| Article Index |
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| GEOPOLITICAL PATTERNS OF EURO-ATLANTICISM |
| 2. GLOBAL BALKANS |
| 3. ENDNOTES |
| All Pages |
With the US-European current debate on international issues (NATO’s new role, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the European foreign and security policy and the strategy on terrorism), it is necessary to reinterpret the transatlantic relationship.
Hence, how the US should redimension its contribution to European security and how the EU should commit to the new global challenges seem to be main issues to be addressed at the Bucharest NATO Summit in April 2008. If not all of it, then a piece of the answer is linked with South Eastern Europe and the Black Sea region. This paper points out that with NATO enlargement to the East, the Euro-Atlantic dimension in Europe has actually strengthened. The new NATO and EU countries should have their own contribution to both NATO and EU policies. Poland and Romania have become allies and promoters of the Atlantic perspective in Eastern Europe and therefore players of the Euro-Atlantic strategy. As a region, South Eastern Europe is about to play a significant role in the stabilizing strategy of Euro-Atlanticism for the Caucasus and Central Asia due to its geographic location next to the new Heartland. The region of the Black Sea is pivotal for Euro-Atlanic strategy of the area this paper calls “the new Global Heartland”. NATO and EU have become regional players at the Black Sea which can give Euro-Atlanticism a new dimension.In April 2004, NATO's frontier moved to the Baltic-Black Sea isthmus, including Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia and the Baltic countries in the North Atlantic Alliance and giving Euro-Atlanticism a new geopolitical landscape. A decade ago, no one would have thought a Latvian airman would fly at the outskirts of St Petersburg or that a Bulgarian fisherman would hoist a NATO flag while sailing on the Black Sea. Constanta in Romania has become an important NATO sea and air base next to the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Middle East.
In May 2004, the European Union also enlarged eastwards to include 10 new members into the club of the most prosperous countries in the world. Prague, Warsaw and Budapest are now again part of the Western world. It is the biggest step the Europeans ever made. In 2007, more new members (Bulgaria, Romania) joined the EU as well. In 2008, EU and NATO overlap in Central and South Eastern Europe, creating an arc of security and stability from the Baltic to the Black Sea. (..)
Enlargement and the relationships of both USA and EU with third parties (Russia,
the Muslim world, Iraq, Middle East) have certainly changed the substance of the
Trans-Atlantic relationship. Therefore, this paper examines whether there is merely a readjustment of the American-European relationships or a dramatic change. On the one hand, it seems the American presence in Europe and the perpetuation of Europe’s role as a Euro-Atlantic platform will not diminish in the near future. On the other hand, EU enlargement to Central Europe and improved EU-Russia political cooperation have increased the land-power strategic capability which is Europe.(…)
In order to clarify this aspect, one should take into account the differentiation between the concepts of sea-power and land-power by which the British scholar Sir Halford Mackinder, the founder of modern geopolitics, coined the term of Heartland in 1904. It seems Mackinder foresaw and built the geopolitical modern thinking in the light of the opposition between land-power and sea-power.
Therefore, from a geopolitical point of view, the bases of the Euro-Atlantic power are on the European continent and they rely on the integration of Europe into an Euro-Atlantic coherent strategy. By contrast, the sources of Eurasian power lie in transforming Europe into a land-power and breaking the Atlantic relationship.(…)
Halford Mackinder’s theory of Heartland seems to catch quite accurately the character, on the one side, of the West perspective which means, in the modern age, Atlanticism, ie the primacy of the individual, economic liberalism, protestant democracy and urban life and, on the other side, of the continental Eastern perspective which means hierarchy, communitarism, authoritarianism and rural life.1 Therefore, on a longue durée, the core question of Euro-Atlanticism is about continuing the EU-US partnership and expanding it further to the East.(…)
If NATO had not been created, the USA would have found something else to serve
the American hegemonic interest in Europe. In the American geopolitical thinking, NATO transcends the breakdown of the Soviet Union and the reasons of its very existence pass over the issue of the Soviet communism. NATO is the tool America uses to be a European power. Between 1949-1991, NATO was linked with Western Europe. After 1991, NATO is mainly about Eastern Europe.
Christopher Layne recently called the geopolitical equilibrium of Europe and America offshore balancing: establishing American hegemony on the Eurasian mainland through a sea-power strategy.2 (…) On the one hand, American presence in Europe has the unintended consequence to maintain EU in a pre-unification stage due to the fact that, by the American presence, the Europeans lack the very reason for political unification and global action. On the other hand, any initiative aimed at politically unite Europe should not lead to replacing the American presence.(…) NATO enlargement to Eastern Europe has consolidated Euro-Atlanticism and the US presence in Europe.
By preserving and enlarging NATO and by the current process of EU redefinition, Europe needs some more time to define a common foreign and security policy. Neither could the individual EU countries adopt a straightforward foreign policy, because of the internal EU political procedures, nor could they raise the EU as a political entity, because of incomplete integration processes within the Union. Being geopolitically dependent on the Atlantic relationship does not mean having no role in current international affairs, only that the important countries (Germany, France) have to accommodate their national traditional role within the EU as yet the Union has not acquired a proper role. (…)
GLOBAL BALKANS
Global Balkans, a new wording of current geopolitics, was submitted by Zbiegniew Brezezinski as a form to define the space between Europe, the Persian Gulf and the Far East comprising the Caucasus, Central Asia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria.3 Brezezinski defines the Global Balkans as “the most volatile and dangerous region of the world – with the explosive potential to plunge the world into chaos – [that] will be the crucial swathe of Eurasia between Europe and the Far East. (…) It is here that America could slide into a collision with … Islam while American-European policy differences could even cause the Atlantic Alliance to come unhinged.”4
What is the geopolitical relevance of the Global Balkans? This area has 68 percent of world oil reserves and 41 percent of natural gas. In 2020, the United States, Europe and the Far East will consume 60% of world oil and gas. In such
conditions, the interest of each geopolitical entity in the world energy reservoir is quite understandable. The matter now is how to stabilize this area so that its transformation into an energy supplier in the 21st century is not endangered.
Taking into account the current US interest in the area and its longue durée
geopolitical relevance, one might call it the New Heartland or the Global Heartland.
The neighbouring countries to the Global Balkans – Russia, Turkey, Israel, India, Pakistan – have limited capabilities to contribute substantially to its stabilization. Israel could not get involved in the Global Balkans because of its size, while each of the others, starting with Russia, failed to do so in the past. India can not get involved due to its conflict with Pakistan, while Turkey takes a low profile because of the Kurdish issue. In such conditions, the Euro-Atlantic community should activelly contribute to stabilizing the Global Heartland. For that to happen, access to the Global Heartland is critical, hence the relevance of Baltic and South Eastern European countries as a safe strategic base and of the Black Sea as a safe sea route. (…)
With the American initiative to stabilize the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Gulf and with the European involvement in Afghanistan, one could conclude that the circle of global Euro-Atlantic strategy closes. “Atlantic” and “European” organizations have spread from Georgia to Kazakhstan and Armenia in the former Soviet republics. Practically, with the end of the Cold War, with NATO enlargement and the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, one could notice the globalization of the Euro-Atlantic civilization, based on sea-power, with all of its economic (market), political (democracy), ideological (freedom) and technological (Internet) expressions.
In the 21st century, the Heartland to decide geopolitical supremacy semms to be geographically Eurasiatic, but geopolitically it is Euro-Atlantic dominated. As the above map suggests, by getting involved in Central Asia, one might say the sea-power challenges the heart of the land-power.
ENDNOTES
1. In 1919, Mackinder’s main work was published in an updated edition with the title Democratic Ideals and Reality. Mackinder became "the grand old man of British geography" who, with the development of his New Geography, led the field from an age of exploration to an age of education (see Martin, Geoffrey J & James, Preston E, All Possible Worlds: A History of Geographical Ideas, Wiley Text Books, 1993.)
2. Christopher Layne, “America as European Hegemon”, in The National Interest, No 72, Summer 2003, pp17-31.
3. Zbiegniew Brzezinski, “Hegemonic Quicksand”, in The National Interest, No 74,
Winter 2003/04, pp5-17.
4. Brzezinski, op cit, p5.
Revised and updated paper published at the Conflict Studies Research Centre, UK
Ionel Nicu Sava is a Professor of Sociology and Security Studies and a founding member of the Center of Geopolitics, University of Bucharest. Presently he is holding the position of Ambassador of Romania in Switzerland
