The World Island : Eurasian geopolitics and the fate of the West
The erstwhile position of the Western powers as the unmatched exemplars of progressive political organization, prosperity, and power projection is rapidly threatening to become an historical memory. While for a time the rise of the major Eastern powers had proceeded in parallel with continued betterment in the West, the dominant trend of global power politics since the end of the 1990s seems to point to a developing East-West divergence along zero-sum lines. A preoccupied introversion in Europe and something of an identity crisis in the United States means that vacuum conditions are being created in many regions around the world, but particularly in the fissiparous climate of Eurasia. A process of long-term Western decline, perhaps leading to eventual dominance by some form of Chinese informal hegemony, is a distinct possibility. As the manifestations of this reality become increasingly abundant the dynamics of the West's important power relations and their focus need to be reassessed. The Eurasian landmass ought to be the focal point of the West's strategic exertions. The Twenty-First-Century Geopolitical Strategy for Eurasia reestablishes fundamental Western strategic objectives, the clarity of which has all too often become muddied by anxiety over short-term considerations. It sets out and communicates what is at stake for the West in the Eurasian theater and urges a robust forward strategy to further and protect essential Western values. With its focus on the "West", the strategy provides a joint framework for trans-Atlantic cooperation. Its most important policy implication is the restoration of geopolitical purpose to Western institutions such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union (EU), and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), among others, by arguing forcefully that their activities and expansion be refocused on Eurasia. A central facet the strategy promotes is the diffusion of good governance to ensure that the struggle for the fundamental theater in world politics is resolved in favor of Western democratic governance and market-based systems, without the domination of Eurasia by autocratic powers. However, although this idea-driven initiative is employed to rationalize the strategy, it is couched firmly in terms of its functionality in furthering an intrinsically realist project
eBook, English, ©2011
Praeger Security International, Santa Barbara, Calif., ©2011
1 online resource (176 pages)
9780313391385, 9781283053280, 9786613053282, 0313391386, 1283053284, 6613053287
714889076
Introduction: Ideas and geopolitics
Sir Halford Mackinder and the World Island
George Kennan and containment
Josef Pilsudski and Prometheism and Intermarum
The World Island in the 21st century
A 21st century geopolitical strategy for Eurasia
Conclusion: New, old, or enduring geopolitics?
English