The Rise of Arab Power
During the 1930s, at a time when the geopolitical school was constantly gaining in importance, its promoter would be asked to exercise official functions. On 12th February, 1934, Hess established the Volksdeutsche Rat (The Council for Foreign People of German Origin) and entrusted Karl Haushofer with its presidency. From 1934 to 1937, the latter was also a presidium member at the German Academy. From 1938 onwards, he contributed to the management of the Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland (VDA), which dedicated its efforts to the defence of ‘Germanity’ beyond the country’s borders.
Dedicated to Rudolf Hess, Haushofer’s book entitled Weltpolitik von heute (Contemporary Global Politics) sold more than 100,000 copies. In it, he predicted, among other things, the rise of Arab power.
At the university of Munich, Karl Haushofer founded a geopolitical institute of worldwide fame, an institute whose programmes focused on both pure research and applied research. Thanks to the variety of information gathered on a global scale, this establishment was able to supply upon request entire files on a huge variety of topics.
Soon, an association of geopoliticians (Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Geopolitik) is founded at the university of Heidelberg. And it was in this very same city that editor Kurt Vowinckel, who espoused Haushofer’s views, took charge of the latter’s publications (Vowinckel would go on to become the head of the German Editor Association). Geopolitics thus entered the university scene. Albrecht Haushofer himself taught at the Institute of Advanced Political Studies in Berlin, which he linked to an ‘increased potential for practical action’ (he would subsequently conduct diplomatic missions to Czechoslovakia, England and Japan).
New branches would soon surface on the fringe of geopolitics and geostrategy: geo-medicine, geo-psychology, geo-jurisprudence, geo-sociology, and others.
A Number of Rules
Following in Kjellén’s footsteps, geopoliticians believe that the state cannot be analysed independently from its own natural environment. The state is a living being. As such, it is born, it grows and it passes away. During its existence, it may ally itself to a ‘consort’, have children (colonies), be placed in trusteeship (to the benefit of another state) and suffer from growth maladies. It can also have some of its organs amputated.
The idea is nothing new, as it dates back to Greek and Roman antiquity. It is, however, the German line of thought that endowed it with newfound vigour. On 23rd October, 1828, Goethe told Eckermann:152 ‘If one compares the state to a living organism comprising numerous cells, one can also draw a parallel between its Capital and a heart that maintains both life and well-being in all those cells, regardless of their proximity or distance’ (see also Jakob von Uexküll, Staatsbiologie, 1920 and 1933).
If a single people scatters itself across many states, this dispersion will result in a flourishing of art and sciences, but also in the lessening of its political power and its hope for continuity. In this respect, the example of Greek states, in contrast with Rome, is highly compelling.
In certain cases, the population is closely connected to its living environment through its very constitution, as there is a selection process that takes place within it in accordance with the surroundings. This is what we refer to as a specific environment (in Haushofer’s view, geography is the science that deals with the specific character of terrestrial and maritime space).
In their Emführung in die Geopolitik (Introduction to Geopolitics), B. G. Teubner, Richard Hennig and Leo Kürholz enumerate the natural factors with a potential to impact the existence of states: the climate, localisation, fauna and flora, forests and landform, hydrographic network and coastal length, border permeability and approach roads, terrestrial shape and outline, soil distribution, capacity for external relations (especially by sea or in the latter’s direction), transit advantages for neighbouring states, maritime rhythms, landscape, and many others. These constant factors are then contrasted with variable ones, including demographic evolution, the potential wealth in terms of resources and the ability to exploit them, cultural and spiritual affinities, and so on.
According to these authors, this contrast determines the capacity of states or statal groups (which are joined together by a kinship founded upon ‘behavioural’ similarity) to adapt to their environment. And it is from this ‘physiological’ adaptation that the present or potential political situations which these states are compelled to face actually stem.
All the data that seems most stable, such as space, territory, natural resources, etc., takes on an entirely different aspect the very moment one analyses it while taking into account man-made innovations, cultural and historical imprints, the ‘geographical temperaments’ (of the maritime, rural or highland type) found at the highest statal positions, popular mentalities, the country’s position (maritime, coastal or other), and so on.
And it is particularly the notion of border that must be revised. Save for a few extreme cases, ‘natural borders’ come across as being a mere myth. Very few countries seem endowed with borders that are as ‘natural’ as those of Italy, and yet the latter did not achieve unity before Germany. Major rivers (such as the Rhone or the Rhine) are at least as much a source of unity as one of separation, if not more so. The ‘iron curtain’, an expression that was born from a purely political and deliberate statement, was much more of a border than the Alps or the Pyrenees. And last but not least, the unexpected discovery of a deposit or the sudden development of a technology could, at any given moment, call the territorial breakdown into question. The oil factor, for instance, has utterly transformed the relative interdependence between the masses represented by different states.
The chief notion in geopolitics is that of homogeneity. The Siberian plain, for instance, is homogeneous from the Amur to the Ural: not a single point acts as a physical barrier between these extremities. What this means is that Siberia could never be subject to long-term division: it will either be entirely Russian or entirely Chinese.
Homogeneity could also be the result of history. Geopoliticians have pointed out the existence of long-lasting ‘civilisational fronts’ such as the ancient Roman limes, which has left an indelible mark upon Europe in every domain. The geo-climatic unity of a given space may facilitate civilisational exchanges and enable a common political evolution. This is the case with the Mediterranean area, which has submitted, in turn, to Roman, Islamic, Italian and French hegemony (among many others) and has nowadays become the focus of US-Soviet rivalry, as confirmed by the fact that both the US and the USSR maintain the presence of fifty to sixty war ships there.
Every space has a ‘geopolitical centre’ of its own, and it is the island of Malta that embodies the Mediterranean one. On 7th January, 1975, Li Xiannian, the third Chinese deputy Prime Minister, declared:
‘China supports the just position espoused by the Maltese government, a government that believes that all countries bordering the Mediterranean should free themselves from the controlling hegemony of superpowers’.
It thus becomes clear that, whatever the ideology embraced by the ruling caste, there are major historical-geographical constants that govern statal existence, resulting from the position that a certain state occupies on the map in relation to its neighbours. Political regimes may change, but invasion routes and the location of key sectors remain the same.
The natural south-eastern route followed by the German expansion leads through the Danuban basin, which was also, at one point, part of the path taken by the Crusaders. During the 17th century, the Turks used it in their attempt to enter Europe all the way to Vienna. It is protected by the Carpathian rampart, which has always halted all invasions that have come from the East, notably the advance of the Tsarist armies in 1914–1915.
The so-called ‘strait policy’ has been a constant in the Kremlin’s historical activity. Already in the 19th century, the Tsars, who longed to take control of the Dardanelles, concentrated their efforts on the region stretching from the Carpathians to the Black Sea.
In 1828, they invaded both Wallachia and Dobruja. Half a century later, in 1877, they penetrated the Moldavian plain once again and broke through the Shipka Pass in the hope of reaching Constantinople. Between these 2 military campaigns, many things had changed. Transylvania, for example, had fallen into the hands of the Habsburgs, who were friends with the Russians. The strategy itself, however, remained unaltered, for neither the Carpathians nor the Danube could ever change location.
Having become a Socialist Republic, Russia has still not renounced its desire to seize the Dardanelles, an area that would allow it to control maritime navigation between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Hence its endless plotting in Greece and Turkey.
There is yet another example: the geo-strategic similarity of all campaigns targeting Russia. In 1707, Swedish king Charles XII attacks Peter the Great. Having captured Minsk and Smolensk, his troops suffer defeat in Poltava (in 1909), following a harsh winter. A hundred years later, the Great Napoleonic army (Grande Armée) regroups in the very same region of the lower Vistula as the Swedish army. Having crossed the Neman, it advances towards Moscow, always through the same gate of Smolensk. Eventually, it is vanquished under circumstances that we are all familiar with. During World War I, the German-Austrian offensive stopped at an eighty-five-kilometre distance from the ancient Russian-Polish border: the power distribution between all present forces highlights the prevalent importance that characterises the Moscow direction. Finally, in 1942, the Wehrmacht is defeated at Stalingrad under the exact same conditions as the Swedish army in Poltava.
There are certain zones, therefore, that can be considered naturally ‘polemogeneous’. This is true of straits (Bosporus, Gibraltar, Suez); of the Siberian corridor that connects the southern Urals to the Amur Plain; of the Trentino region, including the Brenner Pass, which acts as a natural passageway from Central Europe (Bohemia, the Balkans, etc.) to Italy, and particularly the Valtellina valley, near Lake Como, which the Francs, Teutons, Ostrogoths, Spaniards, French and Italians have all fought for.
Not all constants are, however, of a geographic nature. The average strategic speed characterising land operations, for instance, has barely evolved over the past centuries, A modern armoured task force is hardly faster than a 13th-century Mongolian cavalry.
Whatever the age, maritime powers have always been relatively unattainable when it comes to the immediate undertakings of continental powers. Aviation has done little to alter this state of affairs, since only soil occupation and the long-term interception of all communication lines could ever have a significant impact on the level of conventional military efforts.
A ‘Sense of Space’ and Creative Dynamism
Geopolitics is nonetheless more than mere determinism. Indeed, the natural environment is but a framework in which specific human factors come into play. And it is the intervention of these factors that enables the actualisation of that which, previously, was no more than a potentiality. The expansion of a given people depends on its inherent vitality (which is, in turn, determined by its will to power, cultural homogeneity, historical youth, and so on) rather than on uniquely territorial predestinations. Haushofer gives the following clarification: ‘Every geopolitical consideration requires a personal and heroic adjustment… The intervention of a powerful personality puts an end to purely rational pursuits and interpretations’.
In 480 BC, during the battle of Thermopylae, Leonidas153 managed to resist his enemies despite having merely 300 Spartans at his disposal. As for Alexander the Great,154 he set out to conquer the entire area that stretches from the Near-East to the Indus with an army of 37,000 men. In 1519–1521, Hernán Cortés155 and his 500 companions took control of the Aztec Empire. From 1578 to 1581, Yermak156 and his army of 500 Cossacks vanquished the empire of Mongolian Khans and delivered western Siberia back into the Tsars’ hands. In 1756–1757, the small Prussian state managed to liberate itself from the Austrian yoke, although it faced three great powers that had allied themselves against it…
Combining the views advocated by Ratzel,157 Kjellén and Mackinder,158 Haushofer founds his notion of the world on two principal conceptions: space (Raum), which is defined by magnitude, physical characteristics and climatic traits, and the position (Lage) of any such space in relation to other surroundings spaces.
He points out that one’s ‘sense of space’ (Raumsinn), meaning one’s aptitude to organise space by granting the surrounding world a creative sort of dynamism, acts as a criterion of political action. And it is this very sense of space that vanishes most quickly among decadent nations.
‘Space does not merely convey power. It is power’, says Haushofer.
Incidentally, what geopoliticians stress is not the static notion of an empire (Reich), but rather the dynamic concept of a ‘Middle Europe’ (Mitteleuropa). This term, whose history has been traced by Mr Henry Cord Meyer159 in Mitteleuropa in German Thought and Action, 1815–1945 (Matinus Nijhoff, La Hague, 1955), has been used to demonstrate the fact that Germany, which is located ‘in the middle of Europe’, has always been compelled to struggle, whether on the eastern or the western front, so as to defend its own ‘vital space’ or Lebensraum (coined by Ratzel, this word would soon be incorporated into common parlance).
Haushofer bases his viewpoint on the ideas espoused by Halford Mackinder, a British geographer and politician according to whom the ‘centre of the world’ is embodied by a World-Island, an ensemble comprising Eurasia and Africa. At the core of the latter, one encounters a key region, the Heartland, which corresponds to ‘Middle Europe’ and spreads all the way to Poland and Russia. The struggle to appropriate this sector is thus seen as the ‘ultimate battle’ (Endkampf) in the true sense of the word.
Mackinder states: ‘Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island commands the world’.160
It was Bismarck161 who once stated: ‘Bohemia is a fortress established by God at the very centre of Europe. He who controls it is master of Europe’.
There are two great types of power: the maritime kind and the continental kind. Each has its own advantages and drawbacks. The progressive spreading of continental power, which implies the complete occupation of conquered territories, is ultimately always a source of weakness for it, especially in light of the fact that a maritime power can take control of overseas resources quite easily and that it retains the option of intensifying its actions from the safety of its maritime refuge at any given time and on whatever land may seem convenient. By contrast, one of the main positives of continental power lies in the technology of modern transport. Taking advantage of the depth of its own territory, it can manoeuvre with greater ease and keep a major part of its resources beyond the reach of all maritime powers. Through a series of blitz-attacks, it can even stamp out what, from its own perspective, constitutes an obstacle: time.
Regardless of whether they are maritime or continental, great powers are driven towards territorial expansion. From a geopolitical point of view, the latter comes across as being inevitable. It belongs to the ‘biological’ characteristics of states: the logic of life commands each state to expand.
In 1931, Georg Wegener162 made the following declaration: ‘The drive towards territorial expansion is among the most basic and most normal signs that point to statal good health’. According to geopoliticians, this fact prevails over all principles, and no international authority could ever prevent it from being true.
This results in a certain number of rules. — Whenever a state carves out its own enclaves on foreign soil, any space located between these enclaves and the state in question finds itself threatened with annexation. The appropriation of the Alsace-Lorraine region by the French crown under Louis XIV163 was preceded by the creation of the Metz, Toul and Verdun Bishoprics within the German territory. Similarly, the establishment of Rhineland enclaves at the hands of Prussia triggered the downfall of Hanover. The consequence is that, nowadays, every pro-Soviet poli
tical or ideological geographical enclave founded in Western Europe would threaten the latter in its entirety. — A nation’s possession of vast overseas territories is bound to arouse a temptation to conquer further spaces that are located in between and have the potential to reinforce its political and military power. However, only the states that are endowed with a capacity for maritime expansion could ever allow themselves to abide by such a policy. In the past, this was true of England and its implantation tactic, a tactic connected to the growth of the East India Company. — As for colonies, only those where the colonisers themselves proceed to cultivate conquered soil have a long-lasting future. Karl Haushofer writes: ‘Just like geopolitics, history teaches us that, no matter how powerful the coercion means and regardless of whether one masters the soil by force or by right, land possession cannot last once an adverse layer has been introduced’. — Artificial states that are established by major foreign powers in an effort to facilitate their own ambitions have no future whatsoever. Their lifespan is that of a mere policy. — Even when characterised by an equal degree of genuine coercion, the colonisation implemented by a continental power tends to be perceived as such far more intensely than in the case of a maritime power. Indeed, the only thing that the latter requires are safe bases that allow it to control global maritime routes, whereas the former is compelled to occupy the entire space concerned, all the way to the sea. — Whenever the powers that confront each other over the same issue are of equal strength, the strategy shifts towards peripheral regions. Today, the northern hemisphere’s ‘balance of terror’ has shifted the US-Soviet confrontation towards the polar regions, the Near-East, the Indian ocean, etc. — Last but not least, insular nations are simultaneously characterised by their openness to all external suggestions and impressions and by their contrasting aptitude to implement these suggestions within a relatively closeminded mental frame (According to Ratzel, this ‘openness’ and ‘closemindedness’ ‘guarantee the development of life-forms towards their highest possible flourishing point’).
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