| For the period after the end of Second World War, the United States gained increasing prominence as the leading power of imperialist reaction, taking Germany’s place in this respect... And its ruling class managed, particularly during the imperialist era, to have the democratic forms so effectively preserved that by democratically legal means, it achieved a dictatorship of monopoly capitalism at least as firm as that which Hitler set up by tyrannical procedures...And this democracy could, in substance, realize everything sought by Hitler.
Gyorgy Lukacs(1)
Resoluteness does not first take cognizance of Situation and put that Situation before itself; it has put itself into that Situation already. As resolute, Dasein is already taking action.
Martin Heidegger(2)
We don’t have enemies in the East.
Bismarck
The concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political. The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and foe, wrote Carl Schmitt.(3) The affirmation of the political is a recognition of the reality of the political and thus a recognition and identification of the foe. Only by affirmation of the political in an act of decision, which by necessity is a meta-existential choice, can a nation as a collective entity assert its own sovereignty and thus political future.
In the aftermath of the dissolution of Soviet Union in 1991 which reduced the former Great Power to a state without politics and thus to a landmass in chaos, a sort of a Weimar-republic of the 90-ties, and in the face of the new American expansionism, the ideological discussion and search for viable political orientation within the former Soviet Union has intensified. Professor Nikolaj Zagladin pointed recently that the competition between the Soviet Union and the United States during the period of the Cold War must be characterized as a real war during which actual military power had been used to a very limited extend- mostly in proxy wars. This was so not because of a lack of will but because of the nature of the military technology— the existence of nuclear weapons made the war impossible. The nature of the war between the United States and the Soviet Union, known as the Cold War, was to its essence technology specific. But the Cold War was in fact the Third World War, claims Zagladin.(4) To a similar conclusion comes Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former National Security Advisor to President Carter, and presently one of the major ideologists of the «Expansionists of 1991», who wrote, paraphrasing von Clausewitz, that «the Cold War can be defined as warfare by other (non-lethal) means. Nonetheless, warfare it was. And the stakes were monumental. Geopolitically the struggle, in the first instance, was for control over the Eurasian landmass and, eventually, even for global preponderance».(5) Obviously the Soviet Union gave up much more in the settlement than the United States, agreed to the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, although the military arm of American domination of Western Europe, NATO, continues to exist and is steadily expanding. Soviet Union unilaterally reduced its engagement in the Third World while the United States escalated her interventionist foreign policies. Soviet Union even supported the war in Iraq, a war that to its essence was a war for the control of the oil in the Persian Gulf and thus a war against the national interest not only the Soviet Union, but also of other European countries; a war that made it less likely that an accommodation between the Soviet Union and Western European countries could be reached. Soviet Union even agreed to withdraw its military forces from Germany while the United States intends to permanent her occupation of Germany, a fact that was clearly stated by President Bush during the November 7-8, 1991 NATO summit meeting in Rome. And that brings us to the post Cold War settlement, its consequences for Russia and for the international order. A critical observer will characterize this settlement as analogous to a Second Treaty of Versailles. Zbigniew Brzezinski point out that as a consequence of the Second Treaty of Versailles, the defeated Russia is passing into American receivership. «This is an outcome historically no less decisive and no less one-sided than the defeat of Napoleonic France in 1815, or of Imperial Germany in 1918. Unlike the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years War in a grand religious compromise, cuius regio, cuius religio , does not apply here. Rather, from a doctrinal point of view, the outcome is more similar to 1815 or 1945; the ideology of the losing side has itself been repudiated. Geopolitically the outcome is also suggestive of 1918, the defeated empire is in a process of dismantlement. As in previous termination of war there was a discernible moment of capitulation, followed by postwar political upheavals in the losing state. That moment came most probably in Paris on November 19, 1990. At a conclave marked by ostentatious displays of amity designed to mask the underlying reality, the erstwhile Soviet leader, Michael Gorbachev, who had led the Soviet Union during the final stages of the Cold War, accepted the conditions of the victors by describing in veiled and elegant language the unification of Germany that had taken place entirely on Western terms as a ‘major event’. This was the functional equivalent of the act of capitulation in the railroad car in Compiegne in 1918 (the capitulation of Germany) or on the U.S.S. Missouri in August 1945 (the capitulation of Japan).»(6) George Kennan remarked that «the collapse of the Soviet system amounted to the unconditional surrender we envisaged-a voluntary one if you will, but surrender nevertheless.»(7) And as a result the United States is attempting to impose on Russia terms of surrender stated in the National Security Council Memorandum 20/1 (NSC 20/1) which already in 1948 defined the American war aims in the Cold War and envisioned a post Cold War settlement tailored after the Brest-Litovsk treaty of 1918(8) , leading to the partition of the Soviet Union, disarmament, destruction of the national economy of Russia and establishment of American protectorate over large parts of the territory of the former Soviet Union: (...)Such terms would have to be harsh ones and distinctly humiliating...They might well be something along the lines of the Brest-Litovsk settlement of 1918...(We) would have to demand:
a. Direct military terms (surrender of equipment, evacuation of key areas, etc) designed to assure military helplessness...
b. Terms designed to produce a considerable economic dependence on the outside world.(9) NSC 20/1 stated further that the unified geopolitical space of the Soviet Union—the «fortress Heartland»—had to be destroyed by partitioning of the country and inclusion of above all the Baltic States and Ukraine into a Shatterbelt of U.S.A controlled territory.
Wolfram Henrieder has pointed out that de Gaulle wanted the German issue solved- the unification of Germany, because it constituted a decisive cause and justification for American continuous military presence in Europe, a cause that would be eliminated with the solution of the German question, leading to the dissolution of the Cold War military alliances and speeding American withdrawal from Europe(10) , creating an emancipated Europe to the Urals. «The creation of unified Europe requires political decision which is tantamount to a will of independence... A united Europe, in this sense, could be build only in opposition to America.»(11) By her dominant position within the alliance America has kept Europe in a straitjacket, has made her fearful of speaking in her own voice. Since Europe has lost its elan and has borrowed an American personality, it must be forced to reassume an identity. As this identity does not exists, it must be created. If Europe can be roused only by instilling an apprehension over American hegemony, then this must be done for the sake of Europe’s survival, claimed de Gaulle for whom a truly emancipated Europe was an America-free Europe.
From this perspective Gorbachev’s foreign policy and the geopolitics of implosion of Perestrojka negatively effected the possibilities for emancipation of Europe. In the ongoing political debate in Russia but also in France, it has been asserted that the defeat of the Soviet Union begins to appear as a defeat for Europe as well.
Lenin once characterized the original Treaty of Versailles in the following words:
“What is the Versailles Treaty? This unheard of, predatory peace, enslaves tens of millions of people, including the most civilized. This is not a treaty but dictates imposed by robbers with a knife in hand on a defenseless Germany. Germany has been deprived from all her colonies by virtue of the Versailles Treaty. Turkey, Persia and China have been enslaved. Seventy percent of the world population live in conditions of enslavement...And that is why this international order, which rests on the Versailles Treaty, rests in reality on a volcano."(12) And while Russia at the moment is in the same predicament as Germany after the W.W.I, the predatory New World Order, proclaimed by President Bush and implemented by the present Clinton administration, also rests on a volcano.
The intensifying confrontation of Russia with the dictates of the New World Order has led to intensive ideological debate about the future of Russia. This debate has resulted in a renewed interest for the writings of the prominent German jurist Carl Schmitt whose book, “The Concept of the Political”, has already been translated into Russian and published in the sociological magazine Voprosy Sotsiologij.(13) The known Russian politician and chief editor of the influential magazine Elementy (Elements) Alexander Dugin must be credited with the first comprehensive introduction of the works of Carl Schmitt in the essay “Carl Schmitt- Five Lessons for Russia”, published in the Journal of Russian Writers ‘Nash Sovremennik’ (Our Contemporary)(14) and with the creative applications of his writing to the contemporary political and ideological chaos in Russia. “For Russia the writing of Schmitt are of special interest and significance because of his brilliant analysis of state of emergency and exceptional situations in contemporary political reality and the necessity of a decision to preserve the national existence of people. ..People exists politically only if they constitute an independent political community/entity and only if they as an entity oppose other political entities in order to preserve its understanding of the cultural specificity of its own community...The theory of exceptional circumstances and with it related theme of decision are of paramount importance for us today, because we are now in such historical juncture of the history of Russian people and Russian state in which the state of emergency has become a natural state of our nation, permeating and constituting the Being of our nation...We Russians must discover and understand our national essence and existence because we live in a time of emergency which demands a act of collective existential choice, an act of supreme decision.”(15) Here one can see a Heideggerian motif- the political identifies the essence and existence of community; it is the empirical Russian nation which in a time of national emergency must become fully political in an act of self-choice and decision and thus choose itself and its own historical destiny.(16) The act of self-choice presupposes a nation that has become political because only the political being of Russia gives existential meaning to the friend-enemy antithesis, what does not politically exist cannot consciously decide(17) , political unity is grounded on political existence. Political sovereignty is an existential question because it concerns the resolution of an existential conflict. Not only does every politically-existing people decide on the question of its own political existence and any possible danger to it; it decides also on whether an existential question actually exists- a question which is political by its very nature. Since for politically-existing people there is always the possibilities of an existential conflict, the question of sovereignty, i.e. the ultimate existential decision, always remains open.(18) «Every existing political unity has its value and existential justification not in the rightness or usefulness of norms but in its existence. Juridically considered, what exists as apolitical force has value because it exists. From this stems its ‘right to self-preservation’, the presupposition of all further considerations; it seeks above all to maintain its existence , it protects its existence, its integrity, its security, and its constitution - all existential values»(19) Carl Schmitt points out that «as long people exists in the political sphere, it must itself make use of the distinction between friend and enemy, at the same time reserving it for extreme conjunctures which it itself judges as such. This is where the essence of its political existence lies. From the moment it lacks the capacity or the will to use this distinction, a people ceases to exist politically...If the people should no longer have the strength or the will to continue in the political sphere, this is not the end of politics in the world. It is only the end of weak people...If the state refuses or is unable to make a decision in an exceptional situation, it inevitable runs the risk that other forces will make one in its place and establish their norms.»(20) Building on this theme Alexander Dugin sees the elements of will, decision and time intertwined in the quest for historical existence of Russia: «Decisionism not only amplifies and focuses on the state of emergency and the exceptional circumstances, but it is also a defense reaction against those circumstances: in the moment of historical decision for authentic national future, the people and the nation actualize their past and decide their future in a dramatic mobilization of the present. The present then becomes the focal point and synthesis of three qualitative characteristics of time: its source, i.e. the past when people entered into a historical existence, the will of the people directed toward the future, and the political self-assertion of the historically existing people in an act of decision which at the same time is an act of authenticity, in the present. In the supreme mobilization of the decision the historically existing Russian people reveals, recaptures and mobilizes its timeless historical uniqueness and identity. Therefore the political and historical future of Russian people is build on understanding and affirmation of its historical past...
If the Russian people can self-assert themselves and their historical choice in this fateful and dramatic juncture, and if the Russian people are able to reveal and designate friends and enemies, recapturing from the flow of history its political self assertion, then the supreme political decision of the Russian people would be an authentic, historical and existential decision , an affirmation of thousand years of history of Russian people and the Russian state. If on the other hand political decisions will be taken by others, i.e. by the United States in the guise of the insidious ideology of pseudo universalism, which the United States is in the process of establishing as the only legitimate ideology in the New World Order, then our future will be un-Russian, i.e. the future will cease to exist for us. The historical Being of Russian people, Russian state and the Russian nation will became a Being without a future and thus a non-Being. Thus also Russian past will loose its meaning, will dissipate into nothingness: the historical drama of Russian history in the post-Gold War period will became a tragedy of submission under the dictates of the American New World Order, a tragedy of annihilation of Russian future».(21)
«Past, present, and future are existential characteristics, and thus render possible fundamental phenomena such as understanding, concern and determination. This opens the way for the demonstration of historicity as a fundamental existential determination.»(22) Alexander Dugin emphasizes that the essence of a nation’s being-in-the world is a hermeneutical process of questioning and problematization of a crisis situation, a state of emergency. The concept of political existence of the Russian nation is actualized in a time of radical disintegration and regression, a time of emergency and outer and inner danger which creates awareness of being situated in a crises which must take on a political form. The understanding of the political roll of Russia in contemporary world after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, is a power to grasp the nation’s possibilities for being, which by necessity not only requires a disclosure of the nation’s concrete potentialities for being, in a sense of preserving itself and maintaining its own authenticity, but also the revealment of the sources for an inauthentic national existence. This revealment presupposes the identification of the foe which in the process of a national self-understanding becomes manifest; the hermeneutical circle thus closes - the reached understanding leads to resoluteness and demands a political decision on the part of the Russian nation;(23) because the potentiality for authentic national Being remains a mere potentiality unless accompanied by political decisionism. It is the decision to choose itself and thereby to oppose the foe and thus become political, which is the supreme political act of the nation. Those are the issues that are entertained in the most recent issues of Elementy (Elements), the ideological organ of the Russian opposition, dedicated to geopolitical discourse and ideological alternatives in the post-Cold War Russia, a period in which in the words of Aaron Friedberg, Professor in political sciences in Princeton, « the United States has emerged as a single, unchallenged ‘Great Satan’, against whom all ideological energies must be mobilized». The magazine is published by the Center for Special Meta-Strategical Studies in Moscow and beside Alexander Dugin, who is the publisher, lists among its co-editors the editor of the most important opposition newspaper Zavtra (formely Den’), Alexander Prochanov, the New European Right’s ideologists Alain de Benoist (editor of the French magazines Neuvelle Ecole, Elements, Krisis), Robert Steuckers (editor of the Belgian magazines Orientations, Synergies Europeennes and Vouloir) the Italian geopolitician Claudio Mutti, the Serbian geopolitician Dragosh Kalajic, as well as the controversial Russian politician and member of the former Parliament, colonel Victor Alsknis.(25) The interesting issues contain a translation of Carl Schmitt’s essay on “Nomos and the principle of Grossraum”, Karl Haushofer’s work on “Continental geopolitical unity” as well as contributions of authors such as Alain de Benoist and the Austrian general Heinrich Jordis von Lochhausen, the foremost theoretician of contemporary geopolitics and advocate of European liberation from American occupation. Alexander Dugin must be credited with both political imagination and ideological creativeness. He introduces a new vocabulary of resistance. In the tradition of a true iconoclast he identifies not only the foe of Russia and, in the future, of Europe— the United States , but also exposes the most pervasive ideological mystification— Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts— namely the Myth of American Democracy and its claim of pseudo-universality. And finally he argues for the establishment of a new Grossraum in Europe, Pax Euroasiatica , opposing Pax Americana, and based on a coalition of Russia with Central European powers such a Germany and France—a new geopolitical continental block. In essence this concept could be described as a Monroe Doctrine for Europe which will exclude every American intervention in European affairs as well as necessitate a dissolution of NATO and withdrawal of all American military forces from European soil. A Monroe Doctrine for Europe is also a radical departure from the established American paradigm of international order- defined by Zbigniew Brzezinski as »American domination of Europe is axiomatic»(26) —,a paradigm that has been transformed into oppressive political theology and exercise of American hegemony. The relevance of Dugin’s writings as well as the magazine Elementy lies in the formulation of the geopolitical doctrine of Eurasian defense against American expansionism. The geopolitical discourse translates itself into a vision of future liberation which, according to Dugin, must become a categorical imperative for Russia’s-being-in the-world.
THE PRINCIPLE OF GROSSRAUM
The most fundamental principle in geopolitics is the principle of Grossraum formulated by Carl Schmitt in his book “Voelkerrechtliche Grossraumordnung mit Interventionsverbot fuer raumfremde Maechte” and seen by him as a foundation for the science of international law. A Grossraum is «an area dominated by a power representing a distinct political idea. This idea was always formulated with a specific opponent in mind; in essence, distinctions between friend and enemy would be determined by this particular political idea. As an example Schmitt cited the American Monroe Doctrine and its concept of nonintervention by foreign powers in the American Raum»(27) This is the core of the great original Monroe Doctrine, a genuine Grossraum principle, namely the union of a politically-awakened people, a political idea and, on the basis of this idea , a politically-dominant Grossraum excluding foreign intervention.(28)
According to the concept of Grossraum the national sovereignty of a country depends not only on its military power, technological development and economic base but also on the size and geographical location of its land. The sovereignty of a country depends on its geopolitical independence and self-sufficiency of the geographical region. Countries that strive to achieve sovereignty must resolve the problem of territorial self-sufficiency. The Grossraum is a geopolitically unified and economically autarchic space— a spatial power. It is a «territory with rounded-out production and consumption which, if necessary, may exist by itself within closed doors.»(29) As such it protects itself from intervention by spatially alien states and from any other potential Grossraum,(30) and above all from American «Open Door» imperialism—defined by Isiah Bowman as American version of Nazi-Germany’s Lebensraum—in its geopolitical, economical or military manifestation.
Prior to the dissolution, or as Alexander Dugin claims, subversion of the Soviet Union in 1991(31) , in the bipolar world of two Superpowers , there existed two competing Great Areas (Grossr?ume) or two opposing political blocks, each with its sphere of influence and ideology: the Atlantic Grossraum dominated by the United States and the Eurasian Grossraum dominated by the Soviet Union. The political competition between the two blocks gave a substantial latitude for autonomy and independence for countries included in the sphere of influence of the two blocks. However after 1991 a completely new world system has been created. The bipolar world landscape of two superpowers has been transformed into a mono landscape of one superpower imposing its will on the rest of the world.
«The existence of the socialist block and the Warsaw Pact was a decisively positive factor for the prospective European unity, continental integration and future sovereignty of Eurasia. The end of the bipolar world and the emergence of the unipolar New World Order, is a blow on Eurasia, a blow on the continentalism and on the future of all Eurasian countries. If Russia would not immediately start to reconstruct her Greater Area (confirmed by the Helsinki Agreement) ...she would bring to a catastrophe not only herself, but also all people on the World Island...Today Russia, situated in the heart of the Eurasian continent, represents from a geopolitical point of view Europe as a continental block. Therefore the geopolitical interests of Russia and Europe not only confluence but are identical.»(32) In order to understand the historical background of the conflict between the Atlantic Grossraum and the Eurasian Grossraum as well as Dugin's analysis of the American New World Order as a final attempt by the United States for world domination, — a Monroe Doctrine for the whole world as envisioned already by President Wilson at the end of the WWI—, a short account of geopolitical concepts is necessary.
It was the British author Halford Mackinder who in 1904 proposed the notion that the continental part of Eurasia, by virtue of its land mass and geo-strategical importance, forms the world Heartland. The power that controls the Heartland threatens the sea powers-once Great Britain, now the United States—that control the World Island— that is our planet. In 1919 he claimed the necessity for control of the Eastern Europe by the sea power. After the Versailles settlement the new Eastern European countries, concieved as exclusive sphere of influence of the sea powers, had to form a cordon sanitaire between Germany and Russia preventing the geopolitical consolidation of Eurasia. «Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland. Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island. Who rules the World Island commands the World,»(33) asserted McKinder.
In 1943 MacKinder reformulated his theory— the state that controls the Heartland will dominate the World Island.(34) At the same time McKinder acknowledged that «The Heartland is the greatest natural fortress on earth. For the first time in history it is manned by a garrison sufficient both in number and quality»(35) The American geopolitician Alfred Mahan formulated the idea that world hegemony of sea powers can be maintained by control of series of bases around the Eurasian continent. Sea powers could dominate land powers by enclosing them in. The American geopolitician Nicholas Spykman developed the concepts of MacKinder and Mahan but put the emphasis on the control of Eurasian coastal regions which he called the Rimland or Inner Ring. He maintained that the United States could assert control over the Heartland by controlling the Rimland. The Rimland can be seen as an America controlled buffer zone or a huge Cordon Sanitaire, including the NATO countries, Scandinavia, China, India and Indochina. In spite of prolonged wars—the Korean War, the occupation of Taiwan, the war in Vietnam—, the United States has never been able to fully dominate the countries of the Rimland and thus to globalize her Grossraum. The theory and practice of containment born of the Cold War—United States creating NATO, SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization) and CENTO (Central Treaty Organization), putting bases surrounding the Soviet Union, maintaining puppet regimes around the world, are derived from MacKinder’s, Mahan's and Spykman’s geopolitical ideas. If Soviet Union was a fortress, «then to deal with a fortress is to surround it and seal it...This is known as containment»(36) Heartland theory stands as the first premise of the United States geopolitical doctrine and military though during the Cold War. American containment policy «represented a validation of MacKinder«(37) and acceptance of the necessity of destruction of the Hartland. NSC-68 was a statement of this primary objective of the American postwar foreign policy: world domination through destruction of the fortress Hartland— the Soviet Union—and imposition of preponderance of American power in Eurasia. Also U.S. primary foreign policy objective in the New World Order —the conquest of Eastern Europe through «inclusion» of the former Warsaw Pact countries in the military instrument of the global Monroe Doctrine— NATO, is derived from both MacKinders ideas and identical objectives in NSC-68.
One can see the similarities between MacKinder’s and Frederick Jackson Turner’s geopolitical ideas,(38) between the MacKinder’s assertion that the geopolitical dynamics inevitable will lead to a creation of one World Empire (an Anglo-Saxon) and Turner’s «frontier thesis» , defining the essence of the United States as perpetual expansionism. The merger of the Monroe Doctrine, the «Open Door» imperialism and geopolitics in the frontier-expansionist Weltanschaung which has defined the U.S. foreign policy during this century, led after the end of the W.W.II to the grand design of an American Century and an American World Empire enbracing the globe.(39) NSC 68 was a statement of strategy and tactics to achieve those objectives.
However the contraposition between the Atlantic Grossraum and the Eurasian Grossraum does have, according to Dugin, even a wider and more profound context that transcends the geopolitical power competition. In this conjunction one can recall de Gaulle objections in the past to Britain’s entry into the Common Market based on his perception of England as a type of civilization different from that of Europe . The English, as he saw it, were lacking cultural and historical identity with the Continent and were not interested in building a Europe distinct from America. «England is, in effect, insular, maritime, linked through its trade, markets and food supply to very diverse and often very distant countries. Its activities are essentially industrial and commercial, and only slightly agricultural... In short, the nature, structure and economic context of England differ profoundly from those of other States on the Continent.»(40) For Dugin the Atlantic Grossraum and the Atlanticism versus the Eurasian Grossraum and the Eurasianism represent two different paradigms of societal organization that can not be reconciled. Halford Mackinders geopolitical theories as well as Carl Schmitt’s work “Land und Meer” and to a lesser extend Oswald Spengler’s “Prussentum und Socialismus” and Werner Sombart’s “Haendler und Helden”, form here the theoretical framework. Dugin distinguishes two types of civilization: sea-oriented Atlantian and land-oriented Continental or Eurasian and sees the future rapprochement between Russia and Western European countries on the basis of the principle called Continentalism or Eurasianism, which he opposes to English and American Atlanticism. The antagonism between Atlanticism and Continentalism/Eurasianism, between a seagoing civilization and land civilization, goes back to ancient times, constituting the major tension of world history.(41) Atlanticism, exemplified by the legendary Atlantis, by ancient Carthage and by contemporary England and the United States, is characterized by the spirit of trade and profit and it values mercantilism and cosmopolitanism. Continentalism, best represented by legendary Hyperborea, and by historical Roman, German and Russian Empires, emphasizes the organic unity of people in their spiritual bonds with the earth and their fidelity to national tradition. Thus the very form of the landmass supporting a people influence the substance or their culture and national character. «In ancient history a sea power that become a symbol for sea civilization was Phoenicia-Garthage. The land civilization in opposition to Carthage was then the Roman Empire. The Punic wars reflected the irreconcilable differences between the sea-oriented and land-oriented civilizations. In modern history the Queen of Seas - Great Britain - raised as the sea pole of world politics, later to be overtaken by the United States. In the same way as Phoenicia and Carthage in the past , Great Britain used in the first place commerce, trade and colonialism as instrument for her hegemony. The geopolitical paradigm of Anglo Saxon sea orientation created a particular ‘commercial-capitalist-market’ oriented civilization, based primarily on economic and material interests and on the principles of economic liberalism. In spite of historical variation, the most common type of ‘sea civilization’ has always expressed the fundamental idea of the ‘primacy of economics over politics’. Mackinder clearly shows, that during the period of modern history ‘sea orientation’ meant Atlanticism, and today sea powers are United States and England, also the Anglo Saxon countries. In opposition to the Atlanticism stands the Eurasianism, the land based civilization. In modern history the Eurasian orientation is above all characteristic for Germany and Russia. Therefore the historical tradition of those countries has been and would be in opposition to the ideology and the geopolitical interests of the Atlanticist- the United States. Whereas Atlanticism can be equated with capitalist individualism, economic liberalism and commercial notion of imperialism, Eurasianism means communitarianism, social welfare, economic democracy , the precedence of general welfare over self-interest, of the societal ‘whole’ over the parts, and the primacy of politics over economics.»(42) Referring to the fundamental differences between the two paradigms of societal organization, Dugin projects that the world will one day witness a war between Eurasian continentalism, championed by Russia, and the global Atlanticism—the New World Order—, upheld by the United States, or, as Alain de Benoist writes: « Eurasia against America would be the decisive battle of the future. The United States is the enemy of humankind-hostis humani generis-, the Carthage that must be destroyed.»(43)
THE NEW WORLD ORDER
The essence of the New World Order proclaimed by President Bush , and terminologically and conceptually borrowed from the lexicon of Nazi Germany, as well as Woodrow Wilson’s expansionist ideas of a Monroe Doctrine for the whole world, is a new geopolitical project to transform the world into a single Grossraum- in Carl Scmitt’s thought a new Nomos of the Earth—, dominated, controlled and orchestrated by the United States with the corollary of subversion of international law, the United Nations and the sovereignty of other countries except the United States. United Nations is bound to loose all significance, becoming a disciplined puppet and instrument of American expansionism and assertion of global jurisdiction and system of interventionism, a sort of pseudo legitimizing facade through which U.S. will unilaterally act to further her expansionist interests. What seems to be in the future is a global Latin-Americanization of the world with the United Nations reduced to a sort of OAS (Organization of American States ) , i.e. a well-behaved puppet in American hands. «It is obvious that the American concept of Atlantic Grossraum - the American New World Order - totally excludes any form of real state’s and political sovereignty on part of any other country and people. The preexisting bipolar world prior to 1991 gave incomparably more freedom and sovereignty to countries that were included in the sphere of influence of the then existing Superpowers and competing Grossr?ume. The emerging Atlantic Grossraum of the American architects of the New World Order will lead to disintegration of the very principle of state sovereignty because power suppression - by military and economic means- will become the only instrument of control.
The new situation in the world puts other countries, and in particular the countries that previously were members of the geopolitical block opposing the Atlantic Alliance, before the following alternatives: either a forced integration in the U.S. dominated New World Order— the Atlantic Grossraum— with subsequent renunciation of their sovereignty, or a creation of a new Grossraum which will be able to oppose the United States and thus will give them chance to preserve their sovereignty and cultural autonomy».(44)
History in general and U.S. behavior in particular show us that predatory countries abhor power vacuum. It is certain, and it is happened, that the United States would hasten to exploit the withdrawal of Soviet Union from the word arena and impose unilateral advantage over other countries until now protected by the balance of power and the U.S. -Soviet competition. In retrospect one may say that the end of the Warsaw Pact and the dissolution of the Soviet Union have gone a long way toward decreasing stability in Europe and elsewhere.
A substantial part of Alexander Dugin’s geopolitical analysis is focused on the Pentagon’s Defense Planning Guidance , drafted under supervision of Paul D. Wolfowitz, the Pentagon’s Under Secretary for Policy, and provided to the New York Times in February of 1992,(45) and which in all respects could be called a blueprint for total domination of the world. In the 46-page classified document the Defense Department asserts America’s political and military will be to insure that no rival superpower is allowed to emerge in Western Europe , Asia or the territory of the former Soviet Union. American mission and strategy is summarized in the document as follow: «Our first objective is to prevent the reemergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control , be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe , East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia. There are three additional aspects to this objective: First , the U.S. must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests. Second, in the non-defensive areas, we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. Finally we must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role...
... NATO is the primary instrument of Western defense and security, as well as the channel for U.S. influence and participation in European security affairs. While the United States supports the goal of European integration, we must seek to prevent the emergency of European only security arrangements which will undermine NATO».(46)
The document further outlines strategies to subvert the United Nations by substituting it in reality with the United States dominated and controlled NATO and also postulates the right of the U.S. to sidestep United Nations in acting independently and unilaterally.(47) The political development since 1991 can only be described as determined implementation of the American master plan for world domination, outlined in the Pentagon’s Defense Planning Guidance which is a mirror image of identical objectives stated in NSC-68. The document is interesting, as Dugin points out, because it allows for the obvious conclusion that the future enemies of the United States could be her former allies and that the threat that U.S. poses against the Russia now may become a threat against France, Germany and Japan tomorrow. And it is just a matter of time before the antagonism between Western European countries and U.S. will surface and articulate itself as opposition between different national interests. Despite the political transformation in Europe United States has resolved that NATO and the U.S. military presence on the continent should be a permanent geopolitical fixtures. Disbanding of the Warsaw Pact in July 1991 was not followed by the disbanding of NATO . The American alarm concerning the prospect of creation of a Franco-German joint force is understandable since such force will not only inevitably lead to assertion of sovereignty on part of European countries (48) but also to articulation of European identity and collective national interest different from that of the United States. The difference in national interest’s is emphasized by general H.J. von Lochhausen who in his article “The War in Iraq is a War Against Europe” writes: «U.S. has understood that in order to maintain its worldwide domination she must position herself against her enemies of tomorrow i.e. Japan and united Europe. U.S. has chosen to take a firm control of those oil resources on which Japan and Germany will depend in the future ...The war in Iraq was such positioning and it was made possible only because the Soviet Union was eliminated as a player on the world arena and thus also as a deterrent to American aggression. One must remember that the country that controls the oil in the Persian Gulf controls also Western Europe and Japan...And it is deeply disturbing that U.S. forced Germany and Japan to finance the war which ultimately was aimed to their weakening and control in the future».(49) To a similar conclusion comes Samir Amin who points out that »I believe that the decision to go to war in the Gulf was taken deliberately by Washington as a method of preventing the formation of ‘European bloc’ :by weakening Europe (the supply of oil now being unilaterally controlled by the United States; by revealing the essentially fragile political union of Europe...and by neutralizing Moscow».(50)
THE NEW WORLD ORDER AND INTERNATIONAL LAW
I would like to examine in more detail two issues that are central to Alexander Dugin’s criticism of the New World Order namely the framework of new international law it creates and its consequences for Russia and Europe as exemplified by the war in Yugoslavia. The issue of international law can be seen in the light of Dean Acheson’s statement concerning the American concept of sources of and obligations under international law. »Much of what is called international law is a body of ethical distillation, and one must take care not to confuse this distillation with law...Further, the law trough its long history has been respectful of power, especially that power which is close to the sanctions of law...the law simply does not deal with such questions of ultimate power- power that comes close to the sources of sovereignty»(51) , and the tendency on the part of the U.S. to assert her will as the sole source of international law. In this conjunction it is interesting to recall that already de Gaulle saw at the end of the World War II in President Roosevelt’s grand design for United Nations not only America’s bid for world hegemony through creation of international body subservient to and controlled by the United States but also «a permanent system of intervention that he (Roosevelt) intended to institute by international law»(52) , a design that re-emerged and came to realization in the New Word Order. The war in Yugoslavia on the other hand is of particular importance since it has been perceived in Russia not only as a contemporary analogy to the Spanish Civil War with the U.S. assuming the role of the former fascist powers but also as a general rehearsal to what may happen to Russia in the event U.S. gains a strategic nuclear superiority. And as before during the 30-ties in Spain a number of Russians has volunteered to serve in the Serbian forces.(53) A particular alarm in Russia has caused the so called Presidential Directive 13 which outlines American plans for massive cover operations as well as outright military intervention in Russia under the familiar disguise of so called peace keeping operations in former Soviet republics and formulated with the objective to prevent any recognition of a Russian Monroe Doctrine in the former Soviet Union.(54) A starting point for the analysis of the transformation of the concept of international law must be a discussion on the nature and development of the unilaterally proclaimed Monroe Doctrine which from its very inception has been the ideological basis of American imperialism and assertion of an ever increasing extra-territorial jurisdiction. The Monroe Doctrine designated an area far exceeding the territory of the United States- The Western Hemisphere- as a Grossraum with the U.S. assuming the role of imperial power vested with absolute sovereignty in the region while depriving other countries in the same region of rights to sovereignty and self-determination.(55) U.S. unilaterally reserved for herself the right of intervention in the Western Hemisphere creating a qualitatively new form of colonialism with the right of intervention as a cornerstone for political control and domination. The essence of the Monroe Doctrine and its subsequent codification in the Rio Treaty, is the repudiation of the main principle of the United Nations Charter namely the principle of equality and sovereignty of nations on which the body of international law rests. And already Hegel knew that international law-jus gentium-presupposes and is based on sovereignty of states. In a situation where only one state in the international community is a possessor of absolute sovereignty, the international law as such can not exist- it will be the application of the domestic law of the dominating state disguised into an universal principle.(56) After the conclusion of the W.W.I, at the Paris Peace Conference, which resulted in the signing of the Treaty of Versailles and creation of the League of Nations , president Woodrow Wilson presented his Fourteen Points which proclaimed a new universalism as well as , employing what later will be called a Orwellian New Talk, the right of self-determination as a foundation for the postwar world order. At the same time his Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, wrote a memorandum explaining the meaning of the Monroe Doctrine : «In its advocacy of the Monroe Doctrine the United States considers its own interests. The integrity of other American nations is an incident, not an end. While this may seem based on selfishness alone, the author of the Doctrine had no higher or more generous motive in its declaration.»(57) United States refused to enter the League of Nations unless its "Charter incorporated the Monroe Doctrine - a demand less concerned with the right of self-determination than with American domination in the Western Hemisphere. As it turned out, even though Art. 21 of the Chapter did incorporate the Monroe Doctrine, the U.S. did not join the League. In Schmitt’s view, Art. 21 symbolized the triumph of the Western Hemisphere over Europe.»(58) the grand design of President Wilson was to transform the Treaty of Versailles and its creation, the League of Nations , into a instrument of American imperialism and dominance of Europe.(59)
Of particular interest are United States fifteen reservations which did not provide for ratification but, rather, for the nullification of the Treaty. Some of those reservations form a distinct doctrinaire body concerned with the nature of U.S. obligations under international law.
1. The United States so understands and construes article 1 that in case of notice or withdrawal from the League of Nations...the United States shall be the sole judge as to whether all its international obligations and all its obligations under the said covenant have been fulfilled...
4. The United States reserves to itself exclusively the right to decide what questions are within its domestic jurisdiction and declares that all domestic and political questions relating wholly or in part to its internal affairs ...are solely within the jurisdiction of the United States and are not under this treaty to be submitted in any way either to arbitration or to the consideration of the council or of the assembly of the League of Nations, or any agency thereof, or to the decision or recommendation of any other power.
5. The United States will not submit to arbitration or to inquire by the assembly or by the council of the League of Nations, provided for in said treaty of peace, any questions which in the judgment of the United States depend upon or relate to its long-established policy, commonly known as the Monroe Doctrine; said doctrine is to be interpreted by the United States alone and is hereby declared to be wholly outside the jurisdiction of said League of Nations...
14. ..The United States assumes no obligation to be bound by any decision, report, or finding of the council or assembly arising out of any dispute between the United States and any member of the league.(60)
Those reservations express the specific American dualistic position in respect to international treaties: treaties are to be used as a vehicle for other countries to assume obligations while the U.S. does not assume any obligations.(61) Treaties were to be so designed solely to promote United States interests by securing action by foreign governments in a way deemed advantageous by the U.S. and not for the U.S. to undertake any international obligations. The purpose of this dualistic doctrine has historically been to solidify and promote American hegemonical claims. Recognizing the true nature of the pseudo-universalism of the international law created after the W.W.I which appeared not to rest on respect for existing sovereignties but was merely a pretext for complete political and economic domination by the United States, Carl Schmitt wrote that «Behind the facade of general norms of international law lies, in reality, the system of Anglo-Saxon world imperialism»(62) After the W.W.II United States needed a further disguise to unilaterally assert U.S. power and to underscore Washington’s hemispheric hegemony. It resulted in a creation and signing of the Interamerican Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, signed in Rio de Janeiro in September of 1947, and a subsequent pact concluded in Bogota in April of 1948, which established the Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS). The significance of the Rio Treaty goes beyond the formal codification of the Monroe Doctrine. First, in view of the fundamental professed principle of the Charter of the United Nation namely the principle of sovereignty and equality of member states , a regional treaty which in substance repudiates the very principle of sovereignty save for the sole sovereignty of the United States , must be seen as incompatible with the U.N. Charter. Secondly OAS became a prototype of a pseudo-international organization with a pseudo-universal ideological facade, an instrument for American interventionism in the region. And finally it must be seen as a paradigm of American concept of organization of a Grossraum in particular and World Order in general the globalization of which is the very essence of the New World Order. Or as Noam Chomsky points out « For the U.S. , the Cold War has primarily been a history of worldwide subversion, aggression and state-run international terrorism, with examples to numerous to mention. Secondarily , it has served to maintain U.S. influence over the industrial allies, and to suppress independent politics and popular activism.»(63) An additional aspect of the New World Order seems to be the U.S. repudiation of one of the most fundamental rules of international law namely that treaties must be performed in good faith; the rule of “pacta sunt servanda”. The massive cover operations undertaken by the United States in Poland during the 80-ties after President Reagan signed a secret national-security-decision (NSDD 32)(64) that authorized a wide range of subversive measures by the CIA to destabilize the country , were motivated by the U.S. resolve to nullify the Yalta Agreement.(65)
The U.S. invasion of Panama in December of 1990 was based on the Washington design to prevent the effect of the treaty that would transfer the control over Panama canal to Panama. I can certainly agree with Noam Chomsky’s conclusion that the Panama war which resulted in more than 20.000 civil casualties «is a historic event in one respect. It is the first U.S. act of international violence in the post-World War II era that was not justified by the pretext of a Soviet threat.»(66) And finally the war in Yugoslavia and the subsequent partition of the country which, historically seen, is almost analogous to Hitler’s partition of the country: a Croatian puppet state has been established by the neo-Ustachi. The general perception in Russia is that the so called Bosnian forces, promoted by the U.S. , are no more than the equivalent of the so called Contras in Nicaragua and the war is the first example of Latin-Americanization of Europe. But the partition of Yugoslavia, which in not so distant past was one of the leaders on the non-aligned countries, is seen as a flagrant violation of the Helsinki Accord of 1975 which essence was inviolability of frontiers and territorial integrities of states as well as guaranties of sovereign equality of nations and respect for the rights inherent in sovereignty(67) and on which all security arraignments in Europe were based. In pertinent part the Helsinki Accord states that:
The participating States will respect each other’s sovereign equality and individuality as well as the rights inherent in and encompassed by its sovereignty, including in particular the right of every State to judicial equality, to territorial integrity and to freedom and political independence...The participating States regard as inviolable all one another’s frontiers as well as the frontiers of all States in Europe and therefore they will refrain now and in the future from assaulting these frontiers...
The participating States will respect the territorial integrity of each of the participating States. Accordingly, they will refrain from any action inconsistent with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations against the territorial integrity, political independence or the unity of any participating State, and in particular from any such action constituting a threat or use of force.
While the partition of Yugoslavia must be seen as violation of the Helsinki Accord, the issuing war and the U.S. outright military intervention and occupation of part of Yugoslavia—Bosnia—,do have wider implications since those measures involve and articulate the relationship between the U.S. and the United Nations. Summarizing the intentions of Washington William Safire in an article in the New York Times(68) writes concerning the prospective air-strikes against Serbian forces that the Clinton Administration has adopted a new resolute policy vis-?-vis the United Nations- «Don’t ask, tell Policy...Coercive diplomacy would become the order of the day» A State Department spokesman, Michael McCurry, asserted that « The United States would be ready to carry out an air campaign against advancing Serbian forces whether or not it received the approval of European allies at a NATO meeting in Brussels on August 2, 1993.»(69) He further omitted all references to any necessary authorization by the United Nations.
Although the Clinton Administration was rebuffed by the U.S. Secretary General who rightfully asserted that the U.S. does not have jurisdiction over U.N. forces and that furthermore, any decision in respect to air-strikes must be sanctioned by the United Nations(70) , United States has persisted in claiming that U.S. alone can decide whether or not to strike. Or as the former State Department official John Bolton correctly pointed out:
«We are the central multilateralists. The idea that there is some collective international will out there is just fairly land stuff. The true measure of America’s diplomatic clout will always be the military resources we are willing to commit.»(71) After a meeting in Washington with Alija Izetbegovic, the U.S.’s man in Bosnia, and a former officer of the Waffen SS (72) , President Clinton stated on September 8, 1993, that any military intervention in Yugoslavia must be undertaken «by a peacekeeping force from NATO — not the United Nations but NATO». The French reaction was understandable. Richard Duque, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said France believed that any such operation should be «under the authority of the United Nations».(73) The French reaction must be seen also in light of the Defense Secretary Les Aspin’s assertion that any peacekeeping forces should be under NATO command, that is, under the ultimate direction of the Supreme Allied Commander, a post always held by an American officer. France however does not belong to the NATO’s integrated command and apparently sees the American statements as an attempt to infringe upon her sovereignty. The American objectives in Yugoslavia were fully realized. For all practical purposes NATO tog over all the essential functions of the United Nations, in fact replacing the United Nation. The Daytona «agreement» seen by many as a Second Munich , embodied not only the essence of the diplomacy of ultimatums but also the American attempts to subvert the of international law. In fact the Daytona Agreement is a nullity according the international law(74) . The agreement, modeled after the Platt Amendment in regard to Cuba, created a virtual American protectorate in Bosnia. The French geopolitician General Pierre-Marie Gallois, one of the leaders of the Resistance movement during the WWII, the creator of the military doctrine of France and one of the closest advisers of General de Gaulle sees the war and the partition of Yugoslavia as an integral part of the American design for world domination, embodied in the concept of the New World Order. And thus it serves the geopolitical strategy of the ultimate extension of American Lebensraum—the Monroe Doctrine for the whole world. In his words one can hear the voice of General De Gaulle: «The pursuit of truth and justice made me involved in a resolute struggle against the greatest absurd and evil which flow out of the totalitarian idea of the New World Order. The partition and destruction of Yugoslavia , the aggression against Iraq , the murder of hundred of thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq, all those abominable acts are all but pages of the same scenario: the imposition of the evil will of one over all who are perceived as obstacles for the imposition of American Weltherrschaft over humankind...It is rather obvious that the partition of countries in Europe has not ended yet.
Our participation in NATO and the occupation of Yugoslavia is a threat to the independence of France, a betrayal of our national interests. The Balkan crisis is an expedient device to justify the unjustifiable: the expansion of the American military presence in Europe. And at the same time UN, rather than being an institution for promotion of international understanding and peace, has been transformed into an instrument for collective aggression. NATO is not on a peace mission in Yugoslavia. NATO’s forces in Yugoslavia are an act of aggression, an act of outright occupation.»(75) At the same time, points and emphasizes Galouas , the war in Yugoslavia, serves an important geopolitical purpose, designed to imperil the desire for geopolitical independence of Europe: «Germany will grow stronger and soon she would no longer tolerate the presence of American military forces on her soil. Therefore a reserve position for the American NATO forces is necessary, the addition of an ideal geopolitical region for stationing and regrouping of the military instrument of American foreign policy. Albania, Bosnia and Macedonia form that region...The world according to American recipes is an absolute and total negation of the old tradition of respect for rights and freedoms. After the genocidal bombing of civilian Serbian targets and the economic embargo serving the same purpose—weakening of the Serbs—, United States created Bosnia as her protectorate...That is abominable. But those atrocities serve the overriding geopolitical goal of the United States: to remain in Europe at any cost...Dayton Agreement is the latest embodiment of the new American diplomacy, aggressive and uncompromising , confident in its power, the diplomacy that knows and uses only the language of ultimatums...
U.S. literally bombed to pieces Iraq, poisoned the nature and the ecological environment , with unparalleled barbarity killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, only in order to control the supply of oil and dictate its price as it pleases Washington...As a result of the embargo against Iraq 570.000 civilians were murdered....And this is a crime against humanity par excellence.
And again and again decisions are made in Washington which will result in murder of innocent elderly, sick and poor. And then Washington dears to teach the world morality...Or take the so called War Tribunal in Hague, allegedly set up to represent moral and truth but in reality an instrument of war (war with other judicial means) and continuous aggression against the Serbs.(76) What better evidence of the absurdity of this tribunal than the fact that there were no war crime tribunals for all war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the bombing of Dresden and Hamburg, the nuclear annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for the massive war crimes committed in Vietnam, an for the war crimes committed in Iraq during the operation Desert Storm. It is as if all those massive war crimes did not happen or were insignificant compared to the Serbs resistance against the conquest of their country...I can not accept such perverted American logic, and I am very sorry that my country is forced to participate in those American atrocities.(77)
The obvious conclusion is that the partition of Yugoslavia, and the subsequent war, serve several purposes:
a. Expansion of the American Grossraum with the establishment of a Bosnian puppet state controlled by the U.S., as well as, in all probability, establishment of U.S. permanent military bases on the Adriatic;
b. Prevention of the emergence of any independent European foreign policy initiatives and thereby the emergence of Europe as an unified new Grossraum;
c. Consolidation of the control over the Rimland;
d. Abrogation, in fact, of the Helsinki Accord;
e. Subversion and factual demise of the United Nations as an international body and finally
f. A rehearsal for, as it is perceived in Russia, an impending war of aggression against Russia. In any event, it is quite obvious, that substitution of United Nations with NATO will render the veto power of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council inoperative, which will effect the interests of not only Russia but also France and China. If the incorporation of the Monroe Doctrine in Article 21 of the Chapter of the League of Nations signified the subversion of the universality of international law and Europe’s defeat by the U.S. , the war in Yugoslavia and air-strikes against Serbian forces signifies even more important historical event namely the subversion of the United Nations and its transformation in the future , if U.S. is not resolutely opposed , to a functional equivalent of the OAS i.e. to a pseudo-international body serving as a rubber stamp for American hegemony and wars of aggression disguised as so called peace keeping operations in countries that, prior to the peace keeping initiatives, have already been destabilized by the U.S. covert and overt subversion. The partition of Yugoslavia can very well became a second Munich for Europe. It is obvious that Washington is seeking to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world. To achieve this aim United States will have to effect the complete subversion and forcible destruction of the machinery of government and structure of society in , above all, former socialist countries and their replacement by an apparatus and structure subservient to and controlled from Washington.
Hitler left the League of Nations preparing for aggressive wars; United States strategy on the other hand is much more dangerous - the subversion of the United Nations to further the same end . Recognizing the changing nature of the United Nations in the post 1991 era and the issuing crisis of legitimacy, one of the founders of the National Salvation Front in Russia and the former editor of the Military-Historical Journal general B. Filatov wrote that
«When the National Salvation Front comes to power and that will happen very soon, we will leave the United Nations which has become a fascist punitive organization, an instrument of CIA. We will put our rockets on alert. Then we will see who will dare to attack Serbia.»(78) The necessary strategy for Russia and other European countries, Germany and France above all, must be a geopolitical project to create a new Grossraum - Pax Eurasiatica- in opposition to Pax Americana and its corollary , the New World Order, because only in opposition to the United States can Europe begin an independent geopolitical life and reach a genuine emancipation, writes Dugin. The purpose of a new Kulturkampf is to problematize the American hegemony as a threat to Europe as a historical formation in general and to its culture in particular. Finding the authenticity of European destiny and political life implies by necessity a rejection of any false claims of universalism advanced by the U.S., which to its substance is both an ideological facade and concealment of American particular national interests. European revival is conditioned upon the dissolution of NATO which today is solely an instrument of American control over its alleged allies and a pretext to maintain U.S. occupation forces in Europe /for more than one hundred years» as President Bush asserted. The strategical objectives of the U.S. controlled NATO have been defined by Wolfram Hanrieder in his book Germany, America, Europe(79) as a strategy of «double containment»: containment of the Soviet Union in the past on one side and of American allies on the other. «The logic of this strategy was put bluntly by Lord Ismay in his famous dictum about NATO’s purpose in Europe (which could have described the U.S. policies toward the Japanese) ‘Keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down.’»(80) Europe as a collective entity must enter the famous hermeneutical circle and walking there must find the truth about its separate and unique collective existence which during the Cold War years has been concealed. As Heidegger has pointed out , the attempt to achieve national authenticity is always expressed in resoluteness and resoluteness is the true substance of Kulturkampf.
Dugin proposes the revival of the concept of Mitteleuropa, originally formulated by Friedrich Naumann, as an ideological platform for a new geopolitical orientation opposing Pax Americana and creating a competing Grossraum—Pax Eurasiatica— which will exclude and oppose the United States. Closely associated with the concept of Mitteleuropa is the specific political extrapolation of the Kultur/Zivilization dichotomy as formulated by Thomas Mann in his book “Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man”(81) in which he counterpoises German «culture» against largely Anglo-Saxon «civilization». Dugin elaborates on that dichotomy reaching the conclusion that not only Europe’s national interest differs from that of the United States but that also its cultural tradition is the antithesis of the hollow shell of «civilization» in the U.S. Whereas «culture» in European countries is expression of national identities and of organic historical tradition, the American «civilization» is the bearer of an all-embracing commercialism and consumerism whose penetration dissolves all national identities. A rather paradoxical conclusion emerges from the revival of the concept of Mitteleuropa namely an anti-West oriented Europe. Dugin sees the term West as largely an American ideological construct, an Atlanticist mold thrown over Europe, and regards de Gaulle’s decision in 1966 to withdraw from NATO’s integrated command, which, as de Gaulle emphasized, deprived France of her sovereignty, not only as the first assertion of European identity separate and different from that of the United States, but also as the first anti-West manifestation by an European country in the U.S.’s sphere of influence. De Gaulle emphasized that the American design has always been to transform a cohesive European community into a larger and looser Atlantic community under American control.(82) Recognizing that Atlanticism was virulently aggressive as ever, he was compelled to look for ways of resisting American hegemony in Europe. »There were two options: he could either take unilateral measures to challenge American hegemony or he could seek alternative partners with a common interest in breaking down hegemonic control.»(83) France’s withdrawal from the NATO’s integrated command become de Gaulle’s ultimate gesture of anti-hegemonism.
The failure of the Soviet Union, due to defeatist and de facto anti-national foreign policy of the Gorbachev administration, to condition the unification of Germany on her withdrawal from NATO, was a major self-inflicted political defeat affecting not only Russia but also Germany in the future. For Russia it means a weakening of its strategic potential and for Germany a lost chance to gain full sovereignty by not having foreign occupation forces stationed on her territory. And for Europe as a whole it signifies a lost momentum to replace NATO, i.e. American power projection and an instrument of containment against U.S.’s former allies, with a pan-European security system. In this perspective one must se the alternatives for Europe as envisioned by the Maastricht treaty which may lead to gradual unification: either a Federated Europe as a power projecting Grossraum or as an even more divided and weakened Europe under the oppressive and leveling effect of the American pseudo-universalism, which in substance will amount to an Atlanticist police state with the NATO’s strategy of containment directed toward the U.S.’s former allies. In the latter case the Maastrich treaty will lead to deligitimization of national sovereignties and to weakening and dissolution of national identities of member states. Instead of a new European self-identity, the result will be the creation of an amorphous space with obliterated national and cultural identities and functionally integrated into the American Grossraum. Already de Gaulle foresaw that possibility when he stated that if the United States is not opposed «at the end there would appear a colossal Atlantic community under American dependence and leadership which would completely swallow up the European community.»(84) Against the anti-European concept of Atlantic community, devised as an ideological vehicle for subjugation of independent European geopilitical existence, stands the concept of a Monroe doctrine for Europe, claims Alain de Benoist : «What bothers me is that I do not see the Maastricht Treaty leading to an autonomous, politically sovereign Europe determined to acquire the equivalent of what the Monroe doctrine was for the United States, but rather a phantom of Europe, a Europe a unemployment, absent and impotent, a free trade zone governed on the theoretical level by ultra-liberal monetary principles and, on the practical level , by administrators and bankers who neither have a political project nor democratic legitimacy...Nietzsche said: «Europe will create itself on the edge of a tomb». For my part, I believe it will create itself over and against the United States, or it will not create itself.»(85) In historical perspective the Anglophone powers , Great Britain in the past, United States now, have always been an obstacle to consolidation of Europe and thus a true geopolitical adversary. «The urge to evict the Americans, and before us , the British from the Continent has deep roots in reaction to the role of the English-speaking countries in foiling every attempt to unify Europe since the Renaissance. With the exception of the more misguided members of the House of Stuart , every English-speaking head of state from Elizabeth Tudor to Harry Truman opposed the consolidation of the Continent. Elizabeth I fought Spain; from the time of Marlborough to the time of Wellington the English fought France; from Asquith to Churchill and Roosevelt the «Anglo-Saxon» fought Germany. Even when American policy shifted under Truman to support the peaceful integration of Western Europe , it was out of desire to fend off the greater menace of the Soviets...The positive contribution to European civilization of the old «divide and rule» policy cannot, however, disguise its essentially negative goal. The British sought to keep the Continent embroiled in quarrels while they assembled a global empire and grew rich. The United States relied on Britain to maintain a European balance that kept the Europeans from interfering in the New World while we, like our British cousins, traded freely with all quarters of the globe...In the twentieth century the Elizabethan realpolitik of the Anglophone powers acquired a Wilsonian overlay...The Elizabethan and the Wilsonian policies remain at the core of American interests today. As good Elizabethans, we understand that it is not in America’s interests...for European integration to take place under the hegemonic leadership of a single power, whether this power is based in Moscow or Berlin. Nor would it be in America’s interests for European integration to proceed in such a way as to create a single hegemonic power center in Brussels»(86). The grand design of the United States, particularly now, when Washington is aggressively advancing the plans to globalize NATO, and thus its Monroe doctrine, is the Latin-Americanization first of the former socialist countries, including Russia and second, of her former West European allies. And as long as United States is not displaced from her position of hegemony in Europe and ultimately driven out of Eurasia, European countries will never acquire that which is necessary for independent geopolitical existence. A federated Europe with American military forces on its soil is no more than an obedient satellite. During the 60-ties de Gaulle warned against a supranational Europe of the Common market which he then considered a divided Europe under the mentorship and hegemonial design of the United States. Reading Dugin one may paraphrase Bismarck and say that if the power of Russia is ever broken , it will be difficult for the former members of the socialist block to avoid the fate of Poland in the past that is the destiny of divided and contested area to be claimed by the United States as «glacis and perimeter of battle». By the same token a weak Russia may spell weakness also for other European countries. But does it mean that Dugin envisions a sort of a new Rapallo treaty(87) as a political foundation for a new geopolitical orientation? I can agree with Rudolf Barho’s assertion that »A new Rappalo would break Western Europe from North America«.(88) However, a new Rapallo can only be used as a metaphor for diplomatic and political initiatives that may lead to a possible alliance between Germany, France, Russia and China as central powers. A new equivalent of Rapallo treaty is a geopolitical and existential imperative for Europe, a fundament for future continental unity and continental defense against American expansionism, against the pseudo universalism and totalitarian claims of the American Imperium Monde. Dugin’s concept of a new European geopolitical orientation resembles de Gaulle’s visions during the ‘60s. Rejecting American hegemony de Gaulle conjured an alliance, an European coalition, which, without infringing on the sovereignty of the member states would constitute an alternative European Grossraum. He recognized that the ideology of Atlantic unity is in fact the ideology of American domination and counterpoised his concept of European unity which today only can be seen as America free Europe. However de Gaulle recognized that a genuine European alliance could not be created without there being in Europe today a federator with sufficient power, authority and skills.(89) At that time there was no such strong federator. In his memoirs de Gaulle noted that «The American President’s (F.D. Roosevelt) remarks ultimately proved to me that, in foreign affairs, logic and sentiment do not weight heavily in comparison with the realities of power; that what matters is what one takes and what one can hold on to; that to regain her place, France must count only on herself».(90) United States believed that the Frenchmen «in a grip of sort of neurasthenia would gradually relax into the status of an American protectorate...The alternative, as de Gaulle constantly proposed it, was for Frenchmen to continue the arduous struggle for national self renewal until they again became masters of their own fate.»(91) In his advocacy of a new continental geopolitical orientation and in his definition of Pax Eurasiatica, Alexander Dugin criticizes and rejects the old ideology of Panslavism. The difference between the Panslavism and Eurasianism is summarized by him as a difference between two principles — «the principle of blood» and «the principle of soil (realm)». For the Panslavism the emphasis is on the concept of ethnic identity—in other words the primacy of blood over the soil. For the traditional Eurasianism on the other hand, the land takes precedence: as ideology it expresses the primacy of the soil over the blood. «It presupposes the ideological choice of continental, Eurasian values over narrow ethnic or racial values.»(92) A further differentiation of the concept of Eurasianism can be made by distinguishing between two sub directions of the Eurasian ideology.
The first one is centered on the notion of a specific Eurasian identity—the concept of polyphonic ethos of Russia—defined in terms of ethos and land.(93) The second one defines Eurasianism in terms of geopolitical realities and necessary geopolitical strategy, also in terms of realm and Grossraum. The emphasis here is on the land power status of Russia as opposed to the atlanticist sea power status of the United States. Alexander Dugin is a proponent of this definition of Eurasianism. From a geopolitical point of view the past observation of Halford MacKinder that the greatest danger to Anglo Saxon hegemony would be a political union and a geopolitical block of Russia and Germany, bears particular relevance. The concept of Eurasian resistance against the dictates of the American New World Order and the global American hegemony articulates the geopolitical and the national meta— existential necessity to create such geopolitical block able to stop the steamroller of the New World Order.
An additional aspect of Dugin’s analyses of geopolitical orientations and strategies concerns the future relationship between Russia and Islam. The starting point is Robert Steuckers view that Russia must make a common cause with Iran against American interests.(94) Continental, Islamic — revolutionary Iran is contrasted with the Atlanticist secular Turkey and the Arabic theocratic variant of Islam of Saudi Arabia. Turkey is the primary agent of American influence in the region and a virtual colony of the U.S., an Asian forpost of American geopolitical interests which serves as a cordon sanitaire between the Asian East of Russia and the Arab world. A conflict between Russia and Islam countries is the main purpose of the U.S. foreign policy, a main conduit for which is Turkey.
A similar roll serves also Saudia Arabia, a country which in fact must also be seen as an American colony. The interests of Saudy dynasty and of the American Atlanticism coincide, forming a bullwark against creation of an Arabic Great Area. Through the control of Saudi Arabia U.S. controls the supply of oil. And the U.S. controlls the economy of Europe through control of the oil in the Gulf region. Therefore, to counterbalance American hegemony in the region, Russian foreign policy must be oriented toward Iran, asserts Dugin.
In today perspective the events of 1991 are of paramount importance because, as Dugin points out, 1991 is the year of destruction of the Eurasian Grossraum, the only one that possessed resources to withstand American expansionism and which consisted of all countries belonging to the socialist block. Central Europe in general and Germany in particular, as geopolitical entity are only a pure potential at present time. Central Europe can constitute itself in the future only in alliance with Russia which occupies a unique position as a centrum of the Eurasian continent, as a Heartland. Russia occupies also a key strategical and geographical position in the world with its huge landmass and human potential. A new geopolitical orientation must take into account the so called Atlantic factor which Dugin in length discusses.
The Atlantic factor is the United States strategy to impose her will on former Soviet republic and socialist countries and to transform those into satellite countries in the American orbit, linking them into a Cordon Sanitaire around Russia. Certainly one can already see the shadow of the Atlantic masters over the Baltic republics. As the Russian jurist Vladimir Ovzinski asserts the «CIA already works totally in the open in Lithuania , not only through American Embassy in Vilnius but also through American advisers to the Supreme Council of the Republic. And the situation is similar in both Latvia and Estonia».(95) The Atlantic factor is a geopolitical consequence of what William Appleman Willams has called the American «frontier thesis» —the perpetual expansionism in pursuit of new western frontiers.
United States has a perspective for real world hegemony only if no competing Grossraum is allowed to arise. Therefore both NSC-68 after the end of the WWII and its mirror image—the Pentagon Planning Guidance after the «end» of the Cold War, envision control or destruction not only of any competing Grossraum but also any geopolitical area which can consolidate itself in the future into power projecting Grossraum. The conclusion is that the primary objectives of the American geopolitics are to destroy any potential geopolitical alliance as well as to prevent its building. To paraphrase Clemenceau the American politics of peace vis-?-vis Russia are nothing else but continuation of war with other means. The Cold War has been replaced by Military Peace. Therefore creation of Cordon Sanitaire around Russia, which by necessity mandates the conquest of the second Europe—Eastern Europe—under the guise of enlargement of NATO, is the most important objective of the American foreign polic
Cordon Sanitaire consists of territory of countries and people situated between two geopolitical blocks. It is created by virtue of hegemonic control or, as in the American creation of a puppet Bosnian state in the failed attempt to create a Georgian state under Schevernadze, and in the war in Chechnya, with outright force and subversion. The countries that potentially will be included in the Cordon Sanitaire are those countries whose unity or membership in a competing Grossraum would constitute a geopolitical disadvantage to the United States.
United States is actively pursuing her double-edged foreign policy objective of further expansion of her extra-territorial jurisdiction and transformation of former socialist countries into a Cordon Sanitaire through plans outlined by the Secretary of Defense Les Aspin at the NATO meeting in Travem?nde on October 21, 1993 to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization by inclusion of former members of the Warsaw Pact.
Cordon Sanitaire in the beginning of this century consisted of countries situated between Russia and Germany and were controlled by England. Those countries, being an agent and tool of the Anglo-Saxon West, were breaking the Grossraum of Mitteleurope and the Grossraum of Russia. In present days the perfidious Albion has been replaced by the perfidious Washington and the American objectives can be summarized as assertion of hegemonic control and transformation of former Soviet republics into virtual American colonies in which, with employment of coercive measures: subversion, terror, aggression, economic warfare, United States will install marionette rulers without any trace of political independence. Or as Noam Chomsky puts it «One consequence of the collapse of the Soviet block is that much of it may undergo a kind of ‘Latin-Americanization’ , reverting to the service role, with the ex-Nomenclatura perhaps taking the role of the Third World elites linked to international business and financial interests»(97)
In conjunction with this it is important to bear in mind that American attempts to partition Russia and gain control of her huge natural resources predate the Cold War period and NSC-68. In October of 1918 the American government drafted secret commentaries to President Wilson’s 14 points which outlined U.S. plans to partition Russia into small regions in order for the United States to assert her hegemony and gain control over Russian territories and natural resources in Siberia and Caucasus. On the map prepared by the Department of State titled «Proposed Borders of Russia» and presented by President Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference, all that is left of Russia is her central part , the Mid-Russian Plateau. In an appendix to the map it was stated that «All Russia must be divided into large natural regions, each with its own economy. However none of those regions should be sufficiently independent to build a strong state».(98) Those long-standing American plans make it even more urgent for Russia to make a decisive geopolitical orientation. Of course, if President Yeltsin turns out to be a Russian Quisling,(99) and his September 21,1993 coup with subsequent destruction of the Russian Parliament most certainly suggests this possibility(100) , then the prospects for a new geopolitical orientation will become more difficult to realize. In his 1938 study “Ueber das Verhaeltnis der Begriffe Krieg und Feind”, Carl Schmitt, anticipating the future of the Cold War, described the world as moving toward an ‘intermediary situation between war and peace’, a kind of a bellicose peace which is neither war nor peace, which Carl Schmitt called military peace, i.e. a world condition of global confrontation which tends to take the form of a total war. In “Totaler Feind, Totaler Krieg, Totaler Staat”, published in 1937, Carl Schmitt related the idea of total war to the idea of total State, a war that «will be total for two reasons. First because it would not be localized in the sense that it would enfold in on a battle field, but it would be spread across the entire planet including sidereal space. Next, because it would not only be military, given that all the activities -scientific, technological, economic-and all of the material and ideal aspects of existence will be directly implicated in this gigantic conflict. Protected zones will no longer exist since both the military and the non-military will be engaged in this conflict. Politically speaking, there will no longer be a distinction between those who fight and those who do not».(101) During the Cold War two kind of Grossraum confronted each other- the existential categories of friend and enemy applied also to the concept of Grossraum- and out of that confrontation a world order build on plurality of Grossr?ume was maintained. However the end of the Cold War did not lead to revival of the concept of state sovereignty but to renewed attempt to universalize the ordering principles of the American Grossraum and establishment of a Monroe Doctrine for the whole world- an overriding objective of American foreign policy since the time of President Willson- under the slogan of a New World Order. Alexander Dugin equates the New World Order with American world wide hegemony, which, in order to be established, requires the totalization of the ‘intermediary situation between war and peace’, i.e. a new Cold War with different ideological justification but with the same aim: total American world domination. «The total war, previously localized in the Cold War confrontation between U.S. and the Soviet Union, is the essence of American universalism. Military peace is the present substance of the New World Order with which Russia and other countries are confronted now and the American implementation of this New World Order can only lead to a new total war.»(102) As a paradigmatic figure of Russian resistance to the New World Order, of what he calls the Endkampf, Alexander Dugin takes the symbol of the Russian partisan. The phenomenon of partisan is for Carl Schmitt «a paradigmatic figure for the decomposition of the classical Nomos and for the appearance of bellicose peace. The figure is remarkable because it still has a landlocked reality-described by Schmitt as its ‘telluric character’»(103) The partisan embodies the concept of Resistance, his physical existence is overshadowed by his political existence- Existenze des Wiederstand- and he takes his law from hostility, i.e. from his sense of supreme distinction between friend and enemy. His struggle is against the New World Order, its dictates and its total claim of annihilation of Russian future. For Dugin the American New World Order is a triumph of global totalitarianism. The Partisan is the answer to the illegitimate legality of the New World Order. «In the condition of the state of emergency, in the intensifying atmosphere of ‘military peace’ or ‘peaceful war’, the defense of national soil, history, people and nation are the sources of his legitimacy. He heralds the beginning of a total war with the total enemy...In Russian history his prototype is the partisan during the war against Napoleon, the partisan of the World War II, the resister to the Nazi German New World Order. Now he is the resister of a new New World Order- the American. The partisan is the harbinger of the healing power of national soil and historical national space of the Russian people. In the post-Cold War period of intensifying ‘military peace’ only the Russian partisan can show the way to a Russian historical future». (104) However the only viable alternative to the totalitarian globality of the New World Order is the reconstitution or creation of a new Grossraum opposing American world empire and the emancipation of the principles of international pluralism. The pseudo-legality of the New World Order must be confronted by a new alternative legality. Against the all-embracing American pseudo-universalism must stand the will-formation of national particularism and mobilization of geopolitical resistance. Against the steamroller of the American New World Order and the American invasion in the geopolitical vacuum of Eurasia after the destruction of the Soviet Union a new continental geopolitical unity must be consolidated resulting in proclamation of a Monroe doctrine for Europe. Therefore, referring to the Pentagon’s Defense Planning Guidance, Alexander Dugin writes: «The overriding objective of the United States is to prevent the creation of any real geopolitical alternative. Therefore our main objective must be the creation of any new geopolitical alternative.» This is a good point of departure because it presupposes the concept of the political. And after all, to paraphrase Heidegger, the political is the house of Being.
ENDNOTES
(1) Gyorgy Lukacs -The Destruction of Reason (Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, 1981 at pp.765,770.
(2) Martin Heidegger -Being and Time (Harper and Row, New York, 1962) at p. 347.
(3) Carl Schmitt - The Concept of the Political (Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, 1976) at p.p.19, 26.
(4) Nikolaj Zagladin -Pochemu zavershilas ‘holodnaja vojna’ - Kentavr, January/February 1992, Moscow, pp. 45-60
(5) Zbignief Brzezinski -The Gold War and Its Aftermath -Foreign Affairs, Fall 1992 (Council on Foreign Relations, New York) - at p. 32
(6) Zbigniew Brzezinski - ibid. at p. 34
(7) George F. Kennan-The Failure in Our Success -New York Times, March 14, 1992, p. A17
(8) The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk , signed March 3, 1918, ended the war between Soviet Russia and Germany. As a result of the treaty Soviet Russia was partitioned and lost 34 percent of the population and 54 percent of the industrial production. According to the terms of the treaty Germany, enlarging her Lebensraum, was to occupy Ukraine , Byelorussia, Caucasus , the Baltic provinces etc. With the defeat of Germany the treaty was repudiated.
(9) Thomas H. Etzold and John Lewis Gaddis Containment. Documents on American policy and Stategy, 1945—1950 (Columbia University Press, New York, 1978) p. 196. NSC 20/1 was subsequently incorporated in the infamous NSC 68. On this subject in Russian debate see Nikolaj von Kreitor Geopolitika holodnoj vojny , Juridicheskaja gazeta No. 26, 1996, Moscow.
(10) Wolfram Henrieder -Germany, America, Europe (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1989) - at p. 17
(11) Here quoted after Ronald Steel -Pax Americana (The Viking Press, New York, 1967)- at p.p. 79-80.
(12) Lenin Collected works, vol. 41, p.p. 353-354
(13) Voprosy sotsiologij , nr 1, 1992 (Moscow )
(14) Alexander Dugin -Carl Schmitt –piat’ urokov Rossii (Nash Sovremmennik, nr. 8.1992, Moskow)
(15) Alexander Dugin - ibid , at p.p. 129, 130,135
(16) Agnes Heller has analyzed the problem of a meta-existential choice of a nation in a context of friendfoe dichotomy in the essay The Concept of Political Revisited , published in Political Theory Today , edited by David Held (Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1991).
(17) Carl Schmitt -Verfassungslehre (Duncker&Humblot, Berlin 1970) - at p. 50. Schmitt writes further that «because every being is a particularly-constituted being, every concrete political existence has some sort of constitution. But not every politically existing force decides in a conscious act concerning the form of this political existence and succeeds in consciously determining the concrete type of its political existence as did the American states with their Declaration of Independence and the French nation in 1789. ibid. p.23 .See also G.L.Ulman -Anthropological Theology, Theological Anthropology (Telos, Nr.93, Fall 1992, New York) at p. 71.
(18) G.L. Ulmen Anthropological Theology...ibid p.71,72; Carl Schmitt Verfassungslehre -ibid.p.372.
(19) Carl Schmitt Verfassungslehre ibid. p. 22
(20) Carl Schmitt The Concept of the Political
(21) Alexander Dugin- Carl Schmitt, pjat’ urokov Rossii- ibid. p. 131, 132
(22) Herbert Marcuse «Contribution to the Phenomenology of Historical Materialism» (Telos, Number 4, 1969), here quoted from Richard Wolin «Introduction to Marcuse and Heidegger» (New German Critique, Number 53, 1991, New York) p. 23
(23) For a discussion on Heidegger’s concept of hermeneutics in Being and Time se Richard Palmer Hermeneutics ( Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1969)
(24) Aaron L. Friedberg-The Future of American Power (Political Science Quarterly, Vol.109, Spring 1994) at p. 17.
(25) Colonel Victor Alsknis’ father general Jacov Alsknis has been a close friend of marshal Mikhail Tukhachevski; in 1937 general Alsknis participated in the military commission investigating the treason charges against Tuchachevski.The transcript of the commission’s proceedings, classified secret, has never been released. First in 1990, after the intervention of the then Chairman of the KGB Krutchkov, colonel Alsknis gained access to the transcripts and after reading them came to the conclusion that during the 30-ties there was a pro-German conspiracy in the Red Army in which marshal Tukhachevski participated. Alexander Dugin claims that marshal Tukhachevski was a member of Nordlich Light- Elementy -at p.p.10,11.
(26) Zbigniew Brzezinski A Plan for Europe (Foreign Affairs, January/February 1995) p. 26
(27) Joseph W. Bendersky -Carl Schmitt (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1983), at p.253.
(28) G.L. Ulmen - American Imperialism and International Law: Carl Schmitt on the US in World Affairs- Telos, Nr. 72, Summer 1987; se also Carl Schmitt- Voelkerrechtliche Grossraumordnung, op.cit., p.20.
(29) Rudolf Kjellen Der Staat als Lebensform (Berlin, 1924) p. 139. Kjellen writes that the autarchic principle envisions the geopolitical space of the state as «People’s Home». The principle of autarchy «is a reaction against the industrialist type of the nineteenth century. The latter was fundamentally cosmopolitan; in the name of free trade it exposed national households to competition on the world market where the strong always succeeded in swallowing the weak. Its first setback occurred with the adoption of the protectionist system during the second half of the century. Here the state acts in defense of the household (People’s Home). It blocks the road to foreign conquerors by tariff walls behind which national economy can prosper like a true nursery protected from the storm of the sea...The autarchic principle ... replaces «open doors» with «closed spheres of interest» Ibid. p.p. 139, 140. In contemporary perspective the autarchic principle and concept of protected geopolitical space conceived as «People’s Home» is the antagonistic opposite of the American «open door» imperialism.
(30) The concept of Grossraum is discussed in Nikolaj von Kreitor Problemy bol’shich prostranstv i buduschee Rossii Nash Sovremennik, No 3 , 1996, Moscow and Nikolaj von Kreitor Stoletie novogo mira. Universalizm protiv pljuralizma, Kentavr, No. 6, 1995, Moscow.
(31) The National Security Council Memorandum 68 (NSC-68 ) promulgated in 1950 called for a roll-back strategy aiming to hasten the decay of the Soviet system from within and to foster the seeds of destruction within the Soviet system by a variety of covert and other means that would enable the U.S. to negotiate a settlement with the Soviet Union or a successor state or states. The memorandum further called , adopting the objectives of Hitler, to dismantle the Soviet Union into smaller states-se also Noam Chomsky -On Power and Ideology (South End Press , Boston, 1987) at p. 15. In different articles published during 1991 and 1992 in the Moscow newspaper Denj (DAY) have surfaced assertions that during the years of the so called. Perestrojka United States has invested more than 50 billion dollars for covert subversion in the Soviet Union.
(32) Elementy , Number 4, 1993, p. 33
(33) Halford McKinder Democratic Ideals and Reality (W.W. Norton & Company, N.Y. 1962) p. 150
(34) Se Gerald Chaliand, Jean-Pierre Rageau-Strategic Atlas-(Harper Perennial, N.Y. 1992)- at p. 30
(35) Halford MacKinder The Round World and theWinning of the Peace , Foreign Affairs, 21 , New York, 1943. p.p. 595-605. The article is included in the book Democratic Ideals and Reality. See also W.G. Fast How Strong is the Heartland, Foreign Affairs, 29, New York, 1950 p.p. 78-93 and D.J. M. Hooson A New Soviet Heartland , Geographical Journal , 128 (1962) p.p. 19-29.
(36) Peter J. Taylor Political Geography (Longman, London, 1985) p. 42
(37) Richard Muir Modern Political Geography (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1975) p. 195. For geopolitical analysis in Russia see E. A. Pozdnjakov Geopolitika (Progress-Kuljtura, Mpscow, 1995. Nikolaj von Kreitor Ot doktriny Monro do Novogo Mirovogo Porjadka , Molodaja Gvardija No 9, 1995, Moscow and Nikolaj von Kreitor Amerikano-fascistkaja geopolitika na sluzhbe zavoevania mira, Molodaja Gvardija No. 8, 1996, Moscow.
(38) See James C. Malin The Turner-MacKinder Space Concept of History in Eassays on Historiography (Lawrence, Kansas, 1946) p.p. 1-45; Per Sveaas Andersen Westward in the Course of Empires. A Study of the Shaping of an American Idea: Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier (Oslo University Press, Oslo, 1956).
(39) See William Appleman Williams The Contours of American History (W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1988) p. 17.
(40) David P. Calleo Europe’s Future. The Grand Alternatives (W.W. Norton & Co, New York, 1967) p.p. 89,90.
(41) Carl Schmitt claimed in his book Land und Meer that world history is the history of perpetual conflict between land powers and sea powers.
(42) Alexander Dugin Konspirologia (Arktogej, Moscow, 1993) p.p. 92, 93
(43) Alain de Benoist , Den’ No 1(29) , Moscow, 1992
(44) Elementy nr 3, 1993 - at p. 18
(45) Patrick E. Tyler- U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop - New York Times, March 8, 1992, p. 14
(46) Excerpts from the document published in New York Times , March 8, 1992
(47) Patrick E. Tyler - US Strategy Plan...
(48) President Bush stated after the November 7-8, 1991 NATO summit in Europe that security interests of the United States and Europe were indivisible and, therefore , the Atlantic alliance could not be replaced even in the long run and also that the United States presence in Europe would be needed for a century of so. see Ted Carpenter-- In Search for Enemies-(CATO Institute, Washington D.C. 1992, at p.p. 11-12; also White House, Office of Press Secretary, Press Conference by the President, November 8, 1991, transcript, p.1.
(49) H. J. von Lochhausen - The War in Iraq - a War Against Europe - Elements p.p. 34,35,36. von Lochhausen asserts also that the war against Iraq, i.e. a war for the control of the oil , was planned a long time in advance and its blueprint was worked out by Henry Kissinger and published in 1975 in the magazine Commentary and later in Harper’s Magazine.
von Lochhausen writes points out that studies of American relations with her allies show that U.S. is prone to take advantage against them i.e. using the war as a vehicle to transform her allies into vassals. In both W.W.I and W.W.II the American participation was largely parasitic. While the allies made the decisive efforts the United States reaped the fruits of the victory . See Elementy - ibid p.p. 35, 36. It is interesting to note that both right-wing and left-wing interpretations of the Gulf War coincide in their condemnation of American expansionism. For a left-wing parallel to von Lochhausen see Dario Da Re, Rosanna Munghiello and Dario Padovan Intellettuali, sinistra e conflitto del Golfo: un’interpretazione retrospettiva del dibattito (Altreragioni, No. 2,1993) p.p. 151-174.
(50) Samir Amin -U.S. Militarism in the New World Order-Polygraph, 5/1992 (Durham, NC) -at p.23
(51) 1963 Proceedings of the American Society of International Law 13. Discussing further the legal justification of the Cuban quarantine in 1962, Dean Acheson emphasized that « I must conclude that the propriety of the Cuban quarantine is not a legal issue. The power, position and prestige of the United States has been challenged by another state; the law simply does not deal with such questions of ultimate power., se also Noyes Leech, Covey Oliver,Joseph Sweeney-The International Legal System- at p. 105.
(52) Charles de Gaulle -Unity, Documents (Simon & Schuster, New York 1960) -at p. 269. Se also David Calleo- Europe’s Future. The Grand Alternatives (W.W. Norton & Company , New York,1967) - at p.112.
(53) The memory of the American intervention in Soviet Union in 1918 in Archangelsk and Vladivostok in the Far East prompted by the U.S. interest to gain control of the natural resources of Siberia as well as by senator Lodge plan to divide Soviet Union into smaller states in order for the United States to gain control over Ukraine has resurfaced and the issue have been debated in the mass media. See on this subject A. Nevins-Nenry White: Thirty Years of American Diplomacy, N.Y. 1930, p.354; Ljudmila Gviashvili-Sovietskaja Rossija i Soedinennije Schtaty 1917-1920 -(Foreign Relations Publishing House, Moscow,1970.)
In the Russian debate it has been pointed out that the objectives of the U.S. foreign policy will be to achieve strategic superiority in the field of nuclear armaments and through aggressive and adventurous foreign policy initiatives to force Russia to further unilateral disarmament and even to attempt to gain control over the nuclear potential of Russia which is the only deterrent that prevents an outright intervention.
(54) U.S. Peacekeeping Policy Debate Angers Russians-N.Y.Times, August 29, 1993. An editorial in Krasnaja Zvezda or Red Star, the magazine of the Russian army called Directive 13 ‘outrageously cynical and a direct and unceremonious interference in the domestic affairs of Russia.’ Although U.S. opposes a Russian Monroe Doctrine it is in a process of unilaterally extend its Monroe Doctrine to include former members of the Warsaw Pact as well as Baltic countries, which in the new American doctrinal thinking are to form a Cordon Sanitaire surrounding Russia- se N.Y. Times, February 17, 1992.
(55) What the Monroe Doctrine meant for other Latin American countries was the freedom of U.S. to rob and exploit those countries.- Noam Chomsky - ibid. op. cit. p. 7.
(56) Hegel -The Philosophy of Right Oxford University Press, London,1967) p.p. 208-216.
(57) Noam Chomsky - ibid. at p. 14
(58) G.L. Ulmen - ibid. at p. 59, 60
(59) Y. Semenov- Fashistkaja geopolitika na sluzhbe amerikanskogo imperializma (Gospolitizdat, Moscow,1952)-at p.32.
(60) Ferdinand Czernin -Versailles 1919 (Capricorn Books, N.Y. 1964) at. pp.404-406
(61) «Treaties should be designed to promote United States interests by securing action by foreign governments in the way deemed advantageous to the United States. Treaties are not to be used as a devise for the purpose of effecting internal social changes... in relation to what are essentially matters of domestic concern» and the United States being the sole judge of what constitutes domestic matters - see Department of State Circular No. 175, (December 13, 1955), reprinted in 50 Am. J. Intl. L. 784(1956).
(62) Carl Schmitt -V?lkerrechtliche Grossraumordnung... p. 43.
(63) Noam Chomsky - Terrorizing the Neighborhood. American Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Era (AK Press, Stirling and San Francisco , 1991) - at p. 24.
(64) se The Holy Alliance - Time magazine, February 24, 1992- at p.32
(65) Times- ibid. - at p. 29
(66) Noam Chomsky -Terrorizing the Neighborhood - at p. 19.
(67) Helsinki Accord, Declaration on Principles Guiding Relations between Participating States. The full text is published in Thomas Buergenthal (ed) -Human Rights, International Law and the Helsinki Accord-(Allanheld, Osmun/Universe Books, New York, 1979) at pp.161-165
(68) William Safire -Bosnia vs. the United Nations - N.Y.Times. , August 9, 1993
(69) N.Y.Times , August 2, 1993 - at p. A3
(70) N.Y.Times. , Aug. 5, 1993 - p.1.
(71) Newsweek, August 28, 1993
(72) See Pravda, March 30, 1995
(73) N.Y.Times, September 12, 1993
(74) Article 52 (Coercion of a State by the threat or use of force) of the Vienna Convention of the Law of Treaties of May 22, 1969 states «A treaty is void if its conclusion has been procured by the threat or use of force in violation of the principles of international law embodied in the Charter of the United Nations.»
(75) Pravda 5, No. 24, 1996, p. 10-11. Interview of General Galuas by Jole Stanischic.
(76) In Russian debate the Haag War tribunal has been described as an instrument of continuous aggression, to paraphrase Clausewitz, as war with other, judicial means, a tribunal set up by the war criminals in Washington to justify the American territorial conquests under the guise of establishment of a New World Order—a Monroe Doctrine for the whole world—, and persecution Serbs— the partisans of the Resistance against dictates of the New World Order. A historical equivalent of Hague Tribunal would have been a tribunal set up by Nazi Germany to persecute the partisans of the Resistance during an earlier version of the New World Order- Hitler’s. General Gallois , one of the organizers of the Resistance movement in France, fully realizes the absurdity of Hague Tribunal.
(77) Pravda 5, ibid.
(78) See Novoe Russkoe Slovo , March 23, 1993- at p. 9.
(79) Wolfram Henrieder -Germany, America, Europe (Yale University Press,New Haven,1989
(80) Hans W. Maull -Germany and Japan: The New Civilian Powers (Foreign Affairs, Wintern 1990/91, Council of Foreign Relations, N.Y. 1991) - at p. 93.
(81) Referring to Goethe Thomas Mann defines culture as « intellectualization of the political» and expression of the identity and self-realization of a nation: »The nation is not only a social being; the nation, not the human race as the sum of individuals, is the bearer of the individual, of the human quality; and the value of the intellectual-artistic-religious product that one calls national culture...that develops out of the organic depth of national life-the value, dignity and charm of all national culture therefore definitely lies in what distinguishes it from others, for only this distinctive element is culture, in contrast to what all nations have in common, which is only civilization. Here we have the difference between individual and personality, civilization and culture, social and metaphysical live». Thomas Mann Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man (Frederick Ungar Publishing Co, N.Y. 1983)- at p. 179.
(82) Andrew Shennan -De Gaulle (Longman, New York, 1993)- at p. 118.
(83) Andrew Shennan - ibid , p.118.
(84) David P. Calleo Europe’s future. The Grand Alternatives (W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1967) p. 90
(85) Interview with Alain de Benoist , Le Monde, 15 Mai, 1992 (Paris)
(86) Walter Russel Mead The United States and the New Europe (World Policy Journal, New York), Winter 1989-90 p.p. 53,55,56
(87) The Rapallo Treaty was concluded on April 16, 1922 between Germany and the Soviet Union. It allowed the Soviet Union to break the monolithic capitalist encirclement by the Versailles powers while for Germany it signified the road to revision of what was perceived as the Versailles dictate. Discussing the possible political orientation of Russia in the future , Dugin elaborates on the issues of a Russian-German Sonderweg as a historical background to a common political union.
(88) Rudolf Bahro -Rapallo-Why Not- (Telos, No. 51, Spring 1982, N.Y.) - at p. 125.It is interesting to note that the German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel stated during his a meeting in Bavaria with his Russian counterpart Andrej Kozyrev that «Creation of a partnership axis Bonn-Moscow is an objective for German foreign policy»—Izvestija, Moscow, August 24, 1993.
(89) David Calleo -Europe’s Future -ibid. p.89; se also de Gaulle-Unity- ibid. pp.176-177.
(90) Charles de Gaulle Unity ibid. p. 271
(91) David Calleo Europe’s Future ibid. p. 124
(92) Alexander Dugin Konspirologija ibid. 96 . Dugin refers to the works of Konstantin Leontief in which the primacy of the principle of land over the principle of blood was first articulated.
(93) In contemporary Russian political discourse the main proponent of this notion has been Lev Gumilev.
(94) Robert Steuckers The Asian Challenge, Elementy , nr 3, p. 24
(95) Vladimir Ovzinski -Konterperestrojka -Nash Sovremennik -5-1992, Moscow, at p.128.The author who has made interviews with a large number of former KGB operatives from Lithuania, claims on the basis of those interviews that U.S pursues four different objectives:1.Assertion of American hegemonical interests in Lithuania in opposition to German interests. 2. Subversion of what CIA perceives to be a Communist opposition as well as organizations defending the interests of the Russian minority in the country. 3. Collection of materials concerning former Lithuanian KGB operatives in order to either persecute or recruit them. 4. Sending of recruited agents to other former Soviet republics.
(96) See Elaine Sciolino- U.S. to Offer Plan on a Role in NATO for Ex-Soviet Block -N.Y. Times, October 21, 1993; Stephen Kinzer- NATO Favors U.S. Plan for Ties With the East, but Timing is Vague-N.Y.Times, October 22, 1993. President Clinton made a formal proposal for the expansion of NATO at the NATO’s summit meeting in January of 1994.
(97) Noam Chomsky -A View from Below in Michael Hogan -The End of the Cold War (Cambridge University Press, New York 1992) at p.142.
(98) Y.Semenov -Fascistkaja geopolitika -ibid. p. 29
(99) General Victor Filatov compares Yeltsin with the W.W.II traitor general Vlasov-see Denj, Nr 25, 1993, Moscow, June 27, 1993. Stephen Cohen points out that since 1991 the U.S. policy has been characterized by a steadily escalating interventionism in the Russian domestic matters which has created the impression among patriotic movements that Yeltsin’s government is a U.S. sponsored ‘occupation regime’. United States interventionism resulted in a resolution passed on March 21, 1993 by the Russian Parliament condemning the American interference in the internal affairs of Russia. «The Clinton Administration has steadily escalated this kind of interventionism-by contriving the April Vancouver summit as an attempt to ‘help Yeltsin’ in his ongoing conflict with the Parliament, by supporting the Russian President’s threats to disband the legislature , by endorsing Yeltsin’s effort to seize dictatorial or special powers from virtually all of Russia’s other democratic institutions and even by suggesting that Clinton might go instead to Moscow for a solidarity summit with Yeltsin. The result has been to put U.S. government in very bad institutional company. Opposed to Yeltsin’s power grab was not only Russia’s Parliament but also its Constitutional Court, Attorney General, Justice Minister and Vice President.»- see The Nation, April 12, 1993 , at p.p.477,478.
(100) The events surrounding the September 21, 1993 coup allow for the impression that Yeltsin undertook the coup in collusion with the United States and, not unthinkable, on instigation of the United States.
(101) Julien Freund-The Central Themes in Carl Schmitt’s Political Thought ,Telos, nr 102, New York 1994, at p. 31
(102) Alexander Dugin- Carl Schmitt. Pjat’ urokov Rossii-ibid. at p. 134
(103) Julien Freund - ibid. p. 31
(104) Alexander Dugin- ibid. p. 134
~~
New York 1994-96
This article was initially published in abreviated form in the American political journal "Telos" and in different version has been published in other journals.
The full version was published in German: "Rusland, Europa und Washingtons Neue Welt-Ordnung. Das geopolitische Project einen Pax eurasiatica" ETAPPE, Heft 12/Juni 1996
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