The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - May 11, 2026


PREVIEW： Realpolitik #46 ｜ Europe’s Slow Motion Collapse


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Length

20 minutes

Words per minute

128.9051

Word count

2,627

Sentence count

77

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Hate speech

38

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Summary

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Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to a new episode of RealPolitik. I am your host, Firas Mardad.
00:00:05.880 This is a pre-recorded episode. On Monday, when you're actually going to be seeing this,
00:00:12.300 I will be somewhere far, far away getting one of my very close friends baptized along with
00:00:18.080 their entire family. And so we're doing a pre-recorded episode talking about the
00:00:23.720 geopolitics of Europe. In the past, I've done some work on the geopolitics of Turkey and Russia,
00:00:30.000 and some other places. And I thought, well, we haven't done anything on Europe, so maybe let's
00:00:35.420 start. I think the beginning point is to understand the maritime picture, because everything really
00:00:45.380 flows from either land power or sea power. And if you look at the Mediterranean, what it exposes
00:00:55.440 is really Europe's vulnerability to the global south,
00:00:59.220 to the Middle East and North Africa primarily,
00:01:03.440 mainly Muslim states that are hostile to Europe. 1.00
00:01:07.320 And I thought that this might be a good place to start. 1.00
00:01:11.740 And I think, you know, it's worth doing a bit of a dive
00:01:16.700 into the geopolitics of the Mediterranean
00:01:18.540 and trying to understand what is going on there.
00:01:22.020 And then we'll look at the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea.
00:01:24.980 We'll look at the rivers, primarily the Danube and the Rhine.
00:01:29.340 We'll look at the mountains, and then we'll get an idea of how Europe works geopolitically.
00:01:36.160 And then we'll talk about some economic questions, immigration, and what this means for Europe's future.
00:01:44.220 I think this is how we're going to play this out in this episode.
00:01:48.040 So starting with the seas, the most important one is obviously the Mediterranean.
00:01:52.820 because this is where Europe's biggest vulnerability is and if you look at the
00:01:58.980 position of Turkey you kind of immediately understand why it was really in here in Anatolia
00:02:05.520 that the second incarnation of the Roman Empire the Byzantine Empire took hold
00:02:10.860 because it's really the gateway to Europe the entry point to Europe is in Istanbul
00:02:17.660 Constantinople Hellespont where the two continents Europe and Asia meet and you can't think about
00:02:27.860 Europe without thinking about it as part of the Eurasian landmass and this is the key
00:02:33.960 intersection point really now when it comes to the Mediterranean Europe's position is insanely
00:02:43.840 vulnerable, because it has Greece, fundamentally a weak country with 10 million people,
00:02:51.840 Bulgaria, not a country that you really want to bet on very hard, policing its borders,
00:02:59.440 which is not a great situation. The Greek islands in the Mediterranean are already full of Syrian 1.00
00:03:08.000 migrants which is really a problem and half of cyprus is already occupied by turkey 0.99
00:03:15.680 there was the cypriots civil war in 74 or 76 74 and then turkey pretty much invaded the north of
00:03:24.000 the island and the two sides the two populations the muslim and the christian population ethnically 0.52
00:03:29.920 cleansed one another and now you have the republic of northern turkey which nobody other than turks 0.89
00:03:36.480 recognize, which is essentially Turkish territory. And what Cyprus's role is here is a kind of
00:03:45.540 policing point, checking the eastern Mediterranean, checking the coast of Israel, Lebanon, and Syria,
00:03:54.080 and to some extent the coast of southern Anatolia. And that is precisely why the Turks decided that
00:04:01.500 they had to have it. For their ability to project power in the Mediterranean, Turkey is important.
00:04:07.440 So long as the Muslims couldn't really take islands like Cyprus and Crete, the two largest 1.00
00:04:15.400 Greek islands, they were not in a good position against the rest of Europe. And when they took 1.00
00:04:21.320 these, they were in a much, much better position. So the first vulnerability for Europe really comes
00:04:28.480 from the Mediterranean Sea. And the Roman strategy, essentially, that made Roman Empire
00:04:36.840 was based on the Mediterranean and calling it Marienostrum, our sea. The Romans understood
00:04:44.560 that really the security of Italy required them to control the entirety of the Mediterranean
00:04:53.060 and to have a presence all along the Mediterranean coast
00:04:57.980 and to turn it into a Roman lake.
00:05:02.240 And I think I have here a map of Roman ports,
00:05:05.820 which kind of helps make that point.
00:05:09.260 Yeah, which shows that really the key to Rome's dominance
00:05:15.840 was this ability to control all of the Mediterranean.
00:05:19.760 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.
00:05:39.880 In North Africa, they focused only on the coast because behind them was just desert.
00:05:44.600 and in the Syrian coast which for some reason I can't show they went somewhat in depth but then
00:05:51.520 the desert kind of stops them there and so Roman strategy understood that Italian security
00:05:58.100 required them to be able to police the entire Mediterranean and you have the famous story of
00:06:04.940 Julius Caesar being kidnapped by pirates somewhere here in the eastern Mediterranean and him insisting
00:06:13.040 that the ransom they were asking for him was too low and then him coming back with his own navy and
00:06:18.400 crucifying them literally and it was the source of the rise of Pompeii for having defeated the
00:06:24.360 pirates in this region so there is this importance here to the Mediterranean which isn't addressed in
00:06:33.080 any way by European policymakers their assumption is that if we help the Mediterranean countries the
00:06:40.760 Muslim countries and the Mediterranean develop economically, they will become our friends and
00:06:45.540 one day we'll all be good. But anyway, we started with Cyprus as a key point from which the
00:06:54.480 greater Syrian coast can be secured and from which the possibility of a navy building up somewhere
00:07:04.400 here can be checked. And then the next island you want to think about is Crete, which forms a sort
00:07:13.060 of entry point into the Aegean Sea and into the Greek islands in general. Crete's location here
00:07:22.160 has been particularly important. It was contested in World War II because it is close to the Libyan
00:07:28.000 coast, it is somewhat close to the Egyptian coast, and it polices the entry into the Aegean.
00:07:34.400 And if you can provide a navy that can sit safely in Chania and in Heraklion,
00:07:42.080 basically on the other side, whenever a threat emerges,
00:07:45.780 that navy can come out and confront that threat
00:07:49.620 and make sure that it's checked and defeated
00:07:52.160 before it enters the bulk of the Greek islands,
00:07:56.180 before it can reach the Peloponosis or Athens or the rest of Greece.
00:08:01.960 and so you need a very heavy military presence in a place like Crete
00:08:08.400 one of the reasons why the Americans have a base there I believe
00:08:11.360 then you get to the Italian, Italian-ish islands
00:08:17.460 Malta, the scene of the siege of Malta
00:08:22.680 between the Ottomans and the Knights Hospitalliers
00:08:25.400 which ended in a Catholic victory
00:08:28.840 Sicily the the the occupation of which ended up wrecking the Athenians and the pathway that was 0.93
00:08:39.860 used by the allies in the second world war in order to enter Italy it also was a Muslim 0.98
00:08:48.300 principality for a pretty long time the Muslims were able to control Italy and sorry Sicily for 0.54
00:08:54.740 a pretty extended period actually a few centuries it was used as a launching pad to be able to 0.92
00:09:02.660 invade the rest of the italian coast which really put a big price on the italian cities with raids
00:09:09.900 sometimes going all the way into rome you have uh sardinia and corsica corsica famously where
00:09:18.980 Napoleon comes from. And then you have the Spanish islands here, which actually I don't know that
00:09:26.140 much about their history. And most importantly, you have Gibraltar, the entryway into the
00:09:33.340 Mediterranean from the broader Atlantic. This is why the British insist on maintaining a presence
00:09:40.200 there, even though right now it's not very militarily valuable. But this is the territory
00:09:46.220 that the Muslims crossed in their initial invasion of the Spanish peninsula, which led to 700 years
00:09:57.540 of Muslim dominance, which led to the Reconquista. The Christian states were reduced to the very
00:10:04.080 north of Spain and then had to fight their way all the way south to fully expel the invading 0.98
00:10:13.020 Muslim armies. So that's the geography of the Mediterranean, and what it exposes is several 0.92
00:10:19.040 things. First, you have the possibility of major states emerging in a country like Morocco,
00:10:28.260 especially if the Algerians fall apart and the Moroccans can make some gains there. 0.93
00:10:33.980 A state in North Africa, a strong state in North Africa, instantly becomes a threat to Europe. 0.95
00:10:39.900 Egypt is less of a problem because it's always occupied by itself really but Turkey is the other 0.97
00:10:50.040 big problem and the two threats looking at Europe are really Morocco and Turkey and you see them 0.61
00:10:57.560 both pursuing similar policies you see both countries offering themselves as alternative
00:11:04.680 sources of industrial production for Europe so that European industries would basically
00:11:12.480 invest in them, develop their economies, and then they would use that to become serious
00:11:17.880 military powers.
00:11:19.300 And in the episode that I did on Turkey, I discussed how they were building up a pretty
00:11:23.080 serious navy, how the objective of that navy was essentially to dominate their ancient
00:11:28.500 enemy, Greece, how the thinking animating Turkey is focused on them becoming the leading country
00:11:37.360 of the Muslim world, and how the immigration into Europe, which the Turks have done their part to 0.57
00:11:43.000 facilitate, really provides the Turks with a future army. And the Moroccans, their presence in Europe
00:11:50.440 is pretty huge, and they're involved in pretty much every criminal enterprise in Europe, not in 0.85
00:11:57.500 a very sophisticated level except for the cannabis smuggling which largely comes out of Morocco 0.57
00:12:03.920 but at a big enough level for them to be a problem and so you have this huge disaster facing Europe
00:12:15.660 from its inability to control the Mediterranean and this has very deep historic roots because 0.75
00:12:23.760 when Muslim Empire when the Muslim Empire emerged and took over essentially Syria and North Africa 0.87
00:12:31.340 greater Syria and North Africa the first target was going to be Europe and this is how they were 0.99
00:12:41.420 able for hundreds of years to consistently harass European states harass their navies 0.59
00:12:49.180 attack them, raid them constantly. And now we're getting to a position where the
00:12:56.580 mismatch of technology that had allowed the Europeans to be the dominant power in the
00:13:03.360 Mediterranean in the 19th and 20th centuries, that technological advantage is no longer there
00:13:13.440 or is slowly being eroded 0.94
00:13:15.580 and the Muslim countries are going to be increasingly in a position 1.00
00:13:19.360 where the only way they can get rid of their excess population is war 1.00
00:13:23.160 and one of the first areas is going to be the Mediterranean
00:13:28.820 so you can see that the EU isn't serious 0.99
00:13:36.160 because it doesn't have a policy to check the influence of Islam
00:13:42.140 in the Mediterranean and try to reclaim it you could see that this there is this deep lack of
00:13:49.120 seriousness because they're not thinking about it strategically whereas the European empires of the
00:13:55.980 19th century and the early 20th century their focus was explicitly so the French ended up
00:14:03.720 dominating Tunisia Algeria and Morocco and indeed they decided that Algeria was going to be a French
00:14:09.340 province and tried to treat it as mainland France which was an insane notion you saw Italy taking
00:14:18.660 Libya because this was the one closest to them and you know everything else that was valuable
00:14:24.740 was taken and the Italians had to take something being late comers to the game and so in 1911 they
00:14:30.080 took Libya and you saw the British focus on Egypt with the idea being that Egypt would be
00:14:37.500 the route through which they would go through the Red Sea,
00:14:41.220 the Gulf of Aden, and then get to India,
00:14:43.600 the jewel of the British Empire,
00:14:45.440 the crown jewel of the British Empire.
00:14:48.700 So the Mediterranean serves as this passageway for invasions, 0.99
00:14:53.680 and whenever the Muslims were in a position of near parity, 1.00
00:14:58.140 they used it to try to invade and harass Europe. 0.95
00:15:03.120 And now we've ended up in a situation
00:15:05.080 where the Europeans pay Algeria and Libya and to a lesser extent Tunisia and Egypt massive amounts
00:15:13.880 of money to get their oil and gas. And they pay Morocco massive amounts of money to develop solar
00:15:20.100 farms in Morocco and then export that electricity into Europe. And so rather than focusing on a
00:15:27.620 situation that strengthens Europe's hand by making the Mediterranean countries dependent on them,
00:15:36.160 they're largely doing the opposite. They're feeding money into the Muslim world that is one 0.99
00:15:42.940 day going to be used against them. And that, I would argue, is an act of great geopolitical 0.91
00:15:48.600 recklessness. The second sea that you want to think about in Europe is the Black Sea.
00:15:55.140 and here you have the intersection of the orthodox world and the muslim world and so
00:16:05.420 the reason that romania and bulgaria stopped being parts of the ottoman empire was because
00:16:11.760 the russians literally kicked the ottomans out and declared or facilitated the declaration of
00:16:17.800 independent kingdoms there you had the europeans fighting against the russians in the crimean war
00:16:24.800 in order to keep the Ottomans strong enough to check Russia, because the big fear of Europe was
00:16:33.360 always that Russia would one day invade them. But Russia obviously wasn't going to invade them by
00:16:39.960 sea. Russia is a land power. It was always invaded by land, and we'll discuss that in a little while
00:16:46.620 in this episode. But the next place you want to think about is the Black Sea. And in the Black
00:16:52.080 see, the Russian naval presence was always focused on Sevastopol in Crimea, and the Russian ambition
00:17:02.180 was always the recapture of Constantinople. The Russian view on this is that it was the Catholics,
00:17:10.200 it was the Latins, who betrayed them and who facilitated the sack of Constantinople by the
00:17:17.200 Muslims, and that Moscow is essentially the third Rome, and by right it should retake
00:17:26.720 the second Rome, which is Constantinople today known, unfortunately, as Istanbul. 0.93
00:17:34.160 And here, the most important locations other from Sevastopol is Odessa, because Odessa is where
00:17:42.200 the Danube River terminates. The Danube extends, I mean, it goes all the way much further in German
00:17:54.900 territory. But really, the value of the Danube is that it is an artery that allows all of Central
00:18:04.420 Europe to trade by water. And water transport is obviously going to be more efficient than land
00:18:11.380 transport for most of history, although these days with trucking, you know, there's an advantage to
00:18:18.240 going by road, but that assumes that the roads are well policed and well secured. When they aren't,
00:18:25.680 it's actually easier to secure a string of cities along the river and patrol it and keep the bandits
00:18:31.380 away, rather than to police a much bigger landmass and keep that under control. 0.68
00:18:40.180 And so the value of Odessa is that, essentially, it allows the Russians to collect customs
00:18:50.740 from anybody who wants to ship via their port.
00:18:55.820 This has largely been replaced by land routes,
00:18:59.220 but it's still one of the, you know,
00:19:02.120 I think the first or second most important port on the Black Sea.
00:19:06.160 And it's still the way for a lot of Central Europe
00:19:10.320 to get its goods out to the water
00:19:13.660 and then go through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles,
00:19:16.760 the straits that the Turks currently control. 0.99
00:19:19.620 Hopefully this will be reversed, but maybe not in our lifetimes. 1.00
00:19:22.780 and to get their goods into the big wide world
00:19:28.660 because it's in a lot of ways more efficient than going over the mountains
00:19:33.700 or, you know, trying alternative routes.
00:19:37.720 And in today's global economy, it's probably one of the best routes that they have.
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00:19:52.780 Thank you.