The US oscillates between its isolationist custom and involvement in Eurasian stakes. European leaders have traditionally been unable to forge a unified coverage on protection and international coverage – additionally they disagree on Ukraine. The West’s cacophony isn’t just a symptom of the oft-reported weak management; there’s something deeper – an as but unacknowledged problem to the following European Parliament. Behind the occasions and up to date initiatives, warlike or in any other case, lurks a query that had been pushed from collective reminiscence first by the division of Europe throughout the Chilly Conflict after which by American super-hegemony.
Within the altering world, the European nations are after all too small to face up to the geopolitical competitors of powers akin to the USA, China, tomorrow India. The query is the place the present European financial “giants” needs to be oriented, because it realizes the necessity to mix financial with geopolitical energy. Will it look inward to develop into a continental energy; or will it retain the maritime traditions which, up to now, secured world supremacy? Will Europe-continent prevail, oriented centripetal to all of the lands, or Europe-archipelago, with poles between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, open to Africa? Will the emphasis be on the cohesive continental mass or on the peninsulas and gulfs, the interpenetration of land and sea? Will Europe transfer ahead with the continental values of centralism and hierarchy or with the maritime values of democracy and freedom? How will he interpret as we speak’s “picket partitions”?
Following Halford Mackinder’s evaluation, the Anglo-Saxon powers, previously England, then the USA, acted decisively to forestall the “continentalization” promoted generally by Berlin, generally by Moscow, generally collectively – as in Rapallo or with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Nonetheless, with the, not at all times selfless, interventionism, they created dissatisfactions that are expressed within the tone-deaf assertion of European autonomy. Due to this fact, “Europe-continent” to free Europeans from American servitude?
Russia constantly feeds this rhetoric. Its propaganda repeats advert nauseum that the US economic system is benefiting from the conflict in Ukraine, the implications of that are being suffered by Europeans. It seeks to capitalize on the revival of a geopolitical imaginative and prescient that, within the post-war interval, was formulated as “Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals” by Basic de Gaulle and as a “Frequent European Home” by Mikhail Gorbachev.
Each European nation is positioned in a different way. Germany has a unique perspective, with the custom of Ostpolitik and robust financial complementarities with the Russian area; one other is Poland and the Baltic States, with the traumatic experiences from the perennial Russo-German convergence. The initiative for the “three seas”, 4 after the latest accession of Greece, reveals the priority of those nations. It goals at a North-South financial and geopolitical axis, alongside the European isthmus. It seeks to mitigate the financial and geopolitical impression of the visitors and power axes bequeathed by Japanese Europe’s dependence on the Soviet Union; additionally, to open Japanese Europe to maritime visitors.
The traditional European geopolitical stakes run by way of the confrontations of the 2 World Wars and the Chilly Conflict. They’re reviving as we speak as the worldwide geopolitical map is being reshaped. In any case, the tip of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict and the inevitable re-normalization of Euro-Russian relations will deliver again dilemmas that have been beforehand “outdated”.
Within the query of continent or archipelago, Greek pursuits catalytically merge with “archipelago”, maritime Europe. The Greek MEPs shall be known as upon to defend it. Their contribution should develop into extra geopolitical than earlier than. The choices of the following 5 years will transcend, in long-term impression on important nationwide pursuits, the “Delores packages” and the therapy of financial points.
* Mr. George Prevelakis is Emeritus Professor of Geography and Geopolitics, Sorbonne College (Paris 1), and Distinguished Visiting Professor, Hellenic American College.
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