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land against sea & empire against hegemon
“The real competitors nowadays are Russia and the United States.
Europe is out of the game.
Tocqueville understood 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 geographical revolution. What is emerging now is a “wide open space” order.
(Carl Schmitt wrote to Nicolaus Sombart between 1933 and 1943)
The current war between Russia and NATO in Ukraine is the result of this tension between land and sea powers (structural enemies: land/sea, empire/hegemon).
Geopolitics is “the geographical consciousness of the State” (K.Haushofer).
The State is a community of men in a defined space, or rather a civilization with clear boundaries; in this case we can speak of a “civilization-state” – to use Weiwei Zhang’s concept, like China and Russia.
For the German geopolitical scientist Karl Haushofer (1869-1946), geopolitics is neither right nor left, but aims to serve all humanity by promoting understanding between peoples. Haushofer’s object of study is the “great vital connections of today’s man in today’s space” and his aim is “the insertion of the individual into his natural environment and the coordination of the phenomena that connect the State to space” .
This discipline also and above all aims to provide political decision makers with the intellectual tools necessary for an effective decision-making and action process.
However, what we see today is that there is a Chinese geopolitics, a Russian geopolitics and an American geopolitics, but there is no European geopolitics, since the Old Continent is 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 have been deprived 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, reserving it, however, for extreme circumstances of which it will be the sole judge.
This is the essence of its political existence.
The moment he lacks the ability or will to make this distinction, he ceases to exist politically. If he accepts that a foreigner imposes on him the choice of his enemy and tells him who he has the right or not to fight against, he ceases to be a politically free people and is incorporated into or subordinated to another political system.
“ This other political system is the European Union plus NATO, led by the United States.
If politics is the sphere of the distinction between friend and enemy, then the sphere of geopolitics is that of the alliance and confrontation between states.
Applied geopolitics is, first of all, management by the political authority of its space, the space of its people.
Secure your borders and keep outside them, as far away as possible, any threat that any state, any army, any hostile organization may pose.
For Haushofer, the concept of geopolitics is “one of the most usable and refined political tools 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 influences our present and our future.”
; using this key we can bring into play and overlap almost without gaps the spatial descriptive factors of political geography and the temporal descriptive factors of everyday history in their results for the transformative dynamic force of the day and the moment. “ 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 a permanent element to this day, and structures world geopolitics.
The wars between Sparta and Athens, and between Rome and Carthage, will find echoes in the Middle Ages and in modern times in the wars between England and France, England and Russia, England and Germany and today in that between the United States and Russia.
The geopolitical constants span a very long historical period.
On a geopolitical and legal level, since the 16th century, we have lived in a world in which two spatial orders are opposed: that of the open sea and that of the mainland.
“This is how the Eurocentric world order that emerged in the 16th century was 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 foundation of global human rights.
From now on it will no longer be about inland seas such as the Mediterranean, the Adriatic or the Baltic, but about 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 idea of enemy, war and plunder, but also of freedom.
The great global decision of the law of nations in the 16th and 17th centuries therefore culminated in the balance between land and sea, in the face to face of two orders which did nothing other than determine the new nomos of the earth in the tensions of their coexistence”.
at that time and until the end of the 20th century, the balance of power shifted to the advantage of the maritime powers, particularly the British Empire and then its American heir. The fall of continental power following the Protestant Reformation which weakened both the Roman Church and the Holy Roman Empire, allowed in the long term the hegemonic expansion of the Anglo-American thalassocracies and the reduction of continental Europe to a US vassal.
The exit from the scene of European history, as well as the birth of the multipolar world, was perceived by some visionary minds as early as the 1930s/40s such as Carl Schmitt and Karl Haushofer.
The war that Russia is waging today is classic, in the sense that it fights it where Russian-speaking populations are present in the territories of the former Russian and Soviet empires. She fights in her natural zone of influence and not on the other side of the world.
This is a nineteenth-century war, typical of land powers, comparable to that of Prussia which fought to reunite (partially) the Germanic populations scattered in various parts of Europe. Russia is also waging a war to protect its geopolitical zone of influence that America is encroaching on through NATO.
We can go back to antiquity to find this type of limited warfare in order to preserve or expand one’s zone of influence.
A zone of influence that coincides with the security zone, to trace a geographical limit beyond which the very life of the State is threatened.
In the first half of the 3rd century BC, when Rome unified Italy, it was threatened to the east, on the Tyrrhenian coast, by Carthage.
Around 280 BC, Carthage occupied Lipara (now Lipari) in the Aeolian Islands, an important observation post at the mouth of the Strait of Messina.
In 270 BC Rome reconquered Reggio, facing Sicily, and from that moment controlled the Strait of Messina, one of the two major communication routes between the eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean.
Carthage, which attempted unsuccessfully to prevent the unification of the Italian peninsula by Rome, then at least wanted to close Rome’s access to Sicily, the key to Carthaginian colonial hegemony.
We can draw a parallel with the historical sequence that begins with Vladimir Putin’s coming to power in the early 2000s.
As Russia reconstituted itself and consolidated its state, it found itself threatened by the United States, modern-day Molotov-Ribbentrop Pac within its borders (the Chechen War) and externally by NATO’s progression into its zone of influence, the its safety zone.
To establish itself as a regional power, Rome is forced to leave the Italian peninsula and face Carthage, just as Russia left its borders to face NATO in Ukraine.
In both cases war was inevitable.
Because one of two things: either the land power remains within its borders and allows the maritime power to come and attack it on its territory, with the risk of being cornered or even disappearing, or it plans to militarily protect a zone of influence broader that constitutes lasting protection.
The interests of Carthage, which lay in the military, political and commercial control of the Mediterranean, were directly opposed to the vital interests of Rome, which had to guarantee a zone of influence and protection.
Carthage was blocking Rome, just like the Americans are doing to Russia.
The Carthaginians wanted to make Sicily a 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 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 destroy America only at the cost of a catastrophic nuclear exchange for humanity.
While the United States threatens Russia near its border using Ukrainian and European agents.
The Americans are waging an international war against Russia without having to officially get 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 of a limited nature.
We will say the British Empire and then its American heir.
The fall of continental power following the Protestant Reformation which weakened both the Roman Church and the Holy Roman Empire, allowed in the long term the hegemonic expansion of the Anglo-American thalassocracies and the reduction of continental Europe to a US vassal.
The exit from the scene of European history, as well as the birth of the multipolar world, was perceived by some visionary minds as early as the 1930s/40s as Carl Schmitt and Karl Haushofer.
The war that Russia is waging today is classic, in the sense that it fights it where Russian-speaking populations are present in the territories of the former Russian and Soviet empires. She fights in her natural zone of influence and not on the other side of the world.
This is a nineteenth-century war, typical of land powers, comparable to that of Prussia which fought to reunite (partially) the Germanic populations scattered in various parts of Europe. Russia is also waging a war to protect its geopolitical zone of influence that America is encroaching on through NATO.
We can go back to antiquity to find this type of limited warfare in order to preserve or expand one’s zone of influence.
A zone of influence that coincides with the security zone, to trace a geographical limit beyond which the very life of the State is threatened.
In the first half of the 3rd century BC, when Rome unified Italy, it was threatened to the east, on the Tyrrhenian coast, by Carthage.
Around 280 BC, Carthage occupied Lipara (now Lipari) in the Aeolian Islands, an important observation post at the mouth of the Strait of Messina.
In 270 BC Rome reconquered Reggio, facing Sicily, and from that moment controlled the Strait of Messina, one of the two major communication routes between the eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean. Carthage, which attempted unsuccessfully to prevent the unification of the Italian peninsula by Rome, then at least wanted to close Rome’s access to Sicily, the key to Carthaginian colonial hegemony.
We can draw a parallel with the historical sequence that begins with Vladimir Putin’s coming to power in the early 2000s.
As Russia reconstituted itself and consolidated its state, it found itself threatened by the United States, modern-day Carthage within its borders (the Chechen War) and externally by NATO’s progression into its zone of influence, the its safety zone.
To establish itself as a regional power, Rome is forced to leave the Italian peninsula and face Carthage, just as Russia left its borders to face NATO in Ukraine.
In both cases war was inevitable.
Because one of two things: either the land power remains within its borders and allows the maritime power to come and attack it on its territory, with the risk of being cornered or even disappearing, or it plans to militarily protect a zone of influence broader that constitutes lasting protection.
The interests of Carthage, which lay in the military, political and commercial control of the Mediterranean, were directly opposed to the vital interests of Rome, which had to guarantee a zone of influence and protection.
Carthage was blocking Rome, just like the Americans are doing to Russia.
The Carthaginians wanted to make Sicily a 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 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 destroy America only at the cost of a catastrophic nuclear exchange for humanity.
While the United States threatens Russia near its border using Ukrainian and European agents.
(The Washington Post, April 18th, 2023)
The Americans are waging an international proxy war against Russia without having to officially get 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 of a limited nature.
We will say straight that the Russian offensive is limited by the very nature of Russia.
The United States is waging a war beyond all limits, that is to say a war whose space of action is no longer just military, but also civil, economic, legal and social.
Off-limits war is total war.
And it is precisely this all-out attack that Russia has been facing for many years.
The establishment of geopolitical blocs in reaction to the hegemonism of thalassocracy: China/Russia against the Anglo-American hegemon
The order for large spaces has arrived.
This is what we call a multipolar world of great powers gathering nations around them to form geopolitical blocs.
The unipolar sequence was only a brief moment during which the Russian and Chinese powers had to be reconstituted.
A historical misunderstanding, in the end.
This short period, of about 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 the peripheral thalassocracies.
This is a phenomenal reversal of the balance of power on a historical and planetary scale. The major energy resources (oil, gas, without forgetting raw materials) and the major economic and military powers are held by the continental states that control large spaces and ally themselves with numerous states of the immensity of the African continent.
The United States and the rest of the Western world represent twenty-five percent of the world population, with the remaining seventy-five percent grouped around the two continental powers Russia and China.
It is the end of the thalassocratic era.
Even Halford John Mackinder (1861-1947) more than a century ago warned the British Empire of the danger represented by Russian land power, as the continental power had a better chance of triumphing against the maritime power in the face of diplomacy, for how ingenious of the latter.
Those who are surprised to see the Sino-Russian rapprochement are simply ignoring the constants and fundamentals of geopolitics.
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signature (from left to right: Ribbentrop, Molotov and Stalin)
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 unite and form a “bloc” against the Anglo-American maritime powers, and this despite their differences ideological.
Hitler in facts was following the advice of his geopolitical expert Karl Haushofer and winning the first phase of WWII until the moment when he broke the pact Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact denying Haushofer advice.
Coincidentally after this pact breakup began all Third Reich defeats…
Adolf Hitler’s fatal mistake was to break this pact, to the great advantage of the English and Americans who thus freed themselves, at minimal costs, of a cumbersome dominant state in the heart of Europe.
“It was only after having exposed his plans for the conquest of the East to the main military leaders that Hitler encountered resistance from the traditional circles of which General Beck was a typical representative.”
These traditional circles sought to restore a strong Germany and its hegemony according to the classical model.
The Chinese and Russian leaders, who have a strong historical consciousness, will not make the mistake of separating.
Especially because America’s dual containment policy towards Russia and China is forcing these two countries to unite.
As the globe is a battlefield where “states compete for world domination,” the war in Ukraine can be interpreted as a continuation of Russia’s Eurasian policy to protect the continent. This is what is traditionally called “pacification”, the Roman way (pax Romana).
We therefore naturally understand the support provided by Beijing to Moscow; the Middle Kingdom needs it, to perpetuate its new Silk Roads, so that Europe and Asia are pacified. Russia is therefore doing necessary work in China’s eyes.
What is striking today is that German geopolitical realism was adopted by the Russians and Chinese.
Thus wrote Haushofer wrote in 1940: “undoubtedly the greatest and most important change in world politics of our time is the formation of a powerful continental bloc comprising Europe, North and East Asia.
But not all the great formations and configurations of this order are born ready-made in the head of a statesman, however great he may be, like the famous Greek goddess of war in her transfigured aspect.
Informed people have known how such training is prepared for a long time.”
In fact, Euro-Asian politics is not a project originally and punctually developed by a few leaders, but the fruit of necessity, of the strength of historical circumstances.
The Eurasian 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”. (Latin: Let yourself be taught by your enemy.)
It’s not a sacred duty.
“At the birth of important political groups, the adversary often has very early an acute instinct of what threatens him, a premonitory feeling that an extraordinary Japanese sociologist, G. E. Vychara, attributes to all his people, and which allows us to glimpse from away the incoming dangers.
This national feature is very valuable.
Everyone will be surprised to learn that those who first saw on the horizon the possibility of such a continental blockade, fraught with threats to the world domination of the Anglo-Saxons, were the English and American leaders, at a time when for us in the Second Reich [1871 -1918] had not yet developed a picture of the possibilities that could arise from a connection between Central Europe and the dominant power of East Asia. [the reference is to Japan] across the immense Eurasia”, wrote Haushofer in 1940.
Lord Palmerston (1784-1865), British politician, twice Prime Minister, said, during a ministerial crisis in 1851: however unpleasant our relations with France may be today, we must maintain them because behind us threatens a Russia which can connect the ‘Europe and East Asia and, alone, we cannot cope with such a situation.
Homer Lea (1876-1912), American adventurer and writer, writes a book on the twilight of the Anglo-Saxons at the height of the British World Empire.
According to him, the end of English domination would come the day Germany, Russia and Japan joined forces.
We then understand that it was not the minds 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 “anaconda politics”. (Encirclement, suffocation and crushing of nations.)
It is a dialectical relationship, a threat that forces continental states to form powerful and large spaces to hinder the politics of the anaconda.
Furthermore, the Anglo-American strategic goal of separating Germany and Russia is not new.
Today Washington destroys 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 price of a grandiose transfer of the inhabitants of Prussia east to west, Germany now only has access to the western bank of the Vistula, only then can Germany and Russia no longer meet directly.”
The Treaty of Rapallo signed on 16 April 1922 by Germany and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was a great disappointment for the Englishman Mackinder and his school. China’s new Silk Road, linking eastern China to western Europe via an essentially continental route, has revived an old Anglo-American fear.
Recently, Washington’s Italian maid Giorgia Meloni led Italy out of China’s New Silk Road.
The American historian and geopolitical scientist Brook Adams (1848–1927) saw in the possibility of a vast transcontinental railway policy with the termini of Port Arthur (now Lu Shunku) and Tsing-Tao (two ports in eastern China), a German-Russian unity of East Asia that any attempt at the English or American blockade, even combined, would not have been able to break.
We see it today.
The policy of American sanctions against Russia, supported by China and other large areas of the multipolar world (BRICS), is in vain.
Even without Europe, which Washington has managed to separate from Russia, the Eurasian continental alliance is already putting the Anglo-Americans under control politically, militarily and economically.
The Russian-European rupture caused by the Americans pushes Russia even further towards another continent, Africa, where the Chinese are already well rooted.
We can call them the communicating vessels of geopolitics.
The United States lives off the geopolitical gains of the end of World War II.
In particular the control of Europe and Japan.
The policy to counter Anglo-American hegemony must be conducted without these two regions of the world, but with a significant number of great and middle powers, including India, Iran, Indonesia, South Africa and Brazil.
Added to which is an Africa that tilts towards the East to the detriment of the West. Towards which 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 (i.e. a direct clash between the great powers) does not occur first.
Because if yesterday America was an attractive economic power, today it offers its vassals recession, poverty, the looting of industries, war, continuous humiliation. European leaders are therefore 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 take advantage of the war of attrition against the West until the patience of the European peoples reaches its limits.
Russian pressure on European governments is not visible but real.
The resilience and resources of the Russians are far superior to those of the West.
Moscow can therefore do nothing but prolong hostilities and European industrial exhaustion until the population can no longer bear its economic effects.
As for Japan, you showed the specific pragmatism of your culture.
Tokyo refused to sacrifice its economy for the strategic needs of the United States.
“The United States has mobilized its European allies to limit purchases of Russian crude oil to sixty dollars a barrel, but one of Washington’s closest allies in Asia is now buying oil at prices above that cap.
Japan persuaded the United States to accept this exception, saying it needed it to ensure access to Russian energy.
The concession shows Japan’s dependence on Russia for fossil fuels, which analysts say has contributed to Tokyo’s hesitancy to further support Ukraine in its war against Russia. Americans face a difficult situation.
They demand blind obedience from vassal states against their vital interests.
Pulling too hard on the submission rope will eventually break it.
Japan’s geographical position, which is close to the two geopolitical giants China and Russia, could ultimately push it towards a rapprochement with Beijing and Moscow to find a modus vivendi.
Since Japan’s need for hydrocarbons from its powerful industry is vital, Tokyo cannot engage in harakiri for a war that does not concern it.
The reality of the balance of power is evident between a global-scale demographic minority conducting deadly economic and military policy, and the great earthly powers experiencing an economic boom and working to stabilize the great continent.
Thanks to Youssef Hindi
NOTE:
State-civilization is also the expression used by the “Eurasianist” school to define the historical condition of Russia.
The leader was Lev Gumilev (1912-1992), a Soviet dissident, son of the poet Anna Akhmatova. Eurasianist is Alexander Dugin, the best-known contemporary Russian intellectual, enunciator of the Fourth Political Theory.
The influence of Carl Schmitt, German jurist, thinker and political scientist (1888-1982), developed in works such as Theory of the Partisan and The Categories of the Political, is fundamental on the friend-enemy distinction. Carl Schmitt, The categories of the political.
Thalassocracy is synonymous with powers linked to the sea. A. de Tocqueville (1805-1859) French politician and writer.
He was the first analyst of mass society in the famous essay Democracy in America.
Halford Mackinder was the greatest English geopolitician since the Victorian era.
He theorized the need to control the heartland, the heart of the world, i.e. Central Asia, to exercise a lasting imperial hegemony.
The Silk Road is the name attributed in the 19th century to a large network of land, river and sea routes along which trade between China and the Roman Empire had taken place since ancient times.
The New Silk Road is a gigantic infrastructure project to convey trade to and from the East up to the Atlantic Ocean conceived by China. Russia is adding the Arctic sea route to it.
In reality Vychara is a concept of Eastern philosophy that means deliberation; It is the faculty of discernment that distinguishes the Real from the unreal. BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) is the acronym that includes some emerging powers and their economic and financial alliance.
Numerous other states from various areas of the world currently join the BRICS system. Japan breaks with US allies and buys Russian oil at higher prices.
The Wall Street Journal, 02/04/2023.
Claudio Resta was born in Genoa, Italy in 1958, he is a citizen of the world (Spinoza), a maverick philosopher, and an interdisciplinary expert, oh, and an artist, too.
Der Friedensstifter 