How I understand geopolitics
By Andrei Munteanu
Chisinau (Moldova.ORG) – Meeting with Mr. George Friedman, Chief Executive Officer and founder of STRATFOR Global Intelligence was anticipated by emotions I used to experience many years ago, in the Nobel Prize Awarding Hall and/or at the Stockholm University, while listening for the lessons that impact the world at global level, the series of unforgotten lessons taught by professors Carnoy (Stanford University), Fägerlind, Husén and Tuijnman (Stockholm University), and the way those lessons challenged me to think much about inequalities between people and countries, their casualties, so that they were followed by whole days and nights of unease and meditations.
Mr. Friedman is one of several persons who obliquely proved how important is to think globally in order to properly act locally, and how much it matters to be able make priorities in our lives; I was about to make a huge mistake, i.e. to find an „excuse” for not going to the meeting merely because, due to certain reasons, there was changed the meeting time by about 15 hours earlier than expected.
From the fist installment of a series of special reports written by Dr. Friedman I learned that he is a traveler, and this intrigued me even more, because I know how much influenced me my trips, on various occasions, to those over 20 countries of the world.
Geopolitics for him is like for any sound loving parent care of one’s own child, regardless of how this love may be manifested. This is why any word for me was a new challenge to listen, but not only.
It wouldn’t be correctly if I wouldn’t start with the stance on geopolitics through the angle of Mr. Friedman. He considers the geopolitics as an: “intersection of geography and politics. It assumes that the political life of humans is shaped by the place in which they live and that the political patterns are frequently recurring because of the persistence of nations and the permanence of geography”. The thoughts seem inasmuch deep as convincing, and at the same time, stirring up the persistence to formulate my own views, which could be complementary, if the readers and himself do not consider that contradictory…
A quotation that grasped my attention particularly, and which regards us mostly, is that: „When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and withdrew to the borders of old Muscovy, there were those who said that this was the end of the Russian empire. Nations and empires are living things until they die. While they live they grow to the limits set by other nations. They don’t grow like this because they are evil. They do this because they are composed of humans who always want to be more secure, more prosperous and more respected. It is inconceivable to me that Russia, alive and unrestrained, would not seek to return to what it once was. The frontiers of Czarist Russia and the Soviet Union had reasons for being where they were, and in my mind, Russia would inevitably seek to return to its borders”.
This quotation, taken so extensively, is because it is of extreme essence up to the very last letter. It is a quotation that makes me understand, in other circumstances I wouldn’t believe, that pragmatism can have also constructive aspects for the mankind, the R.M. including. If the Russian Federation would have the „natural excuse” – i.e. not out of “ill will” – to claim return to its borders of the Tsarist period, or at least up to the Nistru River, then with the same level of certainty one could justify, as absolutely legal - the interests of the European Union to keep control upon the R.M. and Transnistria including, at least due to the points as follows: (i) the current territory of the R.M. was in the composition of Tsarist Russia and former URSS based on annexation by force, (ii) the current territory of the R.M. was in the composition of the Romania as a result of the Sfatul Ţării resolution, which expressed the legal will and stance of the nation at that moment, (iii) nowadays Romania is part of the European Union, and became so in a natural way, based of its free will, without violence, and (iii) Transnistria was part of the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldavia (SSRM) based on a project made in soviet Moscow, beyond its will, and broken away from the R.M. again, by violence of the Russian army.
Similarly, I can see the justification of the interests of the USA in the R.M. (Transnistria including), as promoter and security factor of guaranteeing a model of democracy which turned to be most viable and sustainable compared to other models of democracy, in the context of need for stability and sustainable development in the region Republic of Moldova is placed geographically.
Many would think this as a simplistic approach, but, I hope, not inasmuch as not to see the „germ” of the essence, that I try to lay as basis for potential, nevertheless, of a geographical division - the attractiveness factor, and that of profiling certain integrationist predilections as natural processes – based on the power of conviction and free will, rather than armed interventions and military force, as it seems to be considered „normally” from the “classical” geopolitics; hence it proceeds there seems to be suggestive that there could be traced out a distinction between the geopolitics and „geo-caprices”, or even „geo-obsessions”.
From the article of Mr. Friedman one can see in a way I could not notice before in the myriad of literature I read on Marxist-Leninist philosophy, and/or history of the CPSU, how important is to struggle for the absolute truth, in order to facilitate our understanding and better tackle the issue of who and what deserves, as implications of deeds committed.
From the discussion as mentioned above, I got to know better how important is to develop our cognitive and attitudinal skills, because this way we can extend the grounds of our courage to approach things pragmatically and impartially, which in a rational interpretation may not be associated with human rights violation, that approaching issues pragmatically does not mean giving up the struggle for absolute truth, and that only this way could be found not only the truth itself, but also constructive ideas which can help us get out of impasse; that by cognitive and attitudinal skills there could be discouraged any aberrant “idea” of committing violence among nations and/or among social classes within a country taken apart.
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