Foundations of Geopolitics, a Puke(TM) AudioBook Alexander Dugin

A Darlek Audio Book. This is not an endorsement,
merely an attempt at the portrayal of the original work.

Show more

Translators Note

This work was published towards the end of the 20th century by Alexander Dugin.
Translation is the process of transforming information from one set of symbols to the closest representation using a different set. As in translating computer code, certain approximations must be made. Unlike a deterministic bijective process, translation requires a degree of interpretation, with the goal being the maintenance of the spirit of the work. In doing some several sentences have been broken up. Also the footnotes are expressly in English, or the most rudimentary non-English and are presented in line with the text. Chapters remain, though section numbering has been removed. Several terms unique in the work, such as the term “great space” or “dry land” are left in.

This Audiobook has been translated and prepared by Puke On A Plate, who, as an internet slave is a solely owned subsidiary of the Darleks.
==========================================
Editorial.

The history and fate of geopolitics as a science is paradoxical. On the one hand, the very concept seems to have become familiar and actively used in modern politics. Geopolitical journals and institutions are multiplying. Republished texts of the founders of this discipline are circulated and conferences, symposiums, geopolitical committees and commissions are being organized. Until now though, geopolitics has not been in the category of the conventional recognized sciences.
The foundational geopolitical works of Frederick Ratzel, Rudolf Kjellen, and especially Halford Mackinder were met by the scientific community and public with hostility. Classical science, inheriting in full the critical spirit of early positivism, believed that geopolitics claims excessive generalizations, and was therefore a kind of quackery.

In a sense, the sad fate of geopolitics as a science was also connected with the political side of the problem. It has been argued that the war crimes of the Third Reich invasions and deportations were largely theoretically prepared by German geopoliticians who allegedly supplied Hitler's regime a pseudoscientific base. Preeminent in this group was the German geopolitician Karl Haushofer, who at one time was quite close to the Fuhrer. However, German geopolitics at the theoretical level was essentially no different from the Anglo-Saxon geopolitics of Makinder, Mahan and Speakman, the French of Vidal de la Blash or the Russian military geography of Milyutin or Snesarev.

The difference was not the specific views of Haushofer, which were completely logical and adequate in their discipline themselves, but in the methods of a number of its geopolitical provisions. Moreover, the specifics of Germany's international policy in the 1930s and 1940s and its most repulsive manifestations sharply contradicted the ideas of Haushofer himself.

Instead of a continental bloc along the Berlin-Moscow-Tokyo axis, there was an attack on the USSR. Instead of an organicist understanding in the spirit of Schmitt's theory of the rights of peoples, there were the doctrines of Lebensraum, living space, vulgar nationalism and imperialism. It should also be noted that the school of Haushofer and his magazine Zeitschrift fur Geopolitik were never elements of the official Nazi systems. Like many intellectual groups, the so-called conservative revolutionaries in the Third Reich led an ambiguous existence. They were simply tolerated, and this tolerance varied depending on the momentary political conjuncture.

However, the main reason for the historical oppression of geopolitics is that it too bluntly shows the underlying mechanisms of international politics that different regimes most often prefer to hide behind with vague rhetoric or abstract ideological schemes.

In that sense one can draw a parallel with Marxism, at least in its purely scientific and analytical part.

Marx more than convincingly reveals the mechanics of production relations and their connection with historical formations. Geopolitics exposes the historical demagoguery of foreign policy discourse and reveals the deep mechanisms affecting international, interstate and interethnic relations.
But if Marxism is global revision of classical economic history, then geopolitics is a revision of the history of international relations. This last consideration explains the dual attitude of society towards geopolitical scientists. The scientific community stubbornly does not allow geopoliticians into their environment, harshly criticizing and usually not even noticing them.

The authorities on the contrary, actively use geopolitical calculations to develop international strategies.

This was the case for example, with one of the first geopoliticians, a genuine founding father of this discipline, Sir Halford Mackinder. His ideas were not accepted in academic circles, but he himself directly participated in the formation of English politics in the first half of the 20th century. He laid the theoretical basis of the international strategy of England, which was intercepted by the middle of the century by the United States and developed by Mackinder’s American, and more broadly, Atlanticist followers.

The parallel with Marxism is in our opinion successful.

The method can be borrowed and applied to different areas. Marxist analysis is equally important for representatives of Capital and for those who would fight for the liberation of Labor.

Geopolitics is a representation of large states or empires and an instruction on how best to preserve territorial domination and expansion. Opponents find in it conceptual principles of the revolutionary theory of national liberation.

For example, the Treaty of Versailles was the work of Mackinder's geopolitical school and it expressed the interests of the West aimed at weakening the states of Central Europe and the suppression of Germany.

Mackinder's German student Karl Haushofer, utilized the same methodology and developed a directly opposite theory of European liberation, which was a complete negation of the logic of Versailles and formed the basis of the ideology of the emerging National Socialism.

Recent considerations show that even without being accepted in the commonwealth of classical sciences, geopolitics is extremely effective in practice, and in its significance surpasses many conventional disciplines in some respects.

Be that as it may, geopolitics as it exists today is gradually gaining official recognition and corresponding status. However this process is not at all smooth. Quite often we are faced with the replacement of the very concept of geopolitics, all more common as the use of the term becomes a common occurrence among non-professionals.

The emphasis shifts from the complete global picture developed by the founding fathers into particular regional ansatzes or geo-economic schemes.

At the same time, the initial postulates of geopolitical dualism, competition of strategies and civilizational differentiation are ignored, devalued, or even denied.

It's hard to imagine something analogous in some other science.

What would happen to classical physics and the concepts of mass, energy and acceleration, if scientists started implicitly to gradually deny the law of universal gravitation, to forget about it and then to represent Newton as a mythological figure that did not exist in reality or as a dark religious fanatic.

But this, mutatis mutandis, is precisely what is happening with geopolitics today. The purpose of this book is to present essential geopolitics objectively and impartially, free of preconceived opinions, ideological sympathies and antipathies. No matter how we are related to this science, we can make a definite opinion about it only by becoming acquainted with its principles, history and methodology.

==========================================
INTRODUCTION.

The definition of Geopolitics.

The works of numerous representatives of geopolitical schools, despite all their differences and regular contradictions add up to one big picture, which allows us to speak of the subject itself as something complete and definite. Authors and dictionaries differ among themselves in the definition of the main subject of this science and the main methodological principles. Such a discrepancy stems from historical circumstances, as well as from the closest connection of geopolitics with world politics, power issues and dominant ideologies.

The synthetic nature of this discipline suggests the inclusion of many additional subjects, such as geography, history, demography, strategy, ethnography, religious studies, ecology, military affairs, the history of ideology, sociology and political science. Since these military, natural and human sciences themselves have many schools and directions, it is not possible to talk with rigor and without ambiguity in geopolitics.

So what is the definition of this discipline, so vague and simultaneously expressive and impressive?
Geopolitics is a worldview, and in this capacity it is better to compare it not with the sciences, but with science systems. It is equivalent to Marxism, liberalism and other systems of interpretations of society and history, highlighting a specific basic principle and important criterion and reducing the importance of the other innumerable aspects of man and nature.

A clear analogy between geopolitics and Marxism was pointed out in 1943 by Karl Korsch in his book Historical views of geopolitics, where he wrote:
The new materialism of geopolitics has the same critical, activist, and in the traditional sense of the word idealistic character, as the early periods of the so-called historical materialism of Marx. As Marxism today strives towards conscious control over the economic life of society, so today's Haushoferism can be defined as an attempt at political control over space.
Quoted from New Essays, volume 6, 1943, page 817.

Marxism and liberalism equally emphasize the economic side of the human existence, the principle of economy as destiny. It doesn't matter that these two ideologies draw opposite conclusions. Marx predicts the inevitability of the anti-capitalist revolution, while the followers of Adam Smith consider capitalism the most perfect model of society.

In both the first and second cases a detailed method for interpreting the historical process, a special sociology, anthropology and political science is proposed. And despite the constant criticism of these forms of economic reductionism by alternative and marginal scientific circles, they remain the dominant social models on the basis of which people not only comprehend the past, but also create the future. By which we mean planning, designing, conceiving and conducting large-scale actions, directly affecting all of humanity.

The same is true of geopolitics. But unlike economic ideologies, it is based on the thesis of geographic relief as destiny.

Geography and space function in geopolitics in the same way that money and production relations do in Marxism and liberalism.

All fundamental aspects of human existence are reduced to them. They serve as the basic method of interpreting the past, they act as the main factors of human existence, organizing every other aspect of existence around them.

As with economic ideologies, geopolitics is based on proximity, on reductionism, the reduction of diverse manifestations of life to several parameters.

But despite the inherent limitations in such theories, they have impressive ability to explain the past and utility in organizing the present and designing the future.

If we continue the parallel with Marxism and classical bourgeois political economy, it can be said that like economic ideologies that affirm a special category of economic man, the homo economicus, geopolitics speaks of spatial man, predetermined by space, and its specific quality of relief and landscape.

This conditionality is especially pronounced in large-scale social manifestations of a person in states, ethnic groups, cultures, and civilizations. The relation of the individual to the economy is evident in both small and large proportions. So economic determinism is understandable to both ordinary people and authorities, operating in all social categories.

Perhaps for this reason, economic ideologies became so popular and carried out the mobilization function up to revolutions based on personal engagement in the ideology of many individual people. The main thesis of geopolitics is man's dependence on space, and it is seen only with some distance from the individual. For this reason and despite the prerequisites, geopolitics did not become an ideology proper, or more precisely, a mass ideology for the people. Its conclusions and methods, subjects of study and main theses are intelligible only to those social institutions that deal with large-scale problems and strategic planning, and understand global social and historical patterns.

Space manifests itself in large quantities, and therefore geopolitics is intended for social groups dealing with generalized realities, countries and peoples. Geopolitics is the worldview of power and the science of power for power. Only as a person approaches the top of society does geopolitics begin to reveal its meaning and its usefulness. Until that point it is perceived as an abstraction.

Geopolitics is the discipline of political elites, both current and alternative, and its whole history convincingly proves that it was dealt with exclusively by people who actively participate in the process of governing countries and nations, or are preparing for this role, or by alternative opposition ideological camps removed from power due to historical conditions.

Without pretending scientific rigor, geopolitics at its own level determines what is of value and what is not. Humanities and natural sciences are involved only when they do not contradict the basic principles of geopolitical methods. Geopolitics, in a way, itself selects those sciences and those directions in science that seem useful to her, ignoring all the rest. In the modern world, it is a ruler's quick reference book, a textbook of power that provides a summary of what should be considered when making globally fateful decisions, such as making alliances, starting wars, implementing reforms, restructuring society and the introduction of large-scale economic and political sanctions.

Geopolitics is the science of rule.

Tellurocracy and thalassocracy

The main law of geopolitics is the assertion of a fundamental dualism reflected in the geographical structure of the planet and in the historical typology of civilizations. This dualism is expressed in opposition of the land power of tellurocracy to the sea power of thalassocracy.

The nature of such confrontation is exemplified in the opposition of the commercial civilizations of Carthage and Athens to the military-authoritarian civilizations of Rome and Sparta. In other terms it is a dualism between democracy and ideocracy. From the very beginning this dualism has the quality of hostility though the alternativeness of two its constituent poles, although the extent may vary from case to case. All the history of human societies is thus seen as consisting of the two elements of water, liquid and fluid and land, solid and permanent.

Tellurocracy or land power is associated with the fixedness of space and stability of its qualitative orientations and characteristics. On the civilizational level, tellurocracy is embodied in thee settled way of life, the conservatism and in the strict legal standards to which large associations of people of the same kind, tribes, peoples, states and empires are organized. The firmness of land is culturally embodied in the firmness of ethics and sustainability of social traditions. Land and especially settled peoples alienate individualism and entrepreneurial spirit. They are characterized by collectivism and hierarchy.

Thalasocracy, or sea power as a type of civilization is based on opposite parameters. This type is dynamic, mobile and prone to technical development. The priorities are nomadism, especially seafaring, trade, and the spirit of individual entrepreneurship. The individual is the most mobile part of the team and is elevated to the highest value, while ethical and legal standards blur and become relative and mobile. Thalasocracy quickly develops, actively evolves and easily changes external cultural features, keeping only the internal identity and the general attitude unchanged.

Much of human history unfolds in a situation of limited scope. Both orientations can fall under the global dominance of tellurocracy. The earth element prevails over the entire ensemble of civilizations, and the ocean element acts only in fragments and sporadically.

Dualism remains up to a certain point at geographically localized seashores, estuaries and river basins. It develops in different zones of the planet with different intensity and in different forms. The political history of the peoples of the earth demonstrates the gradual growth of the political into ever larger forms. This is how states and empires are born.

This process at the geopolitical level means the strengthening of the space factor in human history. The nature of the major political entities of states and empires expresses the duality of the elements more impressively, reaching the level of more and more universal civilizational types.

At a certain moment, which can be termed the ancient world, a rather stable picture emerged, reflected for example in Halford Mackinder's work. The tellurocracy zone is consistently identified with inland expanses of North-Eastern Eurasia, that in general coincide with the territories of tsarist Russia or the USSR. Thalassocracy becomes discernible in the coastal zones of the Eurasian continent, the Mediterranean area, The Atlantic Ocean and the seas washing Eurasia from the South and West.

Three specific geopolitical features appear on the world map.

The Inland spaces become a fixed platform, a heartland, earth of the core, the geographical axis of history, which steadily preserves the tellurocratic civilizational identity.

Secondly, the Inner or continental crescent, coastal zone, or rimland represent a space of intensive cultural development. Here features of thalassocracy are obvious and they are balanced by many tellurocratic tendencies.

And thirdly, the outer or insular crescent representing the uncharted lands, with which only sea communications are possible. Carthage and the commercial Phoenician civilization establish their influence on the internal crescent of Europe from the outside.

This potential geopolitical picture of the relationship between thalassocracy and tellurocracy is revealed at the beginning of the Christian era, after the era of the Punic Wars. But it finally acquires meaning in the period of the formation of England as a great maritime power in the 17th and 19th centuries. The era of great geographical discoveries, which began at the end of the 15th century, led to the final formation of thalassocracy as an independent planetary formation, detached from Eurasia and its shores and completely concentrated in the Anglo-Saxon world of England, America and their colonies.

The New Carthage of Anglo-Saxon capitalism and industrialism took shape, becoming unified and whole, and since that time geopolitical dualism has acquired a clearly distinguishable ideological and political form.

The positional struggle of England with the continental powers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Germany and Russia was the geopolitical content of the 18th and 19th centuries and the first half of the 20th century. Since the middle of the 20th century the USA has become the main stronghold of thalassocracy.

In the cold war of 1946 to 1991, the age-old geopolitical dualism reached its maximum extent. Thalassocracy was identified with the USA, and tellurocracy with the USSR. The two global types of civilization, culture and meta-ideologies resulted in complete geopolitical contrast, which illustrated the entire geopolitical history of the opposition of the elements.

At the same time, it is striking that these forms of finished geopolitical dualism at the ideological level corresponded to two equally synthetic realities, the ideology of Marxism and socialism and the ideology of liberal capitalism. In this case, we can talk about the implementation in practice of two types of reductionism. Economic reductionism was reduced to opposing the ideas of Smith and the ideas of Marx, and geopolitical to the division of all sectors of the planet into zones controlled by the thalassocracy of the New Carthage, the USA and tellurocracy of the New Rome, the USSR.

The geopolitical vision of history is a model for the development of the planetary dualism to its maximum proportions. The original confrontation of Land and Sea spread all over the world. Human history is nothing but an absolute realization of this struggle.

This is the most general expression of the main law of geopolitics, the law of elemental dualism of Land versus Sea.

Geopolitical teleology

Until the final US victory in the Cold War, geopolitical dualism developed within its initial framework. It was about acquiring the maximum spatial, strategic and power volume by thalassocracy and tellurocracy.

In view of the build-up of nuclear potential by both sides, some pessimistic geopoliticians
saw the outcome of this whole process as catastrophic. Having fully mastered the planet, the two powers had to either endure the confrontation outside the earth, the theory of star wars, or mutually destroy each other in nuclear Apocalypse.

If it is obvious to this discipline that the nature of the main geopolitical process of history is the maximum spatial expansion of thalassocracy and tellurocracy, its outcome remains in question.
Therefore, geopolitical teleology, or the comprehension of the purpose of history in geopolitical terms, comes only to the moment of globalization of dualism and stops there.

Nevertheless, on a purely theoretical level, several hypothetical versions of the development of events can be singled out after which it will be possible to ascertain the victory of one of the two systems, tellurocracy or thalassocracy.

The first option is that the victory of the thalassocracy completely nullifies the civilization of the tellurocracy. In this case, a homogeneous liberal-democratic order is established on the planet. Thalassocracy absolutizes its archetype and becomes the only system of organization of human life.

This option has two advantages. First, it is logically consistent and can be seen as a natural completion of a general unidirectional flow of geopolitical history from complete domination of the traditional world to the complete dominance of the modern world. Secondly, this option actually occurs.

The second option is that the victory of thalassocracy ends the cycle of confrontation between the two civilizations, but does not extend its model to the whole world, and simply completes the geopolitical history, canceling its problems. Just as post-industrial theories of society prove that the main contradictions of the classical political economy and Marxism will be removed from society, so some mondialist theories claim that in the world to come, the confrontation between Land and Sea will be completely removed.

This is also the end of history, though the further development of events does not lend itself to such a strict analysis, as in the first option.

Both of these analyzes view the defeat of tellurocracy as irreversible and accomplished fact. The other two options treat it differently.

The third option is that the defeat of tellurocracy is a temporary phenomenon. Eurasia will return to its continental mission in a new form. This will take into account geopolitical factors that led to the catastrophe of the continentalist forces. The new continental block will have maritime borders in the South and in the West, becoming the Monroe doctrine for Eurasia. In this case, the world will return to bipolarity at another quality and another level.

The fourth option is a development of the third. In this new confrontation tellurocracy wins. It seeks to transfer its own civilizational model for the whole planet and close the story on its chord. The whole world typologically will turn into land, and ideocracy will reign everywhere. The outcome of such ideas were anticipated in the World Revolution and the planetary domination of the Third Reich.

Since in our time the role of the subjective and rational factor in the development of historical processes is greater than ever, then these four options should be considered not just as an abstract statement of the probable development of the geopolitical process, but also as active geopolitical positions that can become a guide to global action.

Geopolitics cannot offer any deterministic outcome. Everything here comes down only to a set of possibilities, the implementation of which will depend on many factors that no longer fit within the framework of a purely geopolitical analysis.

Rimland and the boundary zones

The entire methodology of geopolitical research is based on the application of the principle of global geopolitical dualism of the Land and Sea to more local categories. When analyzing any situation, it is the planetary model that remains the main and fundamental.

After highlighting the two main principles of thalassocracy and tellurocracy, the next most important principle is rimland, the coastal zone. This is the key category underlying geopolitical research.

Rimland is a composite space that potentially carries the possibility of being a fragment of either thalassocracy or tellurocracy. This is the most complex and culturally rich region. The influence of the sea element, Water, provokes in the coastal zone active and dynamic development. The continental mass presses on this area, forcing reorganization. On the one hand, rimland passes into the Island and the ship. On the other hand, to the Empire and the House.

Rimland is not limited however, to an intermediate and transitional environment in which counteraction of two impulses takes place. There is a very complex and independent logic influencing both thalassocracy and tellurocracy. It is not the object of history, but its active subject.

The fight for rimland between thalassocracy and tellurocracy is not a rivalry for the possession of a simple strategic position.

Rimland has its own destiny and its own historical will, which, however, cannot be resolved outside the basic geopolitical dualism. Rimland is largely free to choose, but not free in the structure of its choice, because there is no alternative to the thalassocratic or tellurocratic way.

In connection with this quality, the inner crescent is often generally identified with the area of ​​distribution of human civilization. In the depths of the continent reigns conservatism, beyond its limits the challenge of mobile chaos. Coastal zones by their very position are faced with the need to give an answer to the problem presented by geography. Rimland is a border zone, a belt, a strip and it is also a borderline. Such a combination leads to a geopolitical definition of the frontier.

Unlike borders between states, geopolitics understands this term differently, starting from the original model, in which the first boundary or archetype of all boundaries is the specific historical-geographical and cultural concept of rimland. The spatial volume of coastal zones is a consequence of looking at the mainland from the outside, on behalf of sea aliens. For the powers of the sea the coast is a strip extending inland. For the mainland itself the coast is the opposite. It is the limit, the line. The border as a line, as it is understood in international law as a rudiment of land jurisprudence, inherited by modern law from the most ancient traditions. This view is purely terrestrial.

But the view of the sea, external to the mainland, sees coastal areas as potential colonies, like strips of land that can be torn off from the continental mass, turned into a base and incorporated into the strategic space. Wherein the coastal zone never becomes completely their own, they can sit if necessary on a ship and sail away to their homeland, to their island. The coast becomes a strip precisely due to the fact that it is unsafe for aliens from the sea to go deep into the interior of the continent, but only a certain distance.

Since geopolitics combines both views of the space of the sea and land, then in geopolitics rimland is understood as a special reality, as a border-strip, and its qualitative volume depends on what momentum dominates in this sector, the land or the sea. The giant and quite navigable ocean coasts of India and China are lines, bands of minimum volume. The respective cultures are terrestrial in orientation, and the value of the coastlines tends to be zero, to become simply the end of the mainland.

In Europe and especially in the Mediterranean coastal zones are broad bands extending far inland. Their volume is maximum. But in both cases, we are talking about a geopolitical border. Therefore this category is variable and depending on circumstances, it varies from strip to area.

Geopolitics projects this approach onto the analysis of more particular problems related to borders.

Geopolitics views the borders between states as zones of variable volume. This volume of its contraction or expansion depends on the total continental dynamics. Depending on it, these zones change shape and trajectory within given limits.

The concept of a geopolitical border can include entire states. For example, the English idea of ​​a cordon sanitaire between Russia and Germany assumed the creation of a semi-colonial no man's zone that was oriented towards England and consisted of the Baltic and Eastern European states. On the contrary the continentalist policy of Russia and Germany tended to turn this zone into a line in the Brest-Litovsk, Rappalo, and the Ribbentrop-Molotov pacts.

The Atlanticist thalassocrats sought to expand it as much as possible, creating an artificial padding of states. At the same time the thalassocracies of England and the USA used a double standard. The thalassocrats sought to reduce the borders of their own Islands to the line, and to expand the coastal zones of Eurasia as much as possible. The continentalist geopolitics used exactly the same principle in the opposite direction, with borders of Eurasia becoming lines and borders of America stripes.

An analogy with the historical rimland as the cradle of civilization shows the utmost importance of border zones in more particular cases. Free from the need to bear the brunt of the geographical charge of history, border-zones quite often direct their energy into the cultural and intellectual spheres.

The art of the geopolitical strategy is the skillful use of this geopolitical potential of the opposing sides. At the same time, it was the sea forces that mastered this to perfection, since their actions were always based on the principle of maximizing and increasing the use of colonized territories. This distinguished them from the land conquerors, who after the seizure of the territory immediately began to consider it their own, and consequently hurried to squeeze everything they could out of them.

Geopolitics as destiny

The laws of geopolitics are extremely convenient for the analysis of political history, diplomatic history and strategic planning. This science has many intersections with sociology, political science, ethnology, military strategy, diplomacy, history and religion. With occasional clarity it was also indirectly connected with the economy, such that some geopoliticians proposed to found a new science of geoeconomics. In any case, in some aspects of the geopolitical method a recourse to economic realities are necessary.

At the moment, with the attraction of all types of sciences to synthesis, to fusion, to the creation new interscientific macrodisciplines and multidimensional models, geopolitics uncovers its importance both for purely theoretical research and for practical steps in management of complex civilizational processes from a planetary scale to the scale of individual states or blocs of states.

This is the science of the future which soon will be taught not only in special institutions of higher education and academies, but also in simple schools. With the help of geopolitical analysis, it is easy to comprehend entire eras of the historical development of countries and peoples.

With the expansion of information characteristic of our time the emergence and visualization of such simple reductionist methodologies is inevitable, since otherwise a person runs the risk of losing all reference points in the diverse and multidimensional chaos of a flow of heterogeneous knowledge.

Geopolitics is an invaluable aid in matters of education. Its structure is such that it could become an axial discipline at a new stage in the development of education. At the same time, the role of geopolitics in the broad social sphere is becoming more and more obvious.

The level of development of information and the active involvement of an ordinary person in events
unfolding all over the continent, and the globalization of the media bring to the fore spatial thinking in geopolitical terms, which helps to sort peoples, states, regimes and religions according to a single simplified scale so that the meaning of even the most elementary television or radio news is at least roughly understandable.

If we apply the simplest geopolitical grid of heartland, rimland or world Island to any message regarding international events, a certain clear interpretive model is immediately built, which does not require additional specialized knowledge.

NATO expansion to the East with such approach means an increase in the volume of rimland in favor of thalassocracy. An agreement between Germany and France regarding the creation of special purely European armed forces means a step towards the creation of a continental tellurocratic structure. The conflict between Iraq and Kuwait illustrates the desire of the continental states to destroy the artificial thalassocratic formation that prevents direct control over the coastal zone.

And finally a word about the influence of geopolitical methodology on the internal and external politics.

If the geopolitical meaning of certain steps of political parties and movements, as well as power structures becomes obvious, it is easy to correlate them with the system of global interests and therefore, to decipher their far-reaching goals.

For example, the integration of Russia with European countries and especially Germany is an advance for tellurocratic forces and Eurasians. From here one can automatically predict strengthening of ideocratic and socialist tendencies within these countries. Against this, a rapprochement between Moscow and Washington means submission to the thalassocratic line and with it inevitability a positional strengthening of market players.

The patterns of internal geopolitics and internal political processes of separatism of peoples inside Russia, the bilateral or multilateral agreements of various administrative entities and regions between themselves can also be easily interpreted in exactly the same light.

Each event in the light of geopolitics acquires a clear meaning. This geopolitical meaning cannot be regarded as the ultimo ratio of the event, but in any case, it always turns out to be eminently expressive and useful for analysis and forecasting.

The absence today of any textbook on this topic has prompted us to writing and compiling this book, which is an introduction to geopolitics like a science.

===========================================
PART ONE. The FOUNDING FATHERS OF GEOPOLITICS.

Chapter 1. Friedrich Ratzel and States as Spatial Organisms.

The Formation of the German organist school.

Friedrich Ratzel, who lived from 1844 to 1904, can be considered the father of geopolitics. In his writings he used the term political geography, and his main work published in 1897, is titled Politische Geographie.

Ratzel graduated from the Polytechnic University in Karlsruhe, where he took courses in geology, paleontology and zoology. He completed his education in Heidelberg, where he became a student of Professor Ernst Haeckel, who was the first to use the term ecology. Ratzel's worldview was based on evolutionism and Darwinism and colored by a pronounced interest in biology.

Ratzel volunteered in the Franco Prussian war, where he received the Iron Cross for bravery.
In 1876, Ratzel defended his thesis on Emigration in China, and in 1882 in Stuttgart published his fundamental work Anthropogeography, in which he formulated his main ideas: the connection of people’s evolution and demography with geographical data, and the influence of the terrain on cultural and of people’s political formation. But his most basic book was Political Geography.
He became a teacher of geography in a technical Institute of Munich, and in 1886 transferred to a similar department in Leipzig. In politics, he gradually became a convinced nationalist, and in 1890 he joined the Pan-Germanist League of Karl Peters. He travelled extensively in Europe and America and added ethnological research to his scientific interests.

States as living organisms.

In this work, Ratzel shows that the soil is a fundamental, unchangeable axiom, around which the interests of peoples revolve. Historical movements are predetermined by soil and territory. What follows is the evolutionary conclusion that the state is a living organism, but an organism rooted in the soil.
The state consists of the territorial relief and scale and their understanding of the people. Thus, the State reflects an objective geographical entity and the subjective nationwide understanding of this reality is expressed in politics.
Ratzel considered a normal State to be one that most organically combines geographical, demographic and ethno-cultural parameters of the nation.
He wrote that states at all stages of their development are regarded as organisms which by necessity retain their connection with their soil and must therefore be studied from a geographical point of view. As ethnography and history show, states develop on a spatial base, more and more mating and merging with it, extracting more and more energy from it.

Thus, the states are spatial phenomena controlled and animated by this space; and geography should describe, compare and measure them. States fit into the series phenomena of the expansion of Life, being the highest point of these phenomena.

From this organicist approach it is clear that the spatial expansion state is understood by Ratzel as a natural living process, similar to the growth of living organisms.

Ratzel's organic approach is also reflected in relation to space or Raum itself. This space passes from the quantitative material category into a new quality, becoming a life sphere, living space or Lebensraum, a kind of geobioenvironment. Two other important terms follow from this.

Ratzel‘s spatial meaning Raumsinn and vital energy Lebensenergie. These terms are close to each other and denote a certain special quality inherent in geographical systems and their predetermining political design in the history of peoples and states.

These theses are the fundamental principles of geopolitics, in the form which it will develop somewhat later among the followers of Ratzel. Moreover, the attitude to the state as a living entity, an organism rooted in the soil, is the main idea and the axis of the geopolitical methodology.

This approach is focused on the synthetic study of the entire complex of phenomena, regardless of whether they belong to the human or non-human realm.

Space, like a concrete expression of nature or the environment, is seen as a continuous expansion of the inhabitant. The structure of the material itself dictates the proportions of the final work of art.

In this sense, Ratzel is the direct heir to the entire school of German organic sociology, the most prominent representative of which was Ferdinand Tennis.

Raum and the political organization of the soil

How Ratzel saw the relationship between ethnos and space can be seen from the following fragment from his book Political Geography:

The state is formed as an organism tied to a certain part of the surface land, and its characteristics develop from the characteristics of the people and the soil. The most important characteristics are size, location and boundaries, further followed by soil types along with vegetation, irrigation and finally relationships with other conglomerates of the earth's surface, preeminently with the adjacent seas and uninhabited lands, which, at first glance, do not represent a special political interest. The combination of all these characteristics constitutes a country, das land.
But when they talk about our country, everything that man has created is added to this, and to earth-related memories. So initially a purely geographical concept turns into a spiritual and emotional connection between the inhabitants of the country and their history. The state is an organism not only because it articulates the life of the people on immovable ground, but because this connection is mutually reinforcing, becoming something unified and inconceivable without one of the two components. Uninhabited spaces, unable to feed the State, are an historical fallow field. Inhabited space, on the contrary, contributes to the development of the state, especially if it the space is surrounded by natural boundaries. If the people feel to be naturally on their own territory, they will constantly reproduce the same characteristics that originate in the soil and are inscribed in it.

The law of expansion

The attitude to the state as to a living organism implied the rejection of the concept of inviolability of borders.
The state is born, grows and dies, like a living essence. Therefore, its spatial expansion and contraction are natural processes associated with its internal life cycle. In his book On the Laws of the Spatial Growth of States from 1901, Ratzel singled out seven expansion laws.

One, the extent of States increases as their culture develops.

Two, the spatial growth of the State is accompanied by other manifestations of its development. In the areas of ideology, production, commercial activity, powerful attractive radiation and proselytism.

Three, the state expands, absorbing and absorbing the political units of smaller significance.

Four, a frontier is an organ located on the periphery of a State, understood as an organism.

Five, carrying out its spatial expansion, the State seeks to cover the most important regions for its development: coasts, river basins, valleys and in general all rich areas.

Six, the initial impulse for expansion comes from outside, since the State is provoked to expand by a state or territory with a clearly inferior civilization.

And seven, the general tendency to assimilate or absorb weaker nations pushes to an even greater increase in territories in a movement that fuels the State.

It is not surprising that many critics reproached Ratzel for writing the Catechism for the imperialists. At the same time, Ratzel himself by no means sought to justify German imperialism, although he did not hide the fact that he adhered to nationalist beliefs. It was important for him to create a conceptual tool for an adequate understanding of the history of states and peoples in their relationship with space.
In practice, he sought to awaken the Raumsinn or space of feeling in the leaders of Germany, for whom geographical data is most often a dry academic science were it is presented as pure abstraction.

Weltmacht and the sea

Ratzel was largely influenced by his acquaintance with North America, which he studied well and devoted two books to. These were the Maps of North American Cities and civilization which was published in 1874 and The United States of North America which was published from 1878 to 1880. He noticed that the sense of space among Americans was highly developed, since they were faced with the task of developing empty spaces, having significant political-geographical experience of European history.

Hence, Americans meaningfully carried out what came to the Old World intuitively and gradually. So in Ratzel we are faced with the first formulations of another more important geopolitical concept, the concept of world power or Weltmacht. Ratzel noticed that large countries in their development have a tendency towards maximum geographical expansion, gradually reaching the planetary level. Consequently, sooner or later, geographical development must come to its own continental phase.

Applying this principle drawn from the American experience of political and strategic unification of continental spaces to Germany, Ratzel predicted for her the fate of a continental power. He also anticipated another major topic of geopolitics, the importance of the sea for the development of civilization.

In his book The Sea, the Source of the Power of Nations from 1900, he pointed to the need for every powerful nation to especially develop its naval forces, since this is required by the planetary scale of a full-fledged expansion.

That which some peoples and states, for example England, Spain and Holland, carried out spontaneously, land powers, and Ratzel had in mind of course Germany, must do meaningfully. The development of the fleet was a necessary condition for approaching the status of world power.

The sea and world power were already connected with Ratzel, although only with the work of later geopoliticians like Mahan, Mackinder, Haushofer and especially Schmitt did this theme acquire completeness and centrality.

The works of Ratzel are the necessary basis for all geopolitical research. In a condensed form, his works contain almost all the main theses that form the basis of this science.

The Swedish writer Rudolf Kjellen and the German Karl Haushofer based their concepts on Ratzel's books.

His ideas influenced Vidal de la Blache in France, Mackinder in England, Mahan in America and the Eurasianists Savitsky, Gumilyov in Russia.
It should be noted that Ratzel's political sympathies are not accidental. Almost all geopolitics were marked by a pronounced national feeling, regardless of whether it was clothed in the democratic Anglo-Saxon form of Mackinder and Mahan or the ideocratic form of Haushofer, Schmitt or the Eurasians.

Chapter TWO. Rudolf Kjellen, Friedrich Naumann and Central Europe

The definition of the new science

The Swedish born Rudolf Kjellen lived from 1864 to 1922 and was the first to use the term geopolitics. Kjellen was a professor of history and political sciences at the Universities of Uppsala and Gothenburg. In addition, he actively participated in politics as a member of parliament and was characterized by a pronounced Germanophile orientation. Kjellen was not a professional geographer and considered geopolitics, the foundations of which he developed, starting from the works of Ratzel, whom he considered to be his teacher, as part of political science.

Kjellen defined geopolitics with the quote:
This is the science of the State as a geographical organism embodied in space.

In addition to geopolitics, Kjellen proposed 4 more neologisms, which, in his opinion, were to form the main sections of political science. Ecopolitics, the study of the State as an economic force, demopolitics, the study of the dynamic impulses transmitted by the people State, an analogue of Ratzel’s term of Anthropogeography, sociopolitics, the study of the social aspect of the State, and kratopolitics the study of forms of government and power in relation to the problems of law and socio-economic factors.

While all these disciplines which Kjellen developed in parallel with geopolitics did not receive wide acceptance, the term geopolitics has become firmly established itself in the most various circles.

The state as a form of life and the interests of Germany

In his main work, The State as a Form of Life published in 1916, Kjellen developed the postulates laid down in the work of Ratzel. Kjellen, like Ratzel, considered himself to be a follower of German organicism, which rejects the mechanistic approach to state and society.

Rejection of the strict division of subjects of study into inanimate fixed objects of the background and human subjects as the actors is a distinctive feature of most geopolitics. This is this sense of the very name of Kjellen‘s main work.

Kjellen developed the geopolitical principles of Ratzel in relation to a specific historical situation in contemporary Europe.
He brought to its logical conclusion Ratzel's ideas about the continental state in relation to Germany. And he showed that in the context of Europe, Germany is a space that has axial dynamism and is called upon to restructure the rest of the European powers around itself.

Kjellen interpreted World War I as a natural geopolitical conflict that arose between the dynamic expansion of the German axis and the opposing peripheral European and non-European states of the Entente. The difference in geopolitical dynamics of growth, downward for France and England and upward for Germany predetermined the main alignment of forces.

However, from his point of view, the geopolitical identification of Germany with Europe is inevitable and inescapable, despite temporary defeat in the First World War. Kjellen secured the geopolitical maxim outlined by Ratzel, that the interests of Germany equal the interests of Europe and are opposed to the interests of the Western European powers, especially France and England.

But Germany is a young state, and the Germans are a young people. This idea of young peoples, which Russians and Germans were considered to be, goes back to Dostoevsky, and was not once quoted by Kjellen. Young Germans, inspired by the Central European space should move towards a continental state on the planetary scale because of the territories controlled by the old peoples, the French and the English.
At the same time, the ideological aspect of the geopolitical confrontation was considered minor by Kjellen.

Towards the concept of Central Europe
Although Kjellen himself was a Swede and insisted on the convergence of Swedish politics with German, his geopolitical ideas about an independent integrated meaning of the German space exactly coincide with the theory of Central Europe, or Mitteleuropa developed by Friedrich Naumann.
In his book Mitteleuropa from 1915, Naumann gave a geopolitical diagnosis, identical to the concept of Rudolf Kjellen. From his point of view, in order to compete with such organized geopolitical entities like England and its colonies, the USA and Russia, the peoples inhabiting Central Europe should unite and organize a new integrated political and economic space.
The axis of such a space will, of course, be the Germans. Mitteleuropa, in contrast to pure Pan-German projects, was no longer national, but purely a geopolitical concept, in which the main meaning was given not to ethnic unity, but to a common geographical destiny. Project Naumann meant the integration of Germany, Austria and the Danubian states and, in distant perspective, France.
The geopolitical project was also confirmed by cultural parallels. Germany identified itself with the spiritual concept of Mittellage, or the middle position.
Arndt formulated this back in 1818: God placed us in the center Europe; we the Germans are the heart of our part of the world.
Through Kjellen and Naumann, Ratzel's continental ideas gradually acquired tangible features.

Chapter Three. Halford Mackinder and the Geographical Axis of History.

Scientist and politician

Sir Halford J. Mackinder lived from 1861 to 1947 and is the brightest figure among geopolitics. Trained in geography, he taught at Oxford from 1887, until he was appointed director of the London School of Economics. From 1910 to 1922 he was a member of the House of Commons, and in the interval from 1919 to 1920 the British envoy to Southern Russia.

Mackinder is known for his high position in the world of English politics, the international orientations of which he very significantly influenced, as well as the fact that he owns the most daring and revolutionary scheme for the interpretation of the political history of the world.

The example of Mackinder most clearly manifests a typical paradox inherent in geopolitics as a discipline. Mackinder's ideas were not accepted by the scientific community, despite his high position not only in politics, but also in the scientific community itself.

Even the fact that for almost half a century he actively and successfully participated in the creation of English strategy in international affairs on the basis of his interpretation of the political and geographical history of the world, he could not force skeptics to recognize the value and effectiveness of geopolitics as a discipline.

The Geographic axis of history

Mackinder's first and most striking speech was his report the Geographical Pivot of history, published in 1904 in the Geographical Journal.
In it he outlined the basis of his vision of history and geography and developed it in further works.
Mackinder’s text can be considered the main geopolitical text in the history of this discipline, since it not only generalizes all previous lines of development of political geography, but the basic law of this science is formulated.
Mackinder argues that for the State, the most advantageous geographic position would be the middle or center position. Centrality is conceptually relative and may vary in any particular geographical context.
But from a planetary point of view, at the center of the world lies the Eurasian continent, and in its center is the heart of the world or the heartland. The heartland is a concentration of the continental masses of Eurasia. This is the most favorable geographical base to control the whole world.

Heartland is a key territory in a more general context within the World Island. The World Island of Mackinder includes the three continents of Asia, Africa and Europe.

Thus, Mackinder hierarchizes planetary space through the system of concentric circles. In the very center is the geographical axis of history or axial area or pivot area. This geopolitical concept is geographically identical to Russia. The axial reality is called the heartland, the earth of the core.

Next comes the inner or marginal crescent. This is the belt coinciding with the coastal spaces of the Eurasian continent.

According to Mackinder, the inner crescent is the zone of the most intense development of civilization.

This is consistent with the historical hypothesis that civilization originally arose on the banks of rivers or seas, the so-called potamic theory. Note that the latter theory is an essential element of all geopolitical structures.

The intersection of water and land spaces is a key factor in the history of peoples and states. This topic will be specially developed by Schmitt and Speakman, however, Mackinder was the first to derive this geopolitical formula.

Next comes a more outer circle, the outer or insular crescent. This zone is entirely external, both geographically and culturally with respect to the mainland mass of the World Island.

Mackinder believed that the entire course of history is determined by the following processes.

From the center of the heartland to its periphery is a constant pressure of the so-called barbarians.

This was especially clearly and fully reflected in the Mongol conquests. But they were preceded by the Scythians, Huns, Alans and other civilizations stemming from the geographical axis of history, from the innermost spaces of the heartland. These have, according to Mackinder, an authoritarian, hierarchical, undemocratic and non-commercial character.

In the ancient world, this is embodied in a society similar to Dorian Sparta or to Ancient Rome.

From the outside from the regions of the island crescent to the World Island, pressure is applied by so-called robbers of the sea or island dwellers. These are colonial expeditions stemming from a non-Eurasian center seeking to balance terrestrial impulses emanating from the interior of the continent.

Civilizations of the outer crescent are characterized by a commercial character and democratic forms of politics. In ancient times, this was the distinguishing characteristic of Athens or Carthage.

Between these two polar civilizational-geographic impulses there is a zone of the inner crescent, which, being dual and constantly experiencing opposing cultural influences, was the most mobile and has become, thanks to this, a place of priority in the development of civilization.

According to Mackinder history geographically revolves around the continental axis. This history is most clearly felt precisely in the space of the inner crescent, while frozen archaism reigns in the heartland, and in the outer crescent there is a certain civilizational chaos.

Russia's key position

Mackinder himself identified his interests with those of the Anglo-Saxon insular peace, i.e. with the position of the outer crescent.

In such a situation, the basis of the geopolitical orientation of the island world he saw was the maximum weakening of the heartland and the maximum possible expansion of the influence of the outer crescent on the internal crescent.

Mackinder emphasized the strategic priority of the geographical axis of history in all world politics and thus formulated the most important geopolitical law in his book Democratic ideals and reality, published in1919:

He who controls Eastern Europe dominates the heartland; he who dominates the heartland, dominates the World Island; one who dominates the World Island, dominates the world.

At the political level, this meant recognition of the leading role of Russia in the strategic sense.

In the Geographical axis of history, Mackinder wrote that: Russia occupies in the whole world as central a strategic position as Germany does in relation to Europe. It can carry out attacks in all directions and is exposed to them from all directions except the north. Full development of its railway opportunities is a matter of time.

Proceeding from this, Mackinder believed that the main task of Anglo-Saxon geopolitics is to prevent the formation of a strategic continental union around the geographical axis of history, meaning Russia.

Consequently, the strategy of the forces of the external crescent must be to tear off the maximum number of coastal spaces from the heartland and put them under the influence of the island civilization.

The shift in the balance of power towards the pivot state of Russia, accompanied by its expansion into the peripheral spaces of Eurasia, will allow use of huge continental resources to create a powerful navy: so close to the world empire. This will be possible if Russia unites with Germany.

The threat of such a development will force France to enter into an alliance with overseas powers, and France, Italy, Egypt, India and Korea will become coastal bases, where flotillas of external powers will moor to disperse the forces of the axial area over all directions and prevent them from concentrating all their efforts on building a powerful navy.

The most interesting thing is that Mackinder did not just build theoretical hypotheses, but actively participated in the organization of international support for the Entente white movement, which he considered an Atlanticist trend aimed at weakening the power of pro-German Eurasian Bolsheviks.

He personally advised the leaders of the white cause, trying to get the maximum support from the government of England.

It seemed that he prophetically foresaw not only the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, but also the Ribbentrop- Molotov Pact.

In his book Democratic Ideals and Reality from 1919, he wrote:

What will become of the forces of the sea if one day the great continent unites politically, to become the backbone of an invincible armada?

It is not difficult to understand what exactly Mackinder put into Anglo-Saxon geopolitics, which became the geopolitics of the United States and the North Atlantic Alliance half a century later. The main tendency, by any means to prevent the very possibility of creating the Eurasian bloc, the creation of a strategic alliance between Russia and Germany, geopolitical strengthening of the heartland and its expansion.

The persistent Russophobia of the West in the 20th century has not so much an ideological as a geopolitical character. Though, given Mackinder's connection between civilizational type and the geopolitical nature of certain forces, one can obtain a formula according to which geopolitical terms are easily translated into ideological terms. The Outer Crescent represents liberal democracy, the geographical axis of history is undemocratic authoritarianism and the inner crescent, is an intermediate model, a combination of both ideological systems.

Mackinder participated in the preparation of the Treaty of Versailles, whose main geopolitical idea reflects the essence of Mackinder's views. This agreement was drawn up in such a way to secure for Western Europe the nature of a coastal base for naval forces of the Anglo-Saxon world.

At the same time, he envisaged the creation of limitrophic states that would separate the Germans and Slavs, in every possible way preventing the conclusion between them of a continental strategic alliance, so dangerous for the island powers and, accordingly, democracy.

It is very important to trace the evolution of the geographic limits of the heartland in Mackinder’s writing.

In the 1904 article the Geographical axis history and in the 1919 book Democratic Ideals and Reality, his outlines of the heartland coincided in general terms with the borders of the Russian Empire, and later the USSR. Later in 1943 in the text The Round Planet and the Conquest of the World, he revised his previous views and withdrew from the heartland the Soviet territories of Eastern Siberia, located beyond the Yenisei. He called this sparsely populated Soviet territory Russian Lenaland after the name of the Lena River.

Russian Lenaland has 9 million inhabitants, 5 of which live along the transcontinental railway from Irkutsk to Vladivostok. For the rest, less than one person lives per 8 square kilometers. The natural wealth of this land of wood and minerals, is practically untouched.
The removal of the so-called Lenaland from the geographic boundaries of the heartland meant the possibility of considering this territory as an inner crescent zone, or a coastal space that could be used by the island powers to fight against the geographical axis of history. Mackinder, who was actively involved in organization of the intervention of the Entente and the white movement, apparently considered the historical precedent of Kolchak, who resisted the Eurasian center, as sufficient reason for consideration of the territories under its control as a potential coastal zones.

Three geopolitical periods

Mackinder divides the entire geopolitical history of the world into three stages:

One, the pre-Columbian era. In it, the peoples belonging to the periphery of the World Island, the Romans, for example, live under the constant threat of conquest from the forces of the heart land. For the Romans, these were the Germans, Huns, Alans, Parthians, etc. For the medieval ecumene, the golden horde.

Two, the Columbus era. During this period, representatives of the inner crescent coastal zones are sent to conquer the unknown territories of the planet, not encountering serious resistance.

And three, the Post-Columbian era. Unconquered lands no longer exist.

The dynamic pulsations of civilizations are doomed to collide, enticing peoples land into a universal civil war. This periodization of Mackinder with the corresponding geopolitical transformations brings us close to the latest trends in geopolitics, which we will look at in other parts of this book.

Chapter Four. Alfred Mahan and Sea Power.

Sea power

The American Alfred Mahan lived from 1840 to 1914 and in contrast to Ratzel, Kjellen and Mackinder, was not a scientist, but a military man. He did not use the term geopolitics, but his methodology, analysis and the main conclusions exactly correspond to a purely geopolitical approach. An officer of the United States Navy, he taught from 1885 the History of the Navy at the Naval War College in New Port Rhode Island.

In 1890 he published his first book that was titled Nava

Show less