The name Eurasia was used by the Austrian geologist Eduard Suess (1831-1914) in his work Das Antlitz der Erde, while it was coined by the German mathematician and geographer Carl Gustav Reuschle (1812-1875) in his Handbuch der Geographie to denote the continent that it unites Asia and Europe inseparably.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In fact, the term continente (from the Latin contin\u0113re, “to hold, to hold together”) properly denotes a solid land mass surrounded by oceanic and marine waters, so that it cannot designate either Europe or Asia, but only the continental cluster of which Europe and Asia are constituent parts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If, on the other hand, ignoring the geographical criterion on which the concept of continent is based, one wanted to draw a conventional line between Europe and Asia, one would be forced to take as a dividing line the Urals, a mountain range not even 2,000 meters in height (the highest peak, Narodnaja, reaches 1,895 meters above sea level). It would then be necessary to continue this dividing line along the Ural River and along the northwestern coast of the Caspian Sea – but this is where the problems and disputes would begin, because according to some, the boundary between the two supposedly European and of Asian continents would be the Caucasus hydrological basin, according to others, the Kuma-Many\u010d valley north of the Caucasus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Eurasianists of the 1920s<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The idea of Eurasia that emerges from the work of scholars such as Giuseppe Tucci, Mircea Eliade and Franz Altheim is very different from that which inspires so-called “classical” Eurasianism or Eurasianism, which is characterized by a radical aversion to European culture, identified as “Romano-Germanic”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Classical” Eurasianism is represented by a group of Russian intellectuals who emigrated after the defeat of the white armies and became active in the 1920s, among whom the most prominent should be mentioned: Prince Nikolai S. Trubeckoj (1890-1938), famous in the linguistic field because he elaborated, together with the other scholars of the Prague Circle, the so-called “new phonology”[21], the historian Georgii V. Vernadskij (1887-1973), the geographer and economist Pyotr N. Savickij (1895-1965 ), musicologist Pyotr P. Suv\u010dinskij (1892-1985) and theologian Georgij V. Florovsky (1893-1973).<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Classical” Eurasianists expressed the fundamental idea that the peoples of Russia and its neighboring regions in Europe and Asia constitute a natural unity, as they are connected to each other by historical and cultural affinities. Grounded not only in Byzantine heritage, but also in Mongol conquest and thus identifiable as \u201cEurasian\u201d, according to the authors of Ischod k Vostoku, Russian cultural identity had been denied both by the reforms of Peter the Great and the political order that ruled thereafter Russia, as well as from the Slavophile current, which they accused of wanting to imitate Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By the name Eurasia, Trumbetskoy and the other “Eurasianists” of the 1920s did not mean, as the semantic content of the term would require, the great continent between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and between the Arctic and Indian Oceans, but referred to a great intermediate space between Europe and Asia, distinct from both Europe and Asia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For them, Asia was the whole of the eastern, southeastern and southern peripheral regions of the great continent: Japan, China, Indochina, India, Iran and all of Asia Minor. As for Europe, it coincided with the “Roman-Germanic world”, which was essentially limited to Western and Central Europe, while what they usually called “Eastern Europe”, up to the Urals, was part of Eurasia for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The New-Eurasianism Theory<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n From the elaboration of the so-called “classical” Eurasianism, enriched with the contribution of geopolitics and elements of traditional thought (Ren\u00e9 Gu\u00e9non, Julius Evola, etc.), the so-called “neo-Eurasianism” was born in Russia at the end of the 1980s. Its main theoretician and exponent is Aleksandr G. Dugin (1962-), founder of the International Eurasian Movement (Me\u017edunarodnoe Evrazijskoe Dvi\u017eenie) and, over the years, a collaborator or supporter of various political entities: initially the Communist Party of Gennadij Zjuganov, in then Eduard Limonov’s National Bolshevik Party, then Vladimir \u017dirinovskij’s Liberal Democratic Party, and finally Vladimir Putin’s United Russia (Edinaja Rossija) party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dugin’s vision differs from “classical” Eurasianism because in Russia’s incompatibility with “Roman-German” Europe he substitutes (at least in the first phase of his thought) the radical opposition between the continental interests of the entire Eurasian mass and the US-dominated one. West. Europe, the Muslim world, China and Japan are no longer seen as implacable rivals surrounding Russia, but rather as potential allies, in the name of a Schmitt-style showdown between land and sea powers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eurasia, which from Trumbetskoy to Gumilev had been identified with the region corresponding first to imperial Russia and then to the Soviet Union, in Dugin’s neo-Eurasianism does not have a clear and defined profile. Sometimes, in fact, Dugin calls the entire continent Eurasia – sometimes he states that “neither the Eurasian idea nor Eurasia as a concept strictly corresponds to the geographical boundaries of the Eurasian continent” – sometimes he considers Eurasia and Europe as two different cultures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Dugin’s geopolitical perspective, which he developed at length in the first issue of Eurasia, the ancient continent, that is, the land mass of the eastern hemisphere, is divided into three large “vertical zones”, running from north to south, each of which consists of many “large spaces”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This subdivision is a reiteration of the pan-African space of Karl Haushofer (1869-1946), who had theorized an eastern hemisphere geopolitically subdivided into a Eurafrican space, a pan-African space extending to the Indian Ocean but with no outlet to the Pacific, and finally a far-eastern area that includes Japan, China, Southeast Asia and Indonesia;<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Haushofer’s scheme Dugin made some changes required by the current international situation, assigning the Near East and Siberia up to Vladivostok to the second zone (the Russia-Central Asia zone).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The “vertical” geopolitical perspective theorized by Dugin was the subject, in the pages of “Eurasia”, of critical remarks by Carlo Terracciano (1948-2005). Eurasia, observed Terracciano, “is a ‘horizontal’ continent, unlike the Americas, which is a ‘vertical’ continent” – indeed, the entire continental mass of our hemisphere, the eastern hemisphere of the planet, consists of homogeneous units placed horizontally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Translating this geographical vision into geopolitical terms, Terracciano envisioned “the completion of the great northern Eurasian plain from the English Channel to the Bering Strait.” This first horizontal zone is framed, in successive horizontal zones, by the other geopolitical units of Eurasia and Africa: the great Arab space of North Africa and the Near East, the great trans-Saharan space, the great Islamic space between the Caucasus and the Indus, etc. ok<\/p>\n\n\n\n In such a perspective, it is natural for Europe to join a sphere of economic, political and military cooperation with Russia, otherwise, writes Terracciano, Europe will be used by the Americans “like a weapon aimed at Moscow”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For its part, Russia cannot do without Europe – on the contrary, it needs it. From the Russian point of view, “the only security for the coming centuries can be represented only by the control in any form of the coasts of the northern Eurasian landmass, those coasts bordering the two main oceans of the world, the Atlantic and the Pacific.” The need for the geopolitical integration of Europe and Russia forces both Europeans and Russians to definitively revise certain oppositions, starting with the “racial” opposition between Euro-Germans and Slavs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the Russians, too, must eliminate the remnants of that Europhobia, which, born of a just need to upgrade their Turko-Tatar element, has sometimes led them to radically oppose Russia to German and Latin Europe. Therefore, “if one can and should still speak of West and East, the dividing line must be placed between the two hemispheres, between the two continental masses separated by the great oceans”, so that the real West, the land of the sunset, to prove to be America, while the East, the land of light, to coincide with ancient continent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the geopolitical perspective that characterized Dugin’s thinking until 2016, Eurasia – the entire Eurasian continent – is under attack by the United States of America, which is driven to conquer the Heartland and, therefore, world power by their very tyrannical nature (and not simply from the ideological orientation of a part of their political class).<\/p>\n\n\n\n But at the time of the election campaign of Donald Trump and his election to the presidency of the USA, Dugin’s thinking undergoes a radical change: adopting a criterion more ideological than geopolitical and indicating the “main enemy” no longer in the North American power but in the liberal and globalist faction, Dugin hails Trump’s election with fervent enthusiasm and writes verbatim: “For me it is obvious that Trump’s victory marked the collapse of the global political paradigm and, at the same time, the beginning of a new historical cycle (\u2026) In the age of Trump, anti-Americanism is synonymous with globalization (\u2026) In other words, in today’s political context, anti-Americanism is becoming an integral part of the rhetoric of the very liberal elite, for whom Trump’s arrival was a real blow. For Trump’s opponents, January 20, 2017 was the ‘end of history’, while for us it was a gateway to new opportunities and choices.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three years later, on January 3, 2020, the same day that Trump proudly supported the assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, Dugin wished him – in a message posted on Facebook – four more years as president: \u201cFour more years. In 2021, Dugin reiterated his pro-Trump position in a Great Awakening Manifesto, in which he stated that the Great Awakening “comes from the United States, from that culture in which the twilight of liberalism is more intense than anywhere else.” , without, however, failing to recognize the “important role played in this process by the American agitator-propagandist of conservative orientation Steve Bannon”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The conclusion is that “our fight is no longer against America. The America we knew is no more. The division of American society is, as of now, irreversible. We are in the same situation everywhere, inside and outside the US. The same battle is being fought on a global scale.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The European empire is officially Eurasian”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In the “horizontal” perspective of Carlo Terracciano, the influence of the thought of Jean Thiriart (1922-1992) is evident, who came to theorize, after many elaborations, the political fusion of Europe with Russia in a single imperial state. In 1964, in a Europe divided between two blocs, Thiriart had published in the major European languages a book entitled Un empire de 400 millions d’hommes: l’Europe, in which he argued for the historical necessity of building a single Europe, independent from both Washington and Moscow. ‘In the context of a common geopolitics and a common culture’, he wrote, ‘united and communal Europe stretches from Brest to Bucharest. (\u2026) Opposite the 414 million Europeans are the 180 million inhabitants of the USA and the 210 million inhabitants of the USSR”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The “empire of 400 million people,” which Thiriart had envisioned as a third sovereign and armed power, would have to establish a relationship of coexistence with the USSR based on precise terms: “Peaceful coexistence with the USSR will not be possible until until all our eastern provinces regain their independence. Peaceful coexistence with the USSR will begin the day the USSR returns to the borders of 1938. But not earlier: any form of coexistence that may involve the division of Europe is nothing but a fraud.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Thiriart, the peaceful coexistence between the united Europe and the USSR will have its logical development in “a Brest-Vladivostok axis. (\u2026) If the USSR wants to keep Siberia, it must make peace with Europe, with Europe from Brest to Bucharest, I repeat. The USSR does not have, and will have less and less, the power to hold Warsaw and Budapest on the one hand and Chita and Khabarovsk on the other. He must choose or risk losing everything. (\u2026) The steel produced in the Ruhr could well be used for the defense of Vladivostok\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Brest-Vladivostok axis theorized by Thiriart at the time seemed to be more of an agreement aimed at defining the respective spheres of influence of a united Europe and the USSR, as \u201cin the first half of the 1960s Thiriart was still arguing in terms of a “vertical” geopolitics, a fact that led him to think according to a logic more “Eurasian” than “Eurasian”, that is to outline an expansion of Europe from North to South and not from East to West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The scenario outlined in 1964 was developed by Thiriart in the following years, so that in 1982 he could define it as follows: \u201cWe must no longer think or speculate in terms of conflict between the USSR and us, but in terms of rapprochement and then consolidation. (\u2026) we must help the USSR to complete itself in the great continental dimension. This will triple the Soviet population, which by this very fact can no longer be a power with a dominant “Russian character”. (\u2026) It will be the nature of history that will force the USSR to seek safe shores: Reykjavik, Dublin, Cadiz, Casablanca. Beyond these limits the USSR will never be safe and will have to live in constant military preparation. And expensive\u201d[47]. By then Thiriart’s geopolitical vision had become declaratively Eurasian: “The Euro-Soviet empire”, he wrote in 1987, “is inscribed in the Eurasian dimension”. He repeated this perception himself in a long speech in Moscow three months before his death: “The European Empire,” he said on that occasion, “is, officially, Eurasian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The idea of a “Euro-Soviet empire” was formulated by Thiriart in a book written in 1984 and published posthumously. In 1984, the author wrote, \u201chistory gives the Soviets the legacy, the role, the destiny that for a brief moment was assigned to the [Third] Reich: the USSR is the main continental power in Europe, it is the heart of geopolitics. My present speech is addressed to the military leaders of that wonderful body which is the Soviet army, an body which lacks a great cause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Starting from the observation that in the European mosaic made up of satellite countries of the USA or the USSR, the only truly independent, sovereign and militarily powerful state was the Soviet one, Thiriart assigns to the USSR a role analogous to that played by the Kingdom of Sardinia in process of Italian unification or the Kingdom of Prussia in the Germanic world – or, to cite another historical parallel proposed by Thiriart himself, the Kingdom of Macedonia in 4th century BC Greece: “The state of Greece in 350 BC, split into rival city-states and divided between the two powers of the time, Persia and Macedonia, presents an obvious analogy with the situation of today’s Western Europe, divided into small and weak territorial states (Italy, France, England, federal Germany) subject to the two superpowers”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Therefore, just as there was a pro-Macedonian party in Athens, so it would be appropriate to create in western Europe a revolutionary party to cooperate with the Soviet Union – which, in addition to freeing itself from the ideological shackles of incapacitating Marxist dogma, should to avoid any temptation to establish a Russian hegemony in Europe, otherwise his enterprise would inevitably have failed, just as Napoleon’s attempt to establish a French hegemony on the continent had failed. It is not a matter, Thiriart stressed, of preferring a Russian protectorate to an American protectorate. No.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The point is to make the Soviets, who probably don’t know it, discover the role they could play: to expand by identifying with the whole of Europe. Just as Prussia, enlarging itself, became the German Empire. The USSR is the last independent European power with significant military power. She lacks historical intelligence.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Eurasian chessboard<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Eurasian Chessboard is the title of the second chapter of a book written in 1997 by Zbigniew Brzezinski (1928-2017), who served as National Security Advisor from 1977 to 1981, during Jimmy Carter’s presidency. Basing himself on the positions of Sir Halford Mackinder (1861-1947), whose famous formula he does not fail to quote, Brzezinski explains in the circles of North American imperialism the need to adopt a “geostrategy for Eurasia”, considering it necessary for the United States , if they want to dominate the world, exercise their control over the Eurasian continent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFor America,\u201d he writes, \u201cEurasia is the main geopolitical prey. For half a millennium world affairs were dominated by Eurasian powers (\u2026) Now a non-Eurasian power prevails in Eurasia, and America’s global primacy directly depends on the duration and effectiveness of its supremacy on the Eurasian continent.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Brzezinski draws attention to one fact: “Eurasia is the largest continent on the planet and is geopolitically axial,” so that a power capable of dominating it would control two of the three most advanced and economically productive regions of the world. On the other hand, “a simple glance at the map also shows that control of Eurasia would almost automatically entail the subjugation of Africa, making the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world’s central continent.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Furthermore, \u201cEurasia is also home to the most politically assertive and dynamic states. After the United States, the six largest economies and the six largest arms purchasers are in Eurasia. The two most populous countries that aspire to regional hegemony and global influence are Eurasian. All potential political and\/or economic challengers to the US presidency are Eurasian. Overall, the power of Eurasia far exceeds that of the Americas. Fortunately for America, Eurasia is too big to be politically united. Eurasia is therefore the chessboard on which the struggle for world supremacy continues to unfold.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n To give an idea of “that vast, strangely shaped Eurasian chessboard stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok” on which “the great game” is played, Brzezinski introduces a map of the continent divided into four large spaces, which he calls respectively Middle Space (roughly corresponding to the Russian Federation and adjacent territories in Central Asia), West (Europe), South (Near and Middle East) and East (Far East and Southeast Asia).<\/p>\n\n\n\n “If the Middle Space,” writes Brzezinski, “can be drawn more and more into the expansionist orbit of the West (where America predominates), if the Southern region is not subject to the dominance of one player, and if the Far East is not unified with such in such a way as to cause America to be expelled from the bases it maintains outside its territory, then America can be said to prevail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But if Middle Space rejects the West, becomes a claimant entity and gains control of the South or creates an alliance with the most important Eastern factor e.g. China. The same would happen if the two great players of the Far East, China and Japan, were somehow united.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The “geostrategy for Eurasia” elaborated by Brzezinski identifies Europe as the main vehicle for the US to further project its power on the Eurasian continent. According to the crude realist definition used by Carter’s former adviser, Europe is America’s “fundamental geopolitical bridgehead on the Eurasian continent” – moreover, it is a “democratic bridgehead” as “the same values” that America exported to Europe in 1945 and 1989 have made it the last “natural ally of America”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Therefore, Brzezinski assures us, the enlargement of the politically irrelevant and militarily subordinate European Union should not cause undue concern in the White House, quite the opposite: “A wider Europe will widen the radius of American influence (\u2026) without at the same time creates a Europe so politically integrated that it can directly challenge the United States elsewhere in geopolitical affairs of great importance to America, especially in the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Regarding the geopolitical role of Russia, the large country at the center of the Eurasian continental landmass, Brzezinski refers to the possibilities being considered by analysts in the late 1990s. Russia, sooner or later, would form a Eurasian array along with Iran and China: “the most militant Islamic power in the world and the most populous and powerful Asian power.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The name Eurasia was used by the Austrian geologist Eduard Suess (1831-1914) in his work Das Antlitz der Erde, while it was coined by…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[988,7],"tags":[4448,655,1467,5063,2523,5062],"class_list":["post-16861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-science","category-research","tag-alexander-dugin","tag-donald-trump","tag-eurasia","tag-geostrategy","tag-international-relations","tag-new-eurasianism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16861"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16863,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16861\/revisions\/16863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n