EU = SU² - An ahistorical
enterprise?
(Of Europe’s 9/11 and 11/9, 100 years later)
Europe of June 1914 and of
June 2014. Hundred years in between, two hot and one cold war. The
League of Nations, Cristal Night, Eurosong and Helsinki Decalogue Coco
Chanel, VW, Marshall Aid, Tito, Yuri Gagarin, Tolkien’s troll, Berlin
wall and Euro-toll Ideologies, purges, repeated genocides, the latest
one coinciding with the Maastricht birth of the Union… a televised
slaughterhouse and the Olympic city besieged for 1,000 days, just one
hour flight from Brussels.
E
non so più pregare
E nell'amore non so più sperare
E quell'amore non so più aspettare[1]
Key words in 1914: Jingoism, booming trade and lack of trust,
assassination, imminent collision, grand war. 100 years later; Europe
absorbed by the EU project, demographic and economic decline, chauvinism
reloaded … Twisting between the world of (Gavrilo) PRINCIP and global
village of (instant) MONETISATION (of every-thing and everyone)… Are our
past hundred years an indication of what to expect throughout this
century?! What is our roadmap?! Is it of any help to reflect on the
Sarajevo event of June 28th,
1914 which has finally fractured a fragile equilibrium of
La Belle Èpoque,
and set the Old Continent (and its world) into the series of motions
that lasted for almost a century, before ending with the unique
unionistic form of today’s Europe?
Four men leading one
man bound
One man whom the four men hound
One man counted bound and led
One man whom the four men dread[2]
The following lines are not a comprehensive account on all of the
events. Rather interpretative by its nature, this is a modest reminder
of what Europe used and still tends to be, despite all our passions and
hopes, visions and targets, institutions and instruments.
*****
Is the EU a post-Westphalian
conglomerate and post-Metternich concert of different Europes, the
world’s last cosmopolitan enjoying its postmodern holiday from
history?[3]
Is that possibly the lost Atlántida or
mythical Arcadia– a Hegelian end of history
world? Thus, should this OZ be a mix
of the locally domesticated Marx-Engels grand utopia and Kennedy’s
dream-world “where the weak are safe and the strong are just”? Or, is it
maybe as Charles Kupchan calls it a ‘postmodern imperium’ (exhorting its
well-off status quo by notoriously exporting its transformative
powers of free trade
dogma and human rights stigma[4]–a
modified continuation of colonial legacy when the European conquerors,
with fire and sword, spread commerce,[5]
Christianity and civilization
overseas), a kind of ‘new Byzantium’, or is that more of a Richard
Young’s declining, unreformed and rigid Rome? Hence, is this a post-Hobbesian
(yet, not quite a Kantian) world, in which the letzte Mensch
expelled Übermensch? Could it
be as one old graffiti in Prague implies: EU=SU²? Does the EU-ization of
Europe equals to a restoration of the universalistic world of Rome’s
Papacy? Is the Union a Leonard’s runner of the 21st
century, or is it perhaps
Kagan’s ‘Venus’–gloomy and opaque world, warmer but equally distant and
unforeseen like ‘Mars’?[6]
Is this Brussels-headquartered
construct, the 20th
century’s version of Zollverein
with standardized tariffs and trade, but of an autonomous fiscal policy
and politics? Thus, is the EU a political and economic re-approachment
of sovereign states or maybe just an(other) enterprise of the borderless
financial capital? Ergo, would that be a pure
construct of financial oligarchy whose invisible hand
tacitly corrupted the
Maastricht Treaty as to web-up a borderless, limitless, wireless and
careless power hub, while at the same time entrenching, silencing and
rarefying labour within each nation state?
Is this a supersized Switzerland
(ruled by the cacophony of many languages and enveloped in economic
egotism of its self-centered people), with the cantons (MS, Council of
EU) still far more powerful than the central government (the EU
Parliament, Brussels’ Commission, ECJ), while Swiss themselves –although
in the geographic heart of that Union – stubbornly continue to defy any
membership. Does it really matter (and if so, to what extent) that Niall
Ferguson wonders: “…the EU lacks a common language, a common postal
system, a common soccer team (Britain as well, rem. A.B.) even a
standard electric socket…“?[7]
Kissinger himself was allegedly
looking for a phone number of Europe, too. Baron Ridley portrayed the
Union as a Fourth Reich, not only dominated by Germany, but also
institutionally Germanized. Another conservative Briton, Larry Siedentop,
remarked in his Democracy in Europe
that it is actually France who is running the EU
‘show’, in the typical French way – less than accountable bureaucracy
that prevents any evolution of the European into an American-style
United States. Thus, Siedentop’s EU is more of a Third Bonapartistic
Empire than possibly
a Fourth German Reich. The Heartland
or Rimland?
After all, is the Union yet another virtue out of
necessity, as Brzezinski claimed, that after centuries of colonial
overstretch and of mutual destructions (between protagonists in close
geographic proximity), Europe irreversibly lost its demographic,
economic and politico-military importance, and that the early EU was
more of an attempt to rescue a nation state than it was the quest for a
true enterprise of the European Community building?
Despite different names and categorizations attached,
historical analogies and descriptions used, most scholars would agree
upon the very geopolitical definition of the EU. It is, thus,
predominantly defined as a grand re-approachment of France and Germany
after WWII, culminating in the Elysée accords of 1961. An interpretation
of this instrument is rather simple: a bilateral peace treaty through
achieved consensus by which Germany accepted a predominant French say in
political affairs of EU/Europe, and France – in return – accepted a more
dominant German say in economic matters of EU/Europe. All that tacitly
blessed by a perfect balancer– Britain, attempting to
conveniently return to its splendid isolation from the Continent
in the post-WWII years. Consequently, nearly all scholars would agree
that the Franco-German alliance actually represents a geopolitical axis,
a backbone of the Union.
But, what does it mean, precisely? Why
Germany, and why France? And why, besides the geographic (e.g.
north-south, Nordic-Mediterranean) and political (e.g. the EU and non-EU
Europe; the ‘good old’ West and new ‘transitioning’ East, or old EU 15
and new EU 13, or the Paris treaty core-6, etc.) categorization, do we
need to take an additionally due look at the classification of
historical Europes?[8]
Una hysteria importante
History of Europe is the story of
small hysteric/xenophobic nations, traditionally sensitive to the issue
of ethnic, linguistic, religious, and behavioristic otherness.[9]
If this statement holds the truth,
then we refer to events before and after the Thirty Years’ War in
general and to the post-Napoleonic Europe in particular. Political
landscape of today’s Europe had been actually conceived in the late 14th
century, gradually evolving to its
present shape. The universalistic world of the Holy Roman Empire and
Papacy is steadily contested by the explicitly confronta-tional or
implicitly dismissive political entities, be it ideologically (the
Thirty Years’ War culminating with the Peace of Westphalia) or
geopolitically (Grand Discoveries and the shift of the gravity center
westwards). The early round of colonizers, the two Iberian empires of
Spain and Portugal, are the first entities that emerged, followed by
France, Holland, England and Denmark. (Belgium too, although it appeared
as a buffer zone at first – being a strategic depth, a continental
prolongation of England for containment of Central Europeans, Dutch and
Scandinavians from the open sea, while later on also becoming a
strategic depth of France for balancing
Britain and containment of Denmark and Prussia.)
Engulfed with the quest of the brewing
French revolution for the creation of a nation state, these colonizers,
all of them situated on the Atlantic flank of Europe, have successfully
adjusted to the nation-state concept. Importantly, the very process of
creation/formation of the nation-state has been conducted primarily on
linguistic grounds since religious grounds were historically defeated
once and for all by the Westphalia:[10]
All peoples talking the Portugo-phone
dialects in one state, all Hispanophone dialects in another state, all
Francophone dialects in the third state, etc.[11]
This was an easy cut for peripheral
Europe, the so-called old colonizers on the Atlantic flank of Europe,
notably for Portugal, Spain, France, England, Denmark, the Netherlands,
and Sweden.
Although geopolitically defeated and ideologically
contained by the Vienna Congress and its instrument: the Holy Alliance
of Eastern Conservative Courts, the very idea of a nation-state remained
appealing. Once the revolutionary 1848 ousted the principal guardian of
feudalism in Europe, Metternich, the suppressed concept got further
impetus. And, the revolutionary romance went on… Hence, the very
creation of central European nation-states was actually enhanced by
Napoleon III. The unification of Italophones was his, nearly obsessive,
inten-tional deed (as he grew up in Nice with Italian Carbonari
revolutionists who were fighting papal and Habsburg’s control over the
northern portions of today’s Italy). Conversely, the very unification of
Germanophones under the Greater Prussia was his non-intentional mis-chief,
with the two subsequently emerging ‘by-products’; modern Austria
(German-speaking core assembled on the ruins of mighty multinational and
multi-linguistic empire) and modern Turkey (Turkophone core on the ruins
of mighty multiracial and multi-linguistic empire).
Despite being geographically in the heart of Europe,
Switzerland remained a remarkably stable buffer zone: Highly militarized
but defensive and obsessively neutral, economically omnipresent yet
financially secretive, it represents one confederated state of two
confronting versions of western Christianity, of three ethnicities and
of four languages. Absent from most of the modern European
politico-military events – Switzerland in short – is terra incognita.
Historically speaking, the process of
Christianization of Europe used as the justification tool to pacify the
invading tribes, that demolished the Roman Empire and brought to an end
the Antique age, was running parallel on two tracks. One of them was
conducted by the Roman Curia/Vatican and its hammer: the Holy Roman
Empire. The second was run by the cluster of Rusophone Slavic Kaganates,
who receiving (the orthodox or true/authentic,
so-called Eastern version of)
Christianity from Byzantium, and past its collapse,
have taken over a mission of Christianization, while forming its first
state of Kiev Russia (and thereafter, its first historic empire). So, to the eastern edge of Europe,
Russophones have lived in an intact world of universalism for centuries:
one empire, one Tsar, one religion and one language.[12]
Everything in between Central Europe and Russia is
Eastern Europe, rather a historic novelty on the political map of
Europe. Very formation of the Atlantic Europe’s present shape dates back
to 14th–15th
century, of Central Europe to the mid-late 19th
century, while a contemporary Eastern Europe only started emerging
between the end of WWI and the collapse of the Soviet Union – meaning,
less than 100 years, in best cases. No wonder that the dominant
political culture of the Eastern Europeans resonates residual fears and
reflects deeply insecure small nations. Captive and restive, these are
short in territorial depth, in demographic projection, in natural
resources and in a direct access to open (warm) seas, after all, short
in historio-cultural verticals and in a bigger picture-driven long-term
policies. They are exercising the nationhood and sovereignty from quite
a recently. Therefore, they are often dismissive, hectic and suspectful,
nearly neuralgic and xenophobic, with frequent overtones.
The creation of a nation-state (on
linguistic grounds) in the Atlantic, Scandinavian and Central Europe was
relatively a success-story. However, in Eastern Europe it repeatedly
suffered setbacks, culminating in the Balkans, Caucasus and the Middle
East, but also evident in the central or Baltic part of Eastern Europe.[13]
Keeping the center soft
Ever since Westphalia, Europe
maintained the inner balance of powers by keeping its core section soft.
Peripheral powers like England, France, Denmark, (Sweden and Poland
being later replaced by) Prussia, the Ottomans, Habsburgs and Russia
have pressed and kept the center of continental Europe as their
playground. At the same time, they kept extending their possessions
overseas or, like Russia and the Ottomans, over the land corridors
deeper into Asian and MENA proper.[14]
Once Royal Italy and Imperial Germany
had appeared, the geographic core ‘hardened’ and for the first time
started to politico-militarily press onto peripheries. This new
geopolitical reality caused a big security dilemma lasting from the 1814
Vienna congress up to Potsdam conference of 1945, being re-actualized
again with the Berlin Wall destruction: How many Germanies and Italies
should Europe have to preserve its inner balance and peace?[15]
As the late-comers the Central
Europeans have faced the overseas world, clearly divided into spheres of
influence.
In very simplified terms, we can say
that from the perspective of European belligerent parties, both world
wars were fought between the forces of status quo and the challengers to
this status quo. The final epilogue in both wars was that Atlantic
Europe has managed to divert the attention of Central Europeans from
itself and its vast overseas possessions onto Eastern Europe, and
finally towards Russia.[16]
Just to give the most illustrative of
many examples; the Imperial post-Bismarck Germany has carefully planned
and ambitiously grouped its troops on the border with France. After the
assassination of the Austrian Archduke in Sarajevo (28 June 1914),
Europe was technically having a casus belli - as the subsequent
mutually declared war between all parties quickly followed this
assassination episode and the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia. However, the
first armed engagement was not taking place on the southeastern front,
as expected – between the Eastern belligerent parties such as Austria,
Serbia, Russia, the Ottomans, Greece, Bulgaria, etc. The first military
operations of WWI were actually taking place in the opposite, northwest
corner of Europe and only months later. It was in German penetration of
Belgian Ardennes. Still, the very epilogue of la Grande Guerra
was such that a single significant
territorial gain of Germany was achieved only in Eastern Europe. Despite
a colossal 4-years long military effort, the German western border
remained nearly unchanged.[17]
The end of WWI did not bring much
change. The accords de paix –
Versailles treaty was an Anglo-French triumph. These
principal Treaty powers, meaning: Atlantic Europe, invited Germany to
finally join the League of Nations in 1926, based on the 1925 Treaty of
Locarno. By the letter of this treaty, Germany obliged itself to fully
respect its frontiers with Belgium and France (plus demilitarized zone
along the Rhine) with the unspecified promise to arbitrate before
pursuing any change of its borders with Czechoslovakia and Poland. The
same modus operandi applied to the Austrian borders with Italy,
Yugoslavia, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. The Locarno accord actually
instrumentalized two sorts of boundaries around Central Europe
(Germany–Austria): strict, inviolable ones towards Atlantic Europe; but
semipermeable and soft towards Eastern Europe.[18] That is how the predominant player
from Central Europe, Germany, was accepted to the League, a collective
system which the Soviet Russia (meaning: Rusophone Europe) was admitted
to only a decade later (1934).[19] Soon after, this double standard
sealed-off a faith of many in Europe and beyond.
In fact, the 1930s were full of public
admirations of and frequent official visits to an Austrian-born Hitler.
It was not only reserved for the British royal family (e.g. Edward
VIII), but for many more prominents from both sides of the Atlantic. By
1938 in Munich, this ‘spirit of Locarno’ has been confirmed in practice
when French President Daladier and British PM Chamberlain (Atlantic
Europe) jointly paid a visit to Germany and gave concessions –
practically a free hand – to Hitler and Mussolini (Central Europe) on
gains in Eastern Europe. Neither Atlantic Europe objected to the
pre-Munich solidification of Central Europe: Hitler–Mussolini pact and
absorption of Austria, following a massive domestic Austrian support to
Nazism of its 890,000 members of the Nazi party as well as a huge ring
of sympathizers. By brokering the Ribbentrop-Molotov non-aggression deal
between Berlin and Moscow, but only a year after the Munich-shame – in
1939 (including the stipulations on Finland, Baltic states and Poland),
Stalin desperately tried to preempt the imminent: A horror of an
uncontrolled expansion of Central onto Eastern Europe and closer to
Russia, something that was already largely blessed and encouraged by
Atlantic Europe.[20]
For some 300 years, Russia and the
Ottomans have fought series of bitter wars over the control of the Black
Sea plateau and Caucasus – sectors, which both sides (especially the
Ottomans) have considered as geopolitically pivotal for their existence.
Still, neither party has ever progressed at the battlefield as to
seriously jeopardize the very existence of the other. However, Russia
has experienced such moves several times from within Europe. Three of
them were critical for the very survival of Russia and the forth was
rather instructive: the Napoleonic wars, Hitler’s Drang nach Osten,
the so-called “contra-revolutionary” intervention,[21] and finally the brief but deeply
humiliating war with Poland (1919-21).
Small wonder, that in 1945, when
Russians – suffering over 20 millions of mostly civilian casualties and
by far the heaviest continental burden of the war against Nazism –
arrived on wings of their tanks and ideology to Central Europe, they
decided to stay. Extending their strategic depth
westwards–southwestwards, and fortifying their presence in the heart of
Europe,[22] was morally an occupation. Still, it
was geopolitically the single option left, which Stalin as a ruthless
person but an excellent geo-strategist perfectly understood. Just a
quick look at the geographic map of Europe would show that the
low-laying areas of western Russia, Belorussia, Ukraine and Eastern
Europe are practically non-fortifiable and indefen-sible. Their
topography exposes the metropolitan area and city of Moscow to an
extreme vulnerability. So, the geostrategic dictatum is that in absence
of any deep canyon, serious ridge or mountain chain, the only protection
is either a huge standing army (expensive and badly needed in other
corners of this vast country) and/or an extension of the strategic
depth.
In a nutshell, we can say that the very epilogue of both
WWs in Europe was a defeat of Central Europe (challenger of status quo)
against Atlantic Europe (status quo defender), with the relatively
absent, neutral Scandinavian Europe, of Eastern Europe being more an
object than a subject of these mega-confrontations, and finally with a
variable success of Russia.
Finally, back to Franco-German re-approachment:
This is far more than just a story about the two countries signing
d’accord. It truly marked a final decisive reconciliation of two
Europes, the Atlantic and Central one. The status quo Europe has won on
the continent but has soon lost its overseas colonies. Once realizing
it, the road for ‘unification’ of the equally weakened protagonists in a
close proximity was wide open.[23] This is the full meaning of the
1961Elysée.
Europe of Genocide and of Unification – Happy EU to You!
The collapse of the Soviet Union
marked a loss of the historical empire for Russia, but also a loss of
geopolitical importance of nonaligned, world-wide respected Yugoslavia,[24] which shortly after burned itself in
series of brutal genocidal, civil war-like ethnical cleansings. The idea
of different nations living together and communicating in different
languages in a (con-)federal structure was (though imperfect) a reality
in Yugoslavia, but also a declared dream of the Maastricht Europe.
Moreover, this country was the only truly emancipated and indepen-dent
political entity of Eastern Europe and one of the very few in a whole of
the Old Continent. Despite the post-Cold War, often pre-paid, rhetorics
that Eastern Europe rebelled against the Soviet domination in order to
associate itself with the West, the reality was very different. Nagy’s
Hungary of 1956, Dubèek's
Czechoslovakia of 1968 and (pre-)Jeruzelski Poland of
1981 dreamt and fought to join a liberal Yugoslavia, and its
internationally declared 3rd way!
By 1989-90, this country still
represented a hope of full emancipation and real freedom for many in the
East. How did the newly created EU (Atlantic-Central Europe axis) react?
At least tolerating (if not eager to support), or actively eliminating
the third way of Yugoslavia? It responded to the Soviet collapse in the
best fashion of a classic, historical nation-state, with the cold
calculi of geopolitical consideration deprived of any ideological
constrains. It easily abandoned altruism of its own idea by withdrawing
its support to the reformist government of Yugoslavia and basically
sealed-off its faith. Intentionally or not, indecisive and contradictory
political messages of the Maastricht-time EU – from the explicate
encouragement of separatism, and then back to the full reconfirmation of
the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Yugoslavia – were bringing
this multinational Slavic state into schizophrenic situation.
Consequently, these Europe’s mixed political messages –most observes
would agree– directly accelerated inner confrontations of the Yugoslav
peoples. Soon after, Atlantic-Central Europe axis contained the western
Balkans, letting the slaughter-house to last essentially unchecked for
years.[25] At the same time, it busily mobilized
all resources needed to extend its own strategic depth eastwards (later
formalized by the so-called enlargements of 1995, of 2004, of 2007 and
finally of 2013). This is the only answer how can genocide and the EU
enlargement go hand in hand at the same time on such a small continent.
As said, the latest loss of Russophone
Europe in its geopolitical and ideological confrontation with the West
meant colossal changes in Eastern Europe. We may take a look into
geopolitical surrounding of at the-time largest eastern European state,
Poland, as an illustration of how dramatic was it.[26] All three land neighbors of Poland;
Eastern Germany (as the only country to join the EU without any
accession procedure, but by pure act of Anschluss),
Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union have disappeared overnight. At
present, Polish border countries are a two-decade-old novelty on the
European political map. Further on, if we wish to compare the number of
dissolutions of states worldwide over the last 50 years, the Old
continent suffered as many as all other continents combined: American
continent – none, Asia – one (Indonesia/ East Timor), Africa – two
(Sudan/South Sudan and Ethiopia/Eritrea), and Europe – three.
Interestingly, each and every dissolution in Europe was
primarily related to Slavs (Slavic peo-ples) living in multiethnic and
multi-linguistic (not in the Atlantic Europe’s conscripted pure
single-nation) state. Further on, all three – meaning, every second
dissolution in the world – were situated exclusively and only in Eastern
Europe. That region has witnessed a total dissolution of Czechoslovakia
(western Slavs) and Yugoslavia (southern Slavs, in 3 waves), while one
state disappeared from Eastern Europe (DDR) as to strengthen and enlarge
the front of Central Europe (Western Germany). Finally, countless
centripetal turbulences severely affected Eastern Europe following the
dissolution of the SU (eastern Slavs) on its frontiers.
Irredentism in the UK, Spain, Belgium, France and Italy,
or Denmark (over Faroe Islands and Greenland) is far elder, stronger and
deeper. However, the dissolutions in Eastern Europe took place
irreversibly and overnight, while Atlantic Europe still remained intact,
with Central Europe even enlarging territorially and expanding
economically.
As early as in XVI century, the Easter
European thought – in the person of famous Sarajevan, Bosnian
Machiavelli, Kafija Pru?èak – is spelling a universal and far reaching
wisdom that progress is both the focus of a vision and attainable
reality for all.[27] If this futuristic assertion is still
accurate, than the progress itself is unthinkable without social
cohesion. That would, consequently, necessitate shared interest which
only comes with thorough debates affecting all segments of society (or
at least its major interest groups). Is today’s Eastern Europe a clas-sic
case of indirect rule? Is it a deep imperial periphery of nominally
independent native rulers, while in reality the true power holder
resides outside, although is domestically suppor-ted by a dense web of
NGOs, multinational corporations and locally handpicked ‘elites’?
Accidentally or not, for the last
25 years, our reporting on Eastern Europe was rather a matter of faith
than a reflection of the empirical reality. This ‘rhetoric’ was
dominated by fragmented intellectual trends that are more cultural
(e.g. poetry, paintings, film, etc.) than coherently economic and
geo-political in focus as they should be.
How one defines a challenge largely determines the response
– effectively points out
Brzezinski. Hence, the arts will always
elaborate on emotions and the science will look for the facts. If the
front of Atlantic-Central Europe lately suffered (an economic) problem
which has been diagnosed as a distributional and compositional, than who
and when is holistically and scientifically to examine the Eastern-Rusophone
Europe and its burning geo-economic (distributional, compositional),
socio-political/ideological (space-time in history) and geopolitical
(logical and areal) problem? There is a lot of (pre-paid and
post-paid) attention-diverting and velvet-silencing, but besides this cacophonic noise
where is a serious research on that? If the equality of outcome (income) was a communist
egalitarian dogma, is the belief in equality of opportunity a tangible reality offered to
Eastern Europe or just a deceiving utopia sold to the conquered,
plundered, ridiculed and cannibalized countries in transition?
By contrasting and comparing available
HDI data (UN DP’s Human Development Index) and all relevant WB, OECD,
UNCTAD, ILO and WHO socio-economic and health indexes including the
demographic trends of last two decades, we can easily spot a
considerable economic and socio-human growth in Asia, in Latin America
and elsewhere. The only trend of negative growth (including the suicide
and functional illiteracy figures) comparable by its duration and
severity to this of Eastern Europe, is situated in (the central-west,
central to Horn/central-east portions of) sub-Saharan Africa. Euphemisms
such as countries in transition
or new
Europe
cannot hide a disconsolate fact that Eastern Europe
has been treated as defeated belligerent, as spoils of war which the
West won in its war against communist Russia.[28]
It concludes that (self-)fragmented,
de-industrialized, rapidly aged and depopulated, (and de-Slavicized)
Eastern Europe is probably the least influential region of the world –
one of the very few underachievers. Obediently submissive and therefore,
rigid in dynamic environment of the promising 21st
century, Eastern Europeans are among
last remaining passive downloaders and slow-receivers on the otherwise
blossoming stage of the world’s creativity, politics and economy.[29]
East does not exercise its political
sovereignty (gone with the EU), its military sovereignty (gone with the
NATO), its economic and monetary sovereignty (gone with the massive
domestic de-industrialization ‘preached’ by the IMF, EBRD, EIB and
eventually ECB),[30]
and its financial sovereignty (gone by
full penetration of German, Austrian and Swedish banks).[31]
Most of the Eastern European states do
not control a single commercial bank on their territory.[32]
Additionally, this region does not
effectively control its media space – media there (of too-often dubious
orientation and ownership) is discouraging, disorienting and silencing
any sense of national pride, influence over
destiny direction and to it related calls for self-(re) assessment.
East is sharply aged and depopulated –the worst of its kind ever – which
in return will make any future prospect of a full and decisive
generational interval simply impossible.[33]
Honduras-ization
of Eastern Europe is full and
complete.[34]
If the post-WWII Soviet occupation of
Eastern Europe was overt and brutal, this one is tacit but subversive
and deeply corrosive.[35]
Interestingly, the physical conquest, usually referred to
as the EU enlargement, was primarily the US-led NATO one, and only then
the EU enterprise. Simply, no eastern European country entered the EU
before joining the NATO at first. It should not be forgotten that the
NATO was and remains to be an instrument (institutionalized political
justifier) of the US physical, military presence in Europe. Or, as Lord
Ismay vocally defined it in1949: ‘to keep the Russians out, the
Americans in, and the Germans down’. The fact that the US remained in
Western Germany, and that the Soviet Army pulled out from Eastern
Germany did not mean ‘democratization’ or ‘transition’. It was a direct
military defeat of the Gorbachev Russia in the duel over the core
sectors of Central and Eastern Europe. As direct spoils of war, DDR
disappeared from the political map of Europe being absorbed by Western
Germany, while the American Army still resides in unified Germany. In
fact, more than half of the US 75 major overseas military bases are
situated in Europe. Up to this day, Germany hosts 25 of them.
Admittedly, by the early 1990s, the
‘security hole’– Eastern Europe, has been approached in multifold
fashion: Besides the (pre-Maastricht EC and post-Maastricht) EU and
NATO, there was the Council of Europe, the CSCE (after the 1993 Budapest
summit, OSCE), the EBRD and EIB. All of them were sending the political,
economic, human dimension, commercial signals, assistance and expertise.[36]
These moves were making both sides
very nervous; Russia becoming assertive (on its former peripheries) and
Eastern Europe defiantly dismissive.[37]
Until this very day, each of them is
portraying the NATO enterprise as the central security consideration:
One as a must-go, and another as a no-go.[38]
No wonder that the absolute pivot of
Eastern Europe – Ukraine, is a grand hostage of that very dilemma:
Between the eastern pan-Slavic hegemony and western ‘imperialism of free
market’.[39]
For Ukraine, Russia is a geographic,
socio-historic, cultural and linguistic reality. These days, this
reality is far less reflected upon than the seducing, but distant
Euro-Atlantic club. Ukraine for Russia is more than a lame
western-flank’ geopolitical pivot. For Moscow, Kiev is an emotional
place – an indispensable bond of historio-civilizational attachment –
something that makes and sustains Russia both Christian and European.
Putin clearly redlined it: Sudden annexation of Crimea was an unpleasant
and humiliating surprise that will bring a lot of foreign policy
hangover for both the NATO and EU. Thus drifting chopped off and away,
Ukraine itself is a prisoner of this domesticated security drama. This
false dilemma so tragically imploded within this blue state, of a 50:50
polarized population, over the question where the country belongs – in
space, time and side of history. Conclusively, Eastern Europe is further
twisting, while gradually combusted between Ukrainization and
Pakistanization.[40]
Least to the East and Nest of the West
The EU has secured itself on the southeastern flank, too.
In the course of last few centuries, the Balkans was either influenced
or controlled by Russia on the east (also by the Ottomans), Turkey on
the south and center, Austria on the north and west, with the pockets of
Anglo-French influence, too (Greece, Serbia, Albania). This reads that
ever since the late XVII c. (precisely, from 1686 when Russia joined the
Holy League, and past the subsequent 1699 Treaty of Karlovci), the
peripheries kept center of the Balkans soft, as their own playground.
The only (pre-modern and modern) period when the center was strong
enough to prevail, marks the time of the Balkans’ Bismarck: Tito of
Yugoslavia.
Presently, the Eastern Balkans
(Romania and Bulgaria) is cutoff from any Russian influence by being
hastily admitted to the Union (2007). Turkey is contained by Greece
(1980) and Cyprus (2004), and is waiting on the EU doorstep for decades
without any clear prospect to join.[41]
All that, as if it follows the old
rational of the 1814 Vienna Congress as well as the Bismarck’s dictatum
to Andrássy at the 1878 Congress of Berlin. Reinvigorating these
geo-economic and strategic imperatives, Austria does not hesitate to add
and shed emotional charge: it is nearly neuralgic on the Turkish EU
accession, Russian presence or inner Slavic strength. In an attempt to
control the core sectors of the Balkans, Austria jealously keeps the
highest post in the Office of High Representative for Bosnia in its
hands.[42]
At the same time, it is the main
protégé of Croatia’s bid for the EU membership (2013).
De-industrialized, over-indebted and increasingly de-Slavicized, Croatia
– for that matter of course, further fortifies the Austro-influence
deeper in the Balkan proper.[43]
The rest of the Western Balkans is
still finishing the dissolution of Yugoslavia, by forming the ever
smaller, incapacitated mini nation-states. (The prevailing political
culture of the Western Balkans is provincial, anti-intellectual,
xenophobic, irresponsible anti-politics). Less than a decade after
President Tito’s death, the tectonic changes in the Eastern bloc have
caused the dramatic change of geopolitical position of Yugoslavia and
the NAM. The external players and local élites, whom they chose to boost
and cooperate with, had silently agreed that for the amortization of
revived Anglo-French, Germanophone, Russian and Turkish (traditional),
and the US (non-traditional) projections on the region, the Southern
Slavs should (de-industrialize, de-Slavicize, and) live in far more than
two states. In the absence of compromise among the major external
geopolitical projectors, the region still undergoes the fragmentational
erosion, being kept (like once upon a time Germany) as a soft center for
strong peripheral pressures.[44]
Bosnia is the best example of such an
external intrusion, and of the powers that purposely set a dysfunctional
government.[45]
Although assertive, none of the Four +
the US wants to prevail in this core sector of the Balkans (and solely
take a burden), but wish to keep its presence strong enough as to
observe and deter others.
Nevertheless, ever since the Antique
Roman times, the Southern Slavs territories (even all of the Balkans)
have always existed within the larger multinational entities (be it
Byzantium, Hungary, the Ottomans, the Habsburg Empire or Yugoslavia) –
hardly ever in more than two states. Accommodation to a life in the
numerous nano nation-state-alikes is a historical novelty, therefore
only a transitory stage of the Western Balkans.[46]
The lasting solution will only appear
with the return to a historical legacy –life in a larger, multinational
entity.
In his luminary work ‘The New Asian
Hemisphere’, Mahbubani accurately concludes that Gorbachev – not
understanding the real success of Western strength and power, handed
over the Soviet empire and got nothing in return.[47]
Is our history directional or
conceivable, dialectic or cyclical? The Soviet Union was far more of a
classic continental military empire (overtly brutal; rigid,
anti-individual, omnipresent, secretive), while the US was more a
finan-cial empire (covertly brutal; hierarchical, yet asocial,
exploitive, pervasive, polarizing). Bear of permafrost vs. fish of the
warm seas. Athens vs. Sparta. Phoenicia vs. Rome. Thus, Soviets went
bankrupt by mid 1980s. So did the Americans (the ‘white man burden’
fractured them already by the Vietnam war, with the Nixon shock
only officializing it), but the United
States managed its financial capital (or an illusion of it) insofar as
to be(come) a debtor empire through the Wall Street guaranties.[48]
Sputnik
titanium vs. gold mine of printed paper.
Nothing epitomizes this better than the words of the longest serving US
Federal Reserve’s boss, Greenspan, who famously said to then French
President Chirac: “Indeed, dollar is our currency, but your problem”.
Hegemony vs. hegemoney.
This very nature of power explains why
the Americans have missed to take the mankind into completely other
direction, towards the non-confrontational, decarbonized,
de-monetized/de- financialized and de-psychologized, the self-realizing
humankind. They had such a chance when, past the Gorbachev’s
unconditional surrender of the Soviet bloc, the US – unconstra-ined as a
‘lonely superpower’ – solely dictated terms of reference.[49]
Sadly enough, that was not the first
missed opportunity for the US. The very epilogue of the WWII meant a
full security guaranty for the US: Geo-economically – 52% of anything
manufactured in the world was carrying a label Made in USA, and
geostrategically – the US had uninterruptedly enjoyed nearly a decade of
the ‘nuclear monopoly’. Up to this very day, the US scores the biggest
number of N-tests conducted, the largest stockpile of nuclear weaponry,
and it represents the only power ever deploying this ‘ultimate weapon’
on other nation. To complete the irony, Americans enjoy geographic
advantage like no other empire ever. Save the US, as Ikenberry vividly
notes: “every major power in the world lives in a crowded geopolitical
neighborhood where shifts in power routinely provoke counterbalancing…”[50]
The US neighbors are oceans.
Indeed, no successful empire does rely
merely on coercion, be it abroad or at home. However, unable to escape
its inner logics and deeply-rooted appeal of confrontational
nostalgia, the prevailing archrival is only a winner, rarely a
game-changer.[51]
So, to the above asked question whether
our history is dialectic or cyclical, the current Ukrainian events are
like a bad-taste déjà vu.
‘End of the Cold War’ – such a buzz
word, of a diametrically different meaning. East would interpret it as
the final end of confrontation, while the Westerners have no such an
illusion. To them it is the end of war, which only came after the
unconditional surrender of East. Another powerful evidence to support
our claim: Just 20 years ago, distance between Moscow and NATO troops
stationed in Central Europe (e.g. Berlin) was over 1.600 km. Today, it
is only 120 km from St. Petersburg.[52]
Realities have dramatically changed
for the Atlantic-Central Europe and for Russia, while for Eastern Europe
much remains the same – East still serves others as a strategic depth.[53]
In short, Atlantic Europe is a
political power-house, with two of 3 European nuclear powers and 2 out
of five permanent members of the UN Security Council, P-5. Central
Europe is an economic power-house, Russophone Europe is an energy
power-house, Scandinavian Europe is all of that a bit, and Eastern
Europe is none of it.[54]
From
WWI
to www.
9/11 or 11/9?
For most of our history both progress
as well as its (horizontal) transmission was extremely slow and tedious
a process. Well to the classic period of Alexander the Macedonian and
his glorious Alexandrian library, the speed of our transmissions
–however moderate– was still always surpassing cycles of our
breakthroughs. When the breakthroughs finally turned to be faster than
the speed of their transmissions – that was a point of our departure.
Simply, our civilizations started to significantly differentiate from
each other in their respective techno-agrarian, politico-military,
ethno-religious, ideological and economic set-ups. In the eve of grand
discoveries, that very event transformed wars and famine from the
low-impact and local into the bigger and colossal. Faster cycles of
technological breakthroughs, patents and discoveries than their own
transmission, primarily occurred on the Old continent. That event marked
a birth of mighty European empires and their (liberal) schools of
applied biologism, racism, genocide, organized plunders, ethno-social
engineering and eugenics, and similar forms of ideological justifiers.
For the past few centuries, we lived fear but dreamt hope – all for the
sake of modern times. From WWI to www. Is this modernity of internet
age, with all the suddenly reviled breakthroughs and their instant
transmission, now harboring us in a bay of fairness, harmony and overall
reconciliation?[55]
100 years after the outbreak of the
WWI on 28th
June 2014, young generations of
Europeans are being taught in schools about a singularity of an entity
called the EU. However, as soon as serious external or inner security
challenges emerge, the compounding parts of the true, historic Europe
are resurfacing again. Formerly in Iraq (with the exception of France)
and now with Libya, Mali, Syria and Ukraine: Central Europe is hesitant
to act, Atlantic Europe is eager, Scandinavian Europe is absent, and
while Eastern Europe is bandwagoning, Russophone Europe is opposing. The
1986 Reagan-led Anglo-American bombing of Libya was a one-time,
head-hunting punitive action. This time, both Libya and Syria (Iraq,
Mali, Ukraine, too) have been given a different attachment: The
considerable presence of China in Africa; successful pipeline deals
between Russia and Germany (which, while circumventing Eastern Europe,
will deprive it from any transit-related bargaining premium, and will
tacitly pose an effective joint Russo-German pressure on the Baltic
states, Poland and Ukraine),[56]
and finally relative decline of the US
and re-calibration of their European commitments. All of this combined,
must have triggered alarm bells across Atlantic Europe.[57]
This is to understand that although seemingly unified,
Europe is essentially composed of several segments, each of them with
its own dynamics, legacies and its own political culture
(considerations, priorities and anxieties): Atlantic and Central Europe
confident and secure on the one end, and (the EU and non-EU) Eastern
Europe as well as Russia on the other end, insecure and neuralgic,
therefore, in a permanent quest for additional security guaranties.
“America did not change on September
11. It only became more itself” – Robert Kagan famously claimed.[58]
Paraphrasing it, we may say: From 9/11
(09th
November 1989 in Berlin) and shortly
after, followed by the genocidal wars all over Yugoslavia, up to the
Euro, MENA or ongoing Ukrainian crisis, Europe didn’t change. It only
became more itself – a conglomerate of five different Europes.
Prof. Anis H. Bajrektarevic
Chair Intl. Law and Global
Pol. Studies (and Editor of the Addleton’s GHIR Journal)
Vienna, 13. JUN 2014
anis@corpsdiplomatique.cd
** All displayed maps per the author’s idea made by
Anneliese Gattringer.
Post Scriptum
How can we observe and interpret (the
distance between) success and failure from a
historical perspective? This question remains a difficult one to
(satisfy all with a single) answer... The immediate force behind
the rapid and successful European overseas projection was actually the
two elements combined: Europe’s technological (economic) and demographic
expansion (from early 16th
century on). However, West/Europe was not – frankly
speaking – winning over the rest of this planet by the superiority of
its views and ideas, by purity of its virtues or by clarity of its
religious thoughts and practices. For a small and rather insecure
civilization, it was just the superiority and efficiency in applying the
rationalized violence and organized (legitimized) coercion that Europe
successfully projected. The 21st
century Europeans often forget this ‘inconvenient
truth’, while the non-Europeans usually never do.
The large, self-maintainable, self-assured and secure
civilizations (e.g. situated on the Asian landmass) were traditionally
less militant and confrontational (or the nation-state ‘exclusive’), but
more esoteric and generous, inclusive, attentive and flexible. The
smaller, insecure civilizations (e.g. situated on a modest and minor,
geographically remote and peripheral, natural resources scarce, and
climatically exposed continent of Europe) were more focused, obsessively
organized and “goal–oriented” (including the invention of virtue out
of necessity – a nation-state). No wonder that European civilization
has never ever generated a single religion (although it admittedly
doctrinated, ‘clergified’ and headquartered the Middle East-revelled
religion of Christianity). On the other hand, no other civilization but
the European has ever created a significant, even a relevant political
ideology.
This work is at first published in Bahasa language,
Jakarta 2011 (Seputar Indonesia). Its advanced version was published in
Italian language, Rome 2013 (IsAG-Rome), and by the Foreign Policy
Journal of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur 2013 (JDFR). The first English
language version was published by the Routledge/Francis & Taylor and
IAFOR (London – Washington 2013).
** All displayed maps per the author’s idea made by
Anneliese Gattringer.
*** The 100-years anniversary poster
made by Amna Mahiæ.
References:
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Stone Sleeper
(org. Kameni Spavaè),
Svjetlost Sarajevo
2.
Toynbee, A. J.
(1934-61), A Study of History, Vol VII:
Universal States; Universal Churches (Oxford University Press
1954) and Vol XII: Reconsiderations
(Oxford University Press 1961)
3.
McBrien, R. (2000),
Lives of the Popes, Harper San Francisco
4.
Bajrektareviæ,
A. (2013), Future of Europe (Of Lisbon and Generational Interval),
EU Journal Europe’s World, Brussels
5.
Kissinger, H. ( 1994),
Diplomacy, A Touchstone Book
6.
Siedentop, L. (2001),
Democracy in Europe, Penguin Books
7.
Bruton, J. (2013),
How real is the danger of an EU collapse?,
EU Journal Europe’s World 23(13) 2013, Brussels
8.
Brzezinski, Z. (1997),
The Grand Chessboard, Basic Books (Perseus);
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Leonard, M. (2005),
Why Europe Will Run the 21st
century, Fourth Estate
London
10.
Fukuyama, F. (2012),
The Future of History, Foreign Affairs Magazine 91(1) 2012
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Bajrektareviæ,
A. (2007), Verticalization of Historical Experiences: Europe’s and
Asia’s Security Structures – Structural Similarities and Differences,
Crossroads – the Macedonian Foreign Policy Journal, 4 (1), page 111-112,
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Friedman, G. (2009),
The Next 100 Years, Anchor Books/Random House NY;
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Èengic,
E. (1985), S Krle?om iz dana
u dan I – IV, Globus Zagreb Rad Beograd Svjetlost Sarajevo
14.
Winder, S. (2014),
Danubia – A Personal History of Habsburg Europe, Barnes & Noble
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Ferguson, N. (2005),
Colossus – The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, Penguin Books
(page 255)
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Bajrektareviæ,
A. (2005), Green/Policy Paper Submitted to the closing plenary of the
Ministerial (Chairmanship summarizing the recommendations and
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Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, HarperCollins
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The New Asian Hemisphere, Public Affairs, Perseus Books Group (page:
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Stiglitz, J.E. (2012),
The Price of Inequality, Penguin Economics
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Bajrektareviæ,
A. (2013), Da Lisbona a Barcellona: Tutti gli strumenti dimenticati
dell´ Unione Europea, Geopolitica Rivista dell'Istituto di Alti
Studi in Geopolitica e Scienze Ausiliarie, Rome
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Wallerstein, I. (1999),
The End of the World as We Know it: Social Science for the XXI
century, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
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Ignatieff, M. (2003),
Empire lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan,
Vintage (page 70)
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(1596), Universal theory of the
global governing wisdoms
(Usul Al-hikam fi nizami-el-alem, org.
Temelji mudrosti o ureðenju svijeta), taken from: Imamovic, M. (1998),
Historija Bo?njaka
(History of Bosniaks), BZK-Preporod,
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Europe’s Decline and Fall – The struggle against global irrelevance,
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The Crisis of Europe – How the Union Came Together and Why It’s
Falling Apart, Foreign Affairs Magazine 91(5) 2012
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A. (2013), Multiculturalism is D(r)ead in Europe – MENA Oil and the
(hidden) political prize Europe pays for it, Nordic Page, Oslo
Norway
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Ikenberry, G.J. (2014),
The Illusion of Geopolitics, Foreign Affairs Magazine 93(3) 2014
30.
Kagan, R. (2004), Of
Paradise and Power, Vintage Books (page 85)
Abstract
Some 20 years ago the genocide of worst kind was taking
place just one hour flight from Brussels. That time, assassination of
different kind from the one of 1914 has enveloped Sarajevo. While
massive European ignorance turned Bosnia (and the Union of different
peoples – Yugoslavia) into a years-long slaughterhouse, the Maastricht
dream was unifying the Westphalian world of the Old continent. Today,
two decades later, Atlantic Europe is a political powerhouse (with two
of three European nuclear powers, and two of five permanent members of
the UN Security Council, P-5), Central Europe is an economic powerhouse,
Russophone Europe is an energy powerhouse, Scandinavian Europe is a bit
of all that, and Eastern Europe is none of it. No wonder that as soon as
serious external or inner security challenges emerge, the compounding
parts of the true, historic Europe are resurfacing again. Formerly in
Iraq (with the exception of France) and now with Libya, Sudan, Mali and
Syria; Central Europe is hesitant to act, Atlantic Europe is eager,
Scandinavian Europe is absent, Eastern Europe is bandwagoning, and
Russophone Europe is opposing. Did Europe change (after its own 11/9),
or it only became more itself?
Keywords:
Europe; genocide; Bosnia; 1914; unification; Westphalian
Ummah; 9/11, geopolitics
[1]
Taken from the
lyrics of Miss Sarajevo, the song written by Bono Vox of U-2 and
Luciano Pavarotti, and performed together with Brian Eno (1994). This
instant radio-hit was inspired by the true events, when Sarajevens – as
a form of urban protest to the world indifferent to their suffering –
organized the Miss of Besieged Sarajevo beauty contest
only few
hundred meters from the battlefield lines. Translated from Italian, this
line states: “…And I don't know how to pray anymore / and in love I
don't know how to hope anymore / and for that love I don't know how to
wait anymore…”
[2]
Mak –
Mehmedalija Dizdar, Bosnian poet of the modern generation. The quotation
is actually an ending part of his poem: “A Note about the Five” (trans.
Francis R. Jones), from his “Stone Sleeper”
poetry
collection (1966-71) Svjetlost, Sarajevo.
[3]
One of the
greatest historians of our age, Sir Toynbee, gives an interesting
account of our civilizational vertical. He clas-sifies as many as
nineteen major civilizations:
Egyptian,
Andean,
Sinic,
Minoan,
Sumerian,
Mayan,
Indic,
Hittite,
Hellenic,
Western,
Orthodox
Christian/
Russian,
Far Eastern,
Orthodox
Christian/main
body,
Persian,
Arabic,
Hindu,
Mexican,
Yucatec,
and
Babylonic).
Further on, there are – as he calls them – four abortive
civilizations (Far Western Christian, Far Eastern Christian,
Scandinavian,
Syriac)
and five arrested civilizations (Polynesian,
Eskimo,
Nomadic,
Ottoman,
Spartan).
Like to no
other continent, majority of them are related (originating from or
linked) to European proper.
[4]
Lately, it
looks like a Gay-rights Jihad
at many
places.
The non-selective, but massive push without
premeditation on the key issue here: whether homosexuality should be
either tolerated behavior or promoted life-style, has to be urgently
revisited and (re-)calibrated. As it stands now, this
Gay-rights Jihad
neither serves
the human/behavioristic rights nor a worrying birth-rates decline. The
European demographics is far more of a serious and urgent socio-economic
problem, as it is closely related to the emotional-charge inflammable
issues of migration and integration, and by it triggered (to say:
justified) right-wing anti-politics.
[5]
Is
globalization the natural doctrine of global hegemony? Well, its main
instrument, commerce –as we know – brings people into contact, not
necessarily to an agreement, even less to mutual benefits and
harmony...Or, “If
goods cannot cross borders, armies will” is the famous saying of the XIX
century French economist Frederic Bastiat, so often quoted by the
longest-ever serving US Secretary of State Cordell Hull.
[6] ”No
venue has been created in which an EU-wide public opinion might be
formed… European Parliament elections are not truly European because
they are 27 different elections with different electoral systems after
campaigns in which national issues predominate… Under present
procedures, both the President of the European Commission and the
President of the European Council are selected in private meetings of
heads of governments..”, says former Irish Prime Minister John Bruton.
Bruton, J. (2013), How real is the danger of an EU collapse?,
EU Journal Europe’s World 23(13) 2013,
Brussels
[7]
Ferguson, N.
(2005) Colossus – The Rise and Fall of the American Empire,
Penguin Books (page 255)
[8]
Classic
division on north and south in the European newspeech originating from
the London City and Frankfurt’s banking circles would be pigs
vs. wings
(indebted
south: PIGS – Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain vs. prosperous north:
WINGS – West, Industrial North, Germany and Scandinavia).
[9]
Enveloped in
its own myopia of economic egoism, Europeans are in fact digging and
perpetuating defensive self-isolation. While falling short to
constructively engage its neighborhood (but not conveniently protected
by oceans like some other emigrant-receiving countries), Europeans
constantly attract unskilled migrants. The US, GCC, Far East, Australia,
Singapore, lately even Brazil, India, or Angola – all have enormously
profited from the skilled newcomers. Europe is unable to preserve,
protect and promote its skilled migrants. Simply, European history of
tolerance of otherness is far too short for it, while the legacies of
residual fears are deep, lasting and wide.
[10]
To be more
accurate: Westphalia went beyond pure truce, peace and reconciliation.
It re-confirmed existence of western Christianity’s Ummah.
Simply, it only outlawed meddling into the intra-western religious
affairs by restricting that-time absolute Papal (interpretative) powers.
From that point of view, Westphalia was not the first international
instrument on religious freedoms, but a triumph of western evangelic
unity, which later led to the strengthening of western Christianity’s
supremacy intercontinentally.
[11]
All modern
European languages that are taught in schools today, were once upon a
time actually a political and geographic compromise of the leading
linguists, who – through adopted conventions – created a standard
language by compiling different dialects, spoken on the territory of
particular emerging nation-state.
[12]
Annotated from
one of my earlier writings, it states as following: “…Early
Russian state has ever since expanded north/ northeast and eastward,
reaching the physical limits of its outreach by crossing the Bering
straits (and the sale of Russian Alaska to the USA in 1867). By the late
17th
and early 18th
century,
Russia had begun to draw systematically into European politico-military
theatre. (…) In the meantime, Europe’s
universalistic empire dissolved. It was contested by the challengers
(like the Richelieu’s France and others–geopolitical, or the
Lutheran/Protestant – ideological), and fragmented into the cluster of
confronted monarchies, desperately trying to achieve an equilibrium
through dynamic balancing. To this similar political process will affect
Russian universal empire only by late 20th
century,
following the Soviet dissolution. (…) Not
fully accepted into the European collective system before the
Metternich’s Holy Alliance, even had its access into the post-Versailles
system denied, Russia was still not ignored like other peripheral
European power. The Ottomans, conversely, were negated from all of the
security systems until the very creation of the NATO (Republic of
Turkey). Through the pre-emptive division of Poland in the eve of WWII,
and successful campaigns elsewhere in Eastern Europe, Russia expanded
both its territory and its influence westwards. (…) An early Soviet
period of Russia was characterized by isolated bilateral agreements,
e.g. with Germans, Fins, Japanese, etc. The post WWII days have brought
the regional collective system of Warsaw Pact into existence, as to
maintain the communist gains in Europe and to effectively oppose
geopolitically and ideologically the similar US-led block. Besides
Nixon’s reapproachment towards China, the collapse of the Soviet Union
was the final stage in the progressive fragmentation of the vast
Sino-Soviet Communist block (that dominated the Euroasian land mass with
its massive size and centrality), letting Russia emerge as the
successor. The sudden Soviet break-up, however, was followed by the
cultural shock and civil disorder, painful economic crisis and rapidly
widening disparities, as well as the humiliating wars in Caucasus and
elsewhere, since the centripetal and centrifugal forces of integration
or fragmentations came into the oscillatory play. Between 1989 and 1991,
communist rule ended in country after country and the Warsaw Pact
officially dissolved. Subsequently, the Gorbachev-Jeltsin Russia
experienced the greatest geopolitical contraction of any major power in
the modern era and one of the fastest ever in history. Still, Gorbachev-Jeltsin
tandem managed to (re-)brand themselves domestically and internationally
– each got its own label of vodka…” (Verticalization
of Historical Experiences: Europe’s and Asia’s Security Structures –
Structural Similarities and Differences, Crossroads – the Macedonian
Foreign Policy Journal, 4 (1), page 111-112, M-MFA 2008)
[13]
Many would say
that, past the peak Ottoman times, the aggressive intrusion of Atlantic
Europe with its nation-state concept, coupled with Central Europe’s
obsessive control and surveillance drive, has turned a magnificently
mild and tolerant lands and intellectual exchange-corridors of
southeastern Europe and the Near East into a modern day Balkan powder
keg. Miroslav Krleza famously remarked: “It was humans who
transformed our swine to a pig.”
[14]
Serves as a
curios fact that the first border agreement ever signed by Mexico with
any of its neighbors was with Tsarist Russia (delimitation of proper
stretching over today’s western coast of Canada and the US state of
Washington).
[15]
At the time of
Vienna Congress, there were nearly a dozen of Italophone states and over
three dozens of Germanophone entities – 34 western German states + 4
free cities (Kleinstaaterei),
Austria and Prussia. Potsdam conference concludes with only three
Germanophone (+ Lichtenstein + Switzerland) and two Italophone states (+
Vatican).
[16]
Why did the US
join up Atlantic Europe against Central Europe in both WWs? Simply,
siding up with Central Europe would have meant politico-military
elimination of Atlantic Europe once and for all. In such an event the US
would have faced a single European confrontation-potent block to engage
with sooner or later, and would have lost an interfering possibility of
remaining the perfect balancer. The very same balancer role, the
US inherited from the declining Britain.
[17]
V.I. Lenin leaves Switzerland in April 1917, and is
heading to Russia by train (in the sealed off wagon) crossing all over
Germany – a self-telling episode of the WWI.
[18]
Farce or not,
history nearly repeated itself to the last detail in early 1990s. The
western frontiers of Central Europe remained intact, while the dramatic
change took place to its East. Besides Anschluss
of Eastern
Germany by the Western one, borders there remained the same, but many
former neighbors have one by one disappeared for good from the political
map.
[19]
The Cold War era has prevented any comprehensive
scientific consensus. The unbiased, de-ideologized and objective view on
the WWII was systematically discouraged. Soviets consistently equated
Nazism and imperialism while the US, for its part, equated fascism and
communism. Until this very day, we do not have a full accord on causes
and consequences of events in years before, during and after the WWII.
[20]
We should keep in mind that for the very objective of
lebensraum
policy (character and size of space needed for
Germanophones to unhindered, live and prosper), the Jews, Roma and
behavioristic minorities were the non-territorial obstacle. However,
Slavs and their respective Slavic states in Eastern Europe were the
prime territorial target of Hitler-led Central Europe’s ‘final
solution’. Therefore, no wonder why so much fifth column
among Slavs.
For the speeding and smoothening of the lebensraum
objective,
Quisling was needed as PM in Norway, but Slavic quisling-elites
in each and every of that time major Slavic state – useful idiots
in Poland, in
Ukraine, in Czechoslovakia, in Yugoslavia, in Bulgaria, etc.).
[21]
The
6-year-long insurgencies (largely financed and inspired by Western
Europe as an overt ‘regime change’ intervention) at the time of the
young Bolshevik Russia that saturated the country (bringing the
unbearable levels of starvation and hunger up to cases of cannibalism),
took away 5 million mostly civilian lives, and set the stage for ‘red
terror’.
[22]
With the
politico-military settlement of the Teheran and Yalta Conference (1943),
and finally by the accord of the Potsdam Conference (1945), the US, UK
and the SU unanimously agreed to reduce the size of Germany by 25%
(comparable to its size of 1937), to recreate Austria, and to divide
both of them on four occupation zones. The European sections of the
Soviet borders were extended westwards (as far as to Kaliningrad), and
Poland was compensated by territorial gains in former Eastern
Prussia/Germany. The pre-WWII inclusion of the three Baltic republics
into the Soviet Union was unanimously confirmed by the Americans and
Britons in Potsdam, too. Practically, Russians managed to eliminate
Germany from Eastern Europe (and of its access to central and eastern
portions of Baltic, too), and to place it closer to the Atlantic
Europe’s proper.
[23]
Nowadays, from
the safe time-distance, it is easy to claim that the portion of Europe
under Americans was of considerably better fortune than a part under the
Soviet influence. Interestingly enough, the opposite situation was
elsewhere: India – Pakistan, Vietnam – the Philippines, Cuba – Colombia,
Egypt – Saudi Arabia, Ghana – Liberia. That means that the
intra-European differences are beyond pure American–Russian influences,
and therefore far more significant. Proof? The standard-of-living
difference between London and Bucurest or Paris and Sofia today is of
the same –or even wider – distance than it was some 40 years ago.
[24]
Yugoslavia was
by many facets a unique European country: No history of aggression
towards its neighbors, with the high toleration of otherness. Yugoslav
peoples were one of the rare Europeans who resolutely stood up against
fascism, fighting it in a full-scale combat and finally paying it with
12% of its population in the 4-years war. (Relative to the 1939 size of
state territory and incumbent population within, the top WWII fatalities
were suffered by Poland – 18%, the Soviet Union – 15%, Yugoslavia 12%,
III Reich/Germany – 10%. For the sake of comparison, the Atlantic rim
suffered as follows: France –
1,3%, UK –0,9%, the US – 0,3%.)
Yugoslavs also firmly opposed Stalinism right after
the WWII. Bismarck of southern Slavs – Tito doctrinated the so-called
active peaceful coexistence after the 1955 Bandung south-south
conference, and assembled the non-Alig
![Dr. Nguyen Anh Tuan, Assos. Prof.[1] Nguyen Linh[2]](images/Prof_Dr._Nguyen_Anh_Tuan_140.jpg)
december-2011
