EUROPE, THE WEST AND EURASIA

6 November 2022

One thing I like to start with is clarity over definitions.

So it is really important to understand the importance of balance of power geopolitics and to distinguish between Europe, the West and Eurasia.

EUROPE, THE WEST AND EURASIA

EUROPE, of which the EU is but a part, includes 80% of the Russian population. It is in De Gaulle's words "Europe from the Urals to the Atlantic". But Europe is divided east and west by a line joining the Adriatic to the Baltic, a line that is also a zone of struggle between the Teutonics (Germany) and the Slavs (Russia), or in mackinder's speak between the powers of the sea and the powers of the land, or in mythological terms between the sky and the earth, with no established balance of power.

THE WEST is that group of countries in Europe, Great Britain France and Germany, that defined certain concepts around democracy, liberalism, individual freedom, the rule of law and a functioning state, capitalism and these days a market mixed economy ; and spread these ideas to America and Australia ; and after the last war to Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan (China's eastern seaboard).

EURASIA is from the Bering Straits across thousands of miles of Russian steppe, over the Carpathians Mackinder's East-West fault line, possibly taking in the Caucuses and the Baltics, then on down across the plains of Europe.

I might have got this wrong, between heart- and rim-land, but if you think that geography is the number one determinant then this is quite a useful view from which to start thinking about International Relations.

THE WORLD ISLAND THEORY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

We have considered this theory by Halford Mackinder from 1904 in an earlier post. Very important as it was the basis of the thinking of Spykman, George Kennan and handed to Harry Truman became the basis of the theory and practise for containing Russia i.e. the naval power of the US containing the land power of Russia. 

The US seems to work to four action imperatives.

1. Dominate the seas for open trade and you dominate the world.

2. Break the domino chain, by which the fall of a non-communist state to communism would precipitate the fall of non-communist governments in neighbouring states.

3. Divide and conquer, from chaos theory and the power of nationalism.

4. Create international institutions to set the rules for a heavily militarised America to run its dollar empire.

The world Island theory and the domino theory for South America, implemented through a strategy of divide and rule by creating chaos (war, invasion, colour revolutions) to break up large power blocks into many smaller, weaker, pieces that you can then set against each other, is how America dominates an area, and the world. 

It explains capitalist American Russophobia.

It explains how the capitalist West (America and NATO) has contained Russia and the global South or BRICS, or what we used to call the Communist world. And why NATO must be expanded to Asia.

Worth noting that maybe the peoples of The West, through their elite's propaganda machine, feel a hatred of Russia and all Russian people, but the elite, the American military-industrial-government power elite, is guided by this cold logic of power and money and this strategy of conflict rather than co-operation.

Also it is somewhat bewildering to see Europe on the end of America's skewer with no idea what to do. Germany in particular is staring at its forthcoming deindustrialisation and impoverishment.

MACKINDER WAS NOT THE FIRST

Mackinder argues that the heartland with all its resources would eventually come to dominate the rimland and thus the world (unless something is done to contain the heartland):

“Whoever rules East Europe, will rule the  Heartland,

Whoever rules the Heartland, will rule the World Island.

Whoever rules the World Island, will rule the world.”

His theory is much criticised today, with the railways, manned flight, the re-emergence of China and its new silk road. The fundamental idea that the heartland with all its resources should eventually win the planet, but note that the expected outcome - a win for the land power, was not always thus.

Geopolitics is essentially about finding a balance-of-power in the never-ending struggle sea power v. land power. This statement by Sir Walter Raleigh must have been the template for Mackinder's.

"For whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; 

whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world

and whosoever commands the riches of the world, commands the world itself."

SIR WALTER RALEIGH, 

“A Discourse of the Invention of Ships, Anchors, Compass, &c.,” 

The Works of Sir Walter Raleigh, vol. 8, p. 325.

Raleigh tells us how globalisation, or the establishment of safe maritime trade routes, will continue to suppory the United States as the world hegemon.... unless China can break out of its containment within the first island ring of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan (Hong Kong is gone).