Continental blocks versus oceanic hegemonism – The geopolitical dialectic

Geopolitics isthe geographical consciousness of the State».¹

The State is a community of men in a defined space, even a civilization with clear borders; in this case we can speak of a “State-civilization”² – to use Weiwei Zhang’s concept – like China, or to a certain extent, Russia.

For the German geopolitical scientist Karl Haushofer (1869-1946), geopolitics is neither right nor left, but aims to serve all of humanity by promoting understanding between peoples. Haushofer's object of study are "great vital connections of today's man in today's space» and its purpose is “the insertion of the individual into his natural environment and the coordination of phenomena linking the State to space».³

This discipline also and above all aims to give political decision-makers the intellectual tools necessary for effective decision-making and action.

However, what we see today is that there is a Chinese geopolitics, a Russian geopolitics and an American geopolitics, but that there is no European geopolitics, the Old Continent having been integrated into the American glacis. . And even if the United States withdrew from Europe, there would not be a European geopolitics, but a French, German, Italian geopolitics, etc.

European states were thus dispossessed, by Washington, of their sovereignty and their right to designate their friends and enemies.

«As long as a people exists in the political sphere, it must itself make the distinction between friends and enemies, while reserving it for extreme circumstances of which it will be the judge itself. This is the essence of its political existence. The moment it lacks the capacity or the will to make this distinction, it ceases to exist politically. If it accepts that a foreigner dictates to it the choice of its enemy and tells it against whom it has the right or not to fight, it ceases to be a politically free people and it is incorporated or subordinated to another political system».⁴

This other political system is the European Union and NATO, led by the United States.

If politics is the domain of the distinction between friend and enemy, then geopolitics is that of the alliance and confrontation of States. Applied geopolitics is also, even first of all, the management, by the political authority, of its space, of the space of its people. Securing its borders and maintaining, outside them, as far away as possible, any threat that any State, any army, any hostile organization could exert.

For Karl Aushofer, the concept of geopolitics is “one of the most usable and finest political instruments for recording and measuring the distribution of power in space, on the surface of the earth: a key to the play of forces, which so affects our present and our future; using this key we can play and superimpose almost without gaps the spatial descriptive factors of political geography and the temporal descriptive factors of everyday history in their results for the dynamic transformative force of the day and the moment».⁵

Structural enemies: land/sea, empire/hegemon

In Antiquity, States and great models of geopolitical powers were forged which evolved on a technical level but whose spirit remained. The opposition between land empire and maritime hegemon is permanent, until today, and structures world geopolitics.

The wars between Sparta and Athens, and between Rome and Carthage, will find echoes in the Middle Ages and the modern era in the wars between England and France, England and Russia, England and Germany and today the one between the United States and Russia. Geopolitical constants span a very long historical period.

On the geopolitical and legal levels, we have lived, since the 16th century, in a world where two spatial orders oppose each other: that of the open sea and the dry land.

«This is how the European-centric world order appeared in the 16th century. century divided into two distinct global orders, land and sea. For the first time in the history of humanity, the opposition between land and sea becomes the universal basis of global human rights. From now on it is no longer a question of inland seas like the Mediterranean, the Adriatic or the Baltic, but of the entire terrestrial globe, measured geographically, and the oceans...

Two universal and global orders therefore face each other without being able to relate to the relationship between universal rights and particular rights. Each of them is universal. Everyone has their own notion of enemy, war and loot, but also freedom. The great global decision of international law in the 16th century and 17th centuries therefore culminated in a balance between land and sea, in the face-to-face of two orders which only determined the new nomos of the earth in the tensions of their coexistence...»⁶

Since that time, and until the end of the 20th century, the balance of power shifted to the advantage of the maritime powers, namely the British Empire, then its American heir. The fall of continental power which followed the Protestant reform which weakened both the Roman Church and the Holy Roman Empire, allowed over the long term the hegemonic expansion of the Anglo-American thalassocracies, and the vassalization of continental Europe.

The exit from the stage of European History, like the birth of the multipolar world, was perceptible by certain visionary minds as early as the 1930s/40s. In his correspondence with Nicolaus Sombart, between 1933 and 1943, Carl Schmitt wrote that:

«The real competitors these days are Russia and the United States. Europe is out of the game. Tocqueville realized this a hundred years ago. But the very idea of ​​world domination is also over. What is coming is a new Nomos of the Earth, a new geographical order. We must think in planetary terms, in the dimensions of a planetary geographic revolution. What is emerging now is a “wide open spaces” order».⁷

The current war between Russia and NATO in Ukraine is the result of this tension between land and sea powers. The war that Russia is waging today is classic, in the sense that it is fighting where there are Russian-speaking populations in the territories of the former Russian empire. It fights in its natural zone of influence, and not on the other side of the world. It is a 19th century war, typical of land powers, comparable to that of Prussia which fought to (partially) reunite the Germanic populations scattered across part of Europe.

Russia is also waging a war to protect its zone of geopolitical influence on which America is encroaching, via NATO. We can go back to Antiquity to find this type of limited war to preserve or expand its zone of influence. A zone of influence which coincides with the security zone, to draw a geographical limit beyond which the life of the State itself is threatened.

In the first half of the 280rd century BC, when Rome unified Italy, it was threatened to the east, on its Tyrrhenian coast, by Carthage. Around 270 BC. BC, Carthage occupies Lipara, in the Aeolian Islands, a leading observation post at the mouth of the Strait of Messina. In XNUMX BC. AD Rome reconquers Rhegium, facing Sicily, and from then on controls the Strait of Messina, one of the two major routes of communication between the eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean. Carthage, which tried without success to prevent the unification of the Italian peninsula by Rome, then wanted to at least close Rome's access to Sicily, the key to Carthaginian colonial hegemony.

We can draw a parallel with the historical sequence which begins with the coming to power of Vladimir Putin in the early 2000s. While Russia has reconstituted itself and solidified its State, it has found itself threatened by States. -United, the Carthage of modern times, inside its borders (the Chechen war) and outside by the progression of NATO towards its zone of influence, its security zone.

To assert itself as the regional power, Rome is forced to leave the Italian peninsula and confront Carthage, just as Russia left its borders to confront NATO in Ukraine. In both cases, war was inevitable. Because, one of two things, either land power remains within its borders and allows maritime power to come and attack it on its territory, at the risk of being cornered or even disappearing, or it plans militarily to protect a zone of broader influence that will constitute lasting protection.

The interests of Carthage, which lie in the military, political and commercial control of the Mediterranean, are directly opposed to the vital interests of Rome, which must ensure a zone of influence and protection. Carthage was restraining Rome, just as the Americans are doing to Russia.

The Carthaginians wanted to make Sicily a green bridge to Italy, just as the Americans used Ukraine as a bridgehead to Russia.

Russia, like Rome in the past, is in defensive mode, but it is responding to the attack of an enemy, America, which is beyond the reach of its army. Rome destroyed Carthage to reduce the threat to nothing. Russia can only destroy America through a catastrophic nuclear exchange for humanity. While the United States threatens Russia near its border using Ukrainian and European proxies. The Americans are waging an international war against Russia without having to get officially involved.

The military asymmetry to Russia's disadvantage is extraordinarily significant. But the asymmetry in this conflict is not exclusively military.

Russia is waging a traditional, conventional war, limited in nature. We will even say that the Russian offensive is limited by the very nature of Russia.

The United States is waging a war beyond limits, that is to say a war whose space of action is no longer only military, but also civil, economic, legal and societal. Off-limits war is total war. And it is this total attack that Russia has been facing for many years.

The constitution of geopolitical blocs in reaction to the hegemonism of thalassocracy: China/Russia versus Anglo-American hegemon

The order of large spaces has arrived, this is what we call the multipolar world made up of great powers aggregating around them nations which form geopolitical blocs.

The unipolar sequence was only a brief moment during which Russian and Chinese powers were to be reconstituted. A historical misunderstanding in short. This short period, of around twenty years, was interpreted by some Americans as the end of History signifying their hegemony on the planet.

This beginning of the 21st century is not only that of multipolarity, but also that of the shift of the center of gravity towards the East, towards the continental heart of the world, to the detriment of peripheral thalassocracies. This is a phenomenal reversal of the balance of power on the scale of History and the planet.

The largest energy resources (oil, gas, not forgetting raw materials), and the greatest economic and military powers are continental states controlling large spaces and allying with numerous states across the vast African continent.

The United States and the rest of the Western world represent 25% of the world's population, and they face the remaining 75% which is aggregated around the two continental powers of Russia and China. It is the end of the thalassocratic era. Halford John Mackinder (1861-1947) also warned the British Empire more than a century ago of the danger presented by Russian land power, in that the continental power had a greater chance of triumphing against the maritime power in the face of the diplomacy, even ingenious, of the latter.

Those who are surprised to see the Sino-Russian rapprochement are simply ignoring the constants and foundations of geopolitics. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, concluded on the eve of the Second World War, was justified by the need for the two land powers, German and Russian, to come together and form a “unity” against the Anglo-American maritime powers, and this despite their ideological differences. Adolf Hitler's fatal error was to break this pact, to the great pleasure of the British and the Americans who thus got rid, at minimal cost, of a cumbersome dominant state in the heart of Europe.

«It was only after having explained to the main military leaders his plans for conquest in the East that Hitler encountered resistance from traditional circles of which General Beck was a typical representative.».⁸

These traditional circles sought to restore a strong Germany and its hegemony according to the classical model.

The leaders of China and Russia, who have strong historical awareness, will not make the mistake of separating. Especially since the dual policy of American containment targeting Russia and China is forcing these two countries to come together. The globe being a battlefield where “states compete for world domination»⁹, the war in Ukraine can be interpreted as the continuation of Russia's Eurasian policy to secure the continent. This is what is traditionally called a “pacification”, in the Roman style.

We therefore naturally understand the support provided by Beijing to Moscow; the Middle Kingdom needs, to perpetuate its new Silk Roads, for Europe and Asia to be pacified. Russia is therefore doing a necessary job in the eyes of China.

What is striking today is that German geopolitical realism has been adopted by the Russians and the Chinese. Indeed, Karl Aushofer wrote in 1940:

«Unquestionably the greatest and most important change in world politics of our time is the formation of a powerful continental bloc encompassing Europe, North and East Asia. But not all the great formations and configurations of this order come ready-made from the head of any statesman, however great he may be, like this famous Greek goddess of war in her transfigured aspect. Informed people know how such trainings are prepared for a long time».¹⁰

Euro-Asian policy is indeed not a project originally and punctually developed by a few leaders, but the fruit of necessity, of the force of historical circumstances. The Euro-Asian alliance follows a principle that comes to us from Antiquity, at the time of the birth of the Roman state:

«Fas est ab hoste doceri» (It is a sacred duty to let oneself be taught by the enemy).

«At the birth of important political groups, the adversary often already very early has a keen instinct of what threatens him, a premonitory feeling that a remarkable Japanese sociologist, GE Vychara, attributes to all his people, and which allows him to see dangers coming from afar. Such a national characteristic is very valuable. Everyone will be surprised to learn that those who first saw the possibility of such a continental bloc emerging on the horizon, fraught with threats to the world domination of the Anglo-Saxons, were the English and American leaders, at one time time when we, within the Second Reich [1871-1918], had not yet formed a picture of the possibilities that could result from a link between Central Europe and the ruling power of East Asia [NDA: he refers to Japan] across vast Eurasia»¹¹, wrote Karl Aushofer in 1940.

Lord Palmerston (1784-1865), British politician, twice Prime Minister, had declared, during a ministerial crisis in 1851: however unpleasant our relations with France may now be, we must maintain them because at the rear plan threatens a Russia that can connect Europe and East Asia, and, alone, we cannot cope with such a situation. Homer Lea (1876-1912), American adventurer and writer, writes a book about the twilight of the Anglo-Saxons at the height of the British World Empire. He said that the end of English domination could come the day Germany, Russia and Japan joined forces.

We therefore understand that it was not the brains of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping who developed the policy of Sino-Russian rapprochement. This is a reaction to the geopolitics of the Anglo-Americans which they called the “anaconda policy”. Encirclement, suffocation and crushing of nations.¹²

It is a dialectical relationship, a threat that forces continental states to form powerful and large spaces to hinder the politics of the anaconda.

Also, the Anglo-American strategic objective of separating Germany and Russia is not new. Today, Washington is destroying the gas pipelines that connected these two countries, and yesterday, in 1919, when Germany was on its knees and disarmed, the Anglo-Americans feared German-Russian collaboration and proposed “that at the cost of a grandiose transfer of the inhabitants of East Prussia to the West, Germany only gains access to the west bank of the Vistula, only so that Germany and Russia can no longer meet directly».¹³

The Treaty of Rapallo signed on April 16, 1922 by Germany and the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic was a great disappointment for the Englishman Mackinder and his school.

The new Chinese Silk Road, which connects Eastern China to Western Europe by an essentially continental route, has revived an old Anglo-American fear. Recently, Washington's Italian maid, Giorgia Meloni, took Italy out of China's new Silk Road.

The American historian and geopolitologist Brook Adams (1848-1927) saw in the possibility of a vast transcontinental railway policy with the termini of Port Arthur and Tsing-tao (two ports in Eastern China), a German unity -East Asian Russian that any attempt at an English blockade or an American blockade, even combined, could not break.

And we see it today. The policy of American sanctions against a Russia backed by China and other large areas of the multipolar world (BRICS) is in vain. Even without Europe, which Washington succeeded in separating from Russia, the Eurasian continental alliance is already putting the Anglo-Americans in check politically, militarily and economically. The Russo-European rupture caused by the Americans pushes Russia even further towards another continent, Africa where the Chinese are already well established.

Let's call this the communicating vessels of geopolitics.

The United States is living on the geopolitical gains of the end of the Second World War. In particular the control of Europe and Japan. Continental policy to counter Anglo-American containment must be done without these two regions of the world, but with a significant number of large and medium powers, including India, Iran, Indonesia, South Africa. and Brazil. To which is added an Africa which is tilting towards the East to the detriment of the West.

Towards what epilogue?

But the force of attraction of the continental economic mass could tear Japan and Europe from the Anglo-American Judeo-Protestant bosom, if a world war (that is to say a direct confrontation of the great powers) does not occur. not before.

Because, if yesterday America was an attractive economic power, today what it offers its vassals is recession, poverty, the pillaging of their industries, war, continual humiliation. European leaders are thus caught in a vice between their masters of the Western oligarchy who are dragging their countries into the abyss, and their people in revolt who oppose this deadly policy.

For its part, Russia waits to benefit from the war of attrition against the West until the patience of the peoples of Europe reaches its limits. Russian pressure on European governments is not visible but real. The resistance capacity and resources of the Russians are far superior to those of the West. Moscow therefore only has to prolong hostilities and European industrial exhaustion until the people can no longer bear the economic effects.

As for Japan, it showed a pragmatism specific to its culture. Tokyo refused to sacrifice its economy for US strategic needs. “The United States has rallied its European allies to cap purchases of Russian crude at $60 a barrel, but one of Washington's closest allies in Asia is now buying oil at prices above that cap. . Japan got the United States to accept this exception, saying it needed it to guarantee access to Russian energy. The concession shows Japan's dependence on Russia for fossil fuels, which analysts say has contributed to Tokyo's hesitation to further support Ukraine in its war against Russia».¹⁴

The Americans are facing a difficult situation. They demand blind obedience from their vassals against their vital interests. Pulling too hard on the submission rope will eventually break it. The geographical location of Japan, which is close to the two geopolitical juggernauts China and Russia, may ultimately push it towards a rapprochement with Beijing and Moscow to find a modus vivendi. The need for hydrocarbons for its powerful industry being vital for Japan, Tokyo cannot be harakiri for a war that does not concern it.

The reality of the balance of power is obvious between a demographic minority on a global scale which leads a deadly economic and military policy, and the great land powers which are in an economic boom and which are working to stabilize the great continent.

Notes:

1. Karl Haushofer, “On geopolitics”, Fayard, 1986, p.24.

2. https://www.lajauneetlarouge.com

3. Karl Haushofer, “On geopolitics”, p.25.

4. Carl Schmitt, “The notion of politics”, 1932, Champs, 2009, p.91.

5. Karl Aushofer, “On geopolitics”, p.105.

6. Carl Schmitt, “The nomos of the Earth”, 1950, Publication universitaire de France, 2001, p.172.

7. Nicolaus Sombart, “Chronicle of a Berlin youth (1933-1943)”, Quai Voltaire, Paris 1992, trans. By Olivier Mannoni, pp.322-323. Quoted by Alain de Benoist, preface to Land and Sea by Carl Schmitt, 1942, 2022, Krisis, p.57.

8. Jean Klein, preface to “On geopolitics” by Karl Aushofer, p.29.

9. Karl Aushofer, “On geopolitics”, p.27.

10. Karl Aushofer, “On geopolitics”, p.113.

11. Karl Aushofer, “On geopolitics”, p.114.

12. Karl Aushofer, “On geopolitics”, pp.114-115.

13. Karl Aushofer, “On geopolitics”, pp.115-116.

14. “Japan breaks with US allies, buys Russian oil at prices above cap”, The Wall Street Journal, 02/04/2023. https://www.wsj.com

Source: Strategika

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