Old World Order

In the movie, The Hunt for Red October, based on a Tom Clancy novel, the large submarine is about to  set on its maiden voyage from the Bearing Sea, and Captain Vasili Borodin says to the Commanding officer of the ship, Marco Ramius, that it is a cold day, to which Ramius responds, “yes, cold and hard.”  That would be the weather in an area far north.  It is from here that a story of a rogue submarine adventure takes place.   Since the end of the cold war western powers seem more concerned about globalization and the world coming together, and in so doing have allowed their thinking to take precedence over much of the eastern world.  Or, as Robert Kaplan, author of the Revenge of Geography puts it, “Western leaders think in universal terms, while rulers in places like Russia, the Middle East, and East Asia think in narrower terms: those that provide advantage to their nations or their ethnic groups only.”  Hence, the west thinks in different terms than the east.  Secretary of State John Kerry refers to the current thinking of Russia as so “19^th century.”  Such pretension does not serve groups of nations well.  The thinking that your way is the best way, often leads to trouble.  Recent history is replete with the results of such thinking.  Perhaps it is time for the west to realize that the east looks at the world from lens with a long history and here they think geographically; or geo-politically.  The west has lost its lessons of geography.  The recent Russian land grab of Crimea is a case in point.  And this gets us back to the Hunt for Red October.  Crimea is the only warm water port available to Russia, and its location as a peninsula at the north end of the Black Sea allows it to control much of the Black Sea.

Black Sea

The area of Crimea, as a peninsula in the Black Sea, has been important for several thousand years, and many an empire have recognized its geographic importance.  This one sea serves to divide east from west, serve as a crucial artery for Eastern Europe, serve as a bulwark between the ever-boiling Middle East and Europe, and serves as a confluence of occurrences that hamper modern day living from the drug trade to human trafficking.  Crimea, according to Jay Winik, had been the crown jewel of the Ottoman Empire, and before that parts of it were within the Roman and even the Greek empires.  Combined with the Anatolian plain and the Middle East, much of human history has been written in that wider region.

Vladimir Putin’s defense of the Russian incursion into Crimea is based on his contention that it is necessary for Russia to protect the interests of the many ethnic Russians who live in Crimea.  Crimea first became part of Russia following a bloody war after the Ottoman Turks declared war on Russia, insurrection by the Tatars, and diplomatic maneuvers.   Catherine the Greats advisor, Potemkin, would indicate that Crimea could be hers.  And to her it would be.

Catherine the Great

In 1782 Russia saw Crimea as a key to thwarting invasion from the south.  Britain was involved in wars with America, France with Britain, and Austria was, at the time, not willing to challenge an incursion into Crimea.  One could say that but for the involvement of those western powers elsewhere, Crimea may never have become part of Russia.  It would appear that Putin’s thinking mirrors that of Potemkin who said he who controls Crimea can control the Black Sea.   The Russian Black Sea fleet, first established in 1783, and it was this fleet over 200 years later that allowed Russian incursion into the Republic of Georgia in 2008, where today they still hold a good part of this former Soviet territory.  In 1787 Catherine the Great, ruler of Russia would journey to Crimea, to see her southern prize.  It was on this journey that she would come across the seemingly great villages which were mainly but facades, giving us now the commonly used term Potemkin village, for an illusory situation described as better than what it is.

With the breakup of the Soviet Union, the 1994 Budapest Memorandum came about, but is of little regard to Mr. Putin.  The pro-Russian President of Ukraine was over thrown by Ukrainian protestors interested in leaning toward the west rather than to Russia.  The former President, who was essentially Mr. Putin’s puppet, decided to break ties with the west and form ties with Russia, and while that would be his downfall, Russia had not yet fully played its hand.  It did not take long for Russia to exert its influence and in a matter of days Crimea held an election to reunite with Russia, and Russia willingly accepted.  The west should have realized that Russia is positioning itself to gradually re-establish land areas to which it says it has some historic claim. The 2008 move into Georgia should have been a clue. Russia first took control of Crimea in the 18^th century, and but for partial occupation by Nazi forces during WWII, had remained under Russian or Soviet control, until the fall of the Soviet Union.  Nikita Khrushchev never thought when he gifted Crimea to the Ukraine in the 1950’s that there would never be a Soviet Union.  But history, as noted in a prior post, is intractable; little goes according to plan.

Location of Crimea

When the US and its allies invaded Iraq it was to rid the country of a brutal dictator, and bring democracy to the Middle East.  Little turned out according to plan.  What we have is a country that is a pawn to Iran.  So to the Arab Spring was to bring down dictator’s in Egypt, Libya and other countries and to have democratic elections providing the values the west long holds true.  Yet, other than perhaps Tunisia, this has not occurred.  Radical Islam has taken hold: Libya is in shambles; Egypt had a democratically elected man who was quickly leading it to an Islamist state and was thrown out of power so the country is essentially ruled by the military; and in Syria a tyrant is on the run by other tyrants, and opposition groups promoting democracy have been supplanted by those allied with Al Qaeda.  Christians in Syria, among the oldest lineages in the Christian world now have to pay a tax in gold to radical Islamists, and agree to not repair any destroyed churches.  While the Assad regime is tyrannical, if replaced it may well be like Iraq, by a group more radical and recognizing less the rights of minority groups than the one it replaces.  One can see at play the role that tribes and blood plays in the territories of the Middle East.

Middle East

Likewise domination of territory, that 19^th century phenomenon so belittled by US Secretary of State John Kerry, is rampant by China and it on-going grab for rights in the South China Sea. China, ever thinking ahead, while on the verge of internal issues of its own, has been purchasing land for mineral rights in countries on other continents, as far away as South America.  Burma, at the east edge of India, is a mountainous country with internal strife, in a sense mimicking its poor economic structure.  The homeland Marco Ramius, the fictitious captain of the Red October, Lithuania, has been subjugated, along with the other Baltic Republics and Poland, by powers to their east and west.  A consequence of geography.

Red October Captain Marco Ramius, played by Sean Connery

Bonds of blood and territory that go with it is a matter of geography.  The prior post noted that tribalism, which dates from the earliest times of human movement, is alive and well.  In part this is shown by the ambitions of nations like, China, Russia, and others in the east still think in terms of territory.  Middle Eastern countries think less in terms of their nation than of their birth right be it religious or tribal—Kurds, Shiite, and Sunni come to mind.  Even Russians opposed to Putin agree with his taking of Crimea.  Putin’s current approval rating is one only President Obama can dream of obtaining.  Territory is viewed as power, and the values of a nation that sees territory as power cannot be pushed to the side as 19^th century thinking.  Instead the western world has to understand the values and the way of thinking of those to the east, and recognize that their values may well not be western values. The west needs to recognize the harsh reality that not all nations view the world as does the west.  Kaplan also comments that “Geography establishes the broad parameters—only within its bounds does human agency have a chance to succeed.”    

If Russia sees as its duty the need to protect the interests of its ethnic population, could you imagine the chaos to result in the United States if other nation’s thought the same way?  After all we are a nation primarily of immigrants, and the ethnic group having the largest majority in any one person is German descent. (Could you imagine Angela Merkl declaring the right of Germany to protect ethnic Germans in the U.S.?)   It is this rather unique heritage in the US, where we are bound less by our ethnicity, and more by our ideals and values, that colors are geo-political thinking.  The world is not made up of a melting pot, or stew, as is the United States, but rather it is continues to be comprised of nations, many of which are very concerned with their blood, tribe, and territorial rights.  It was not a too distant past that Europe too thought in ethnic terms.  One only needs to go back to WWII to see the concept of a pure race in play.  Yet, Europe has transformed its thinking, although concepts of blood and tribe still retain importance in certain ways. 

Ancestry of the US Population (blue is predominantly German)

While democracy may be the best and ultimate goal for a civil society, a nation needs to be sufficiently willing to accept the rights of the minority.  As found in Egypt, a democracy that is one-sided devolves into another form of tyranny.  After all, in most other places on earth the defecting submarine Captain Marco Ramius would look out of place, but in the multi-ethnic U.S. he can fit right in.