I no longer remember when I first wrote and posted this on Amazon. Maybe it was in 2015. On this blog, it was first published in 2018. Since the text is eerily relevant, give or take a few points, I post it again! Note the comments on Ukraine...
"The World Island", published in 2011, is a book by Alexandros Petersen, a member of the British-based Henry Jackson Society and the American-based Atlantic Council. I'm not familiar with the latter group, but the British society is often accused of being "Neo-Con", although "liberal interventionist" is perhaps a better designation. Petersen sees Russia and China as the biggest threats to the West. His book is based on the traditional geopolitics of Halford Mackinder, with further insights from George Kennan (often seen as the architect of Cold War "containment" of the Communist bloc) and Josef Pilsudski, the Polish interwar leader who had a more "activist" approach to Russia and the Soviet Union. Petersen wants to create a synthesis of all three, a synthesis he dubs 21CGSE (A Twenty-First Century Geopolitical Strategy for Eurasia). Ironically, "The World Island" could also be read with some profit by anti-Western Russians, who indeed want to (re-)create a Eurasian empire or bloc centered on Moscow.
Mackinder formulated his geopolitical ideas shortly before and after World War I in opposition to those of A T Mahan, who argued that sea-power is the key to world domination. To Mahan, land-powers such as Russia or Germany were therefore permanently at a disadvantage against the British Empire. Mackinder (at least according to Petersen) didn't deny that sea-power was crucial. However, he believed that a strong land-power could harness the necessary resources to successfully challenge British domination on the seas. The most important part of the world, geopolitically speaking, is the Pivot Area or Heartland of Eurasia, roughly coterminous with the vast territory already controlled by Russia. Second in importance is the Marginal or Inner Crescent, where Germany is situated. Therefore, an alliance between Russia and Germany, or the conquest of one by the other to create a unified Eurasian empire, is key to world domination. China also belongs to the Marginal Crescent, a fact of some importance today. Britain and the United States, by contrast, belong to the Outer or Insular Crescent, which in the larger scheme of things is the least important part of the world. (The curious term The World Island is a reference to the Old World: Eurasia plus Africa.)
Petersen argues that the pivotal importance of the Heartland still remains. He identifies at least three reasons. Russia and Central Asia have enormous and often untapped resources of oil, gas and minerals. Land-based transport between Europe and East Asia (provided a modern infrastructure is set up) is faster than transport by sea. Finally, the Heartland has always been a staging area for barbarian invasions of Europe. The fact that the Pivot is controlled by an authoritarian and slightly paranoid power like Russia is therefore of some significance. Thus, Western influence in the inner reaches of Eurasia would mean "energy security", economic growth and the isolation of a potentially dangerous enemy.
The strategy Petersen recommends is a mixture of Kennan's containment and Pilsudski's "Prometheism". While Russia proper will apparently need to be contained, a more activist approach is needed towards the ex-Soviet republics in its near abroad. "Prometheism" was a Polish attempt to support nationalist-separatist movements in the Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia, in order to break up Soviet Russia. Pilsudski also proposed the formation of "Intermarium", an East European confederation from the Baltic to the Black Sea, blocking both Russia to the east and Germany to the west. Pilsudski's ambitious plans eventually came to naught, both due to the weakness of Poland, and to the lack of Western support. With the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Petersen believes that its time to resurrect Prometheism, with the European Union playing the part of Pilsudski's failed Intermarium project. Essentially, Petersen calls for EU and NATO expansion into the former space of the Soviet Union. Since he doesn't believe the Russian Federation will collapse any time soon, this Pilsudski-inspired strategy presumably morphs into Kennan's Cold War containment at the federation border. China is Petersen's second enemy, and an important part of the 21CGSE is therefore to stop the Chinese from filling the vacuum left by the Russians in Central Asia and elsewhere, and (presumably) to contain mainland China. He supports Taiwan, South Korea and Japan, and at least tacitly calls for autonomy for Tibet and Xinjiang.
Many of Petersen's concrete proposals make a lot of sense, geopolitically speaking. Thus, a strong EU-NATO presence in Central Asia would split China and Russia from each other. Interestingly, he regards the Ukraine as lost to the West (the book was written when Yanukovich was president in Kiev). Instead of bothering about this, the West should attempt to bypass the Ukraine by integrating Turkey into the EU and gain the upper hand in the Caucasus, hence creating a "corridor" from Europe to resource-rich Central Asia and beyond. Several pipeline projects follow these geopolitical fault lines closely. I haven't read Zbigniew Brzezinki's "The Grand Chessboard", but Petersen references this work at several points, calling it "seminal", so I wouldn't be surprised if some of these ideas are derived from the old National Security Advisor. (His book was dusted off and read by some people when the United States intervened in Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9/11.)
Interestingly, Petersen (the supposed "liberal" interventionist) doesn't want immediate democratic reforms in the would-be pro-Western ex-Soviet republics. (Of course he doesn't. The pro-Russian Yanukovich in the Ukraine was a democratically elected president!) Instead, he calls for "good governance", by which he simply means free trade in Western goods and protection of Western investment, as against Russian and Chinese "mercantilism". Here, I believe, is the Achilles heel of Petersen's strategy. If the hallowed ideals of Adam Smith and Ricardo don't lead to increased prosperity for the common man in far-away places such as Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan relatively quickly, why *should* they support the 21CGSE? The Russian economy was stabilized by Putin's "mercantilism", the Chinese prosperity boom is also the result of "mercantilism". To be blunt, why should Turkmenistan support "free trade", if the Chinese are ready to cough up more ready cash to buy their crude? The "energy security" sought for by the author (and the Henry Jackson Society) might easily turn into good ol' colonialism, something the Russians and the Chinese, with their "anti-imperialist" rhetoric, would be silly not to take advantage of.
Recent events suggest that the 21CGSE might already be moot. Rather than bypassing the Ukraine, the Western powers are actively trying to break it away from the Russosphere. Putin's reaction has been a de facto invasion. Interestingly, Petersen explicitly warns against such a development, arguing that neither Kiev nor EU-NATO can possibly win a military confrontation with Russia over Eastern Ukraine or Crimea! Putin has also established cordial relations with Erdogan's crypto-Islamist government of Turkey, something that puzzled me until I read "The World Island". Russia is, of course, trying to break the Western geopolitical chain between Europe and Asia, while securing both shores of the Black Sea. The electoral victory of the pro-Russian SYRIZA in Greece has also upset the apple cards. Both Turkey and Greece are NATO member-states...and both are courting the Kremlin! The perennial crisis of the Eurozone make it difficult to believe that the EU could integrate Turkey, the Caucasus and Central Asia in any way that wouldn't be detrimental to the future subjects of "good governance". But the really hard problem with the 21CGSE is that it's so much hot air. Petersen acknowledges at several points that he isn't willing to actually confront the Russian Federation militarily. Thus, he advises that Georgia accepts the loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to Russia. As already mentioned, he isn't prepared to face Putin in the Ukraine. He doesn't want to attack "Transdinistria" (usually called Transnistria), a Russian breakaway republic from Moldova. Nor does he want a military confrontation in Central Asia, advising the West to stay clear of Tajikistan (where the Russians still have a sizable contingent of troops). When the chips are down, Petersen's muscular liberal internationalism and Pilsudskiite Prometheism turns out to be the feeble hope that Western consumer goods, devalued Euros and more stipends to exchange students will somehow trump "The One Mighty Soviet Union" (the Chinese already have the goods and the stipends, although they seem to prefer dollars to Euros!).
I don't like the authoritarian systems in Russia and China. Historically, Russia has usually played a reactionary role in Europe, whenever they were strong enough to break into our Marginal Crescent. (I feel less threatened by Beijing.) However, if the only options are a bad peace deal with Putin in the Ukraine, and reliance on a wimpy British think-tank who can't "walk the walk", I think most people this side of the Carpathians will go for the former...
That being said, I will nevertheless give "The World Island" three stars. The book is interesting, and it did help me understand the basics of geopolitics. The chapter on Pilsudski was particularly interesting. Unfortunately, Petersen's oeuvre is very hard to read, perhaps because English isn't the author's native language. You will need more patience than usual to sift through it! Personally, I happen to be interested in "the decent left", with which the Henry Jackson Society apparently hobnobbed before turning towards more Neo-Con vistas, so the book was useful in that respect, too. I also suspect that there might be something to its main thesis. I happen to believe that the peak oil bloggers are right, which means that we will soon experience "the last scramble" for what's remaining of the world's oil, gas and uranium deposits. If these resources are really to be found in the Heartland, Eurasia will - for good or for worse - play a central role in the geopolitical landscape for decades to come. But as of this writing, it seems that the initiative is with Moscow and Beijing.
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