From the perspective of the ‘US-Russian peace’, the efforts that both Europe and China could exert to affirm their own sovereignty are thus an equal source of concern, for they disrupt the game which the USSR and the USA have driven themselves to play.
The Prevalence of the East over the European Rimland
Adopting, yet modifying Mackinder’s notion of a ‘world island’ and its Heartland, Spykman170 (an American) shifts the Heartland eastwards towards Russia and China, defining the World Island as a ‘sea realm’ embodied by the Americas and the Pacific. Into the midst of the two entities, he introduces the Rimland and ‘coastal world’ fringe, incarnated by monsoonal Asia and peninsular Europe. He proceeds to demonstrate that the continental Heartland and the maritime World Island clash over the Rimland and that global security depends on this historical issue. Western Europe thus remains at the ‘centre of the Earth’: ‘He who rules the Rimland commands Eurasia; he who rules Eurasia commands the world’s destinies’.
According to Mr Eric Muraise, one can define the tactic embraced respectively by the Russian continental power and the maritime American power in the following manner: ‘The continental power strives to expand itself to sea, so as to be in the closest possible position to threaten either the territory of the maritime power or its maritime communications. By contrast, the maritime power (i.e. the USA) does its best to punctuate its maritime communications with military bases and aims to acquire a disembarkation pathway in the Rimland (i.e. Europe) in order to contain and plague its adversary. From both parties’ perspectives, what these manoeuvres render particularly interesting are isthmuses and straits, and from the maritime power’s perspective, the surveillance islands located off their opponent’s coast and the ones that enable it to expand its communications, in addition to various geographical and political peninsulas where it can establish and sustain itself at low cost’ (in Relations de la polémologie, de la géopolitique et de la géostrategie).171
The difficulties and apparent impossibility to engage in a direct East-West confrontation have restored the importance of flanking manoeuvres, meaning that of straits (Gibraltar, Dardanelles) and secondary maritime spaces (the Baltic, the Mediterranean), as well as the significance of certain border areas where adversaries compete for influence.
From this angle, the prevalence of the Eastern Bloc seems obvious. And it is the USSR that is now particularly endowed with a fleet that enables it to fight for oceanic hegemony under previously unheard-of conditions. This implies that the Heartland (a continental power) has become more maritime than the World Island (traditionally a maritime power) has managed to evolve into a continental one. Russia’s efforts to obtain permanent access to the Mediterranean space, its ploys in the Bosporus and the Balkans, and its coveting of post-Tito Yugoslavia (a position that would grant it access to the Adriatic) all make perfect sense in this respect.
On the continent itself, the increased mobility exhibited by the Soviet army, the qualitative and quantitative increase affecting its armament and the sheer size of its tank divisions (40,000 armoured vehicles) would allow it to simultaneously strike at the southern and eastern flanks of the European Rimland, in a display of decisive speed.
In parallel to this, whenever battle cannot be waged using military or conventional methods, it is systematically transferred to the domain of propaganda and subversion through the broadcasting of incapacitating myths (intoxication, disinformation, emotional blackmail) that do not aim to annihilate the adversary’s means, but to eradicate any and all will that could drive him to make use of the latter.
On both sides, this will to act is thus no longer the same. Scalded by its own clumsy experiences, the USA is clearly striving for disengagement, a disengagement that happens to be consistent with its historical tradition. Facing China, the USSR has, on the contrary, been feeling the need to cover itself completely on the western front. Due to all these developments, the European challenge is undergoing a simultaneous loss of significance on the American side and an increase in importance on the Russian front.
Geopolitically speaking, as foreseen by Admiral Castex172 prior to the outbreak of war, the entire strategy espoused by the Russian continental power aims to achieve domination over Eurasia by means of consecutive thrusts towards both the East and the West, with the understanding that the Kremlin always feels compelled to cover itself in the opposite direction to its efforts. So as to attack China, it must thus secure itself against its satellites’ longing for independence, and in order to reinstate order in the Communist Bloc, it must make sure that its Siberian borders remain protected.
It is therefore clear that the entire world is changing. As America surrenders to self-doubt, the Russians undertake to prepare themselves. As for Japan, it has reached a crossroads. On its part, the Chinese nation longs to embrace its own destiny, while the Arabs attempt to assert their power and the Third-World experiences an endless birth. Meanwhile, Europe remains at stake in this game, pending the time when it itself will turn into an active player. New ambitions are taking shape, and there are powers that seek to impose themselves.
Whether explicitly or not, geopolitics is more present than ever.
***
In an essay published around 1950 and entitled ‘Der Schritt zum Atlantik’ (Oesterreichische Landsmannschaft, Vienna), Austrian general Heinrich Jordis-Lohausen analysed the geopolitical consequences stemming from the Soviet stranglehold that Central Europe was subjected to in the aftermath of the war.
More recently, in World Power Assessment — A Calculus of Strategic Drift (Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, 1976), professor Ray S. Cline (of Georgetown university) attempted to follow a novel approach to geopolitics, which he redubbed ‘polytechtonics’. He proposes the following formula: PP = (C + E + M) x (S + W). ‘C’ represents the ‘critical mass’, i.e. the result of the interaction between the population in question and the overall territorial surface; the two acting, according to Cline, as the factors that determine a nation’s power. ‘E’ refers to economic strength, with the nation’s GNP, trade balance, involvement in global trade, etc. embodying its decisive elements. ‘M’ represents military capacity, while ‘S’ and ‘W’ correspond respectively to national strategy and governmental will. In this equation, ‘PP’ stands for ‘perceived power’.
By resorting to this formula, Ray S. Cline attempts to evaluate the ‘critical mass’ of our world’s major regions, which he has baptised ‘polytechtonic zones’. The author has identified the latter as being eleven in total: Northern and Central America; the USSR, Cuba and Eastern Europe; China, Indochina and North Korea; Western Europe; North Africa and the Near-East; South Asia; South-Eastern Asia; North-Eastern Asia; South America; Central and Southern Africa; and Australia and New Zealand. Save for the first two, all these regions are considered ‘peripheral’, since there are friction factors that impact all of their ‘borders’. With regard to Western Europe, its greatest handicap lies in its artificial separation from Eastern Europe, as well as in its lack of genuine will towards asserting its presence as a sovereign force. At the same time, Mr Cline defines the US ‘W’ factor (Will) as being ‘reactive’ rather than ‘dynamic’. What is remarkable is that when one proceeds to calculate things in accordance with the above-mentioned formula, one finds that it is still in Western Europe that one encounters the greatest ‘perceived power’ (PP). Europe thus remains ‘the world’s geopolitical centre’, in the sense that any modification affecting the power relations in this area would lead to a necessity to re-deal the cards on a global scale.
In an essay entitled ‘Problématique mondiale et problématique stratégique militaire’173 (published in ‘Etudes polémologiques’,174 April 1975), Mr Eric Moraise demonstrates that far from rendering geopolitical data obsolete, the evolution of nuclear deterrence has actually reinstated its importance. Indeed, it seems that the limits of deterrence are determined by its own development.
These limits do not re
late solely to the consistent growth of the strike means that are available on both sides (which the Vladivostok Arms Control Agreement only managed to affirm), but also to a number of factors that complicate strategic simulation to a point where the latter is partially robbed of its meaning and is assimilated to a hyper-abstract logical calculation, one that is becoming increasingly harder to do. Among these factors, Mr Muraise lists the growing accuracy of missiles used in retaliatory strikes; the development of the Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV) missile (which can no longer be intercepted);175 the rising uncertainty pervading enemy identification, an uncertainty that is due to the dissemination of atomic weapons (or perhaps even to their ‘handicraft’ production); the increasing number of ‘players’ and their various motivations; and so on.
Furthermore, people forget all too often that in terms of dissuasion, the ‘raw’ data matters less than the manner in which each partner assesses it. Potential warmongers may indeed evaluate both the pressure factors that restrict their own freedom of action and the likelihood of their own survival once the threat takes actual shape in entirely different manners. However, such subjective assessment (which, incidentally, can hardly ever relate to quantifiable data) does not merely depend on the conditioning of each partner, but also on the norms and scales of specific values in accordance with which both the hope for victory and the benefits and losses one expects to experience in the moral and material domains are perceived differently by each side. And it is apparently in this specific sphere that a hiatus exists between the mentalities, a hiatus that strategic observers seldom take into account as a result of their belief in the mental homogeneity of all global partners.
It is for all the reasons mentioned above, ranging from ‘graduated deterrence’ to ‘flexible retaliation’, that one now witnesses ‘the birth of a strategic irrational whose bizarreness is accentuated by the Russian doctrine, which makes no secret of the fact that in the event of a conflict, Russian troops would urgently undertake to obtain irrevocable guarantees and present their principal adversary with a ‘fait accompli’ before the latter reconciles himself to a nuclear exchange. In other words, there was once a time when the very threat of an atomic war was enough to evade the perspective of conventional war; nowadays, however, one hopes to elude the perils of atomic warfare by waging a conventional blitzkrieg’, says Mr Muraise.
The Zeitschrift für Geopolitik was once again published from 1956 to 1962 by Kurt Vowinckel, under the auspices of the ‘Institut für Geosoziologie und Politik’ in Bellnhausen über Gladenbach/Hessen, an institute headed by Dr. Rolf Hinder. At the time, American Ewald W. Schnitzer published an essay on geopolitics in post-war Germany entitled German Geopolitics Revived — A Survey of Geopolitical Writing in German Today (Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, 1954).
In the US, the small-scale periodical Potomac — Geopolitical Assessments, which is chaired by Mr Alexander E. Ronnett (4728 N. Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, 60625), has been published on a quarterly basis since 1975.
To find out more about the Hess-Haushofer relations, it is recommended that you read James Leasor’s Rudolf Hess — The Uninvited Envoy (published by Presse de la Cité, 1962–1963), J. Bernard Hutton’s Hess — The Man and the Mission (David Bruce & Watson, London, 1970), Roger Manvell’s and Heinrich Fraenkel’s The Rudolf Hess Affair (Stock, 1971), and especially Lord James Douglas-Hamilton’s Motive for a Mission — The Story Behind Rudolf Hess’ Flight to Britain (Laffont, 1972), which makes use of a considerable number of previously unpublished documents.
Furthermore, concerning Haushofer, a book in excess of a thousand pages has been announced for publication in Germany: Hans Adolf Jacobsen’s Karl Haushofer — Leben und Werk176 (In two volumes, Harald Boldt, Boppard/Rhein, 1977–1978).
Theoreticians
From Clausewitz to Mao Zedong
Unless one has read the enormous treatise entitled ‘On War’, one always quotes the same sentence written by Clausewitz (‘War is the continuation of politics, but through different means’), while simultaneously remaining oblivious to the special circumstances in which this universally relevant sentence was penned: the collapse and subsequent war of liberation in Prussia, in the aftermath of the Empire’s great wars.
The year is 1806. The French have crushed the Prussian army at Jena-Auerstedt. On the 27th of October, Berlin is occupied. As king Frederick William III flees to Eastern Prussia and settles in Memel, Napoleon177 and the Tsar divide Western Europe between themselves at Tilsit.
At Russia’s request, Prussia is allowed to survive as a state. However, it is stripped of its territories that lie west of the Elba (Napoleon offers them to his brother, Jérôme, who is granted sway over the kingdom of Westphalia). To the east, the duchy of Danzig178 is reconstituted, acting as France’s ally. A French garrison is stationed there. Last but not least, Prussia is expected to pay a war indemnity and banned from having an army of more than 42,000 men.
The French stranglehold over Germany is absolute. Faced with the ‘ogre’, Europe is secretly divided between ‘collaborators’ and ‘resistance fighters’.
Born in 1780, Karl von Clausewitz watches these events unfold with the greatest possible attention. A career military man, he had already taken part in the 1792 campaign against France, when he was just twelve years old. As a flag bearer. For the time being, one man monopolises both his hate and admiration: Napoleon.
Following the defeat, Clausewitz participates in the ‘reconstruction’ and is among the ‘reformers’ asked by the king to administratively reorganise the army. The purpose is to turn Prussia into the departure point of a genuine war of ‘national liberation’, as well as to allow Germany to reconquer its freedom and unity.
The innovation lay in the presence of the Landsturm, the popular military troop whose organisation Clausewitz and Scharnhorst undertake to prepare. ‘The Landsturm’, Clausewitz writes, ‘must spread and continue in its defensive efforts through unforeseen attacks, rather than simply concentrate within a single area and run the risk of remaining confined to a narrow refuge as part of a standard defensive position’ (such is the harassment tactic, with immediate ‘disengagement’).
All across the country, national fervour reaches intense levels. The news of the Spanish uprising galvanises energies. In 1809, Major Ferdinand von Schill stands at the head of a hussar Freikorps and manages to reach Westphalia. He is, however, repelled towards the coast and dies defending Stralsund. Napoleon has all his officers shot. In 1813, Frederick William III decrees general mobilisation. Volunteers flock; the population offers its gold and women their jewellery. Poets Ernst Moritz Arndt and Theodor Körner praise this ‘sacred struggle’.
Prussia succeeds in creating an army of 300,000 men, an exceptional performance in a diminished and impoverished country.
The fighting resumes. Gradually, French troops are compelled to retreat, eventually withdrawing to the other side of the Rhine. The Rhine Confederation is dissolved and the Treaty of Fulda signed, a treaty that guarantees the right of sovereigns to retain the whole of their territorial possessions.
In 1815, upon Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, the constituent act of a new Germanic Confederation is signed.
Although Clausewitz is put in charge of the military Academy of Berlin from 1820 to 1830, he is mostly entrusted with administrative tasks. ‘His students suspected him of being overly fond of good wines, since his reddened nose still bore traces of the Russian campaign’, Mr Raymond Aron reminds us in Revue de la défense nationale,179 January 1973. Clausewitz passes away in 1831, without ever having cast his military uniform aside. A large and unfinished manuscript constitutes his sole legacy: it is a treatise entitled ‘On War’ (This treatise was later translated into French and published in 1955 by Les Éditions de Minuit).
Clausewitz, who had started writing the manuscript in 1815, bequeathed it to his wife (born Maria von Brühl), appointing her with the task of ensuring its publication. How
ever, it was only the first two chapters that he considered to have been finalised; hence a ‘warning’ in which he protested in advance against various inevitable misinterpretations.
Despite its inadequate format, or perhaps even its rather obscure structuring, On War remains, to this very day, a classic. It is a practical manual interspersed with philosophical reflections, one that focuses on the lessons to be drawn from the military experiences of the early 19th century. Even though every war has its own specific features, there are also common traits that are shared by all wars. What Karl von Clausewitz ponders is ‘what aspects are similar and which different when comparing wars’.
Perpetual Peace?
In Clausewitz’s eyes, war does have its own ‘absolute essence’, for it is part of human nature and, beyond the realm of man, belongs to the logic of life as a whole. During the 20th century, Spengler made the following declaration: ‘Whatever one does, war remains a fact and pacifism an idea’.
Mr Julien Freund writes:
Whether one curses it or not, war is still one of the essential characteristics of the human condition, even if it cannot be justified any more than evil ever could. And yet, is it truly evil? Or even an evil? Is it not the case that societies often perceive war as a source of fulfilment? How could anyone reconcile their admiration for revolutionary exploits and conquests with a simultaneous condemnation of violence and war? (…) Whether we like it or not, there is no longer anything historical about the pacifistic philosophical conception of history, since it has stripped its notion of future humanity of all that has, until now, given history all of its meaning; thus ultimately, perhaps, rejecting history itself. For how are we to label as historical something that has, in fact, never taken place?
Systems and Debates Page 10
