The Cosmic Duel between Atlantic and Eurasianism: A Reading in the Book "Postmodern Geopolitics"

Introduction

Postmodern Geopolitics: The Age of New Empires, Outlines of Geopolitics in the Twenty-first Century, published in Russian in 2007 by the well-known Russian philosopher and geopolitical thinker Alexander Dugin, is one of the most important books on modern geopolitics, given Dugin's prestige with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the influence of Dugin's thought on the course of Russian foreign policy, in addition to his role in shaping its strategic projects.

In light of the accelerating events of the Russian-Ukrainian war, and the increasing political, military, security, and economic repercussions, reading this book, including its ideas and strategies, comes at a time when the Arab reader, interested in the issues of geopolitical conflicts in general, and the Russian geopolitics in particular, needs a deeper insight, and also needs a broader perspective on these issues.

The book consists of a foundational theoretical introduction on postmodern geopolitics, four detailed sections, in addition to the conclusion and appendices. The first chapter discusses the typical system of coordinates (premodern, modern, and postmodern). The second chapter is devoted to discussing the shift from logic of model to the logic of continents, or unipolar globalization in the face of integration between large spaces. The third chapter details the issues of geoeconomics in the postmodern era. While the final chapter discusses the geopolitics of asymmetrical risk, or postmodern wars.

The War of the Sea against Land, and the "New World" Map

The book deals with a set of foundational theoretical issues, as it presents the issue of geopolitics as an analysis of the fixed part of the historical process, and as an approach based on the stability of space that is not linked to historical fluctuations. The book critically deals with the classification of the English scientist "Halford Mackinder" traditional geopolitical approach, that is based on the duality (land and sea), and the classifications of other scholars of the historical process, such as the classification of "Thomas Carlyle", the classification of "Wilfried Pareto" and the classification of "Karl Marx", reaching the "temporal models" of the historical process, applied to societal systems, namely: "traditional model" or "premodern society", "contemporary model" or "modern-modern society", and "postmodern society". In economic terms, such models correspond to "pre-industrial society" or "agricultural", "industrial society", "post-industrial society" or "information society".

The topic of the "cosmic duel" between the United States of America and the Atlantic on the one hand, and between Russia Eurasia on the other hand, has an important place in the introduction to the theoretical book. The geopolitical attack, launched by the civilization of the "Atlantic" seas on the civilization of the "Eurasian" land continues, is regularly and successively appearing in the peripheral of the Russian Federation, and also in its edges NATO bases, logistical and military facilities, with the aim of strategically besieging Russia. This process is continuing and gaining more momentum.

Hence comes the importance of geopolitics and its geopolitical method, which not only explains or interprets these events and processes in a decisive way, but also serves to predict the logic of the subsequent development of events, such as predicting the occurrence of the "Great Continents War" in the future.

The introduction to the book analyzes the "fatal conceptual mistake" committed by Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin at the end of the former Soviet Union, as such "mistake" was based on exclusively analyzing the situation, within the concepts of "ideological confrontation" and "modernization", while completely ignoring the geopolitical inevitability of societies, along with not realizing the land feature of the Soviet Union. This fatal mistake contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which the book now warns against; for if postmodernism is accomplished without taking geopolitics into account, it will - even if successful- inevitably lead to the disappearance of Russia as a historical phenomenon.

The conclusion of the theoretical introduction to the book addresses the "Atlantic project in the face of the Eurasian project", by referring to an important phrase of the American political thinker Samuel Huntington. The book's conclusion expresses the general balance of power in international politics, which is the phrase "the West against the rest" (this means, according to the book: Atlantic vs. Eurasianism), or sea against land, a formulation that is adopted in our world by only one aspect: the sea. An impression arises as if the globalized West is working on establishing a universal order that only fits it, while the rest of the rest stand in its way, hindering it from achieving its plans, unlike Eurasianism as an approach, which proposes to look at the situation from the point of view of "all the rest", that is: through the eyes of the rest. Therefore, the war between the one universal empire (expressed by the Atlantic project) and the constellation of many empires (the Eurasian project) will continue for a long time, which will determine the essence of international political processes. 

Typical Coordinate System (Premodern, Modern, Postmodern)

The first chapter of the book deals with the process of modernization, that proceeded at the beginning of the twentieth century through three tracks, where three ideologies began to compete and aspire to express that process: the ideology of modernity or national modernization (fascism and its counterparts), the ideology of socialist modernization (Marxism), and the ideology of liberal modernization (Anglo-Saxon capitalism). Each of them advanced its own path, interpreting in its own way the initial impulse of the modern era. All ideologies were moving towards achieving a kind of final state of modernization, when all its processes would reach their highest stages.

According to the book, the third project of modernization- the liberal democratic project, was the only one that reached the finish line, thus achieving victory by inheriting the entire modernity, and then began, after World War II, a new phase next to purify modernity from traditions, but such purification, this time, was from its elements penetrated into modernity in a deep and hidden way. This was the typical essence of the geopolitical and ideological conflict between the Soviet and capitalist camps in the post-war period "Cold War phase", where a post-,modernity society "information society" is the only model that successfully concluded the modernization program, moving to the next stage of development, that is: liberalism remained alone after it won the competition with Nazism and communism, and after it first succeeded in achieving a successful transition from modernity and the industrial style of society to the next post-industrial era. This means the end of the differences between previous projects that sought to be an alternative to liberalism and a competitor to it.

The European, or central European consciousness, is characterized by "cognitive racism". It constantly seeks to match and identify between what is "Western European" and what is "European" and "world or universal", so the Western European "end" of history is adopted as a comprehensive "end" of the history of all mankind, on the basis of which a "global" system of evaluation, criteria, and templates is developed, that is: the path taken by the West from traditional society to contemporary society, and towards "post-contemporary society", which the West continues to follow, intended to be considered as a comprehensive and valid path for all countries, cultures, and peoples. Therefore, the history of peoples is seen as a process of "modernization" and "Westernization" only.

However, it is clear, according to the book, that the history of traditional societies, and so far the overwhelming majority of the planet's population which belongs to this category, falls outside this Western model, and moves in a completely different path, which means that the West ignores the "history" of the humanity's majority in its fundamental dimension, focusing only on parts or sections of it, where the signs of "European telos" appear in it, that is, "elements of modernization".

Based on this, the Russian situation after the collapse of the Soviet Union, found itself in the nineties of the twentieth century at a new cycle of colonialism, where it was clear that a society that did not succeed until the end in conducting the "modernization process", had received orders to learn and master the liberal model in its refined and filtered form, not the ordinary liberal model simply, in Russia everything was not clear regarding modernity. Postmodernism comes by surprise without a prelude. This has led to serious conceptual confusion.

Russia has not actually entered modernity or modernity so far, but has remained at its doorstep. Postmodernism offers Russia a unique opportunity, as Russia can, after overcoming intermediate stages, make a sharp and sudden leap, as happened at the beginning of the twentieth century in a similar way (marching to communism and transcending the entire social composition of capitalism). The point of the Eurasian Union is to repeat that same experience at a new historical juncture. The key to this is to move in the direction of a "Democratic Empire", a democracy similar to the European Union, but at the same time paying attention to the preservation of geopolitical subjectivity, while dealing with the identity of ethnic groups with the utmost care. This will be the most postmodern gesture that can be invented, and the Eurasian idea in this direction is the only hope.

The era of modernity is over. We have entered a different world: the modern era, and the postmodern era. This is an irreversible process. Postmodernism is globalization, excessive liberalism or extremism, unipolar domination, the supremacy of networks, and the abolition of all forms of traditional identities, whether states or religions, nations or ethnic groups, and even family and gender. Postmodernism today has achieved a historic victory, but, as it happened in the Enlightenment, postmodern resistance can be organized by adhering to the nation-state against Globalization. The geopolitical duality of land and sea against the "global flood", via the preservation of the traditional family and natural reproduction; social identity against the universal and absolute decay of individuals; the world of things and actions against the world of "images" and "fakes on screens"; a real economy "the old form of the economy" against the tyranny of money, the virtual world, and the new economy.

The uniqueness of the Eurasian idea as a political philosophy lies in the fact that it recognizes the uniqueness of the new situation more quickly than other theories, and does not content itself with resistance, but proposes to invest internal energy in a new project, while accepting the challenge posed by postmodernism.

Shifting from the Logic of Model to the Logic of the Continents

The second chapter of the book is devoted to discussing the idea of unipolar globalization in the face of integration between large spaces, and analyzing the concept of "globalization" politically, economically, and strategically. this means, at the strategic level, the extension of direct control by the armed forces of the United States of America and its partners, in the globalization process over the entire global space, proposing an alternative project to that globalization, which is prospective, potential or "humanitarian" globalization, a purely theoretical project that spreads in humanitarian circles in developed countries, a project based on the development of dialogue between cultures and civilizations, after the clash in a bipolar world.

In the Russian case, the book invites Russia to determine its position on that globalization that already exists on the ground, that is: towards unipolar globalization of the first type, because Russia's involvement in this process will lead in the long run to the extinction of Russia and its absence as a great country, and as Russia is the nucleus of a special Orthodox civilization. The book analyzes the state of anti-Americanism in contemporary Russia, where this hostility is considered in its deep meaning a brief summary of Russian national history:  Canonical and governmental, cultural and creative, social, and in the Tsarist and Soviet eras, a hostility of deep geopolitical and economic dimensions.

Because the "American empire" project is totally unacceptable to Russia, Russia can either join an existing and active internationalist or transnational project, or vigorously isolate itself within the borders of a nation-state, or it can make tremendous efforts proposing its own project, that can compete against the backdrop of other supranational models/projects, such as the project of a global American empire, the European project, the Islamic project, and the project of Great China from Taiwan to the Urals.

It must be admitted, according to the book, that there is no special place for Russia in these "grand projects", but this does not mean that Russia is doomed to hostility with all the "big ideas or projects" of the twenty-first century. More accurately: Russia would be deprived, in this case, from having an "absolute friend", that is: of that project that is fully consistent with its national interests. At the same time, Russia probably has an "absolute enemy" that is the United States of America and the new U.S. imperialism, that is working on achieving its own project on the expense of Russia all the time. Should Russia choose to play for the interest of a multipolar world, it would obtain its own special status and its legitimate place in the map of world powers. On the basis of such an assumption, the system of "axes of friendship" formed by Russia - Europe, Russia - the Islamic world and Russia - China is automatically established.

To ensure that Russia succeeds in building an "axis of friendship" to serve as a structure for a multipolar world, it must combine in its national doctrine the principle of relative openness with the principle of relative closure. The Eurasian idea gives Russia the opportunity to present itself, not only as a fortress of the struggle against globalization and the unipolar world order, nor only as a leading and avant-garde power on the path to multipolarity, but also as a carrier of the universal message and the doctrine of "continentalism", as a distinctive and special culture, that combines and unites the features of the West and the East.

Geoeconomics in the Postmodern Era

The third chapter of the book tackles the issue of geoeconomics in the postmodern era, where it analyzes the relationship between geopolitics and economics, starting from a critique of the choice of an economic model, that was incorrectly formulated in the perestroika stage in the former Soviet Union, and as one of the catastrophic mistakes of that stage, proposing the option of the "Third Way" in economics, a path that is not considered a simple compromise between liberalism and Marxism, or a transitional or intermediate loop or a middle option, but rather based on the foundations of Philosophical, scientific, and completely different worldviews, self-sufficient as something independent and definitively accomplished.

The Third Way in Eurasian economics or economic thinking can be formulated as follows: "Any economic situation must be seen as being of a cyclical nature, and not as steadily evolving and in a regular manner at all. In order to evaluate the economic situation, it must be placed in its historical, cultural, geographical, as well as national and religious context. These contexts in particular help us to know with which cycle and what stage we are dealing with, and what we should consider a standard, and also how we can support that criterion, taken case by case".

The book's justification for the previous hypothesis is based on the use of unidirectional global measures with each economic situation, which omit qualitative aspects, and then Russia's actions can lead to irreparable and unjustified costs, as the IMF's prescriptions that were applied to Somalia's old economy, for example, led to a complete collapse of the Somalian economy, despite financial pumping and loans. This is what made Somalia, that until the near past used to export food products, become below the line poverty and a general famine.

In this context, there is a distinct position of Eurasian economic theory towards the three economic theories in modern Russia, where modernization is not a goal in itself for Eurasians, rather; modernization is a positive need and necessity in some cases, though harmful and destructive in other cases, so the three economic models: pre-industrial "traditional society", industrial, and post-industrial, can exist together at the same time, and within one geographical sector. This requires a clear and accurate differentiation:  Russia needs Eurasian postmodernism (its post-industrial component), Eurasian modernity (industrial component), and Eurasian premodernity (pre-industrial component).

The Geopolitics of Asymmetric Risks

The fourth chapter discusses the geopolitics of asymmetric risks, or postmodern wars, where the chapter analyzes the phenomenon of terrorism as a method or method of political action, that characterizes those groups and sectors of the political spectrum (national and religious) which -for certain reasons- are unable to achieve their own goals (or to express themselves simply, and also to declare their point of view in the desired range), by operating outside the law. The condition for the emergence of terrorism lies in the existence of a vacuum or a certain gap between serious socio-political constraints, besides the relative leniency of the security system, which makes societies with a liberal democratic structure ideally suited to the emergence of this phenomenon.

The book uses the term "geopolitical terrorism" that was employed in the Cold War previously, and continued to be employed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, by the United States of America and NATO with new tools and forms. Among those geopolitical tools emerges Islamic fundamentalism (Islamism) used by the West to confront pro-Soviet regimes in the Islamic world, or for those forms of politicized Islam that are based on traditional and Shiite political doctrines, which have made an effort to defend some independence from the West and from the East, the socialist East. The radical forms of contemporary Islamism are based on the Atlantic geopolitical trend, therefore, this current of terrorism is merely a genetic derivative of the Atlantic. Hence, the book concludes that the structure of the terrorist network of Islamism has its roots in Western intelligence services.

The book also discusses the phenomenon of terrorism in the media space, and the role of the mass media as a tool in the counter-terrorism strategy, where the mass media, due to the significance of the terrorist operation, cannot remain neutral and play the role of remote observer of the conflict between a terrorist system and an anti-terrorist structure. By virtue of the fact that the mass media stands on the side of the majority, and on the side of society, it is supposed to take a clear and unambiguous position on the side of the anti-terrorist front. At the same time, this does not mean carrying out service missions for the security services or other institutions that work professionally in order to combat terrorism and prevent terrorist acts, because the role and function of the mass media in the information society is a serious and important matter, as it is not permissible for them to turn into mere postmen for this or that situation.

As a conclusion, Alexander Dugin's book "Postmodern Political Geography" combines a strategic analytical reading on the one hand, and a forward-looking vision for the future on the other, based on a modern geopolitical methodology with a clear Eurasian background in terms of critical philosophical theoretical premises, interest in the Russian value system, and political ambition.

This comprehensive reading of the most important ideas contained in the book does not replace a careful reading of the book, linking many of the ideas contained in it to Russia's strategic policies on the ground, thus contributing to a more in-depth analysis of those policies, and extrapolating the possibilities of their development in the foreseeable future.