STRATFOR.COM's Global Intelligence Update - November 22, 1999 By The Internet's Most Intelligent Source of International News & Analysis http://www.stratfor.com/ _________________________________________ WHAT'S GOING ON IN YOUR WORLD? Nigerian President Backtracks to Save Oil Japan, China and South Korea Move Closer Russia Revives Hostility Toward the West Israel Could Use "Smart" Bombs Against Lebanon FIND OUT AT http://www.stratfor.com/ __________________________________________ ALSO ON STRATFOR.COM Be sure to read our four-part series, Russia 2000. http://www.stratfor.com/CIS/countries/Russia/russia2000/russsia2000.htm Be sure to see our in-depth analysis, Kosovo's Killing Fields http://www.stratfor.com/crisis/kosovo/genocide.htm Have you seen our new homepage? http://www.stratfor.com/ __________________________________________ STRATFOR.COM Global Intelligence Update November 22, 1999 From Jerusalem to Grozny: Replotting the Eastern Hemisphere's Pivot Summary: Draw a circle with a thousand-mile radius around Ankara, Turkey. That circle is the pivot of the Eastern Hemisphere. It is the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa, and the place where empires are made and broken. What would be minor elsewhere can be of enormous significance within this pivotal circle. During the 1980s, ancient feuds between tiny Lebanese clans had global significance. Today, hatreds in Kosovo trigger major powers to massive exertion. Following the retreat of the Russian empire, the area of significant instability has shifted to the west and north of Turkey. The Golan Heights has become globally insignificant. The futures of Grozny and Sarajevo have become vital. Understanding this is the key to policy making today. Analysis: This week's visit to Turkey by OSCE nations' leaders gives us an opportunity to consider some of the extraordinary geopolitical shifts currently under way. Ever since the Cold War ended, we have been dealing with places that history seemed to have buried generations ago. Who, in 1985, would have imagined world leaders obsessed with cities like Sarajevo, Pristina and Grozny? Who would have thought that Beirut, Damascus and Jerusalem would be relegated to the sidelines and that a meeting of world leaders would deal with them only in passing. It is extraordinary how a decade has reshaped the geography of crisis. This redirection of leaders' attention represents a fundamental shift in the geopolitics of the region where Asia, Europe and Africa meet, the pivot of the Eastern Hemisphere. At the center is Turkey, host of the OSCE summit. Also in this pivot are the Levant countries, the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, the highway to and from Egypt and Africa, including Syria, Lebanon and Israel. To the east is Iran, the land route to India and the rest of Asia. To the northwest are the Balkans and the trans-Danubian countries, the road to and from Europe. And finally, to the north is the Caucasus region, the road to and from the Russian heartland. (See the map at [ http://www.lib.utexas.edu/Libs/PCL/Map_collection/middle_east_and_asia/M iddle_East98.jpg ] If you drew a circle with a 1,000-mile radius and Ankara as the centerpoint, it would contain both the crossroads of the Eastern Hemisphere and the persistent center of political crisis since Roman times. The circle, of course, does not contain every trouble spot in the world, but over the centuries, every inch of it has been a focus of conflict. Empires have been created and destroyed in this region. No global power can exist that does not define its policy in the Eastern Hemisphere. No nation can have a policy in the Eastern Hemisphere without a coherent policy in the hemisphere's pivot. A coherent policy necessitates understanding the hemisphere's dynamic. The region abounds in small, fragmented and hostile nations, an inevitable result of its geography. The creation of a European, African or Asian empire south of the Himalayas requires securing this region. Would-be conquerors must subjugate either a significant portion or its entirety, or else they must form alliances with strategic elements. The ability of these nations to survive over time is reinforced by topography. The area is replete with rugged mountains and desolate deserts, making it difficult to mount conclusive military operations. In this terrain, nations can survive endless shifts in the political winds. >From the Balkans to the Caucasus, and to the Lebanese highlands, a dizzying array of ancient peoples live in close contact. They generally despise one another with a passion difficult for outsiders to grasp. Each clan or nation has a thousand years of resentment toward their neighbors piled up. Each can name a thousand atrocities committed against it. Each justifies its own atrocities as just retribution. Any outsider trying to develop a moral calculus for assigning blame will quickly go mad. The intractable, petty regional geopolitics makes it a good place for outsiders to avoid. But that is impossible. Europe cannot be secured without blocking the Balkans. Russia cannot be secure with the Caucasus in chaos. Israel or Egypt cannot be secure if the Lebanese mountains are uncontrolled. The defense of the Persian Gulf begins in the hills north of Baghdad. Nations do not go into the region seeking conquest. They go to protect their conquests. They therefore never bring enough force to settle anything and they leave behind debris of empire. The term petty, we should add, is not meant to be derogatory, but merely connotes the scale of regional interests compared with the grand geopolitics of global forces. To understand the region, it is important to understand the interplay between the regional geopolitics and the grand geopolitics of the global system. Relations among the native regional powers are a permanent feature. As great empires rise, they intrude, taking advantage of local animosities to build their own power. Empires reshape the region, but are also reshaped in the process. Grand geopolitics rise and fall. Petty geopolitics last forever. The last generation's regional geopolitics were defined by the collision of the Soviet and American empires. At the end of World War II, the United States chose to defend Western Europe by building a defensive line surrounding Russia. The defense of Western Europe depended on a coalition stationing forces in western Germany. But Western Europe would quickly collapse if the Soviets were able to strike at its southern coast. The defense of the Mediterranean began by preventing Russian access to ports. Three nations were critical to this: Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey. In other words, the United States was forced to move into the pivot of the hemisphere to defend Western Europe - a classic case of being drawn into the pivot for reasons having nothing to do with any regional interest. During the late 1940s, the Soviets urgently tried to seize the region. They sponsored civil wars in Greece and Turkey. Yugoslavia had a communist government, but unlike the rest of Eastern Europe, it had liberated itself from Germany, and understood that permitting Russian access to its ports would mean the end of autonomy. It adopted a strategy of armed neutrality, with a defensive posture directed toward the Russians and quietly coordinated with NATO. The Greek and Turkish insurrections were suppressed, and the American containment line effectively ran through the heart of the region, cutting the Caucasus in half and extending through Iran, anchored on the mountains of northern Pakistan. The failure of the Soviets to penetrate the region caused them to pursue a fall-back strategy designed to encircle Turkey. During the late 1950s, the Soviets participated in the creation of anti-U.S. governments in both Syria and Iraq. Strategically, this made perfect sense. Turkey was blocking Soviet expansion southward. By trying to sandwich Turkey between Soviet clients to the south, the Soviets hoped to increase pressure on Turkey and, with some luck, cause Turkey to buckle under pressure. The change in Syria's and Iraq's orientation increased U.S. dependence on Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Each of these drew Syrian and Iraqi forces away from the Turkish border, decreasing pressure on Turkey. Thus, where Israel was of minor strategic importance to the United States in the 1950s, by the mid to late 1960s it had become a key strategic asset. Russia responded by trying to create a Pan-Arab movement, primarily against Israel but focused on conservative Arab states like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and Iran as well. During the Cold War, therefore, the focus of geopolitical activity was south of Turkey. The line running from Yugoslavia, along the Black Sea to the Turkish-Russian border in the Caucasus was frozen in place. Nothing was happening on either side of the frontier. The active area of the pivot was directly south of Turkey. The core issues, therefore, involved the Arab-Israeli conflict, the status of Lebanon and the Kurdish question. But the underlying issue was the ability of Turkey to contain Russia. It is important to understand that none of the petty geopolitical issues of the region were abolished. From Bosnia to Armenia, the grand geopolitical forces in place had simply made them inoperable. Those same forces, for their own reasons, magnified the Arab- Israeli conflict out of all regional proportions. Recall how in the 1980s, conflicts within the Maronite Christian community of Lebanon had become globally significant. Today, the global significance of that conflict has ceased, although it retains its regional importance. Following the Cold War, the grand geopolitics of the region changed dramatically, as the Russian empire retreated from its old frontiers. The withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary ended the threat of a Soviet invasion of Yugoslavia. Russia's withdrawal from the Caucasus republics into the northern portions that rest inside of the Russian Federation ended the threat to Turkey. Russia's collapse meant that Turkey, in the role it occupied from 1948 to 1992, was no longer relevant. With pressure released on its northern frontier, Syria and Iraq became the vulnerable countries. Syria was now sandwiched between Israel and Turkey. Iraq was sandwiched between U.S. forces to the south and Turkish and U.S. forces to the north, not to mention Iran to the east. With the Soviets out of the way, the Arab-Israeli conflict ceased to be globally significant. Whether the Golan Heights belongs to Israel or Syria is interesting for the two countries' residents, but not to anyone else. The Lebanese civil war ceases to represent a strategic challenge to the United States, but is instead a minor regional squabble. At the same time, the rest of the pivot becomes extremely important. The withdrawal of the Russians from their imperial frontiers released the pressure on Yugoslavia, allowing it to shatter into its constituent, antagonistic parts. Similarly, the area north of Turkey has thawed, with the entire Caucasus in chaos, including those parts inside of the Russian Federation itself. It is clear that the area south of Turkey is now of minimal significance to the grand geopolitics of the region. In spite of reflexive U.S. involvement, minimal global interests are involved. But less clear are U.S. strategic interests in the Balkans. The only rational reason to move into the region is to protect one's sphere of influence against another great power. U.S. involvement in the Balkans makes sense as a preventive measure should the Russian empire return to Romania and Bulgaria. But it is not clear that the United States is acting with this in mind. Events north of Turkey have the potential to be critically important. The Russian attack on Chechnya represents a strategic decision indicating Russia believes the empire's disintegration has reached its limit. Chechnya will not be permitted to become independent. What must be understood, however, is that as long as the area between Turkey and Russia remains fragmented as a series of small nations, Russian control over Chechnya or Dagestan will never be truly secure. Russian frontiers went as far south as they did for a reason. If Russia plans to keep Chechnya, the geopolitical logic will draw them south, back to the Turkish frontier. Turkey has an interest in a buffer zone between itself and Russia. Turkey has an interest in the Balkans, where it has sent peacekeepers, and where Muslims see Turkey as a defender of their interests. Turkey has an interest in northern Iraq and in the Kurds. As the Russians become more active, their interest and Turkish interests will inevitably collide. Russian support for Iraq, for example, will be partly conditioned on tying down Turkey. As the conversation shifts from Jerusalem to Grozny, two issues emerge. The first is the Turkish question. As the center of the pivot, what, if anything are Turkey's policies and capabilities? The second question concerns the United States. As the only superpower, and the effective owner of the epoch's grand geopolitics, what are its designs for the region? What is the U.S. policy in the Caucases? At what point will it shift its attention from last generation's issues (Israel, Iraq) to the next generation's (Armenia, Georgia). This is happening, to be sure, but it is a diffused shift, without a clear focus. The regional conflicts will never go away. Israelis and Palestinians will continue to hate each other, as will Albanians and Serbs, Armenians and Turks, and so forth. No person in his or her right mind goes into the Eastern Hemisphere's pivot with the hope of ending hatred. One goes there as a last resort, in pursuit of an interest that cannot be secured any other way. That is what led the United States into the region after World War II. Now, the real question is simple: does the United States have any interest in the region and if so, what is it? And if the United States has no interest in the region, then what are the forces that will shape the intractable, petty geopolitics of the hemisphere's pivot, the thousand-mile radius around Ankara? 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