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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

UKRAINE: EURASIANISM AND ATLANTICISM 

29 May, 1999 - 00:00

By Serhiy DATSIUK and Volodymyr HRANOVSKY, Humanitarian Technologies Agency
The Balkans are once again in this century the scene of a confrontation
between two basic geopolitical trends, Eurasian and Atlantic. In this case,
however, the conflict is clearly the greatest challenge thrown and met
on a vast scale, one between NATO embodying Atlanticism and Russia Eurasianism,
once again trying to capitalize on its Slavic affinity to the Serbs. To
understand what is really happening, let us make a brief historical digression
to trace the geopolitical concepts and try to answer the question whether
what we are all witness to is

a genuine confrontation.

GEOPOLITICAL AND CULTURAL-POLITICAL ORIENTATIONS

Geopolitics, determined by its founders Friedrich Ratzel (the first
to make it a separate field of research) and Rudolf Kjellen (the first
to provide the underlying definitions and asserting the whole thing as
a science) is a kind of Weltanschauung whereby any economic, political,
or cultural issues are dealt with based on a given country's geographic
location. Geopolitics substitutes the multidimensional individual by a
spatial one. After all has been said and done, this world outlook is as
limited as any other one dimensional or nationalistic one.

Geopolitics is a limited notion not only because it portrays phenomena
in a simplistic one dimensional manner, but also because, using historical
examples, it seldom refers to chronopolitics - i.e., to man as a temporal
phenomenon - or to cultural politics as the sphere of the self-consciousness
of a given polity in the process of implementing a certain short-term purposeful
strategy. But even when geopolitics deals with certain long-term historical
trends and cultural characteristics it uses a rather ambiguous, metaphoric
language (e.g., the supremacy of dry land or of seas). This limitation
of geopolitics can be overcome only when taking a closer look at a specific
period when a given scheme/pattern was predominant within a given polity,
taking into account the attendant cultural characteristics, which the state
places in first place, the presence or absence of a long-term state strategy,
and the result of the policies using such a geopolitical schema.

Slavism is the source of the Russian ideology of Eurasianism, creating
the concept of unity in the linguistic context, where cultural commonality
(Pan-Slavism) is derived from a linguistic one. Slavs make up a rather
large component of Eurasian civilization. One of the major Slavophile tenets
of Konstantin Leontiev, predecessor of Savitsky, the father of Eurasian
ideology, has it that the Slavs, while a language family, are not a cultural
one. Moreover, it cannot be considered a geopolitical entity or a supranational
historical community.

The first Russian variant of Eurasianism was consistently formulated
by P. N. Savitsky (Russky uzel evraziystva [The Russian Eurasian
Knot], Moscow, 1997). Eurasianism originates from works by Slavophiles
where this complication was first mentioned as ensuing from attempts to
single a cultural community out of a language family. To surmount this
obstacle, the Eurasian concept was developed, being more global, in that
the authors based it not so much on a linguistic as on a continental communality.
Savitsky's followers include Trubetskoy, Vernadsky, Karsavin, Suvchivsky,
and of course Lev Gumilev as the most spectacular figure in the field with
his passionarism (a neo-Eurasianism containing the idea of Turkic-Slavic
merger and choice of Moslem countries as an anti-Atlantic ally).

In our opinion, Eurasianism is an attempt - and it seem to us a rather
unsuccessful one - to develop a concept of ruling a continent based on
the assumption that the "immovable platform " (i.e., Russia, referred to
as the "Eurasian knot") is the focal point of influence affecting the other
polities of that continent by virtue of the strength of its geographic
position. Originally, the concept of Russia's key role was put forth by
Sir Halford John MacKinder (1861-1947), author of the heartland theory,
originally stated in 1904 and revised in 1919 and 1943. In this theory
he proposes that north-central Eurasia, because of its geographic isolation
and vast natural resources, would eventually be the heart of the world's
controlling political power. Then there was Karl Ernst Haushofer (1896-1946),
a German army officer, geographer, and prominent advocate of the geopolitical
basis for Nazi plans for world domination, followed by Savitsky upholding
Eurasian centrism, allocating Russia a very special, exclusive role. And
the formulation is as consistent as that of the German geopoliticians (like
Haushofer's project) which had quite an impact on Hitler's military strategy.
From the geopolitical perspective, World War II could be regarded as a
major confrontation between two focal Eurasian centers, Germany (Third
Reich) and Russia (USSR), each vying for supremacy on the continent. The
USSR won that Eurasian war and then lost the Cold War contest to the Atlantic
coalition.

Zbigniew Brzezinski's book The Great Game, appearing in print
in 1998 (translated into Russian by Moscow's Mezhdunarodnye Otnosheniya
Publishers), is directed against Russia's recent, rather aggressive, attempts
to actualize the Eurasian geopolitical concept in its foreign policy. In
fact, this book formulates Washington's strategic stand with regard to
Russia's Eurasian geopolitical concept. The United States is creating a
situation such that no other country could control the whole continent.
The ongoing Balkan crisis and Russia's stand are fresh evidence that Moscow
still claims Eurasian supremacy. Those closely following late twentieth
century developments like the USSR's collapse, dissolution of the Warsaw
Pact, Russia's continued regionalization, and the Moscow-NATO-Balkan confrontation
have every reason to assume that geopolitics has no prospects in Ukraine,
while cultural politics do. The historical experience of the second half
of the twentieth century points to the supremacy of culture, not geographical
parameters or conditions.

CULTURAL POLITICAL SUPREMACY: TALASSOCRACY AND TELUROCRACY

Basic geopolitical cultural dualism, according to Karl Schmitt's element
theory, is represented by two civilization types: talassocracy and
tellurocracy. The former means sea power (based on the original notion
of water, fluidity, democracy, and the latter, power on land (dry land,
permanence, ideocracy). The predominant role of these cultural characteristics
in the encounter between the two civilization types was formulated by Karl
Schmitt in his book, Land and Sea, published in 1942. Here the distinction
is interpreted philosophically, relating to basic legal and ethical systems.
Geopoliticians tend to make a major error by reducing this difference between
the types of civilizations to that of the notions of land and water, in
other words, reducing fundamental cultural/civilization distinction to
differences in the geopolitical characteristics of a given locality.

This distinction is more fundamental than initially appears, as shown
by the large number of extremely serious works by scholars, writers, and
philosophers, who did not reduce it to the confrontation between just two
civilization types along geopolitical lines. In 1932, Henri Bergson published
The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, defining the ethical and
religious distinctions between the two cultures. In 1945, Karl Popper (1902-1994),
Austrian-born British philosopher of science, known for his theory of scientific
method and for his criticism of historical determinism, published his book,
The Open Society and Its Enemies (that is, ideocracy as a closed society
counterbalanced by an open one). Vladimir Lefevre, former Soviet researcher,
wrote a book in the 1980s, fundamentally describing the two cultural types,
relying on theoretical and experimental study, defining them as two principally
different ethical systems (an approach known as the algebra of consciousness).
In 1996, Samuel Huntington wrote his book, The Clash of Civilizations,
stressing cultural differences as the main cause of confrontation.

All these studies by scholars, writers, and philosophers in one way
or another focus on two principles underlying any national policy: a given
society's strategic perspective secured by the state and the formulation
of cultural development guidelines to implement it. With regard to the
former problem, geopolitics is just one of the methods of expressing the
historical stability of a given polity (territorial stability), on a par
with chronopolitics and cultural politics. The second problem is manifest
in finding adequate ways to secure historical stability with regard to
a given polity (e.g., stable development in perspective) - strategic planning
from the perspective of cultural, technological, and social priorities.

Geographic position, natural resources, demographic, religious, and
other aspects do not vanish; rather, they no longer work only in terms
of geographical coordinates, but also within their given information-cultural
theater of operations, thus bringing forth cultural politics. Given today's
means of transportation and communication, geographical position no longer
has such importance as it did in past decades. The dynamism of migration
or dependence of communications on terrain can no longer be determined
using geographical indices now that we have movie, telephone, television,
video, and computer technologies - and of course the Internet. Social change
becomes connected not with literal territorial changes, but with those
in the space of cultural influence of a certain polity, with changes in
that polity's attitude toward the times; whether a given state operates
from a day to day or long-term perspective. History, regarded chronopolitically,
can be used to actualize one period or another, and this actualization
does not require falsifying or rewriting history; it requires only the
actualization of that part of a given culture connected with the chronopolitically
chosen period of history and orienting it toward that period.

Thus, if Slavs distinguish themselves from the Anglo-Saxon and Romano-Germanic
world, this is a doctrine of the language delimitation of states, Atlanticism
and Eurasianism - doctrines of distinguishing civilizations in terms of
the political influence of territory and geographical aspirations of states,
then talassocracy and tellurocracy are doctrines of the cultural delimitation
of civilizations. The war going on in the world is not geopolitical but
cultural. There is a redistribution of language groups and continental
space in conjunction with the delimitation of cultural communities or civilizations:
talassocracy and tellurocracy.

Characteristic of the former are nomadism (especially maritime), trade,
individual entrepreneurial spirit, along with the mobility of ethical and
legal norms. Civilizations of this type develop quickly and easily change
their outward cultural attributes. Tellurocratic civilizations are connected
with fixed space, stability of cultural orientations and characteristics.
Characteristic of this type are a settled way of life, conservatism, rigid
legal norms, powerful ideology (more often than not Messianic), repressive
collectivist ethics, and stable social hierarchy (official and otherwise).
{Compare these and the characteristics found in A. Dugin's Geopolitics
where the author glorifies this type of civilization.}

Civilizations of the second type are inner-continental, including tsarist
Russia (USSR). They are regarded as a "stationary platform," "heartland,"
or "geographical axis of history," in that they remain stable and immobile
in history. Meanwhile, civilizations of the former type, the coastal zones
of the Eurasian mainland, are zones of intensive cultural development.
For tellurocracy the main thing is not values but ideas being part of a
solid ideology and the latter playing a system-forming role. Values are
a Western notion meaning the presence of qualities being discussed and
rejuvenated, something man is free to choose between and use in building
the essence of his life. The main characteristic of each such value are
mobility and rationality, and an opportunity to be united unsystematically.
Values are the underlying notions of the Atlantic civilization whose geopolitical
space is centered on the Atlantic Ocean (e.g., North America and Western
Europe). Ideas and ideologies are the key elements of the Eurasian civilization
whose geopolitical space is connected with Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and
Eastern Europe.

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF TALASSOCRACY AND TELLUROCRACY

The main values in talassocratic civilization are the right to live,
to be free, and have property. Values emerge as positive life strategies
proven on the individual level. Consider private property. It is a value
for talassocracy. On the other hand, in the tellurocratic civilization
private property may be legally permitted, but it is not a value, because
it is not part of a set ideology as an idea (the ideology says that property
is a threat and the owner a thief); to this end the elite is divided into
two hostile camps; here one can find no positive examples of using private
property, because a given society does not recognize these life strategies
as successful en masse. As a result, property is not seen as something
acquired fairly, and one's wealth is not considered deserved. On the contrary,
society resents those who have property. Large numbers of people wait for
jobs and wages. On the other hand, collective property is not considered
as a value either; it is intangible or otherwise mastered; no one can say
see, this is what I have. Hence, tellurocratic civilizations cannot develop
by rendering certain values mobile, because these very values are absent
as a means of transferring cultural experience.

In these civilizations values are transmitted by ideology. In lieu of
values tellurocracy upholds a certain idea, making it a rule, a Messianic
idea of its exclusiveness, of some special mission, a special way turned
into a systematized ideology, which interferes not only in collective labor
activities, but also with family and private life, conquering people's
consciousness, at times subjugating the personality, turning it into a
collective nonentity.

When a crisis occurs in a talassocratic civilization certain values
are revised, but this revision is essentially unsystematic, not total,
because this revision occurs on the individual level and then takes shape
as a well-balanced system. For example, Weber, Durkheim, Jaspers, et al.
would perceive and systematize values only after they become the flesh
and blood of many individual lives.

With a tellurocratic civilization it is an altogether different story.
Here the first and foremost task is a new ideology, another Messianic idea
to unite one and all, gather the land, exerting compulsory influence on
and subjugating other peoples. This time, however, the crisis befalling
Russia and other post-Soviet states is far more serious, for it is rooted
deep in Orthodoxy as a religion, collective ethics as the organizing beginning,
and it consists in the absence of an ideology capable of reviving motivation
for life, work, and reproduction. This motivation can no longer be resumed
within the ideology because of overall distrust of each and every ideology
by the people.

It is in their mutual influence that their main contradictions are found:
each tries to dominate the other and impose its own strategies. Here lies
the insurmountable obstacle for tellurocracy. First, one can keep something
mobile under control only being mobile oneself. Rigid, with its habits,
social rules, and ethical norms resistant to change, tellurocracy as a
community constantly gravitating toward a great universally unifying idea
cannot exert any influence on countries where ideologies do not play the
dominant role. Second, once tellurocracy is faced with the need to become
more mobile (say, in order to rule the Eurasian continent) it will inevitably
become vulnerable to domination by talassocracies it will transform into
a talassocracy, merging with the talassocratic civilization. The Cold War
was viewed in Soviet times as ideological warfare (and it was, from the
tellurocratic standpoint). However, outside the cultural characteristics
of tellurocracy the Cold War can be perceived as a war between these two
types of civilization, culture, ethics, two ways of organizing the space
in which people live and of organizing labor.

On the other hand, a talassocratic civilization finds it easier to exert
an influence on a tellurocratic one, because this influence is kept at
the level of specific values, individual examples of successful life strategies
in talassocratic countries, and by no means at the level of a solid ideology.
Thus, a talassocratic civilization can easily integrate a tellurocratic
one without changing its inner content at the level of individual economic
projects, cash, raw materials, and labor markets, which will fit into its
system-creating structure. But a tellurocratic civilization can by no means
integrate a talassocratic one without changing its own inner content. In
other words, for tellurocracy to integrate talassocracy the former must
change the latter, imposing on it its principles of existence at the ideological
level, thus turning it into an ideocracy.

GEOPOLITICAL AND CULTURAL POLITICAL DELIMITATION

Now let us correlate these two principles of delimitation: Atlanticism-Eurasianism
and talassocracy-tellurocracy. Their limits do not coincide: the Atlanticism-Eurasianism
confrontation is not an expression of the basic geopolitical cultural dualism
of talassocracy and tellurocracy. While Atlanticism (with the US as its
axis in the twentieth century) is an approximate geographical expression
of talassocracy, Eurasianism (with imperial Russia at its core since the
turn of the century, followed by the USSR) cannot be totally identified
with tellurocracy. In the first place, numerous tellurocratic countries
do not construct their policies on the concept of Eurasianism. On the other
hand, Eurasia is a continent, a considerable part of which belongs to the
Atlantic civilization. In fact, Eurasianism as a concept of tellurocratic
expansion within talassocracy inherently exaggerates its own influence
on the continent and inner cultural schism.

The same is true of Pan-Slavism. All attempts to convince the Slavic
countries that they have brothers in Serbia, and precisely these Slavic
brothers of ours are committing an act of ethnic genocide, do not withstand
criticism. This does not mean that Ukraine should automatically join the
Anglo-Saxon or Roman-Germanic side. It means that with which side Ukraine
as a polity should show solidarity cannot be decided based only on remote
linguistic affinity (or that we are all White). Ukraine's solidarity with
other countries is possible only within the context of our cultural values.
Ukraine has itself suffered considerably from ethnic purges and enemy bombs.
From the standpoint of our culture, we side with no one in the conflicts
between the Atlantic and Eurasia, so in this sense one ought not to reproach
our politicians for being mistaken.

The process underway in Ukraine could be described as gradually building
and movement toward a talassocratic civilization. By choosing talassocracy
- and we stress talassocracy in the sense of culture, not geopolitical
space (Atlanticism) - it simply resumes its age-old historical stand, that
of its culture at the period of Kyiv Rus. For Ukraine this choice is only
natural; it wants to revive its historical memory, the time when it existed
as a polity long before Muscovy and all those Slavic alliances. Actually,
this is what compels us to insist not so much on geopolitics as on chronopolitics
and cultural politics, identifying Ukraine with certain periods in the
past and future, its self-realization within a certain culture. In other
words, Ukraine should identify itself with the period and culture when
we had our own state formation, the period of Kyiv Rus.

The culture of Kyiv Rus was talassocratic, essentially distinct from
the tellurocratic culture eventually imposed on it by Russia when we found
ourselves exposed to its powerful geopolitical influence and had to live
for centuries contrary to our innermost archetypes of individualism, enterprising
spirit, possession of individual values, mobility of our ethical and legal
norms. The identification of Kyiv Rus as a talassocracy is due to the strong
influence on it radiating from Greece and the Byzantine Empire as classical
talassocratic (maritime democratic) polities. Kyiv Rus expanded by spreading
this southern maritime influence. Russia's influence was always strictly
continental, first directed eastward, against the Horde, and then invariably
associated with countless vain attempts to redirect it westward. Peter
I, trying to change his country's cultural characteristics, sought above
all access to the sea. Incidentally, this is why the Crimea is important
for Ukraine not so much in the geopolitical or economic sense as that of
cultural politics.

Ukrainian nationalism of the nineteenth century emerged as a reaction
to the cultural difference between Ukraine and Russia. This archaic nationalism
is superficial, while the cultural differences are deep-going, their roots
are to be found in archetypes, in what many now call mentality. For this
reason, in the cultural political sense nationalism will invariably be
limited; here it can encounter linguistic differences with the rest of
the Slavic world and territorial ones with the rest of Eurasia (on the
side of Atlanticism). Nationalism is not a mainstream concept in Ukrainian
cultural politics. This country currently experiences not a national but
cultural confrontation - or a cultural-political one, to be precise. We
have not two nations confronting each other, but two cultures.

UKRAINE'S HISTORIC CHOICE

In the sense of cultural choice, Ukraine is at a crossroads, and its
geographical perspective depends on taking the right path. It can either
choose talassocracy here and now, join the Atlantic civilization, struggle
for markets, cultural expansion, and take part in a strategic duel with
Atlantic countries, or remain tellurocratic., following in Russia's footsteps,
bound by its contradictory Eurasianism, and move toward talassocratic civilization
together with Russia. This should be understood precisely as our cultural
choice, which we must make consciously and of our own free will. There
is nothing coercive or compulsory about this choice. Choosing Russia is
not unavoidable, nor is choosing talassocratic civilization.

Note that the issue is not that Ukraine should join a stronger polity,
as is often alleged in Russia. It is just that Ukraine should make its
choice, adopting values its civilization long ago accepted and suffered
for: individual entrepreneurship, professionalism, corporatization, a law-governed
state, effective legislation, mobile ethics and culture, procedures allowing
peaceful maintenance of civil accord (what we call conventionalism). It
is not a choice in favor of stronger countries but dearer values, not a
choice against a weak Russia but against weaker values leading to stagnation
and bondage, ethico-legal repression, and physical destruction of large
numbers of people in the course of continuous civil wars. Eurasianism is
unable to achieve and maintain accord other than in the form of a totally
repressive totalitarian ideology (whether class or national-patriotic).
Eurasianism means a war of cultures, continuous hostilities between culturally
opposed groups within civil society, culminating in civil war. The Ukrainian
politicians campaigning for Eurasianism should be aware that they are leading
their people toward war.

From the standpoint of cultural political priorities, we must revise
all Ukraine's foreign political initiatives and existing preferences. What
precisely do we understand by Ukraine's European orientation? To us, Europe
is not just a certain continental space, not a certain number of polities
within this space, but a talassocratic culture. Thus, in the sense of trade
or general foreign economic aspirations, our orientation can be aimed in
whichever direction, not only toward Europe (what we know as multivectoral
policy). But in the cultural sense we must be oriented precisely toward
that talassocratic civilization. The latter is heterogeneous, as European
Atlanticism is distinct from North American Atlanticism (in the extent
to which the state intervenes in the economy, nuances in corporate policy,
social guarantees, different levels of cultural openness, equal opportunity,
its ethic of clan solidarity, etc.). We understand the spirit of the culture
of these countries, yet we do not accept their politics. Agreeing with
talassocratic cultural values does not mean accepting NATO politics or
those of any of its member states.

Just as Kyiv Rus was falling into decay it faced the same choice. It
made the wrong one, because of which the irresolution and shortsightedness
of its elite cost us centuries of slavery. We must fully comprehend the
scope and implications of today's choice. We could end up like our ancestors
did or receive a powerful impetus in raising Ukraine to a higher level.
In any case, the consequences of our choice will amount to a cultural development
strategy that will last for centuries. We must have a clear vision of the
level of this choice; we are not choosing between the United States and
Russia (either might not even exist in 200 years), but between Europe and
Asia (because their purely spatial isolation is bound to disappear with
time). It is not a choice between Atlanticism and Eurasianism (because
the latter concept has no positively understood, single cultural content).
We are choosing between two types of culture, two cultural types of civilization.
One of these types will still exist 200 years later. Therefore, our geopolitical
choice extends for decades and our cultural political one for centuries.
We live at a time when a choice has to be made meant not for decades but
for centuries.

Atlanticism is as anachronistic as Eurasianism. Both belong to the twentieth
century. Atlanticism, built on the doctrine of geopolitical confrontation,
has outlived itself. In fact, this is precisely why Ukraine should stay
out of the confrontation mentioned earlier; it lays no claims to any parts
of the continent. Ukraine must consider its choice not in terms of Atlanticism
or Eurasianism, but in terms of talassocracy and tellurocracy. Its policy
is a cultural political, rather than geopolitical choice. Its domestic
situation is basically marked by a weak and irresolute Ukrainian elite
and the absence of unity or desire by this elite to conduct an open dialogue
on the subject.

 

 

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