Zombie geopolitician

The InLiberty project continues the series of public talks “Zombie Ideas”. The lectures are devoted to inventorying big ideas that lead an afterlife because they have been refuted by scientists or common sense. One of them is geopolitics, the essence of which is that large communities of people or even individual territories have their own interests. And these interests turn out to be more important than the interests of an individual. Professor of the Higher School of Economics, historian and publicist Sergei Medvedev talks about how geopolitics resembles homeopathy.

Sergey Medvedev: I’m very glad that it’s such a full house, thanks to InLiberty for the invitation. Geopolitics, it seems to me, has similarities with homeopathy. Both come from historically determined views. Homeopathy began in early modern times when there were no modern medicines. Geopolitics is the same: its roots date back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a respectable and legitimate concept, but the problem is that in the 20th and 21st centuries both homeopathy and geopolitics are becoming the basis of a quasi-religious cult. This is what I will try to refute.

Russian people love geopolitics. Every person can watch this every night on TV. People sit and discuss that America needs this, Russia wants this, France, if Le Pen wins, will have such and such interest.

A good metaphor is that people think of politics as a giant pool table. Balls of different masses roll on it. One giant ball is called the USA, a smaller ball is Russia, there is a ball called Iran, and there is a very small ball called Belgium. They roll around this billiard field and collide. A linear Euclidean picture of the world is formed: the mass of the ball depends on the force with which they collide and fly apart in different directions. This can be considered a parody of geopolitics. Geopolitics is geographical determinism, the geographical intelligence of the state.

There is an important idea here: statehood and politics are essentially geographical, linear concepts. How does Max Weber define sovereignty? This is a monopoly on violence within a certain territory. We gain sovereignty only at the moment when we talk about control over territory.

We can find practical geopolitical arguments in any political treatise, even in Aristotle's Politics. Here is a quote from it: “The island of Crete is, as it were, destined for domination over Greece. Its geographical position is excellent: it touches the sea, around which almost all the Greeks have their settlements.” Aristotle could have written this at the end of the 19th century: how geographical location dictates the political structure and relationships between various political subjects.

In the 19th century, the idea of ​​soil, biology and connection to territory appeared in geopolitics.

All this is connected with the era of romanticism, which naturally turns into the era of nationalism. The German romantics worked hard to transform the mixture of politics and geopolitics into a biological discipline. Germany began to realize its integrity as a single culture, as a linguistic, and then as a territorial project. Half a century after the German romantics, the project of a united Germany is being implemented by Bismarck. Later there would be the Franco-Prussian War, then two world wars - but all this stems from the beginning of the 19th century.

The German idea of ​​“blood and soil” is embedded in the texts of the German romantics, in the very concept of German culture. Herder and Humboldt write about this: how climate, soil and geography shape a political nation. This was discussed by the German geographer Karl Ritter, who first introduced the concept of Lebensraum - living space. Then one of the godfathers of geopolitics, geographer Friedrich Ratzel, declared that Lebensraum must expand, because a nation is a growing organism. And he demands new territories for himself.

The father of the term “geopolitics” is the Swede Rudolf Kjellen. He introduced this concept in 1916. Challen came from a wealthy landowning family and wrote extensively about the importance of landownership and the farmer to the idea of ​​the state. The agricultural component is very important in understanding geopolitics. Geopolitics is a peasant idea, the idea that the state grows on the earth.

The socioeconomic roots of geopolitics date back to late modernity. The golden age of geopolitics was 1870–1945. It was not by chance that I set these dates - three major wars that bypassed Europe and then the whole world fit between them: Franco-Prussian, World War I and World War II. What era is this? This is the era of the height of romanticism, romanticism and nationalism, when nations began to imagine themselves as organic unities. This is a time of incredible technical progress, which is captured in the books of Jules Verne, in the ideas of world exhibitions, in airship construction. This is the era of mechanized killing.

This is all the era of imperialism. In this regard, grandfather Lenin was right, who wrote about imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism. Yes, indeed, between the two world wars we are experiencing the highest point of European empires, which can expand with the help of all modern technologies and collide in the struggle to redivide the world.

The organizers asked to mention several authors and key terms. This is Friedrich Ratzel, who says that the state is an organism. The American Admiral Mahan was the first to talk about sea power and two different types of geopolitical governance - maritime and continental. Mahan wrote that the great oceans were ruled by maritime powers: first Spain, then Holland, and then Great Britain. Now this is America. This is Rudolf Kjellen, who invented the term “geopolitics”. Briton Halford Mackinder, who talks about the Heartland and the Rimland. The coastal countries of the rimland become hotbeds of democracy and capitalism, while the heartland is a huge Eurasian continental mass with authoritarian empires. One may recall Karl Haushofer, one of the favorite theoreticians of German fascism. He talks about pan-regions, which can be compared to orange slices. There is, for example, a middle segment - Germany, Europe, North Africa - in which, accordingly, Germany should rule.

The key term for geopolitics is space. In geopolitics they talk about different fields, marginal fields, central fields, cross fields where the interests of different states collide, regions, borders. This is the idea of ​​resource, power, struggle for limited resources. World politics as Darwinian competition for the same limited resource - coal. And this is the concept of interest. A nation is a unitary unit that has a common interest and acts in its name.

Geopolitics is entirely described by only one of many political theories - “political realism”. It has been the dominant theory of international relations for over two thousand years. People tend to think of world politics in realist terms. Let's remember Thucydides' "Peloponnesian Wars", when the Athenians say that the strong do as they want, and the weak suffer what they must. Here's a typical realist argument.

Moving on to the second part of my speech, I want to ask a question that was asked very often in the second half of the last century: is geopolitics as a theory responsible for the catastrophes of the 20th century? Can we make geopolitics responsible for Nazism, for the Holocaust, for the crimes of Stalinism, for the deportations of peoples, for the colonial crimes of the West? A theory cannot be responsible for anything. Marx is not responsible for Pol Pot or the Cultural Revolution in China. Ratzel, Mackinder and Haushofer are not responsible for the crimes of Nazism or for Stalin's deportations of peoples.

However, it must be clearly understood that geopolitics expressed a certain ideology of a huge period of European history - the period of modern times. This is modernity, when we thought in terms of territory - power, resources, competition. All our ideological baggage is based on this.

On the other hand, already in the second half of the 20th century we began to understand that the world had changed very strongly and irreversibly. The world after the atomic bomb and with the United Nations, the Bretton Woods system and the European Union is fundamentally different. Here it is, geopolitics: the world is divided into spheres of influence, the Soviet Union maintains a 13 million army in the center of Europe, has consolidated a huge part of the former Russian Empire and even seized lands that never belonged to Russia. At the same time, the second half of the 20th century becomes the era of the decline of empires.

Things are beginning to spread that geopolitics cannot handle. For example, the spread of institutions and norms such as the European Union. It started in 1957. The European Union is generally not described by geopolitical concepts or ideas about hard power.

There are several very different views on international relations. Before this we talked about political realism. But there is also a theory of liberalism. She says the world is governed by institutions and norms. The world does not have to exist according to the Darwinian idea of ​​zero-sum games - after all, there are positive-sum games. This is not a Hobbesian war of all against all, but a Kantian state of an ideal world, which may be unattainable, but which must be strived for as a horizon.

The main thing that the theory of liberalism calls into question is whether there is a national interest at all? The entire political experience of the last 50–70 years shows that national interest is a very conditional thing. My Dutch co-author Peter Vanham asked: “What is the national interest of Holland?” This is not a rhetorical question. Identities and levels of policy making have changed enormously.

Here I will go into the field of international relations. The unit of analysis in political realism is the state. In liberalism or structuralism it ceases to be the only level of analysis. This could be a supranational entity, like the European Union or the World Trade Organization. This could be a sub-state entity, like individual regions. Geopolitics cannot cope with the concept of what are the separate interests of Catalonia or what are the separate interests of Scotland, which does not want to join the UK in leaving the European Union. The state ceases to be the point at which national interest is formulated. At the same time, the entire geopolitical structure is falling apart.

Russia was practically not affected by the ideological changes that I spoke about. Neither the theory of liberalism, nor especially the theory of constructivism, which says that politics is a set of speech acts, and the state is an imaginary community, have taken root in our country.

Russia is a retroactive country. It goes back to the golden age of geopolitics - 1870-1945. This is partly explained by the fact that the classical geopolitics of the first half of the 20th century was carried out in the Soviet Union almost until its collapse. The Soviet Union was a classic empire, primarily concerned with its own borders and influence throughout the world. As a result, the USSR ended up in a war in Afghanistan, getting involved in the latest geopolitical and post-colonial adventure. This led to imperial overstretch and collapse.

After the collapse of the USSR, geopolitics remained the only way to look at the world. In fact, it represents the ruling class's view of the world. In this capacity, it is convenient for the masses. This is a very convenient explanatory model of the world, which simplifies all world interactions, reducing them to the struggle of powerful forces. In general, we have a very strong slave psychology, that everything depends on external forces, everything does not depend on us. The master will come, the master will judge us; the Rothschilds and Rockefellers will come and decide among themselves how the world will work; The United States will come, Trump or Obama will come, Merkel will come, and they will sort everything out among themselves.

Russia's fascination with geopolitics is obvious. It is written in Russian ideology, cultural and political tradition, in the extreme underdevelopment of political thinking, in the absence of its own independent political philosophy, in geography itself. The history of Russia is its geography. Russia is fascinated by space.

Geopolitics has become a refuge for post-imperial ressentiment, nostalgia for the past. Geopolitics has become retropolitics. Russia yearns for the time when Stalin kept an army of 13 million in Europe. This is a dream of a bygone era of imperial power, when there were linear measurements of power. Now it still seems that Russia’s power lies in the fact that it can deliver a limited tactical nuclear strike, win a tank battle and reach the English Channel in 3 days. We understand how unrealistic these ideas are, but they capture the imagination of politicians and the masses and are broadcast from television screens. Caricatured characters appear, like Alexander Dugin, Leonid Ivashov or Natalya Narochnitskaya. All their arguments come down to measuring power in tank armies and nuclear missile potential.

A caricatured vision of geopolitics is increasingly characteristic of countries that have not integrated into globalization. Retrospective views are characteristic of countries and elites that do not see themselves in the current world order. Russia's geopolitical discourse is one of the signs that these people and concepts have lost. Russia is driving itself into a corner.

Is it dangerous? To a certain extent, yes. It's like homeopathy. Yes, it's harmless, it's a placebo. Then why was it declared pseudoscience and why does it need to be talked about? Because it can divert resources from real illnesses, from true healing of a person. A person may lose critical time when he could turn to classical medicine and save his life. It's the same with geopolitics. We can say: whatever the child amuses himself with. Let them entertain ideas of a rush to the Indian Ocean, where a Russian soldier will wash his boots. Geopolitics can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I can offer an example of current Russian policy towards Ukraine and Crimea. The entire policy towards Ukraine is formed by geopolitical reasoning: if Maidan wins in Ukraine, then there will be NATO bases in Voronezh; If Maidan wins in Ukraine, then the US sixth fleet will be in Sevastopol. This is being said very seriously without understanding that NATO needs Ukraine even less than Russia needs Ukraine. America has a completely different strategy for projecting its national interests. American power is measured by completely different parameters.

Russia thinks in completely archaic categories, but acts in modern political circumstances. The decaying, bleeding Donbass is a manifestation of geopolitical thinking in the post-geopolitical world. In the 19th century, this would have been considered a natural military acquisition for Russia. In the 21st century, this is a wound in the body of Ukraine, this is a wound in the body of Russia, this is an element that weakens Russia’s position in the world order. Here is an example of how geopolitical reasoning leads to completely catastrophic conclusions.

It's the same with the Arctic. Russia is trying to operate in the Arctic in geopolitical terms. We will build military bases there, we will not give our resources to anyone, we will not allow others to extract oil. This is an example of traditional geopolitical reasoning: our towers will be there, our submarines will be there, everything up to the North Pole will be ours. In reality, the threats emanating from the Arctic are of a completely different class. They relate to ecology, to the survival of humanity, to the cleanliness and pollution of the Arctic coast. But this is not part of geopolitics at all. In the coming years we will see a quasi-geopolitical clash regarding the Arctic.

How to carry out dezombification? Who can tell me now what Russia’s national interest is? I can understand what Putin’s interests are, I can understand what Rottenberg’s interests are, I can understand what Sechin’s interests are. But to what extent do Sechin’s interests relate to Russia’s national interests? To what extent do Gazprom's interests coincide with Russia's national interests or are contrary to Russia's national interests?

National interest is a chimera that explains absolutely nothing. We need to break out of traditional realist and geopolitical thinking, to realize that this is a Russian provincial pastime, a small-town response to the complexity of the global world.

Russia is belatedly adopting and embodying with redoubled force many Western concepts, such as atheism. In the West, there has long been a tradition of atheism in the form of the enlightened atheism of Voltaire. In Russia, atheism in the 20th century turns into a formal fight against God, the destruction of churches and the fight against priests.

It's the same with geopolitics. This is a legitimate Western concept that is in line with world political theory. But when in the 21st century people put it on the banner of the state and make it the only possible view of the world, building their foreign policy based on geopolitical principles - this is pathology.

Geopolitics on the world stage reflects our internal political statism and authoritarianism, if we talk about the dominance of the dictates of the state in our internal life. I am sure that the interests of individuals and corporations are behind our international politics. But people from TV screens are fed by the idea that there is a certain Russia that has a certain national interest and which this interest somehow projects into the outside world. This is geopolitics, which the population is zombie.