Eurasianism, Dugin, and The Battle For The World-Island

Date: 10/20/2022
Author: Mr. X


They call him General Armageddon.

General Sergei Surovikin is an experienced commander, a “Hero of Russia,” and, according to some human rights advocates, a war criminal. He also now leads all Russian forces in Ukraine. However, in his latest comments on the situation in Ukraine, the general was very direct about the difficulties the Russian army is facing, especially around Kherson. He said the atmosphere was “tense” and that “difficult decisions” may lie ahead. This could potentially include abandoning the area temporarily. He predicted heavy losses for Ukraine, noting that NATO is pushing an offensive for political reasons.

General Sergei Surovikin is now commander
of all Russian forces in Ukraine

However, the general also tried to portray himself as something of a humanitarian. He emphasized that the Russian way of war was done through a slow, methodical overwhelming application of violence, seeking to spare the lives of both soldiers and civilians. He also rather dramatically denied Ukrainian nationhood.

“The enemy is the criminal regime pushing the citizens of Ukraine to their death. We and Ukrainians are one people and want the same thing – that Ukraine be independent from the West and NATO and a friendly state for Russia.”

Many Ukrainians would evidently disagree. Some, especially in the east, would agree though, as the separatist forces of the “People’s Republics” show. However, there’s a bigger fight at work. Why exactly is Ukraine so important to the West, despite its relative distance? Why is the West willing to risk even nuclear war over whether Russia controls eastern Ukraine?

What we’re seeing is the return of geopolitics. Modern geopolitics must begin with Harold Mackinder (1861-1937), an MP and a scholar. He argued that the “heartland” of the Eurasian continent was the key to world control. He proposed a series of states in eastern Europe that would be explicitly designed to contain then Communist Russia. Eurasia, “the world island,” was the key to world domination.


Move Fast. Keep Winning.


In short, as he put it:

Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland.

Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island.

Who rules the World-Island commands the World.

He argued that if eastern European states couldn’t maintain their sovereignty and independence, there would be another war in the area between Germany and Russia over control of the “world island.” He was right about that.

In Germany, one of the most important geopolitical scholars was Karl Haushofer (1869-1946). He wrote extensively about the need for Germany to extend eastward to secure Lebensraum. One young man who attended his lectures was Rudolf Hess – later “Deputy Fuhrer” of the National Socialist Party, second only to Adolf Hitler. In this way, he had far more influence than he might have imagined.

Karl Haushofer

After the catastrophe of World War II, the United Kingdom could no longer play its traditional role of being the balancing power on the Eurasian continent, preventing the rise of a hegemonic power. This has always been Britain’s strategic aim – in the wars against Louis XIV, Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Adolf Hitler. After the war, a new power would take up the balancing role – the maritime power of the United States.

America’s postwar role was not just to contain the Soviet Union. It was to rebuild Europe – but keep it under control. Lord Ismay, the first Secretary General of NATO, said the purpose of the organization was to “keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Even after the end of the Cold War, this policy continued. NATO expanded eastward (in direct violation of promises made to Russia) and Europe prospered under a Common Market.

However, this prosperity came at a cost – ultimately, it was the United States that directed the major questions of foreign policy. This did not always work to the advantage of America’s allies. For example, in the 1956 Suez Crisis, the USA lined up against Israel, Great Britain, and France, humiliating the European powers and indicating that the era of colonialism was over. America tolerated authoritarian anti-communist leaders in the Cold War but did not support European attempts to hold on to their colonies.

Occasionally, there were tensions in Europe because of perceived American domination over its foreign policy. Protests over whether nuclear weapons should be deployed in Europe were common. However, after the Cold War, some may have thought needed NATO needed to find a new purpose. Instead, it’s doing the same thing – keeping Russia out, America in, and Germany down. Despite a few abortive moves towards more European “strategic autonomy,” in French president Emmanuel Macron’s phrase, America ultimately calls the shots. It also now enjoys the support of newly freed eastern European countries that are more hawkish than “Old Europe” of Germany and France.

Europe is now paying the price for being America’s de-facto protectorate in the form of high energy costs. Whatever challenges the American economy faces, it’s far worse for the Continent.

Geopolitics has been very important to the current generation of Russian leaders. For example, President Vladimir Putin called the breakup of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century.” It wasn’t just that Russia had lost its empire, but that a different kind of empire had dominance.

According to some scholars, the American empire, much like the British empire, was essentially a thassolocracy, a naval empire that pushed globalization, free trade, modernism, and anti-traditional ideas in the name of economic efficiency. Many in America would say that this is true and is also a good thing. However, others, especially in Russia and the Global South, would say that it is a hypocritical way to control other nations through the use of finance. Some even call it racist, with all the talk about free trade and modernization just so much propaganda surrounding a plan to keep the world subjugated and the “Golden Billion” in the West prosperous.

That may be a stretch. Yet these are precisely the themes that President Vladimir Putin touched on when he announced the annexation of four Ukrainian territories and unveiled his “partial mobilization.” These ideas didn’t come in a vacuum.

The Russian scholar Alexander Dugin has become increasingly influential, especially because of his “Eurasianist” philosophy. Though Eurasianism is far too complex to fully describe here, its practical consequences are easy to grasp. Dugin argues for a multipolar world that can check American hegemony and allow local cultures, traditions, and ways of being  to exist outside of Western neoliberalism. It’s not just a geopolitical vision, but a philosophy, a way to grapple with Martin Heidegger’s questions about “being in the world,” or Dasein.  Dugin essentially argues that there are different civilizational answers to these basic questions about identity and individual experience, rather than one “correct” global answer. In the realm of power politics, this means that instead of globalization, Russia, Central Asian nations, and others can pursue security, prosperity, and collective identity without submitting to Washington.

Of course, an independent Ukraine with a strong national consciousness is a major threat to this project. For this reason, Dugin has been highly critical of Ukraine. President Putin sounds like him when he argues that modern Ukraine was essentially being turned into a kind of anti-Russia, simply a negative identity against Russia.

The complicated legacy of those Eastern Europeans who fought with the Germans in World War II also provides rhetorical ammunition to Russia. In the minds of the Russian leaders, they are fighting the “Nazis” from the Great Patriotic War, especially when they see Soviet monuments torn down, celebrations of SS units. or Wehrmacht iconography in Ukraine and Eastern Europe. To us, it seems absurd to say Ukraine has a Nazi regime when it is led by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a Jewish man who has hardly concealed his identity and won office as something of a dove. Yet to some powerful Russians, it makes sense.

A strong Ukraine siding with the West, as it did after the Maidan revolution or the “Revolution of Dignity” in 2014, is an existential threat to Russia remaining a great power. It certainly means Russia can’t be a “pole” that can command great spaces and so challenge Washington’s financial, political, military, and cultural hegemony. It even threatens the existence of Russia, because Russia is not a nation-state but essentially an empire containing many nations with differing religions and cultural backgrounds. Russia must provide a contrast to the West in order to safeguard its own identity, lest the Russian Federation split apart the same way the USSR did. This is why President Putin leaned on social conservative themes during his speech, blasting the West for gay marriage and transgenderism.

Ideas have consequences. For Dugin, the consequences came when a car bomb, possibly intended for him, killed his daughter Darya Dugina. American intelligence reportedly scolded Ukraine for this act. It certainly escalated the stakes for Russia, and Putin’s regime was quick to seize upon it. Darya Dugina was awarded the Order of Courage posthumously by the Russian government.

Darya Dugina, 2022
Source: 1RNK Used Under CC BY 3.0

Dugin’s influence among the Russian elite was wildly overstated before the war and the idea that he’s “Putin’s brain” is simply absurd. Nontheless, in war, fringe figures and ideas move to the center. Dugin’s concept of a land-based, traditionalist, and expansionist empire that can serve as one of the “poles” in a multipolar world provides part of the ideological justification for Russia’s war. Russia isn’t just a great country but a pole, the center of a civilization.  Russia’s government, lacking a true fundamental mythos about why the Motherland should fight to the death, may seize on this.

Aleksandr Dugin,
Source: Fars Media Corporation
Used Under CC By 4.0

Vladimir Putin has remained in power not by invoking fanatical nationalism or a cult of personality but by removing politics from everyday life. Like many soft authoritarian governments, if you don’t present a direct challenge to the system, you are left alone. It’s simply understood that you don’t have any control over your government, so you focus your attention on other things, like making money. Even Putin’s opponents, with few exceptions, think there’s nothing they can do to change things. During peacetime, this benefits him because he has little opposition. Why would people risk jail or worse when things are good enough to just get by? And why challenge a leader who many would argue saved Russia from the economic and social chaos of the immediate post-Soviet era?

However, in war, this strategy breaks down. Putin has no radicalized, nationalist population to draw upon. Russians who have been taught to be politically apathetic are suddenly being told they are in an existential conflict. Politics really matters when suddenly you are getting conscription orders. Putin never prepared his people for this, one of the key signs he never expected this kind of war. Instead of rushing to the colors, many Russians rushed out of the country altogether during partial mobilization.

After preaching complacency for years, Putin is hardly able to call for a holy war or a Stalinesque “not one step backward” Great Patriotic War. Still, it’s significant that many Russians left the country rather than championing militant resistance at home. That may be a win for Putin in a small way – even his opponents don’t think there’s anything he can do. That may change as President Putin is forced to make greater demands on his population.

Other countries, including Russian allies in central Asia, haven’t latched on to Eurasianism. Indeed, some powers seem to be breaking with Russia. Yet not all have. Iran has enthusiastically supported Russia with drones that have proven devastatingly effective. Iran denies this, but its denials are frankly hard to believe. Belarus was – and is – a staging ground for the invasion. And in a particularly worrying development, Alexander Dugin just visited “Europe’s last dictator” Alexander Lukashenko.

Reports that Russian troops and equipment are pouring into Belarus, and that Belarus has upped its security posture, could be a possible indication Minsk will formally enter the war. After all, given that the West seems to be aiming towards regime change in Russia, Lukashenko must know that he wouldn’t survive a Russian defeat. He might as well go out fighting.

Dugin paid tribute to Lukashenko:

You prevented the state from being robbed, you did not make the mistakes that we, alas, made in the 1990s and that we are now correcting with such difficulty. I sincerely bow before your authority, before your courage, before your earnest steadfastness in saving the Belarusian people, the Belarusian statehood – and, accordingly, us, our unity, our Union State.

The Union State is a long-sidelined project for the merger of Russia and Belarus. That could also be Lukashenko’s last play for ensuring his own security – by merging into a Russian state that is being built around the principles of autarchy and self-sufficiency in the face of Western sanctions.

President Vladimir Putin is not an fanatic. He’s a product of the security services and the Soviet state. The problems with that model of governance is that there is an incentive to provide leaders with optimistic, though inaccurate intelligence. That’s probably why Putin launched a war that he thought he would win quickly. Instead, because of overly optimistic reports from his subordinates, he’s trapped in a war to the knife that could last for years.

He’s trying to make the best of it. He’s seized on the war as a way to defend Russia’s “sovereignty” and openly proclaim his goal of a multipolar world. While no one other than Iran has enthusiastically backed him, China, Brazil, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and other powers have also not condemned him. Saudi Arabia even defied president Biden by refusing to increase oil production.

In this ideological vacuum, the once fringe ideology of Eurasianism takes on new importance. The fact that Dugin visited Belarus is highly significant. Russia is stumbling towards a metapolitical justification for its invasion. It’s dangerous for Western policymakers to think that if they simply impose enough costs on Russia, Vladimir Putin will withdraw his forces. For him, and perhaps for others like him, this is now a war against the entire global order. Belarus may join him. Iran already has. If China, antagonized by American trade restrictions, decides to aid Russia, the United States will have found itself in a proxy war that it can ill afford. And if energy prices and the cost of living keep going up in Western Europe, some may begin to question the Atlantic alliance itself.

The worst nightmare of American policymakers isn’t a Russian victory in Ukraine. It’s a German-Russian rapprochement that would make America irrelevant on the Continent. America is the hard power that supports “liberal democracy” around the world, something it sees as a universal mission. A multipolar world, with values that aren’t held universally across all cultures, is bad for American-style business. It’s even worse if we get a financial multipolar world and the dollar no longer remains the reserve currency. If that occurs, all those debts and deficits we Americans have been ignoring become important very quickly.

America does indeed have a vital interest in defeating Russia, but it’s not about defending Ukrainians. It’s about preventing the rise of a “Russian World” in eastern Europe and more broadly, making sure that the world is marching along with America to the End of History, liberal democracy, and neoliberal capitalism. Poor, violated, ravished Ukraine is torn not just between two countries, but two different civilizations. It is in the critical heartland of the Eurasian “World-Island,” and neither side can allow the other to control it.

What is this war about? It can be summarized in one question. Is Ukraine part of the West or are Ukrainians “one people” with Russians? People can believe whatever they want, but the answer will be determined on the battlefield. The second battle of Kherson looks like it’s going to begin… and with Dugin in Belarus, we may even see a second Battle of Kyiv sooner than we thought.

Mr. X is an investment analyst working in the Washington DC area who specializes in the intersection of business and public policy. After fifteen years working in politics, he writes on a classified basis for RogueInvesting.com to bring you news on what those with power are debating, planning, and doing.

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