Eastern Europe: Civilizational Specialty and Modern Geopolitical Situation

Considering Eastern Europe to be a separate category of geopolitical analysis began only after the First World War when, as one of the founders of geopolitics, H. J. Mackinder said, an entirely new geopolitical space comprising small nation-states was created out of the space previously controlled by the four continental empires, Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman, as a result of military defeat and revolution. This region of new states, “Eastern Europe” was considered by Mackinder to be a “buffer zone” allowing thalassocratic powers to artificially separate Russia, Heartland, from continental European forces with Germany at their head. Hence his famous saying: “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island commands the world.”^[i] By the end of the First World War, Eastern Europe became a key area of ​​Rimland and arranging control over it affected the global geopolitical balance of forces. One of the founders of the American political geography and geopolitics, J. Bowman, held a similar view and thought that the maintenance of Eastern European States’ independence from both Germany and the Soviet Union was crucial.^[ii]

The American sociologist, political scientist and geopolitician James Burham revealed Eastern Europe to be the main US target in the years of the Cold War that, according to contemporary geopolitician Francis Sempa, anticipated the successful actions of the Ronald Reagan’s administration there.^[iii] Henry Kissinger was against the union between Russia and Germany and considered their reconciliation to be unacceptable to the USA and a priority for its foreign policy.^[iv] Zbigniew Brzezinski did not deny the importance of this region as he focused on the integration of “Central Europe” in the Euro-Atlantic structures as one of the most important parts of the project which would allow the Atlanticist orientation of the continent to be maintained and its expansion to the East, first of all to Ukraine,^[v] to be continued.

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, American geopoliticians continued to insist on the use of the “buffer zone” concept. Therefore, Saul Cohen said concerning US policy in Europe: “decoupling the military and economic links between Western and Eastern Europe would represent a more viable geopolitical solution” than any other principle, which could be laid in the foundation of the region's geopolitical arrangement.^[vi] The importance of Eastern Europe to global geopolitics did not subside despite the attention given to other “geopolitical centers” (Zbigniew Brzezinski).

The traditional attitude towards the Rimland zone on the geopolitical map is principle for estimating the geopolitical role of Eastern Europe. As a part of the Rimland zone, Eastern Europe has a dual identity. Eastern European states can make a choice in favor of thalassocracy or tellurocracy. Some geopoliticians have even nominated their own different schemes of this geopolitical space different from the classic version on account of Eastern Europe’s specificity. In particular, the geopolitical picture of V. Tsymbursky describes Eastern Europe as part of the “Great Limitrophe”, “straits” zone, separating the European and Russian civilizational platforms.^[vii] Although not identical to either to either of the two civilizational worlds in principle, Eastern Europe nonetheless possesses inherent similarities to both of them. Modern Ukrainian foreign affairs scholars V. Konstantinov and M. Kamenetsky noted the dynamism of change of “the region” borders of Eastern Europe, noting the main specialty as limitrophy, or separating Europe from other civilizations.^[viii]

What role from a geopolitical point of view do Eastern European states play today? In our view, the understanding of the geopolitical map offered by A. Dugin as one in which the general political map consists of overlapping between national, sovereign states and civilizations is fundamentally important.^[ix] This approach identifies underlying sociological patterns of societies affecting, in particular, states’ political behavior as well as helps to identify the contours of “large areas” organized around the nucleus of a civilization. Considering the civilizational level of a given region’s geopolitical organization helps to give in-depth analysis of its geopolitical structure in taking into account the factors that seem to be hidden when we restrict ourselves to a mere analysis of a state’s behavior and its elites. In addition, there are state and communities that operate on different levels. There are civilizations acting over states and through states. Despite the amorphous discourse of “civilization” (there is no consensus as to the definition of the concept of “civilization”), this category, if generally defined as a large socio-culturally community where attention is drawn primarily towards the factors of identity, values, and cultural forms, is very useful for studying international relations

"Civilization”, said S. Huntington, is “defined both by common objective elements, such as language, history, religion, customs, institutions, and by the subjective self-identification of people.”^[x] This is the vastest level of cultural identity, the “biggest ‘we’ within which we feel culturally at home as distinguished from all the other ‘themes’ out there”.^[xi] A. Panarin regards civilization as “a large, long-existing, self-contained community of countries and nations, selected on a socio-cultural base.”^[xii] A. Sorokin, offering a definition of civilizations, or according to his terminology, “socio-cultural super-systems”, noted that “they are the real cause and semantic integrity, different from the cultural clusters, small cultural systems, as well as from the state, nation, political, religious, racial, ethnic and other social systems and groups.”^[xiii] These super-systems determine properties of other systems and small groups. By highlighting this important characteristic of civilizations, we note that in any case they should not be regarded as a strictly connected and stable community, otherwise conflicts within civilizations can not be explained, as well as significant socio-cultural originality within the traditional civilizational formation’s allocation. The constructivist approach to the phenomenon of civilizations, relativizing their “primordialism” and consistency, is more appropriate to the analysis to show their international politics, as it represents them as partially primordial social constructs. One of the leading representatives of the constructivist approach in modern sociology in international relations, Peter Katzenstein said that civilization as a symbolic system, existing mainly in the people’s minds, can be seen in the politics, be “politically materialized” under certain circumstances, particularly interacting with other civilizations^[xiv]. Physically, they don’t exist, in the best case, they can be placed on the “mental map”, however, they appear in a collision with other cultures, their norms, values, carriers of these values ​​and standards. Therefore, the growth of euroscepticism in Eastern European countries, a certain rejection of the norms and values ​​of modern Western culture, typical for many levels of Eastern societies, can be interpreted as a sign of an appearance of a civilization gap ^[xv] between Eastern and Western European and North American societies in their current forms. Even researchers who believe that Europe is a single civilizational unit, confirm the presence of values gap between the western and eastern parts of Europe. An expert of the Woodrow Wilson Center, Elemer Hankiss, said that the basis of a between the two parts of Europe is the “clash of traditional western civilization and our contemporary consumer civilization”^[xvi].

The existence of a values ​​gap was shown by the results of research conducted by a team of scientists from the German, Great Britain, Turkey, Slovakia and the Netherlands universities, who created the Atlas of European Values. For example, in 2008, according to the Atlas of European Values project, the military regime was called the best form of government by 29% of respondents in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 12%  – in Bulgaria, 11% – in Croatia, 8% – in the Czech Republic, 26% – in Romania, 29% – in Montenegro (for comparison, 2% – in Germany and 3% – in Netherlands, but 10% – in the UK)^[xvii]. Countries with a significant number of votes on “strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections" are mostly the countries of Eastern Europe: Romania – 73%, Bulgaria – 62%, Serbia – 68%, Macedonia – 72%, Bosnia – 42%, Montenegro – 51%^[xviii]. The Eastern European countries also differ, according to the Atlas, in comparison with Western Europe (but comparable with Europe South) on religion. They showed a high level of trust in religious institutions (except the Czech Republic), the conservative position in regard to family values, tolerance towards sexual minorities, etc. The evidence of the influence of conservative religious attitudes in the minds of Eastern Europeans is the fact that, in general, more than 50% of them (in some countries even more: 94% – in Romania and 86% – in Poland) believe in the existence of sin as a values category, while in the rest of Europe, except Portugal, Austria, Italy and Greece, the number of respondents, who answered that they believe in the existence of sin, is about 40%.^[xix] The existence of this category of value in the minds of Eastern Europeans shows other valuable purposes, being more traditional, comparing to the secularized consciousness of most Western Europeans. Another interesting fact is that the Atlas clearly demonstrates the existence of a values ​​border between Western and Eastern Europe, but it does not show the differences between Eastern Europe and Russia, on the issues that identify the basic diversities between Eastern and Western Europeans, the respondents from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union generally agreed.

Are there any historical and cultural preconditions for such a development? If we take into account the most popular and modern model dividing the world into zones of civilization offered by Samuel Huntington^[xx], it is possible to see the heterogeneity of civilization in Eastern Europe. This region is a mixture of three civilizations: Orthodox, Western Christian and Islamic. Even disagreeing with Huntington’s conflict concept, and taking into account the above reservations made on the “brutality” of the “civilization” concept, recognizing the existence of at least three socio-cultural communities is possible.

A part of the peoples and ethnic groups in the region – Bulgarians, Serbs, Montenegrins, Romanians and other Eastern Romance ethnic groups (Vlachs, Aromanians, Istro-Romanians, and others), Slavic Macedonians, some Albanians, some Rusyns – are traditionally Orthodox and fit the civilization concept that the famous Byzantinologist D. Obolensky called the “Byzantine Commonwealth of Nations.”^[xxi] Later they found themselves under the Ottoman Empire in one or another way, which also left its mark on the culture and self-perception of these peoples. Their comprehensions of themselves as Europeans happened quite later. This idea was popularized only in the XIX century among the elites when, according to prominent Romanian historian Nicolae Iorga, there was a final rejection of restoration in some form or another of the Byzantine project and the Byzantine, Orthodox, socio-cultural and political model, which served to this standard model for the Orthodox states^[xxii]. Increased Europeanization and modernization was created almost immediately, however, confrontation between Atlanticist modernists and Continentalist traditionalists on the model similar to the collision of the Slavophiles and Westernizers in Russia^[xxiii], and with them, among other things, new models of an alternative government, foreign policy and geopolitical orientation connected with stressing their Orthodox identity.

The main institution that united Orthodox Eastern European nations, including in the difficult time of foreign domination (Ottoman for Orthodox Balkans peoples, Hungarian for part of the Carpathian Rusyns and Romania) was the Orthodox Church. The role and importance of the Church and Orthodoxy in the consciousness of the Orthodox Eastern Europeans were traditionally high. In addition, there are serious mental differences between Western and South Slavs caused by cultural differences and reasons associated with varying historical development. As E. Ponomareva noted, the integration of the Balkan Slavs, primarily Serbs and Montenegrins into modern Europe was slowed down by mentality. In particular, for example, the lack of understanding of the reserved subject played a large role, which meant the absence of the typical Western man ready to work not only for the sake of their own needs, but instead also for the future. The “sources of globalization, constant activity, extension, expansion, devoid of study of society. The peoples of peripheral societies are not psychologically prepared for voluntarily globalization ... Such a way of thinking was formed historically. Centuries under Turkish rule, war, persecution, and displacement, i.e. the absence of any guarantee of property protection, compelled the Serbs and Montenegrins to think to take care of minimum things...”^[xxiv]. This was favored by the “ the Serbian Orthodox ethos formed under the Turkish domination.”^[xxv]

Peoples of Huntington’s typology in Western Christian civilization are divided into two unequal groups – the Protestants (the Hungarians and the Czechs) and Catholics (the Poles, the Croats, most of Hungarians, most of the religious Czechs). Among them, the Polish and the Hungarian governments have traditionally differed in their originality of historical development. Serious connection to the East, the idea of ​ Hungarians’ eastern origins, the Sarmatian doctrine of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, according to which the Polish gentry had different from the peasants, not Slavic, but East, Sarmatian origin^[xxvi], the influence of the Ottoman Empire, military contact with it, feuds, as well as the mutual influence of the Polish-Lithuanian and Moscow Principality - all of these experiences defined those countries as separate group within the framework of European “Christendom”. The Croats, for whom affiliation to Catholicism is a marker of national identity as a significant part of their history, were close to Hungary unified with Croatia with the dynastic union in the XI century.

Unlike the West, Eastern Europe faced different processes of socio-economic development. While in Western Europe the prerequisites of the industrial revolution were gradually developed, there was the so-called Eastern European “second serfdom” which, according to I. Wallerstein, was due to their location on the periphery of the European world-economy in the XVI-XVII centuries. At the same time, several areas of the region remained cut off from the European world-economy.^[xxvii] The relationship between religions and cultures of the Christian East and West European countries had serious historical differences that found expression in the difference of cultures and mentalities as well as economic development.

In addition, we should take into account the Muslim peoples of the region. The Bosnian Muslims, Gorani, Torbeshi, Bulgarian Pomaks, Turks, and the Muslim Albanians belong to a different socio-cultural world, albeit one equally different from Islamic civilization. The value of the Muslim factor in Eastern Europe, especially in the Balkans, increased largely due to demographic reasons. While the rest of the population declines, Muslim communities have enjoyed population growth. According to Jeffrey Simon, Senior Fellow of Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University, demographic processes in the Balkans in many regions, especially Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo, will produce a Muslim majority of the population in the near future.^[xxviii] This process will take place while Muslim communities continue to significantly grow in Western Europe and Russia, which should affect the reassessment of the Muslim factor by these countries.^[xxix]

Now we will analyze the geopolitical position of contemporary Eastern European states. Eastern Europe includes many national states each having their own traditions of foreign policy, their own behavior in the international arena, and their own, differing national interests along with various economic and military potentials. Although it is impossible to determine the exact boundaries of “Eastern Europe”, we should note that Eastern European countries are considered by default to be those countries that traditionally belongs to the regional stretch of the former Soviet Union, i.e. the countries of the former socialist camp. In this study, however, we consider it counter-productive to include the former Soviet Union, as it is distinct from Eastern European countries on account of many factors. Each of the “Eastern European” states had and have their own specific relations with Russia. This does not apply, however, to cases in which projects of geopolitically reorganizing Eastern Europe include the expansion of the territories of these “Eastern European” states.

Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Croatia are taken to be the countries of Eastern Europe. One could also extend this to encompass “New Eastern Europe” which includes Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova in the framework of Atlanticist plans. Most of these countries, except Serbia and Macedonia and the countries of the “New Eastern Europe”, are NATO members-states. The EU is the unifying European continent formation that can be regarded as a supranational structure that has the potential to play an independent role in contemporary international relations. However, the EU does not include the Western Balkans countries: Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Albania. Moreover, there are only two Eastern European States that have not included in NATO: Serbia and Macedonia. Thus, the zone of influence of an Atlanticist structure, if we consider the level of the country's geopolitical organization of Eastern Europe, is much larger.

Eastern European countries are currently characterized by pro-American geopolitical orientations. All of them, except for Serbia, fit into the practical politics of the concept of the “New Europe”. This concept was introduced in 2003 by the US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during the Iraq campaign, showing the active pro-American orientation of the Eastern European countries. Atlanticist control over the “buffer zone”, as prepared by Mackinder, has been realized in practice. These countries remain essential parts of the Cordon Sanitaire built between Russia and the EU continental center. A large part of modern East European elites, including geopoliticians, is decisively oriented towards Atlanticism^[xxx]. As we have already noted, the leadership of Eastern Europe sees itself as an outpost of the West and Atlanticism in the East. The latest American foreign policy plans continue to hold a significant role for Eastern Europe. Head of the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington B. Mitchell notes that the East Europeans have brought even more Atlanticism and market-based approaches into EU activities.^[xxxi] Bruce Jackson, the head of the Institute for Transitional Democracies, says that the leading roles in the creation of anti-Russian bloc are assigned to Turkey and Poland^[xxxii]. The head of the private analysis firm Stratfor which is close to the CIA, George Friedman, predicts the rise of Poland in the next 20-30 years, which is to become an ally of the United States as important as Japan, South Korea and Israel.^[xxxiii] This last prophecy is particularly interesting because it better characterizes the state of mind at the moment than what can really happen in the future.

In considering the geopolitical organization of Eastern Europe in the 1990s, the researcher of the Peace Research Institute of Oslo, Ole Tunander, noted two trends in its structuring. The first is the creation of coherent, integrated, territorially delimited “great spaces” as was described in the theory of Carl Schmitt^[xxxiv]. In this case, the construction of the Central European identity, which performs the function of the “Other”, contributes to a territorial demarcation between the “great spaces” of NATO-EU and Russia.^[xxxv] As A. Tunander notes, this is the scenario of the Cold Peace, the possible reconstruction of the “European wall” between “Us” and the military and cultural “Other”, between friend and foe to quote further Rudolf Kjellen who postulated the existence of “a great cultural division between Russia and Europe”^[xxxvi]. The second trend is also characterized by an orientation on the part of Eastern European states towards Europe, towards their cultural and civilizational commonalities, and directly towards the EU and NATO. However, the characteristic of the first trend, the division to friend and foe, symbolic figures of which constitute, according to Carl Schmitt, the political space, is being replaced by the dichotomy of the Cosmos and Chaos. If the “friend-enemy” concept is characterized not only by conflict relations, but also the possibility to start an equal dialogue, as political comprehension is based on this kind dualism in recognizing specialty of the “Other”^[xxxvii], then the universalist perception of “Political” within the dichotomy of “Cosmos-Chaos” is merely excluded. Chaos must be ordered. The uniqueness of the other is not perceived as a different order, but as its absence, as the “Other” is situated in the zone of the Chaos. This trend to extend the regulatory orders, recognized as European, is characterized by a certain deterritorialization, when the first is characterized by the pursuit of territorial limitation and fixity^[xxxviii]. With this approach, the “human rights” concept and democracy promoted by the US and EU became instruments of geopolitical hegemony and the “Other” comes to embody visible “inhuman traits.”^[xxxix] If the current geopolitical structure is largely determined by this trend, Russia obviously acts as the “Other” and we can say that the modern geopolitical structure of Eastern Europe predetermines conflicting relations with the Russian Federation.

Basic EU and NATO documents that link the powerful all-European unification project vividly reveal a manifestation of the second trend and understanding within the “Order-Chaos” dichotomy. Hence the emphasis that members joining the union can only be democratic states. The defense of democratic values, human rights and freedoms is one of their main tasks. The current Strategic Concept of NATO stresses the Universalist nature of this military-political bloc, its role as a source of order (liberal-democratic order as the only one possible) in the European space^[xl]. NATO’s involvement in military operations in Afghanistan “out of ​​responsibility” as noted in the 1949 Washington treaty^[xli] (North Atlantic itself) makes this claim truly global. The European Union claims that not only is it promoting democracy and human rights abroad, but also that this is one of the key foreign policy priorities^[xlii] and that the EU should seek to institutionalize the rules of internal EU law (aquis communautaire) not only in EU member-states (in accordance with the so-called Copenhagen criteria), but also in other countries. This is seen in special relationship offers^[xliii], and also in the commitment to spread the so-called «Good governance» principles^[xliv] across the globe. The Russian researcher of contemporary processes of European Union integration M. Strezhneva stresses the evaluative nature of the modern EU expansion when “Europeanization” extends “not only to the countries directly involved in the Union. It affects the state who would like to join the European Union as well as EU member-states of various association and partnership forms.”^[xlv]

The first trend, as represented by Ole Thunder, corresponds more to the realistic approach in international relations, and the second to liberal ones. The Norwegian scholar claims that both are intertwined in European politics. From a geopolitical point of view, they are a combination of trends in a particular space and its further expansion. The predominance of the “Order-Chaos” dichotomy in law corresponds to the expansionist aspirations of the EU and NATO and the Universalist trends in their policies. The “friend-enemy” dichotomy is manifested more in the minds of the masses, consolidating the opposition of East European countries against Russia.

When comparing the features of civilization in Eastern Europe and the role that they play in modern geopolitics, fundamental mismatch between the actual memberships of the elites in the Atlanticist camp, the pole of thalassocratic civilization, and many eastern “Eurasian characteristic” of their cultures is revealed. Some of them are traditionally Orthodox. While the US and Britain, the centers of thalassocracy, are traditionally Protestant countries, most of the peoples of Eastern Europe are Orthodox and Catholic. In addition, there is the rapidly growing Muslim population in the region and it bears remembrance that relations with the US are difficult insofar as the United States backs Israel against the Muslim world (except the ruling elite of the Persian Gulf oil monarchies). Overall, Eastern Europe and Atlanticism have no deep, valuable unity, and no unity of civilizational features.

What is the basis of further expansion projects in the Eastern European zone while some CIS countries have an Atlanticist character even promoted by Eastern European countries themselves? Eastern Europe seriously differs from Western Europe and the United States in a number of specific characteristics. In discourse on “Eastern Europe” and “Central Europe,” however, such have a negative connotation resulting in plans and desires to overcome such “backward” or “eastern” features and mentalities. On the one hand, the participation of Eastern European countries in expanding the EU zone can be interpreted as an attempt to be pioneers of civilization themselves and find those who are more "east" in the mental maps of Europeans. On the other hand, the traditional understanding of Eastern Europe as an outpost of “Christendom” that is prominent in a number of Eastern European countries, with the adoption of the liberal-democratic system, can be transformed into self-perception as an outpost of Western civilization in general, no longer a Christian, but secular one. There are, of course, some reasons for this varying in nature.

Conclusions

Eastern Europe (in a geopolitical context) represents a fusion of political and geographical images covering the area of the “​cordon sanitaire” between continental Europe and Russia. It has one resulting political function. Currently, this function is, above all, strengthening the unequal nature of relations between the states of Western Europe and the United States on the one hand and Eastern Europe on the other, as well as the consolidation of Russia’s image as the "Other" as a reference point for the identity of Eastern Europeans. Particularistic discourse on Eastern Europe appeared at the beginning of the modern era, and continues to abound today.

The basic difference between the political and geographic images of Eastern and Central Europe and, respectively, between their discursive practices connected many way lies in the subject of their application. Discourse on Eastern Europe is applied by Western Europeans to Eastern Europe while discourse on Central Europe is applied by Eastern Europeans to themselves and to Russia. Eastern Europe is the “Other” to Western Europeans, and Russia is the “Other” to Eastern Europe. These images constitute the specific relations of domination and subordination and define the specific civilizational function of the West in regard to the East on the one hand, and Russia is determined as constituting the “Other” of Eastern Europe, the eternal geopolitical enemy, on the other hand. The combined result of these two discourses is a strengthening of Eastern Europe as the “buffer zone”, or “cordon sanitaire” between Middle Europe (Germany) and Russia.

Among a number of other civilizational characteristics prevalent in Eastern European societies, they are different from both the West and Russ that form separate cultural spaces or combinations of cultural and civilizational spaces. The compelling force of Eastern European discourse and the reason why Eastern Europe accepts subordination lies in the evaluation of these peculiar characteristics as disadvantages or obstacles in the way of integrating into European and Euro-Atlantic institutions. It allows one to ignore the special “oriental features” in the history and culture of Eastern Europe’s nations, especially those that have close ties to Russia. Moreover, it is based on understanding Europeanism not as a focus on past ideals or the united “Christian world” in the case of Catholics, nor as a geopolitical orientation towards a strong and in independent Europe, but rather as the first center of “modernity,” the center of the modern world and the “Enlightenment.” The Western Europe of modernity is at the heart of both this view of Europe and discourses on “East” and “Central” Europe.