PREVIEW： Realpolitik #46 ｜ Europe’s Slow Motion Collapse
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Summary
In this pre-recorded episode, Firas Mardad talks about the geopolitics of Europe's geography, starting with the Middle East and North Africa, then looking at the North Sea, the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea, and the Danube and the Rhine, and finally the Sumerian mountains.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to a new episode of RealPolitik. I am your host, Firas Mardad.
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This is a pre-recorded episode. On Monday, when you're actually going to be seeing this,
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I will be somewhere far, far away getting one of my very close friends baptized along with
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their entire family. And so we're doing a pre-recorded episode talking about the
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geopolitics of Europe. In the past, I've done some work on the geopolitics of Turkey and Russia,
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and some other places. And I thought, well, we haven't done anything on Europe, so maybe let's
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start. I think the beginning point is to understand the maritime picture, because everything really
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flows from either land power or sea power. And if you look at the Mediterranean, what it exposes
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is really Europe's vulnerability to the global south,
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mainly Muslim states that are hostile to Europe.
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And I thought that this might be a good place to start.
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And I think, you know, it's worth doing a bit of a dive
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and trying to understand what is going on there.
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And then we'll look at the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea.
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We'll look at the rivers, primarily the Danube and the Rhine.
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We'll look at the mountains, and then we'll get an idea of how Europe works geopolitically.
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And then we'll talk about some economic questions, immigration, and what this means for Europe's future.
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I think this is how we're going to play this out in this episode.
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So starting with the seas, the most important one is obviously the Mediterranean.
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because this is where Europe's biggest vulnerability is and if you look at the
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position of Turkey you kind of immediately understand why it was really in here in Anatolia
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that the second incarnation of the Roman Empire the Byzantine Empire took hold
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because it's really the gateway to Europe the entry point to Europe is in Istanbul
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Constantinople Hellespont where the two continents Europe and Asia meet and you can't think about
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Europe without thinking about it as part of the Eurasian landmass and this is the key
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intersection point really now when it comes to the Mediterranean Europe's position is insanely
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vulnerable, because it has Greece, fundamentally a weak country with 10 million people,
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Bulgaria, not a country that you really want to bet on very hard, policing its borders,
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which is not a great situation. The Greek islands in the Mediterranean are already full of Syrian
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migrants which is really a problem and half of cyprus is already occupied by turkey
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there was the cypriots civil war in 74 or 76 74 and then turkey pretty much invaded the north of
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the island and the two sides the two populations the muslim and the christian population ethnically
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cleansed one another and now you have the republic of northern turkey which nobody other than turks
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recognize, which is essentially Turkish territory. And what Cyprus's role is here is a kind of
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policing point, checking the eastern Mediterranean, checking the coast of Israel, Lebanon, and Syria,
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and to some extent the coast of southern Anatolia. And that is precisely why the Turks decided that
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they had to have it. For their ability to project power in the Mediterranean, Turkey is important.
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So long as the Muslims couldn't really take islands like Cyprus and Crete, the two largest
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Greek islands, they were not in a good position against the rest of Europe. And when they took
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these, they were in a much, much better position. So the first vulnerability for Europe really comes
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from the Mediterranean Sea. And the Roman strategy, essentially, that made Roman Empire
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was based on the Mediterranean and calling it Marienostrum, our sea. The Romans understood
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that really the security of Italy required them to control the entirety of the Mediterranean
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and to have a presence all along the Mediterranean coast
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Yeah, which shows that really the key to Rome's dominance
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was this ability to control all of the Mediterranean.
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Now, in countries that were functional and rich, like Spain, like France, like the Balkans, and like Anatolia, the Romans went deep into that territory and focused on big possessions.
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In North Africa, they focused only on the coast because behind them was just desert.
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and in the Syrian coast which for some reason I can't show they went somewhat in depth but then
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the desert kind of stops them there and so Roman strategy understood that Italian security
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required them to be able to police the entire Mediterranean and you have the famous story of
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Julius Caesar being kidnapped by pirates somewhere here in the eastern Mediterranean and him insisting
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that the ransom they were asking for him was too low and then him coming back with his own navy and
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crucifying them literally and it was the source of the rise of Pompeii for having defeated the
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pirates in this region so there is this importance here to the Mediterranean which isn't addressed in
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any way by European policymakers their assumption is that if we help the Mediterranean countries the
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Muslim countries and the Mediterranean develop economically, they will become our friends and
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one day we'll all be good. But anyway, we started with Cyprus as a key point from which the
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greater Syrian coast can be secured and from which the possibility of a navy building up somewhere
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here can be checked. And then the next island you want to think about is Crete, which forms a sort
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of entry point into the Aegean Sea and into the Greek islands in general. Crete's location here
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has been particularly important. It was contested in World War II because it is close to the Libyan
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coast, it is somewhat close to the Egyptian coast, and it polices the entry into the Aegean.
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And if you can provide a navy that can sit safely in Chania and in Heraklion,
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basically on the other side, whenever a threat emerges,
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that navy can come out and confront that threat
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before it enters the bulk of the Greek islands,
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before it can reach the Peloponosis or Athens or the rest of Greece.
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and so you need a very heavy military presence in a place like Crete
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one of the reasons why the Americans have a base there I believe
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then you get to the Italian, Italian-ish islands
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between the Ottomans and the Knights Hospitalliers
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Sicily the the the occupation of which ended up wrecking the Athenians and the pathway that was
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used by the allies in the second world war in order to enter Italy it also was a Muslim
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principality for a pretty long time the Muslims were able to control Italy and sorry Sicily for
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a pretty extended period actually a few centuries it was used as a launching pad to be able to
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invade the rest of the italian coast which really put a big price on the italian cities with raids
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sometimes going all the way into rome you have uh sardinia and corsica corsica famously where
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Napoleon comes from. And then you have the Spanish islands here, which actually I don't know that
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much about their history. And most importantly, you have Gibraltar, the entryway into the
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Mediterranean from the broader Atlantic. This is why the British insist on maintaining a presence
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there, even though right now it's not very militarily valuable. But this is the territory
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that the Muslims crossed in their initial invasion of the Spanish peninsula, which led to 700 years
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of Muslim dominance, which led to the Reconquista. The Christian states were reduced to the very
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north of Spain and then had to fight their way all the way south to fully expel the invading
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Muslim armies. So that's the geography of the Mediterranean, and what it exposes is several
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things. First, you have the possibility of major states emerging in a country like Morocco,
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especially if the Algerians fall apart and the Moroccans can make some gains there.
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A state in North Africa, a strong state in North Africa, instantly becomes a threat to Europe.
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Egypt is less of a problem because it's always occupied by itself really but Turkey is the other
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big problem and the two threats looking at Europe are really Morocco and Turkey and you see them
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both pursuing similar policies you see both countries offering themselves as alternative
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sources of industrial production for Europe so that European industries would basically
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invest in them, develop their economies, and then they would use that to become serious
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And in the episode that I did on Turkey, I discussed how they were building up a pretty
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serious navy, how the objective of that navy was essentially to dominate their ancient
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enemy, Greece, how the thinking animating Turkey is focused on them becoming the leading country
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of the Muslim world, and how the immigration into Europe, which the Turks have done their part to
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facilitate, really provides the Turks with a future army. And the Moroccans, their presence in Europe
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is pretty huge, and they're involved in pretty much every criminal enterprise in Europe, not in
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a very sophisticated level except for the cannabis smuggling which largely comes out of Morocco
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but at a big enough level for them to be a problem and so you have this huge disaster facing Europe
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from its inability to control the Mediterranean and this has very deep historic roots because
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when Muslim Empire when the Muslim Empire emerged and took over essentially Syria and North Africa
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greater Syria and North Africa the first target was going to be Europe and this is how they were
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able for hundreds of years to consistently harass European states harass their navies
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attack them, raid them constantly. And now we're getting to a position where the
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mismatch of technology that had allowed the Europeans to be the dominant power in the
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Mediterranean in the 19th and 20th centuries, that technological advantage is no longer there
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and the Muslim countries are going to be increasingly in a position
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where the only way they can get rid of their excess population is war
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and one of the first areas is going to be the Mediterranean
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because it doesn't have a policy to check the influence of Islam
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in the Mediterranean and try to reclaim it you could see that this there is this deep lack of
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seriousness because they're not thinking about it strategically whereas the European empires of the
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19th century and the early 20th century their focus was explicitly so the French ended up
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dominating Tunisia Algeria and Morocco and indeed they decided that Algeria was going to be a French
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province and tried to treat it as mainland France which was an insane notion you saw Italy taking
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Libya because this was the one closest to them and you know everything else that was valuable
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was taken and the Italians had to take something being late comers to the game and so in 1911 they
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took Libya and you saw the British focus on Egypt with the idea being that Egypt would be
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the route through which they would go through the Red Sea,
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So the Mediterranean serves as this passageway for invasions,
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and whenever the Muslims were in a position of near parity,
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they used it to try to invade and harass Europe.
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where the Europeans pay Algeria and Libya and to a lesser extent Tunisia and Egypt massive amounts
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of money to get their oil and gas. And they pay Morocco massive amounts of money to develop solar
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farms in Morocco and then export that electricity into Europe. And so rather than focusing on a
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situation that strengthens Europe's hand by making the Mediterranean countries dependent on them,
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they're largely doing the opposite. They're feeding money into the Muslim world that is one
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day going to be used against them. And that, I would argue, is an act of great geopolitical
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recklessness. The second sea that you want to think about in Europe is the Black Sea.
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and here you have the intersection of the orthodox world and the muslim world and so
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the reason that romania and bulgaria stopped being parts of the ottoman empire was because
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the russians literally kicked the ottomans out and declared or facilitated the declaration of
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independent kingdoms there you had the europeans fighting against the russians in the crimean war
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in order to keep the Ottomans strong enough to check Russia, because the big fear of Europe was
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always that Russia would one day invade them. But Russia obviously wasn't going to invade them by
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sea. Russia is a land power. It was always invaded by land, and we'll discuss that in a little while
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in this episode. But the next place you want to think about is the Black Sea. And in the Black
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see, the Russian naval presence was always focused on Sevastopol in Crimea, and the Russian ambition
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was always the recapture of Constantinople. The Russian view on this is that it was the Catholics,
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it was the Latins, who betrayed them and who facilitated the sack of Constantinople by the
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Muslims, and that Moscow is essentially the third Rome, and by right it should retake
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the second Rome, which is Constantinople today known, unfortunately, as Istanbul.
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And here, the most important locations other from Sevastopol is Odessa, because Odessa is where
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the Danube River terminates. The Danube extends, I mean, it goes all the way much further in German
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territory. But really, the value of the Danube is that it is an artery that allows all of Central
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Europe to trade by water. And water transport is obviously going to be more efficient than land
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transport for most of history, although these days with trucking, you know, there's an advantage to
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going by road, but that assumes that the roads are well policed and well secured. When they aren't,
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it's actually easier to secure a string of cities along the river and patrol it and keep the bandits
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away, rather than to police a much bigger landmass and keep that under control.
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And so the value of Odessa is that, essentially, it allows the Russians to collect customs
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I think the first or second most important port on the Black Sea.
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And it's still the way for a lot of Central Europe
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and then go through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles,
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the straits that the Turks currently control.
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Hopefully this will be reversed, but maybe not in our lifetimes.
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because it's in a lot of ways more efficient than going over the mountains
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And in today's global economy, it's probably one of the best routes that they have.
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