Thus, when another European thinker whom we shall discuss, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, later described the antagonism of too contrary models of earlier European development, represented by Austria’s Chancellor von Metternich and Italy’s Giuseppe Mazzini, advocate of liberal republican nation-state, Naumann can be seen to represent the Metternichian tradition while Coudenhove-Kalergi was in favour of the Mazzinian one. In some form Naumann’s construction became realised in the form of the Axis Powers - later in the WW II the Axis construction of course became entirely distorted in regard to Naumann’s ideas. Naumann’s Mitteleuropa has been well studied by an American, Henry Cord Meyer, for those interested in Mitteleuropa.
A new construction again constructing Central Europe was modelled by Tomáš G. Masaryk, one of the most influential interwar European statesmen and the first president of Czechoslovakia. The name of his construction, Strední Evropa, meant Central Europe exactly like Naumann’s Mitteleuropa, but these two models were contrary. While Naumann placed the German element to the very centre of the Central European idea, Masaryk wanted to exclude Germany from his Strední Evropa. Unlike Naumann’s construction, Masaryk’s ideas were warmly welcomed and supported by Anglo-Saxon and French politicians.
Also Masaryk was liberal and a supporter of free trade, and he was clearly more liberal than Naumann had been. Strední Evropa can also be seen as the first eminent construction of Zwischeneuropa, "intermediate Europe" i.e. Europe between Germany and Russia, in the 1900s. Realisation of Masaryk’s ideas took place in some form first in the Little Entente (co-operation of Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia and Poland, mainly directed against feared revanchism of Austria and Hungary), and later in the margin-state (frontier state) co-operation reaching from Finland through the Baltic States and Poland on some level up to Romania. However strong the common interest, none of these became successful, mainly due to the mutual disagreement of Zwischeneuropean countries. The constructions of Zwischeneuropa have been profoundly studied by a Finnish political historian, Vesa Saarikoski, for those interested in Zwischeneuropa.
While the previously mentioned constructions were quite exclusive constructions of Central Europe, the next one to appear was a truly idealistic idea of Pan-Europe, a whole and united Europe, first presented by Count Richard Nicolaus Coudenhove-Kalergi. The Paneuropean idea became a very influential and attractive movement of the interwar period. The Paneuropean movement was founded in 1922, and can be said to represent the oldest modern-time initiative for achieving peace, liberty and unity in Europe. Coudenhove-Kalergi, whose father was an Austrian diplomat and whose mother was a Japanese noblewoman, was a real cosmopolitan who found himself as a citizen of Czechoslovakia after the WW I. During his extensive travels in the post-war Europe he was shocked of the destruction caused by WW I, and inspired by this, he became convinced of the necessity of a common united Europe. His book "Paneuropa" was published in German in 1923, and soon translated into most of important European languages.
Coudenhove-Kalergi was a good friend of Masaryk, whom he tried to persuade to take the leadership of the Paneuropean movement that was lobbying tirelessly for a united Europe and peace throughout the interwar period. Masaryk, however, considered himself too old, but Coudenhove-Kalergi found an eminent high-level supporter for Paneurope in the French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand. Besides, many eminent European statesmen, diplomats, intellectuals, artists, writers and liberal economists became supporters of the Paneuropean movement - for instance, the German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann, Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, Franz Werfel, Selma Lagerlöf, Stefan Zweig, Pablo Picasso, Konrad Adenauer, Bruno Kreisky - in Estonia the diplomat Karl-Robert Pusta. Coudenhove-Kalergi’s successor in the Paneuropean Union’s presidency, and the present president, is Arch-Duke Dr. Otto von Habsburg.
The Paneuropean idea, as first presented, failed in its first historical chance, but through Briand, the ideas of Paneurope and the United States of Europe were continued in the West, by the French Prime Minister Edouard Herriot writing his book "The United States of Europe", and the idea of united Europe later being picked up and copied - yet in a very different form - by a French high-level bureaucrat Jean Monnet. Instead of Coudenhove-Kalergi, Monnet became later known as "the father of the European Union", but the ideas were all initiated by the Paneuropeans. Monnet’s European Union however became in many essential aspects different from Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Paneurope: In contrast to Coudenhove-Kalergi’s idealism, Monnet’s European unity was reached in most pragmatic ways, neutralised of most Paneuropean moralism, and of course, reduced to the torso of Western Europe that the WW II had left free. It is describing that in his memoirs Monnet did not mention Coudenhove-Kalergi with a single word.
In the heyday of the Paneuropean movement, it really seemed to change Europe’s fate. However, as we know, despite all the Paneuropean efforts, European unity was not achieved. What took place instead was exactly what Coudenhove-Kalergi had feared, a deal between Germany and the Soviet Union and consequent destruction and division of Europe in a new world war. One of the main motivations for the Paneuropean movement had been avoiding a new war - still the war came. What went wrong with the Paneuropean idea?
First of all, the deaths of Briand and Stresemann and the negative development of the relations between France and Germany turned the wheel of European development and the Paneuropean movement started to lose its historical chance, and consequently, its credibility. The Paneuropean movement was accused by its main enemies - the nationalists and the socialists - of representing liberal democratic weakness and mere idealism. A later national-socialist, German Count von Lerchenfeld, attacked against Coudenhove-Kalergi and the Paneuropean Union claiming it to be a conspiracy of Vienna-based Jews and Freemasons. Rising regimes in Europe saw increasingly the future greatness not in a united peaceful Europe but in aggressive statist ideologies of fascism, national-socialism and communism. War was increasingly seen as the means of a nation or a class to achieve victory and greatness. Mussolini’s fascist ideology and the anti-European manifesto given in Rome, Hitler’s Lebensraum ideology and anti-Semitism, and the Third International founded by communists constituted directly opposite challenges to the visions of the Paneuropeans.
The expansionist imperialist threat imposed upon smaller and weaker countries by Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini brought about their counter-effects in most of the Zwischeneuropean states, but also in places like Spain where the immediate threat of communism caused sudden rise of a so far marginal Falangist movement into Francisco Franco’s fascist regime (though Franco later, after the war, remodelled his regime towards ‘normal’ Christian democracy and since late 1950s also liberalised economy). Nationalism triumphed in Zwischeneuropa, in the sinister shadow of Stalin and Hitler: Józef Pilsudski in Poland, Miklos Hort in Hungary, Ion Antonescu in Romania, and the authoritarian regimes of Konstantin Päts, Karlis Ulmanis and Antanas Smetona in the Baltic states. Also in Czechoslovakia, Masaryk’s successor Eduard Beneš started destructive nationalist policies against the Sudetian Germans, contributing to the success of German national-socialist agitation.
The fascism of Mussolini remained in more traditional imperialist ideas, directing its aggression against nations that were found strategically not too important in the West - Albania and Ethiopia - a line greatly resembling the policy of aggression by Russia in later post-Cold-War times. Hitler and Stalin’s geopolitical views, however, contained expansionism that was in a much clearer way in contradiction to the Western interests. The Nazi geopolitical view was greatly inspired by Haushofer’s theories. In 1927 Haushofer had written that "the state is a living organism consisting of land, people and army". The "court geopolitician" of the Nazis, Carl Schmitt, completed the Nazi geopolitical ideas in his book "Deutschland als ein Reich" in 1941. The Third Reich remained short-lived, while Stalin got everything he ever dared to dream of, in the Yalta world-order that lasted for half a decade. The Western leaders Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were more than conciliatory to give to Stalin all that the Soviet troops had managed to occupy, except Bornholm and the northernmost part of Norway.
During the Cold War and division of Europe between the Free World and the "Evil Empire", regional constructions were formed in Europe. The European Union was gradually born in the Western rump Europe, following the ideas originally presented by the Paneuropeans. However, as mentioned, the European Union was born in Monnet’s pragmatic and administrative sense rather than in Coudenhove-Kalergi’s idealist sense, and besides, it only consisted of Western Europe, while all Eastern Europe stayed occupied.
Still we cannot underestimate the progress that was reached during the Cold War era: the total reformation of the German state-idea in West Germany which witnessed economic miracle under the liberal policies of Adenauer and Erhart; the reformation and progress in Italy under the liberal De Gasperi; the gradual integration of Spain, Portugal and finally Greece into the sphere of European democracy and market economy; and most importantly, the neutralisation of the most troublesome geostrategic question of interwar times - the Franco-German relations. War between Germany and France seems unthinkable today - this progress proves that the traditional geopolitical "truths" should not be taken as too deterministic!
To guarantee the defence of the Western liberties against the terror policy of the Soviet Union, also the NATO was born and developed in the Cold War era. Of course we also know the contrary organisation, the Warsaw Pact, created by Moscow’s bloc. Finally, there was also various forms of lower-level regional co-operation, for instance the Nordic co-operation.
The end of the Cold War was manifested by two processes that can be said to create the post-Cold-War European geopolitical situation: the liberation of Eastern Europe and the integration of Western Europe. Many tendencies of the post-Cold-War situation suggest that we might be living "an historical déjà vu" as expressed by Otto von Habsburg in the assembly of the Paneuropean Union in Strasbourg, December 1999. Thereby comparing the presently continuing post-Cold-War period with the interwar period that we have just studied, is most justified.
First of all we could think about the similarities prevailing in the general European situation of these two periods. In the interwar Europe, four empires had fallen: the German, the Austro-Hungarian, the Turkish, and the Russian. Two of them, Austria-Hungary and Turkey, had turned into harmless for general European security, while the other two, Germany and Russia, constituted and proved most destructive. In the post-Cold-War Europe two empires have fallen apart: the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Most of the countries born on their ruins in Europe have developed into healthy direction and can be said to be harmless for general European security. However, the former master nations of the fallen empires, Russia and Serbia, have remained aggressive, revanchist, and they have also proved most destructive to their neighbours.
All the wars in Europe since the end of the Cold War have been started by Russia or Serbia (with the relatively unimportant exceptions of Croatian counter-attack against the Republic of Krajina, and the Albanian civil war in 1997). Serbia started wars against Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosova. Russia attacked into three countries she had recognised herself: Moldavia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, and organised armed conflicts in Transnistria, Abkhazia, Samadzablo and Karabagh to be exploited. Besides, of course, in 1990s alone Russia started two massive wars and genocide against Chechnya.
In the interwar period, the long tendency of anti-Semitic propaganda and conspiracy theories reached its climax - much inspired by the falsified "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" produced by the czarist Russian secret police Ohrana. In the post-Cold-War Europe, anti-Islamism seems to have taken the place of earlier anti-Semitism. Moreover, the anti-Islamist propaganda and conspiracy theories seem to have been backed by the very same security service and inspiring the very same circles in both right and left as the anti-Semitic propaganda earlier. The legitimisation of aggressions by fascist or presently fascist-resembling regimes against ethnic and religious minorities, Jewish "bourgeois" or "oligarchs", are backed with very similar propaganda and pogroms as in the interwar period. Generally the new "problem regimes" again argue for centralisation of power, against regional autonomy and freedom of press. Also the West seems as reluctant to react in time as in the interwar period.
In the interwar period, stability was challenged by many questions concerning national minorities, especially in the East of Europe and in the former dominions of the fallen empires. During and after the WW II massive and cruel cleansings and homogenisation took place in Eastern Europe. However, communist regimes especially in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia produced more and new problems connected with national minorities by irrational border changes, genocides, ethnic cleansings, deportation and importation of new populations. Manipulation of nationalities took place in scale never witnessed before. Thus, we have again major problems with irrational borders and national minorities.
Apparently also many important changes have taken place since the interwar period, and that should give us much hope that everything does not necessarily need to be repeated. Most of all the potential strength of liberal democracy in Western Europe has grown immensely, due to the Western integration and peace, as well as economic growth, which is due to market economy. Besides the Franco-German axis, also many other traditional threats against European geostrategic stability have been buried. This has not only taken place in the West, but also in the East: One good example is the constructive relations of Hungary and Romania - a region that could have been expected to contain potential for conflict. It also must be mentioned that many authoritarian regimes that gained power in post-Cold-War Zwischeneuropa due to insecurity, much in the same way as in the interwar times, have been later replaced with Western-oriented and more constructive ones: Ion Iliescu of Romania in 1996, Sali Berisha of Albania in 1997, Vladimir Meciar of Slovakia in 1999, and Franjo Tudjman of Croatia last Christmas.
Still the danger embedded in Russian and Serbian development constitutes major threat to the security in Zwischeneuropa, especially as the West has always reacted too late to Serbian aggressions, and has not reacted at all to Russian aggressions. It is thus not a wonder, that also the regional and geopolitical construction policies in Zwischeneuropa have repeated the interwar scenes.
First of all, like in the interwar period when Naumann’s Mitteleuropa appeared in the discussion already before the WW I, also in the post-Cold-War Europe the conception of Central Europe got its revival already in the autumn of communism. Discussion constructing Central Europe spread as parallels in the German-speaking Europe (Germany and Austria) and in the non-German Central Europe (Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, also Romania and certain Yugoslav states), as in the interwar times. In the East, the Central European discussion was risen by such intellectuals as Václav Havel and Milan Kundera of Czechoslovakia (later Czech Republic), Adam Michnik of Poland, György Konrád of Hungary, and Mircea Eliade of Romania.
Mainly the construction policies stayed on the first level of the three levels I mentioned as strategies of Zwischeneuropean states in constructing their place on the political map: 1) reference group, 2) regional co-operation, and 3) alliance. Every country saw the construction of a desirable Western reference group as essential for achieving a "heaven seat" in the Western security. Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, Slovenes and Croatians rushed to emphasise their Central European heritage. Romania manifested her Latin and Mediterranean heritage, drawing connections to Rome and Paris. Moldova tried to remind the world that she is actually Romanian, not Slavic, although the Russian invasion to Transnistria torpedoed Moldavian wishes for reunification with Romania. Lithuania emphasised her Catholic religion while Estonia wanted to be taken as a Nordic country.
Same development took part also in those corners of Europe that we often ignore: In the Balkans we usually forget that also Ibrahim Rugova of Kosova and Milo Djukanovic of Montenegro have been attempting to emphasise how European, Western, or democratic Kosova and Montenegro are, compared with Serbian dictatorship. In the Caucasus, the intellectual first presidents of Georgia and Azerbaijan, Zviad Gamsakhurdia and Abulfaz Elçibey, represented very similar ideas with those of the East Central European political intellectuals. Gamsakhurdia wanted to connect Georgia to the ancient monarchic heritage and to Europe, while Elçibey emphasised the Pan-Turkic unity with Azerbaijan’s closest ethnic and linguistic neighbour Turkey. Also the first Chechen president, Dzoxar Dudayev, stated similar views, inspired by general European nation-building and humanitarian questions - to these thoughts Dudayev became attracted in Tartu, Estonia.
Nomenclature coups in Georgia and Azerbaijan and the Russian-initiated Caucasian wars made Gamsakhurdia, Elçibey and Dudayev fail in what Václav Havel, Lech Walesa, Emil Constantinescu, Lennart Meri and Vytautas Landsbergis had succeeded. Although the regimes of Eduard Shevardnadze and Haidar Aliyev were backed into power by their background in Soviet nomenclature and by Russian armed support, even they have later turned back towards the Western-oriented reference group projects of their predecessors: Both Georgia and Azerbaijan have even been talking about NATO membership. Though radical changes and massive destruction, the Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov has continued Dudayev’s secular and moderate policy and attempts of being associated rather with the rest of East European liberation struggle than with Afghan and Arab fundamentalist movements, where Russian propaganda would like to posit Chechnya.
So far, the Western incapability, hesitation and inconsistency in meeting the expectations of the intermediate states has kept the regional construction on the level of reference groups. A lot of regional co-operation has of course taken place, but what has been missing is concrete and credible regional co-operation between the Zwischeneuropean states: Instead, they have preferred to strengthen their relations with the West, each one independently. It seems rather than the post-communist countries are competing against each other of the places in the West, than co-operating. Each one seems repeatedly very eager to present herself as Western and European, and her neighbour as Eastern and strange to Europe: Czechs in relation to Slovaks, Hungarians in relation to Romanians, Romanians in relation to Ukrainians, Croatians, Albanians and Montenegrins in relation to Serbians - but even Russians and Serbians in relation to the claimed "Muslim threat".
Such constructions as the Visegrad co-operation and the Quadragonale that later grew up into Pentagonale and Hexagonale, and the constructions of Northern Dimension and Baltic co-operation, represent some level of regional co-operation. Still most of these projects seem to be lot of rhetorics and conferences but very little concrete. Besides, the geopolitical contains of the fashionable regional constructions as Northern Dimension remain obscure - in Finland, the home country of the Northern Dimension as a geopolitical code, it still remains disputed whether the Northern Dimension is designed to protect us from Russia or to advocate Russian interests in Europe. Does the weak success of regional co-operation warn that the present Zwischeneuropean geostrategic co-operation is proving equally unsuccessful as Naumann’s Mitteleuropa, the Petite Entente, and the margin-state co-operation?
So far the concrete step on the level of alliance has been the NATO membership of Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic, which became true in the eve of NATO intervention against Yugoslavia. Although the progress of regional co-operation and integration to the West has been much less and much slower than people both in the West and in the East expected in the beginning of the 1990s, these things have instead gained much renaissance in intellectual and academic discussion: After the long freeze of the Cold War, Central Europe, Paneurope, and Zwischeneuropa are again discussed all around Europe. The major Western governments, however, remain on the level of rhetorics. Does this, too, recall the interwar times?
When a major strategic shift has taken place in the world politics, also geopolitical thought has reappeared to reconstruct the map of the world. The emphasis of Zwischeneuropean countries on construction of desirable reference group in order to advance their co-operation and finally alliance with the West has already been studied. With which regional and geopolitical constructions are the great powers driving their geopolitical, strategic, and aesthetic interests on Europe’s map? Basically I believe that the characterisation I made in the beginning of the lecture about the different strategies of the West, the empire (Russia), and the intermediate countries, is valid also in the post-Cold-War situation: The U.S. is constructing strategic and geopolitical constructions backed by rhetorics connected to general good (democracy, market economy, peace). Russia is struggling to maintain and enlarge an interest sphere in the classical imperialist way. The intermediate countries are constructing reference groups, seizing to the hope of Western saviours while neglecting the need of hard co-operation between each other.
It seems that American geopolitical thought of the post-Cold-War world can be divided into two influential schools of thought - the multipolarist and the realist school. The third could be isolationism, which would hardly bring about anything good for those European and Asian countries that wish protection for their liberties from the U.S. Here I concentrate in the two geopolitical directions that I name multipolarists and realists. Perhaps at the moment the best known multipolarist is Samuel Huntington (Clash of Civilizations), while an excellent example of a realist is Zbigniew Brzezinski (The Grand Chessboard).
The multipolarist thought is based on the idea of division of the world into the hegemonic blocs of few "great powers", granting them with interest spheres that are somehow supposed to be legitimate. This line of thought is rooted in imperialist tradition, but also in the theories dividing world between continents, which had inspired for example Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Paneurope and the similar developments of Pan-America and Pan-Asia in the interwar times. The legitimisation of the constructions, however, appears most obscure. Huntington’s model is entirely based on religious division of the world - in a way that alarmingly resembles the race theories of those geopoliticians who inspired the Nazis: now "cultures", or religions, have just replaced the "races". Huntington divides the world into "civilisations", which are all supposed to have a legitimate "central state". Huntington’s anti-Islamism is very clear, while for Russia and China he would grant interest spheres much larger than the claimed Orthodox and "Sinic" civilizations.
Huntington’s civilization theory, in my opinion, is not actually scientific in nature, but it rather belongs to the same category with the many interwar constructions with aesthetic basis. Besides, there are too many embarrassing factual errors in Huntington’s book - let alone purposeful ignorance of the fact that the pattern of amity and enmity in the world’s conflict zones is far from being "clash of civilizations", i.e. religious in nature, but quite the contrary, forms a complicated web of unholy alliances. The very examples of Balkans and Caucasus that Huntington finds supporting his theory on the vague basis that religions are involved, are actually witnessing against his theory: For example, Shi’ite Islamist Iran is supporting the interests of Russia in Chechnya and of Christian Armenians against Shi’ite Muslim Azerbaijan; Sunnite Turkey, Christian Georgia and Shi’ite Azerbaijan are co-operating against Orthodox Russia, Monophysite Armenia, Shi’ite Iran and Sunnite Syria, and so on. Religious division into Uniate and Orthodox Ukraine has not brought about a real conflict while the linguistic conflict between Slavic Transnistria and Latin Moldova - both of same Orthodox religion - has generated a bloody war.
Thus, even if Toomas Hendrik Ilves and many other Estonians have become enthusiastic of Huntington’s theory just as it happens to grant Estonia the desired Western reference group, I would not recommend realist students in an intermediate country as Estonia to fall too much in love with Huntington’s theory. To be honest, I find it rather dangerous. Russia and China can be expected to be enthusiastic on Huntington’s views - and multipolarism in general - since they want to get a share of the world hegemony along the U.S. For small countries like Estonia such hegemony granted to nuclear superpowers only would not promise too secure a position. However, we must study also Huntington’s theory, its motivations and its implications, most seriously, as it has gained very large influence in Western geopolitical thought.
The multipolarist school is challenged by the other line of thought: that the U.S. supremacy as the leading hegemon of the post-Cold-War world is a fact and that this fact should be used for the benefit of Western values - democracy, market economy and peace. Zbigniew Brzezinski, himself born in Poland and an expert of Eurasian affairs with extensive and detailled knowledge, has a much more realist view on geostrategy than Huntington does. However, he also repeats the traditional moral bias of Anglo-Saxon geopolitical thought.
While Huntington’s model is based on mythical cultural "civilizations" and religious prejudices, Brzezinski’s geostrategy is based on objective facts influencing the "grand game" being played in Eurasia by grand powers. While Huntington’s model is simplistic and however based on generally plausible ideas, collapses on the level of details and single examples, Brzezinski’s model is based on pedantic and almost encyclopaedic information on the countries, including the minor ones, and knowledge on the strategic realities and natural resources such as Caspian oil. The politically and thus perhaps "culturally" most advanced post-communist countries, Slovenia and Estonia, might get extra favour from Huntington, while Brzezinski pays attention on the "strategically important pivot countries" like Poland, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan. This, however, does not mean that Huntington’s model would be more favourable for Estonians. Quite the contrary.
Huntington’s world political moral is relativistic and basically gives the right to the hegemons of each "civilization" to do whatever they like within their bloc, if only they do not mess with other "civilizations" - an exception Huntington makes with the Islamic civilization, from which he gives a greater part into a dominion of Russia for apparently subjective reasons. Brzezinski’s world political moral is based on clear defence of Western values with any objective means available. The idea of the moral basis of Western hegemony continues the tradition of Mackinder and Spykman. The realist school of geostrategy has traditionally been favoured by the Republican thinkers of American geopolitics. To mention recent examples, this line of thought has appeared for example in the views of John McCain and Paul Wolfowitz, and in John Shalikashvili’s defence of NATO’s east enlargement.
It seems that the enlargement process of both the European Union and NATO seems to have stagnated - temporarily or for good, remains to be seen by forthcoming U.S. presidential shift and development of policy in the Western countries toward Russia. The stagnation seems the more frustrating for post-communist countries that their "problems" in getting integrated to the West and in gaining security guarantees seem relatively independent on their own willingness and meeting the criteria that the West imposes upon them as demands. Rather, the stagnation seems to lie within the West itself. The European Union must be radically reformed and liberalised in order to get such large agrarian countries as Poland, let alone Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey, into the union. The NATO must remind itself or re-define what are the Western values it was founded to defend, and against what.
Meanwhile, the intermediate countries from Estonia to Romania, from Croatia to Albania, from Greece to Turkey and the Caucasus, could at least improve the shattering regional co-operation in order to avoid the mistakes that made the Central European and Paneuropean projects to fail in the interwar context. Western countries should of course improve their attitudes towards these efforts of the intermediate countries. Such constructions of regional co-operation as the Baltic, the Mediterranean, and the Central European co-operation should be encouraged, and also Black Sea and Caucasian regions would deserve their own regional co-operation in order to strengthen their geopolitical status. The GUAM+ co-operation initiated by Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova might promise some positive development on the so far most unlucky sector of Europe, too.
On the other hand, also the imperial constructions by the Eurasian superpowers Russia and China are in a rise. In Europe, the shaggy construction of Russian economical dominion as the CIS is on the level of geopolitical thought accompanied by the construction of political and military interest sphere in the conception of "near abroad", and by the construction of an expansionist mission in renaissance of "Derzhava". So far, the U.S. has been unintentionally supporting the construction of interest spheres - "backyards" and "frontyards" - in her rather inconsistent policies towards the conflicts in the Balkans and in the Caucasus. It seems that lasting, let alone final, political solutions are not actually wanted: the game is going on. There is not enough political will, as the cliché goes.
So, what conclusions can we draw from the similarities between the interwar and the post-Cold-War geopolitical situations? The head architect of the Paris order after the WW I was Woodrow Wilson. The head architect of the Yalta order after the WW II was Josif Stalin - with the obedient assistance of Roosevelt. For the post-Cold-War Europe’s architects we already have several potential candidates. The only thing that seems obvious regarding our discussion today, is that once again the European political geography is being designed in Washington and Moscow instead of Europe. The future in our generation’s time will show whether Europe after 50 years will remember Walesa, Havel, Constantinescu and Mart Laar... or Putin and Milosevic, who are actually just putting Huntington’s model into action in a similarly distorted way as another architect aspirant designed Haushofer’s geopolitics less than 70 years ago.
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The Author is member of the Board of the Finnish Paneuropean Union, Chairman of the Paneuropean youth organisation in Finland, has studied political science and international politics in the universities of Jyväskylä (Finland), Lund (Sweden) and Tartu (Estonia), and in the Master programme of the Aleksanteri Institute of Russian and East European Studies (Finland). He is writing his Master Thesis on regional constructions and geopolitical strategies in the Caucasian and Caspian region. He is also the editor-in-chief of an internet journal on European and Asian affairs, The Eurasian Politician: http://www.the-politician.com
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