Spatial ambitions and the art of the possible
The events of the last four years have again brought to light wide-ranging discussions about the place and role of geopolitics as a concept in explaining various processes in international relations. The decline of unipolar system created conditions for an inevitable clash between different players seeking to win their right to existence and development in new realities. From this perspective, it would be wrong to refer exclusively to geopolitics, since the current processes are more complex in nature and require a multidisciplinary approach. With that said, for many small countries and nations, geopolitics, which is defined by them as a confrontation between the ‘titans’, remains a dominant concept for understanding and interpreting international processes. The policy of such countries comes down to finding an answer to just one question — which ‘titans’ should a nation join?
Such a superficial approach is associated with an extremely narrow understanding of geopolitics, which is not just one of the classical schools of political thought, but also a profound philosophy. German thinker Friedrich Ratzel first introduced the concept of ‘living space’, which he understood not just as a ‘static territory’, but as a ‘living organism’ that passes through stages of birth, maturing and dying. Every people, seeking to consolidate their intellectual and natural resources for growth and progress, must necessarily have a ‘spatial perception’. This term describes the strictly delineated boundaries of national ambitions, for which appropriate forms of being are formed. The highest form of unification is a political nation that has a clear idea of itself, its capabilities, and its potential. Peoples without ‘spatial ambitions’ are unable to transform into nations, which leads to the formation of a permanent ‘survival regime’.
‘The strongest states will be those where the political idea encompasses the whole state. For a nation who has managed to maintain its state in the same territory over centuries, this unchanging foundation of the state, i.e. its territory is so deeply merged with it, it is impossible to imagine this nation without its territory.’
Friedrich Ratzel
Otto von Bismarck arrived at the idea of a unified Germany and the Constitution of the German Empire because he saw the potential for forming broad ‘spatial ambitions’. He did not base himself on the mathematical calculation of the short-term effect of these ambitions, because he was guided by the principle that ‘politics is the art of the possible’. And this ‘possible’ was a sufficient motivation for him. Such examples in history are quite numerous: Giuseppe Garibaldi and his Risorgimento (unification of Italy within the Italian state), the farmer George Washington and scholar and bookseller Benjamin Franklin from the North American colonies, who came to an agreement to constitute the American nation, the founding fathers of Israel David Ben-Gurion and Gamliel Jamil Cohen, who believed in the return of the Jews to Israel, the idealistic dreamers Éamon de Valera and Arthur Griffith, who liberated Ireland from the 700-year-old British colonial rule, etc. The above-mentioned characters were not giants with infinite resources at their peak, on the contrary, they withstood the real ‘titans’ of their time. Their success was based on superior selfless motivation, coupled with personal rationalism and composure.
Reimagining the tragedy
The history of nation-building always begins with the reimagination of a great tragedy. It is a complex and cumbersome process, which is key to the formulation of specific objectives for the establishment of real national coordinate systems.
The tragedy of the Irish people is not the Great Famine of 1845, nor is it the Holocaust for the Jews. These events are the result of a lack of comprehensive analysis of the meanings of their being and value (utility) in this world. That is the tragedy, and it is universal to all peoples who have ever lived and live on this planet now. The lack of understanding of the importance of self-analysis led the Irish to seven-century slavery on their own land and at its apogee — to the Great Famine, which claimed more than a million lives and forced many others to leave the country. The British did not even provide humanitarian aid and did not let other countries deliver it either. It took a decade after that event to form an intellectually prepared aristocracy for inner rethinking and self-determination (who they are and what they want). Since then, the process has not stopped and its results are self-evident: Ireland has been independent since 1921, it occupies a special position in international relations, having a transnational lobbying network from the US to Australia, and establishing national, religious, and ideological domination in Northern Ireland that is still a part of the UK.
‘We cannot afford idleness, waste or inefficiency.’
Éamon de Valera
European Jews were persecuted and humiliated since the early Middle Ages, and their first emancipation, i.e. elimination of all legally-entrenched discrimination, was introduced in 1791 in France. The process of rethinking began in 1896 with Theodor Herzl’s pamphlet ‘The Jewish State’, around which the first Zionist congresses were held. However, the considerable differences within the Jewish aristocracy itself impeded the transformation of that rethinking process into specific results. The foundation was laid in the form of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, but by that time it was already far from sufficient. History did not forgive them for their carelessness, slowness, and profligacy. The new aristocracy, which grew up with the work of its predecessors, had to correct mistakes, reason and act in the conditions of a global war (World War II 1939–1945), watching the mass destruction of their people. Israel and the Israeli nation were coiled in the most difficult political conditions. Any imprudent step could easily lead to the expulsion of this state from the newly-founded international relations system with two major ‘titans’, the United States and the Soviet Union.
‘It doesn’t matter what the world says about Israel; it doesn’t matter what they say about us anywhere else. The only thing that matters is that we can exist here on the land of our forefathers. And unless we show the Arabs that there is a high price to pay for murdering Jews, we won’t survive.’
David Ben-Gurion
The reinterpretation of the tragedy allowed the Irish and Israelis not only to build their own states but also to formulate substantially different ‘spatial ambitions’. In the first case, it is a vision of the founding fathers, i.e. reunification of Ireland and Northern Ireland, that will become the political, economic and cultural centre of the Celtic world as a subject of international order. The ‘spatial ambitions’ of the Israeli nation are based on the concept of unification and revival of the Jewish people in its historical territory, the Eretz Israel. It is a secondary question of how well such goals are achieved; the more important question is whether such nations have fundamental values, mission, and belief in the inevitability of ultimate success. In the end, whether you succeed or fail, it all comes down to a simple dilemma: to be someone or to be no one.
Armenian national project
The breakup of the Ottoman Empire created a situation of inevitable collision of separate national projects with their ‘spatial ambitions’. The Turkish project was based on the idea of preserving and turkifying a large part of the former empire’s province. To do this, it was necessary to destroy the other two national projects, the Armenian and the Greek. The Young Turks and later Kemal Atatürk did not believe in the possibility of finding a formula for compromise between the above projects, guided by the concept that ‘in Turkey, even the mountains should be Turkish’.
‘We must know that peoples without national dignity are the victims of other peoples. We will crush anyone who opposes the Turks and Turkism.’
Kemal Atatürk
At that time, the Armenian factor was triangular. The first facet thereof was Western Armenia, the destruction of which continued since 1915. The second one was Eastern Armenia, within the territory of which the First Republic of Armenia was proclaimed in May 1918. The third aspect referred to the split of the emigrant Armenian elite into the Soviet and the Western. The ultimate success of the Armenian project depended on the physical and political connection between the first two aspects (a unified statehood) and the unification of the third aspect around it (a unified nation).
This was a matter of restoring a stripped-down version of Greater Armenia, which was doomed to become a regional superpower. This was due not only to extremely favourable geographical advantages but also to the economic and political influence of ethnic Armenians in all regional capitals (Constantinople, Tehran, Tiflis, Baku). The positive outcome depended on how quickly individual Armenian political groups would be able to overcome internal divisions, cleanse themselves from external agent influence and establish a united national aristocracy as the carrier of a consolidated Armenian standpoint. The lack of understanding of oneself, as well as of the region and the world, coupled with political naiveté and immaturity, have resulted in a completely opposite outcome — the abolition of the Armenian project.
The Greek project had a slightly different perspective, since independent Greece had emerged in 1830 and by the First World War it already maintained its own naval and ground armed forces experienced in the war with the Ottoman Empire in 1897. Taking part in the world war by siding with the Entente, the Greeks aspired to establish a grip on Eastern Thrace and the western areas densely populated by Pontic Greeks. ‘Spatial ambitions’ of Greece, which possessed the resources and expertise, called into question the very existence of an independent Turkish national project. Turkey was indeed hanging by a thread and was forced to seek external patronage, consequently assumed by the early Soviet Union. The Soviet leadership did its utmost to comprehensively contain the Greek-Armenian strike (from the East and West) and to ensure the victory of the Turks. It would not be superfluous to mention that one of the ideological inspirers of the strategy of destroying the Greek and Armenian national projects for being ‘hostile to communism’ was the Soviet revolutionary diplomat of Armenian origin Lev Karakhan (Levon Karakhanyan).
In that crucial historical juncture, the Turkish concept emerged victorious and gained a chance to build an independent nation and statehood. The Armenian concept was defeated: Western Armenia was recognised for Kemalist Turkey by the Great Powers, Eastern Armenia without Nakhijevan and Artsakh (transferred to Azerbaijan with the active participation of the Soviet Armenian group) was made part of the Soviet Empire, Western Armenian political and financial clans integrated into their host countries (France, Britain, the USA), and the Eastern Armenian group got its piece of the ‘pie’ in the Soviet hierarchy. The result being a truncated Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic instead of a truncated Greater Armenia as the centre of the nation’s unification, demoralized communities scattered around the world, and the Church as their only pillar.
‘Our antiquated means are to place entirely the hopes of our struggle on outsiders, be they governments or rebel elements. No matter how valuable a tool they may be from the viewpoint of harming our true and principal enemy, the Turks, they will never cease from disappointing and conspiring against us. Let us repeat that these comments in no way have the nature of negating the greater or lesser value of those weapons but are made only so that we concentrate on moving forward OUR battle for existence by OUR means, always available and uncorrupted.’
Shahan Natalie
