Distributed Heartland and the importance of multipolar discours

The book of Sasha Rossmüller «Geopolitische Zeitenwende Multipolarität statt Imperialismus» is extremely important and actual. We are certainly living in the age of transition. The exploration of the nature of this transition is key question. It is not about to foresee the future but about active participation of sharpening it. Every prophecy is partly self fulfilled prophecy. Every thinking is more or less wishful thinking.
So in this book we clearly see how the author interprets the transition, how he is shaping the future and what he wishes. All that corresponds with my own aspiration and is based more or less on the same authors, theories and concepts. That is why I consider this book very opportune. But at the same time the book is very original and creative.
Sasha Rossmüller considers (as myself) the actual transition of global system as the end of unipolar moment (started with the fall of USSR) and the beginning of multipolar world order. That is the realization of the possible fourth Nomos of Earth predicted by Carl Schmitt after the end of bipolarity. Alain de Benoist in his Sankt-Petersburg speech has pointed out the possible connotation of Fourth Nomos of the Earth and Fourth Political Theory that is in its turn closely related to Theory of Multipolar World developed in my writings and exposed in its original (German) version in this book. So the transition is the shift from unipolar world order with the dominance of the Western (North American) hegemony towards the multipolaity. It is highly realistic but at the same time wishful and promising for all defenders of real democracy, pluralism and deep decolonization of the people of the Earth.
In that context I would like to emphasize one important point of geopolitical doctrine. Classical geopolitics deals with essential dualism of civilizations Sea Power vs Land Power. That is the key for geopolitics as such. Since Mackinder the core of Land Power in actual political geography is identified as Heartland and situated in the North-Eastern part of Eurasian continent coinciding exactly with the Turan and Russia. That was discovered long before the bipolar structure of cold war geography where it has achieved the perfect form.

The fall of the USSR and the betrayal of the Land Power by Gorbatchov has created the conditions for unipolar world order based on the full scale domination of the Sea Power and on its radical and presumably “irreversible” victory. The unipolar moment and the transient illusion of end of history (Fukuyama) was geopolitically precisely that: the global victory of Leviathan over Behemoth.

But with 9/11 catastrophe, the Putin’s assertion of Russia as reestablished sovereign country, the growth of China and the evident failure of globalists’ plans sealed by Trump’s winning the US elections, put together have made completely different picture: victory of Sea Power over Land Power was not the stable global order, but rather precisely the “moment”. Theoretically it could turn into the real World Order but that didn’t happen. So the temptation to define Fourth Nomos of the the Earth as unipolar Empire of Leviathan and full scale dominance of Sea Power with corresponding total victory of liberalism and globalism has spectacularly failed. Hence the growing evidence of multipolarity. There are other centers of global decisions outside of US and NATO and there are different political and religious ideologies to serve the bases for such decisions outside of the liberalism: that is the new axiom of the contemporarily state of things in the international relations. And that is at the same time the starting point of elaboration of the Theory of Multipolar World.
Here we come to the problem of Heartland. It is obvious that the multipolarity is not the same thing as the simple return to the bipolarity. In spite of the fact that modern Russia plays still important – and somehow key -- role in the overturning of the unipolarity (global dominance of liberalism and Sea Power hegemony) she can not be considered as main and unique alternative. Russia is still the Heartland and Land Power but it can not stand against Sea Power alone. She tried and failed. So the multipolarity is something quite different than the simple return to the bipolarity. For that Russia lack everything – economy, ideology, demography, strength. So Sea vs Heartland problem acquires new form.

In order to describe the new geopolitical situation correctly I suggest the notion of the “distributed Heartland”. It can be regarded as the key concept of the multipolar world order. Distributed Heartland means that Heartland is not the same as Russia and neighbor countries. Sure Russia is Heartland but not anymore unique and lonely. We should stop to consider it as “lonely Heartland” and conceive it as the part of the the broader group of geopolitical entities called collectively “integrative Heartland” that consists from fully independent heartlandS (I emphasize plural “S”). That is the main principle of Multipolarity. Russia stops to be global Heartland and becomes one heartland among the other.

Somehow the same possibility was already foreseen by Mackinder himself and adopted and developed by Karl Haushofer. I mean the geopolitical identification of Germany as European Heartland. The same idea shared Carl Schmitt. It could be dangerous if German heartland is opposed to Russian one (that was precisely the geopolitical reason of the terrible defeat of Germany in WWII), but it can be the leading idea for continental Europe if Russia is considered as ally. That was the geopolitical axiom of XX century and its underestimating or ignoring has caused to Europe  and the humanity two World Wars. So Europe with Germany (French-German alliance) in the center we should consider as European Heartland. That is the European Big Space (Grossraum). In the context of “distributed Heartland” it is the part of “integrative Heartland”. Hence the logical alliance with Russian heartland.
The present book of Sasha Rossmulluer is precisely about that. The actual European Union is a part of Sea Power – hence its globalist elites and totalitarian liberalism. So in present situation the Europe is still the part of the Leviathan and some European globalist leaders want to save Sea Power under new leadership of EU including in the moment when the atlanticism has so drastically lost the the control over US itself – with the victory of Trump. EU should be destroyed in order to Europe reappear becoming the independent geopolitical pole, Big Space. Such continental Europe based on German-French alliance is European Heartland and one of the most important pillars of the multipolarity.

In the broader context of “distributed Heartland” we need to assign the same status to other Big Space. We can forecast Chinese heartland as the accentuation of the Chinese Land Power represented by Chinese original civilization and the refuse of Western totalitarian liberalism.

The other heartland is Islamic with different sub-poles – Pakistani, Persian and Turkish. In the future there can be established Arab heartland in the Middle East and Northern Africa.
India is other heartland. Latin America liberated from domination of American North one more heartland. In the future Pan-African Union can represent African heartland.
Last but not least we can imagine North American heartland. It is already outlined by Trumps wall and Lets make America great again. If we oppose (as Trump sometimes does) this greatness to globalism and liberal hegemony, that is precisely the chance for North American Behemoth to win over North American Leviathan.
All heartlandS should be quite independent but still to be heartlands and not Sea Power. That means they should be constructed on the fixed identities and traditions. The eternity of the Land should prevail over temporality of the Sea. That is global Conservative Revolution where the on the side of the conservatives is the Eternity itself (as Arthur Mueller van den Bruck said once).
So that is multipolarity. And the more we speak and write about it the closer it becomes to us and sooner it is going to appear.