NATO AND THE ARCHITECTS
OF THE AMERICAN
LEBENSRAUM
American Blueprint for World
Hegemony
Nikolaj von Kreitor
Go to:
NATO
AS INSTRUMENT OF UNITED STATES EXPANSIONISM:
THE GEOPOLITICS OF AMERICAN LEBENSRAUM
NATO AND THE ARCHITECTS
OF THE AMERICAN LEBENSRAUM
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It was John O’Sullivan who in 1845 formulated the
concept of American Lebensraum - the Manifest Destiny
Doctrine. He coined the term to signify the mission of the
United States "to overspread the continent allotted by
Providence for the free development of our yearly
multiplying millions."
(1) For Josiah Strong, the
American missionary imperialist par excellence, the
Manifest Destiny had geopolitical destination—the
creation of a world empire. The America would be the
greatest of all empires. "Other nations would bring
their offerings to the cradle of the young empire of the
West , as they had once taken their gifts to the cradle
of Jesus."
(2) Since the destiny and its destination
were preordained by God , Americans possessed supreme
title to space, preempting and superseding the right of
others. Combined with the Monroe Doctrine, the
theological rationale of the Manifest Destiny Doctrine
provided an almost evangelical explanation of the
geopolitical manifest design to conquer and subjugate
space, first the whole Western Hemisphere and then,
beginning with the war against Spain in 1898, the whole
world. As Carl Schmitt has pointed out, in 1898 USA
embarked on a war against Spain and latter against the
world which has not ended yet. In this context the
American war against Yugoslavia is only a continuation
of the one hundred years war which the United States
began in 1898.
In the history
of the United States the expansionist impulse has been
as powerful as religion. The continuity of American
expansionist war aims since the time of the Manifest
Destiny Doctrine has been the most predominant feature
of American foreign policy in which the three components
of American expansionist Weltanschauung confluence: The
Manifest Destiny Doctrine – the theological component
– conquest preordained by God and Providence to carry
the will of the Almighty, and subsequently, conquest to
establish democracy or in the interests of democracy or
mankind, The Monroe Doctrine –the geopolitical
component and the Open Door Doctrine —the economical
component.
It was at the
end of the last century that the intellectual
foundations of the American geopolitical doctrine were
formulated by Frederick Jackson Turner, Brooks Adams,
admiral Mahan, and its implementation begun by Theodore
Roosevelt and subsequently Woodrow Wilson. The
geopolitical concepts advanced by Frederick Jackson
Turner, Brooks Adams and admiral Mahan "became a
world view, an expansionist Weltanschauung for
subsequent generation of Americans and ... important to
understand America’s imperial expansion in the
twentieth century," writes the noted American
historian William Williams. The policies of American
Lebensraum, called "Open-Door" imperialism,
and the enlargement of the American empire through
expansion of the perimeter of the Monroe Doctrine, is
the explanation of America’s foreign policy during
this century, including the present policies of NATO
expansion, assertion of American preponderance of power
over the whole Eurasia and the war against Yugoslavia.
The architects
of the American Lebensraum provided also the rationale
for NATO. NATO as a geopolitical construct is firmly
anchored in the "Frontier thesis" of the
American expansionist foreign policy, appearing as a
function and instrument of the Atlantic Grossraum, as
envisioned by Turner, Adams and Mahan. Or as Senator Tom
Connally stated: "the Atlantic Pact is
the logical extension of the Monroe Doctrine". The
creation of the NATO signified the extension
of the Monroe doctrine to Europe - Europe would become
for the United States another Latin America, points out
the American historian Stephen Ambrose. (3)
Frederick
Jackson Turner’s main concept was that America’s
uniqueness was the product of an expanding frontier. He
defined American historical existence as perpetual
geopolitical expansion toward new frontiers in the West.
"The existence of an area of free land , its
continuous recession , and the advance of American
settlement westward explains the American
development"(4) The "universal disposition of
the Americans", an "expanding people, is to
enlarge their dominion" and that the ongoing
geopolitical enlargement "is the actual result of
an expansive power which is inherent in them"(5),
claimed Turner. Thus American history is a history of
"continually advancing frontier line…The frontier
is the line of most rapid and effective
Americanization…Movement has been its dominant, and
…the American energy will continually demand a wider
field for its exercise"(6)
"The other
idea ( in the American imperialist Weltanschauung) is
the thesis of Brooks Adams that America’s uniqueness
could be preserved only by a foreign policy of
expansionism."(7) Adams idea was calculated to
preserve Turner’s explanation of American past and
project it into the future. "Taken together, the
ideas of Turner and Adams supplied American empire
builders with an overview and explanation of the world,
and a reasonably specific program of action from 1893 to
1953", points out William Williams. "Expansion
was the catechism by this young messiah of America’s
uniqueness and omnipotence...Turner gave Americans a
nationalistic world view that eased their doubts... and
justified their aggressiveness."(8)
Turner, looking at the American past , saw in the final
conquest of West the realization of Manifest Destiny in
the Western Hemisphere. Adams saw the coming new
frontier - the whole world. His mondial vision was
inevitable leading to a one world empire—the American
World Empire, not plurality of Grossraüme or Panregions,
as envisioned by Carl Schmitt or general Haushofer.
Brooks Adams’
The Law of Civilization and Decay(9) (1895) was "a
frontier thesis for the world."(10) He propounded a
policy of aggressive expansionism designed to make Asia
an economic colony, allowing America to acquire a large
new frontier in Asia. Essentially the
conquest of Eurasia was commenced then. "One even
reissued his foreign policy recommendations of the
1890’s as a guide for the United States in the Cold
War,"(11) points out William Williams. In his book
"American Empire"(12) (1911) Brooks Adams
envisioned the coming of the American world empire and
the conquest of all Eurasian geopolitical space.
Theodore Roosevelt’s, and Woodrow Wilson’s
interpretation of the westward movement as a civilizing
conquest of Eurasia was influenced by the works of
Turner and Adams. Adams" use economic and military
power to expand the frontier of the United States
westward"(13)
Brooks Adam’s
expansionist design was the foundation of American
foreign policy —expansionism first in Asia, then in
Europe. "Wilson relied extensively on Turner’s
frontier thesis in presenting his own interpretation of
American history" ‘All I ever wrote on the
subject came from him’", pointed Woodrow
Wilson.(14) Borrowing from the vocabulary of the
Manifest Destiny Doctrine - Wilson’s slogan
"World safe for democracy" - meant in reality
world safe for policies of American Lebensraum. As
William’s adds " even more than in the case of
Theodore Roosevelt, the policies of Woodrow Wilson and
subsequently Franklin Delano Roosevelt were classic
Turneris.(15) Turner’s frontier thesis made democracy
(i.e. American dominion ) a function of an expanding
frontier." F.D. Roosevelt has always been ...a
Turnean in foreign policy...Roosevelt ‘s Turnerism was
meanwhile blended with the realpolitik of Adams."
(16)
Woodrow Wilson
was the first who gave a glimpse of the coming American
world hegemony. Already conceiving Great Britain
subjugated by the United States and thus John Bull
transformed to an obedient servant of the overseas
Atlantic Master, Adams saw the main enemy in continental
Europe.
"The
acceleration of movement, which is thus concentrating
the strong, is so rapidly crushing the weak that the
moment seems at hand when two great competing systems
will be pitted against each other, and the struggle for
survival will begin...Whether we like it or not , we are
forced to compete for the seat of international
exchange, or, in other worlds, for the seat of
empire.....Our adversary (France, Germany and Russia) is
deadly and determined...If we yield before him , he will
stuffle us" (17)
Economic
supremacy, claimed Adams, was the basis for all power
(18). Free trade and economic internationalism i.e.
international economy under American control, was the
key to world domination. "Adams argued that
the United States must take an increasingly large role
in policing the world order. "Economic (and moral)
power had to be translated into military power if
America was to have, as Franklin D. Roosevelt
(influenced by Adams) put it, its "rendezvous with
destiny".(19) Adams American Economic
Supremacy (20)(1900) was the old handbook for American
empire builders.
Childs writing
in 1945 pointed out: "If Adams had written last
year, for publication this year, he would have had to
alter scarcely anything to relate his views to the world
of today"(21). The same is true for the period
after 1991. The father of containment George Kennan , in
explaining and defending the policy of containment,
mentioned Adam’s as one of the small number of
American’s who had recognized the proper basis of
foreign policy...Kennan’s analysis and
argument was in many respects similar to that of
Adams."(22) The Truman Doctrine was a classic
example of the Frontier Thesis designed to facilitate
American expansionism, and in one speech Truman called
it "The American Frontier".
"By the
end of W.W.II , American leaders were thinking even more
explicitly within the pattern evolved in the
1890s."(23) "Like a good many aspect of 20th
century American history, the military definition of the
world was a direct product of the frontier-expansionist
outlook.(24)
Admiral Mahan
provided the earliest rationale for NATO.
"Expressing himself in a menacing and efficient
attitude of physical force", Mahan envisioned a
future in which the industrial expansion led to a
rivalry for markets and sources of raw materials and
would ultimately result in need of power to open and
conquer new markets. Sea power was the ultimate vehicle
for this expansion, the new "open door’
colonialism demanded the services of American navy.
As Walter
LaFeber points out, Mahan summarized his theory in a
postulate : "In these three things—production ,
with the necessity of exchanging products, shipping ,
whereby the exchange is carried on, and colonies...—is
to be found the key to much of the history , as well as
the policy , of nations bordering on the sea"(25)
Production leads to a need for shipping , which in turn
creates the need for colonies.(26)
John Hay’s
"Open Door Notes" - the proclamation of
American Lebensraum in 1899, and 1900 signified the
beginning of the American commercial invasion of the
world, the future American imperialist expansionism
through the policy of Open Door.(27) As I have already
pointed out Woodrow Willson’s words "World safe
for democracy" translated in reality "World
safe for American Lebensraum". Wilson saw overseas
economic expansion as the frontier to replace the
American continent that has been conquered. In a section
of volume V of his "History of the American
People", which reads as a paraphrase of essays
written by Brooks Adams, Wilson claimed that United
States is destined to command "the economic
fortunes of the world" through the "Open
Door" expansionism. "Diplomacy, and if need
be, power, must make an open way." In a series of
lectures at Columbia University in April of 1907, he was
even more forthright:
"Since trade
ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists
on having the world as a marked, the flag of his nation
must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are
closed must be battered down…Concessions obtained by
financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state,
even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged
in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in
order that no useful corner of the world may be
overlooked or left unused"(28).
F. D. Roosevelt
conceived his New Deal in geopolitical tradition of
Turner and Adams (29)— the New Deal as a New Frontier.
American freedoms could not be preserved in a frontier
less society. United States was again in search of new
frontiers. "To expand the Open Door Policy to the
world" became the leitmotiv of American foreign
policy.(30) The Secretary of Commerce said: "We
cannot permit the door to be closed against our trade in
Eastern Europe anymore than we can in China."(31)
The Secretary of State Hughes extended the Open Door
Policy to all European colonies and Eastern Europe(32).
The Cold War was about the opening of the Russian and
the Eastern European frontiers for American expansionism
and Open Door imperialism. The policy of
"containment", i.e. the traditional blockade
of the Fortress Heartland served the same purpose.
Austin Bears had challenged in 1934 the New Deal
(Roosevelt’s Administration) to break with the
expansionist tradition. He implied that the New Deal
would be involved in another war for empire. Speaking
through the National Foreign Trade Council the
corporation community opposed Beard resolutely:
"National self-containment has no place in the
economic policy of the United States."(33)
"American
leaders predicted that commercial expansion, as long as
the door remained open, would provide the United States
with the economic advantages of a formal empire without
the political responsibilities and moral liabilities
connected with colonies"(34) Nevertheless the end
result of the "Open Door" expansionism was the
economic colonization of new geopolitical space. As the
German geopolitician Otto Maull remarked: "Complete
economic penetration is the same as territorial
occupation". "Open Door" warfare
inevitably leads to "Open Door " occupation.
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AMERICAN BLUEPRINT FOR WORLD HEGEMONY
The British geopolitician Peter J. Taylor
introduces in his book "Britain and the Cold
War.1945 as Geopolitical Transition" the concept of
"Geopolitical world order" which denotes a
geopolitical regime of hegemony by a historical country-
hegemon in the international word-system and points out
that "the geopolitical order that preceded the Cold
War has been termed the World Order of the British
Succession."(36) Both Nazi Germany and the United
States had identical plans for Weltherschaft and both
countries were involved in a struggle for world
hegemony as successor of the previous geopolitical order
of Pax Britannica. "…we can interpret the two
world wars as contests for the British succession
between Germany and USA"(37). As a result of the
World War II the dominant British political empire was
replaced with a new American economic empire.(38)
Already prior to World War II United States began to
plan for the coming American world hegemony.
The minutes of
the closet meetings that were held between the State
Department and the Council on Foreign Relations
beginning in 1939 explicitly detail the role of the U.S.
as a replacement for the British...The minutes of the
Council’s Security Sub-Committee of the Advisory
Committee of the Post-War Foreign Policy set the likely
parameters of U.S. post-war foreign policy: ‘..the
British Empire as it existed in the past will ever
reappear and...the United States may have to take its
place...’. The US ‘must cultivate a mental view
toward world settlement after this war which will enable
us to impose our own terms, amounting... to Pax
Americana.’(39) . Americans could retain their
vitality only by accepting the logic of endless
expansionism.(40) In 1942 , the Council’s
director , Isaiah Bowman , wrote, ’The measure of our
victory will be the measure of our domination after
victory...(The US must secure areas) strategically
necessary for world control.’"(41)
The War and Peace
Studies Project, initiated by the Council on Foreign
Relations during the F.D. Roosevelt Administration
immediately prior to the Second World War, was then the
master plan and blueprint for a new global order for the
postwar world, an order in which the United States would
be the dominant power...The War and Peace Studies
groups, in collaboration with the American government
,worked out an imperialistic conception of the national
interests and war aims of the United States." The
American imperialism "involved a conscious attempt
to organize and control a global empire. The ultimate
success of this attempt made the United States...the
number one world power , exercising domination over
large sections of the world—the American empire...
Such blueprinting was by its very nature determining the
‘national interest "(42) of the United
States....The purpose of postwar planning was the
creation of an international economic and political
order dominated by the United States.(43)
Isaiah Bowman,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s chief geopolitician,
defined the foreign policy objectives of the United
States as pursuit of global policy of American
Lebensraum in response to Nazi Germany’s Lebensraum.
Thus the war aims of United States and nazi-Germany were
identical. Bowman in collaboration with H.F. Armtrong
even secured an article from MacKinder on
the danger of a strong Soviet Union which was published
in Foreign Affairs under the title "The
Round World and the Winning of the Peace"(44)
The article is
remarkable because in it the old British imperialist
MacKinder in essence argues for transformation of the
British Empire into an American dependence and for the
establishment of American hegemony in Europe:
…"Britain—moated stronghold—a Malta on a
grander scale (for the westward movement of the American
empire) and France as a defensible bridgehead"(45)
Memorandum
E-B19 concluded with a statement of the essentials for
the United States foreign policy, summarizing the
"component parts of an integrated policy to achieve
military and economic supremacy of the United States
within the non-German world." Another main element
was the "coordination and cooperation of the United
States with other countries to secure the limitation of
any exercise of sovereignty by foreign nations that
constitutes a threat to the minimum world
area essential to the security and economic prosperity
of the United States and the Western
Hemisphere."(46)
At a meeting on
October 19, 1940 Leo Posvolski, the Department of
State’s chief postwar planer , "agreed with the
Council’s initial blueprint for world power. His
belief that the United States had to have more than just
the Western Hemisphere as living space is indicated in
his statement that ‘if you take the Western Hemisphere
as the complete bloc you are assuming preparation for
war’(47). Posvolski thus felt that the United States
would have to go to war to gain more living space if
limited to the Western Hemisphere, a conclusion clearly
following from the Council’s work."(48)
American economy need an elbow room, a new extended
living space in order to survive without major
readjustments, claimed the planners of the Council on
Foreign Relations. That elbow room was conceptualized as
the Grand Area, (Grossraum) — the United States -led
non German bloc which the United States during 1941
called "world economy"(sic!).
The Economic
and Financial Group’s studies had shown how dangerous
a unified Europe, with or without Nazi domination, would
be to the United States. Hamilton Fish
Armstrong pointed out in mid-June 1941 that a unified
Europe could not be allowed to develop because it would
be so strong that it would seriously threaten the
American Grand Area. Europe, organized as a single
entity, was considered fundamentally incompatible with
the American economic system."(49)
AMERICA’S MINIMUM
LEBENSRAUM - THE GRAND AREA
The extensive studies and discussions of
the Council group determined that, as a minimum , most
of the non-German world, as a new American ‘Grand
Area’, was needed for elbow room.’ In its final
form, it consisted of the Western Hemisphere, the United
Kingdom, the remainder of the British Commonwealth and
Empire, the Dutch East Indies, China and Japan
itself.(50)
Noam Chomsky
summarizes the concept of American Lebensraum:
"The Grand Area was to include the Western
Hemisphere, Western Europe, the Far East, the former
British Empire (which was being dismantled), the
incomparable energy resources of the Middle East (which
were then passing into American hands as we pushed out
our rivals France and Britain), the rest of the Third
World and, if possible, the entire globe."(51) The
whole China was also included.
Unlike Carl
Schmitt who in his geopolitical works used the concept
of Grossraum, (and Greater Area is the exact translation
of Grossraum), and who advocated a world order based on
coexistence of Grossraüme, the American concept had
nothing to do with a delimited geopolitical space. US
deliberately rejected after the war the scenario of
several Monroes (52). Instead American
expansionism had to be unlimited, rejecting thus the
very notion of competing national interests.
The War-Peace
studies conceptually embodied the geopolitical
expansionism of Turner and Adams, the Weltanschauung of
the American Open Door imperialism. NSC -68 was nothing
by restatement of those geopolitical objectives, coached
in the heavy theology of a modernized Manifest Destiny
Doctrine. (53)
ATLANTICISM
"The main political objective , both
in peace and war , must therefore be to prevent the
unification of the Old World centers of power in a
coalition hostile to her own interests", wrote the
American geopolitician Nicholas Spykman in his book
Geography of Peace,(54) restating the main geopolitical
objective of the United States in the post-war Europe.
"Spykman simply is repeating for the United States
what has been an overriding principle for British
statecraft since the time of Henry VIII", comments
David Galleo (55).
To the same
conclusion came also Hans J. Morgenthau : "United
States European policies largely parallel those of Great
Britain from Henry VIII to the end of the British
Empire". Like Great Britain in the past United
States pursues one single objective in Europe—
prevention of European unity, rejection of the principle
of balance of power and assertion of unilateral American
hegemony and preponderance of power.(56) After the
war the policies of American Lebensraum resulted in the
formation of the Atlantic Alliance, the new Grand Area
envisioned by the planners of the Council on Foreign
Relations and the War and Peace studies project. The
American Grand Area was conceptualized and
institutionalized as the Atlantic Alliance.
The Atlanticism—the
organizing principle of American postwar policy toward
Europe—was build on Europe’s political dependency.
NATO— the linchpin of American post war control— was
the instrument to manage American power projection in
Europe, points Ronald Steel in his book
"Temptations of a Superpower" (57), in which
he emphasizes that for the American post-war planers a
major objective was to prevent Europe from becoming in
the future an economic competitor because an economic
competitor is likely to become a political one too. The
American national interest demanded prevention of
Continental unity.
Anticipating
the creation of NATO, the leading American geopolitician
of US postwar expansionism Nicholas Spykman, propounded
in 1943 the idea that "European power zone can be
organized in a regional League of Nations with the
United States as a extra-regional member."(58)
Commenting on Spykman’s proposal, a leading American
political scientist Clyde Eagleton pointed out that :
"This is simply incredible-either that the United
States would take on such a risk , or that other states
would permit such interference from outside."(59)
Acceptance of the American proposals would only mean
consent to the establishment of American protectorate
over those European states.
Reformulating
the old Turnerian "Frontier thesis" Spykman
wrote "We have seen the frontier from an
international point of view as an expression of a
relative power relationship, as that line where
conflicting pressures became equalized. From a national
point of view of the individual state, the frontier is
the front trench held during the temporary armistice
called peace"(60)
The Europeanist
influence tended to see the Atlantic system built around
American hegemony as a transitional construction, born
of exceptional European weakness, bound to be
transformed if not discarded once that weakness had
passed. Implied was the view that Europe was not to be
dominated indefinitely.
Geopolitical
Atlanticism envisioned just that indefinite domination.
Political Atlanticism saw NATO as a pillar for such
indefinite domination and as instrument for power
managing of European geopolitical space.
Atlanticism is a sort of political religion of
expansionism with its geopolitical catechism and
doctrine of immaculate conception of American foreign
policy. (Although- befitting its Anglo-Saxon origin, the
Atlantic catechism appears less systematized and less
doctrinaire)"(61), write David P. Galleo and
Benjamin M. Rowland in their book "America and the
World Political Economy. Atlantic Dreams and National
Realities".
In the
frameworks of the American imperialist Weltanschauung
the establishment of American protectorate over Europe
could be accomplished through NATO.(62) The Atlantic
imperial mantle and American grand schemes for a world
military empire were epitomized in the Atlantic
Alliance. David Galleo and Benjamin Rowland point out
that: "Hull’s free-trade imperialism might
have been expected , but not a new Roman Empire with an
Atlantic Mare Nostrum. It was almost as the United
States , spurning Europe’s colonies, had decided to
annex the mother countries instead (63).
The Atlantic
Alliance, envisioned already by Brooks Adams,
"marked the hegemony of America over Europe (64).
Henceforth an American general , answerable to the
President , will usurp the political prerogatives of
Europe. And with the Truman Doctrine a spatially alien
power —the United States, asserted and gained control
over Western Europe, obliterating thus the independent
political existence of former Great Powers, including
its own ally Great Britain.
NATO AND THE MONROE
DOCTRINE
The geopolitical concept of American
Lebensraum—the Atlantic Great Area of American power
preponderance —needed a direct power projection in
order to guarantee American dominion. NATO became the
institution of hegemony par excellence.
The architects of the
American Empire envisioned for NATO the same role as
admiral Mahan envisioned for the Navy – a vehicle for
conquest of new markets and geopolitical space and an
instrument for the implementation of the "open door
" policy and geopolitical space management. In
short NATO became the military arm of the westward
movement of the American Empire. The "frontier
thesis" of the American foreign policy and the
Monroe Doctrine did confluence in NATO. The
Marshall Plan, followed by NATO, began in earnest the
era of American military, political , and economic
dominance over Europe, points Stephen Ambrose.(65)
Senator Henry
Cabot Lodge considered NATO as one of series of regional
organizations designed to hem in the Soviet Union. Thus
NATO was also constructed as an instrument of the
strategy of blockade of the fortress
"Heartland" , identical with the Soviet Union.
(Spykman’s concept of the countries of Rimland which
had to be controlled by the United States must be seen
as geopolitical theory of blockade).
NATO
would assert American domination over Western Europe
while simultaneously allowing the United States to
assume a position of undisputed hegemony over Europe.
What that hegemony would be "was adequately , if
somewhat crudely , summed up in the frequent references
to the extension of the Monroe Doctrine. Europe would
become, for the American businessman, soldier and
foreign policy maker, another Latin America"
Senator Tom Conally declared "the Atlantic Pact is
but the logical extension of the Monroe
Doctrine."(66)
NSC -68
represented the practical extension of the Truman
Doctrine , which has been world-wide in its implications
but limited to Europe in its application . The document
provided justification for America’s assuming the role
of world policeman.(67) It was designed to not only to
preserving the power of USA but to extend and
consolidate power by absorbing new satellites and to
prevent the rise of competing system of power.
In order
to understand the threat that NATO poses against the
security of Russia and other European countries, it is
necessary to go to the origin of the so called Atlantic
Alliance. The North Atlantic Treaty, in its origin, was
not an alliance at all, but an unilateral US guarantee
of what US termed European security, and factually an
assertion of American hegemony in Western Europe under
the disguise of security. The essential condition of the
original US-European relationship , formulated in 1949,
was totally one-sided. Its raison d’etre allegedly was
security — in reality it was hegemony, in fact an
enlargement of the Monroe Doctrine, such as the
announcement of the Truman Doctrine, which initially
mostly effected Great Britain which had to cease—as in
the case of Greece— her spheres of influence to the
United States. It allowed the United States to gain
supreme command over Western European armed forces and
also to station American troops on European soil. An
editorial in the Wall Street Journal in April of 1949
correctly characterized the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization "as nullifying the principles of the
United Nations."(68)
Historically speaking the unilaterally proclaimed Truman
Doctrine was an extension of the Monroe Doctrine across
the Atlantic, i.e. a major enlargement of the American
Grossraum— a globalization of the principles of the
Western Hemisphere Grossraum, where the United States is
the sole bearer of sovereignty — and thus the first
direct assault on the sovereignty of European states.
Although ostensibly promoted as a device of containment
and a policy for global intervention, it was in reality
a device of subjugation and expansionism, serving
American policy of Lebensraum.. The British foreign
policy scholar Kenneth Thompson called the Truman
Doctrine a national and expedient act designed initially
to replace British with American power in Central
Europe.(69)
Charles de
Gaulle, the great French statesman with a kin eye for
geopolitics and propensity to dismantle American myths,
rightfully asserted that NATO was a mere appendage to
the United States and that NATO and (French) national
sovereignty were incompatible objectives. Already in
1951 (June 12) the Paris weekly Le Monde summarized the
essence of the Atlantic Alliance and its military arm
NATO:
"The
fundamental inequality of the alliance is turning it
more and more into a hidden protectorate in which
protestation of national pride are not enough to
compensate for a growing enslavement. The Roman Empire
had its citizens, its allies, and its foreigners. The
new American Empire has its allies of the first zone
(the Americans), its allies of the second zone (the
British), and its continental protégés: In spite of
all their haughtiness, the latter are becoming to an
ever increasing extend the Filipinos of the
Atlantic."
Leopold
Kohr concluded that the Atlantic Alliance is not a
partnership of equality , and that there is only one
nation which is truly free in this new arrangement,
"the imperial nation, the American."(70) As
Walter LaFeber has pointed out with the formation of
NATO United States accomplished their victory in what
LaFeber calls the First Cold War which President Wilson
started already at the Versailles Peace Conference after
the end of the First World War and the end result of
which was the establishment of American control over the
Western Europe i.e. over a significant portion of
Eurasia.
After the end
of the Cold War the role of NATO as instrument of
American expansionism, an instrument for administration,
control and enlargement of the American empire, became
more clear than ever. Quoting the French author J.J.
Servan Schreiber Benjamin Schwarz and Christopher Layne
describe the roll of the USA in the post-cold war period
as a head of world empire. "Fifty years after
NATO founding, as the post-cold war alliance finds
itself at war, the time has come to reassess US imperial
policy in Europe. The war in Yugoslavia is a watershed
in NATO’s history. Today , the United States has
expanded the alliance’s geographical scope and created
a new role for it: intervention in the internal affairs
of sovereign states whose domestic policies offend
NATO’s values - even when such states pose no security
threat to the alliance’s partners… Hidden by all
lofty (and misleading) rhetoric about NATO and
transatlantic partnership is a simple fact: US policy in
Europe aims not to counter others’ bids for hegemony
but to perpetuate America’s own supremacy...NATO
expansion may prove to be a diplomatic blunder on a par
with the 1919 Versailles Treaty...".(71)
Schwarz and Layne point out that
NATO serves the following important functions:
- Defending and expanding
the imperial frontiers of the United States.
- Establishment of
permanent US protectorate over the continent and
- Undermining the emergence
of independent Western Europe.
-
NATO was used to undermine the
pre-existing world order based on the Helsinki agreement
and to obliterate the independent role of the United
Nations. NATO became an instrument of conquest of the
Eastern Europe – "peacefully" as in the case
of the Visegrad–countries (Poland, Hungary and Czech
Republic ) or by resorting to outright war of aggression
(Yugoslavia). Containment of Western Europe and conquest
of the Eastern Europe are the two main functions of
NATO.
In the verdict
rendered at the concluding session of the International
War Crimes Tribunal Investigating U.S. NATO War Crimes
in Yugoslavia on January 23, 2000 in Kiev, Ukraine, NATO
was declared a criminal institution within the purview
of the Nuremberg codex.
Once again, and
now after the end of the Cold War, Europe as a
geopolitical entity is faced by a historical choice —
either independent geopolitical existence as a
Mitteleuropa or European community, or a future as
dependent appendage to the American empire. An
independent geopolitical existence — Europe for
Europeans — translates into a Mitteleuropa as
antihegemonic block facing and competing with the
American Atlantic Grossraum. The most simple
geopolitical axiom is that NATO is a threat to a future
European independence. And above all- NATO is a threat
to Russia.
|
ENDNOTES
(1) See Anders Stephenson
Manifest Destiny. American Expansion and the Empire of
Right (Hill and Wang, New York, 1995) p. XI.
(2) Josiah Strong
Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis
(New York, 1985) , p. 20. Here quoted from Walter
LaFeber The New Empire (Cornell University Press,
Ithaca, 1963) , p. 74.
(3) Ambrose,
Stephen E. The Military Dimension: Berlin, NATO and
NCS-68 in Paterson, Thomas G.(ed.) The Origins of the
Cold War (D.C. Heath and Company, Lexington, MA, 1974)
p. 178.
(4) Turner,
Frederick Jackson The Significance of the Frontier in
American History (Henry Holt and Co, New York, 1995) p.
1.
(5) Turner,
Frederick Jackson ibid. p.33.
(6) Turner,
Frederick Jackson, ibid. p.p. 33, 59.
(7) William
Appleman Williams The Frontier Thesis and American
Foreign Policy in Henry W. Berger (ed.) A William
Appleman Williams Reader (Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 1992) p.
90.
(8) William
Appleman Williams The Frontier Thesis and American
Foreign Policy p. 91.
(9) Brooks Adams,
The Law of Civilization and Decay (The MacMillan Co, New
York, 1896).
(10) William
Appleman Williams The Frontier Thesis and American
Foreign Policy p. 92.
(11) William
Appleman Williams The Frontier Thesis and American
Foreign Policy p. 96.
(12) Brooks Adams
The New Empire (The MacMillan Co, New York, 1900).
(13) ibid. p. 96.
(14) Williams
ibid. 97.
(15) ibid. p. 98.
(16) ibid. p. 99,
100.
(17) Brooks
Adams America’s Economic Supremacy, p.p. 80, 104-05,
David P. Calleo and Benjamin Rowland America and the
World Political
Economy p. 273.
(18) Thomas J.
McCormick America’s Half-Century (John Hopkins
University Press , Baltimore, 1995) p. 18.
(19) McCormick
ibid. p.p. 18-19.
(20) Brooks Adams
America’s Economic Supremacy (The MacMillan Co, New
York, 1900).
(21) Ibid. p. 100.
(22) ibid. p. 101.
(23) William
Appleman Williams The Contours of American History ,
Norton and Company, New York, 1988, p. 474.
(24) William
Appleman Williams Contours of American History p. 473.
(25)
A.T. Mahan
The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783
(Boston, 1890) pp.. 53, 28.
(26) Walter
LaFeber The New Empire. An Interpretation of American
Expansion 1860-1898 (Cornell University Press, Ithaca,
1963) p. 88.
(27) Williams
ibid. p. 86.
(28) Williams,
William Appleman The Tragedy of American Diplomacy p.p.
71, 72.
(29) Graebner p.
134.
(30) Graebner p.
134.
(31) (Charles
Evans Hughes p.. 86).
(32) William
Appleman Williams The Contours of American History p.
454.
(33) Lloyd C.
Gardner The New Deal, New Frontiers, and the Cold War: A
Re-examination of American Expansion, 1933-1945 in David
Horowitz (ed) Corporations and the Cold War (Monthly
Review Press, New York, 1969) p. 108.
(35)
Dorpalen,
Andreas The World of General Houshofer. Geopolitics in
Action (New York, 1942), p.224.
(36) Peter J.
Taylor "Britain and the Cold War. 1945 as
Geopolitical Transition" (Guilford Publications,Inc,
New York 1990) p. 17. The concept of "Geopolitical
regime of hegemony" , used by Taylor, is quite
similar to the concept of "Historical regime of
hegemony " in the political writings of Antonio
Gramsci.
(37) Peter J.
Taylor ibid. p. 17.
(38) Peter J.
Taylor ibid . p. 17.
(39) Michio Kaku
and Daniel Axelrod To Win a Nuclear War. The
Pentagon’s Secret War Planes (South end Press, Boston,
1987) p.p. 63, 64.
(40) Those
views were expressed by Reinhold Niebuhr who, like many
American Cold War planners viewed the American future
political destiny as Manichean interpretation of the
virtually uninterrupted warfare- from the point of the
revamped Manifest Destiny Doctrine. In this conjunction
one may recall the view of the American foreign policy
by William Appleman Williams.
In order to understand the foreign
policy of expansionism of the United States Williams
urged his students "to study the pirates as a
protocommunity which sought in the Renaissance era and
afterwards to create its own rules , and prompted
widespread fear in the existing empires". See Paul
M. Buhle and Edward Rice-Maximin William Appleman
Williams . The Tregedy of Empire (Routledge, New York
and London, 1995) p. 236.
One may also recall that while still
allies already during the World War II the United States
started to prepare for war with the Soviet Union. In the
summer of 1945 , at the time of the Conference in
Potsdam United States adopted a policy of ‘string the
first blow’ in a nuclear war against the Soviet Union.
To that effect a secret document JCS 1496 was drafted on
July 19, 1945. (p. 30).
The first plan for nuclear attack was
drafted soon afterwards by General Dwight Eisenhower at
the order of PresidentTruman. The plan. called
TOTALITY (JIC 329/1) envisioned a nuclear attack on the
Soviet with 20 to 30 A-bombs. The plan earmarked 20
Soviet cities for obliteration in a first strike:
Moscow, Gorki, Kuibyshev, Sverdlovsk, Novosibirsk, Omsk,
Saratov, Kazan, Leningrad, Baku, Tashkent, Chelyabinsk,
Nizhni Tagil, Magnitogorsk, Molotov, Tbilisi, Stalinsk,
Grozny, Irkutsk, and Jaroslavl Michio Kaku and Daniel
Axelrod To Win a Nuclear War. The Pentagon’s Secret
War Planes (South end Press, Boston, 1987) pp. 30, 31.
(41) Michio Kaku
and Daniel Axelrod To Win a Nuclear War. The
Pentagon’s Secret War Planes (South end Press, Boston,
1987) pp. 63,64.
(42) Lavrence H.
Shoup & William Minter Imperial Brain Trust (Monthly
Review Press, New York 1977, p. 117.
(43) Lawrence
Shoup & William Minter ibid. p. 118.
(44) Martin
Geoffrey The Life and Thought of Isaiah Bowman (Archon
Books, Hamden, Connecticut, 1980) p. 177. One may also
recall that Isaiah Bowman already in his in 1921
published book "The New World" envisioned the
coming American world empire. Carl Haushofer published
in 1934 a trilogy of books titled "Macht und Erde"
which, according to Otto Maull, was written as the
German response to Bowman’s "The New World".
Martin Geoffrey, ibid. p. 165.
(45)
MacKinder,
Halford "The Round World and the Winning of the
Peace" in Democratic Ideals and Reality (W.W.
Norton & Co, New York, NY 1962) p. 274.
MacKinder’s article was originally published in
Foreign Affairs, vol.1 (July 1943) p.p. 595-605.
(46) Memorandum
E-B19, October 19, 1940, CFR, War-Peace Studies , NUL.
Here quoted after Shoup & Minter, ibid. p. 130.
(47)
Posvolsky’s statement is in Memorandum A-A11, October
19, 1940 War Peace Studies , Baldwin Papers, Box 117,
YUL from which Shoup &
Minter quote .
(48) Shoup &
Minter ibid. p. 131.
(49) Shoup &
Minter, ibid. p. 137.
(50) Shoup &
Minter , ibid p. 136.
(51) Noam Chomsky
What Uncle Saw Really Wants p. 12 (Odonian Press,
Berkeley, 1992). The policies of American Lebensraum and
the geopolitical construct of the American Greater Area
are discussed in dept in Joyce and Gabriel Kolko The
Limits of Power. The world and United States Foreign
Policy (Harper and Row, New York, 1972) .
(52) See Taylor,
Peter J. Britain and the Cold War. 1945 as Geopolitical
Transition (Gilfor Publications, New York, 1990. Not
only Carl Schmitt but also General Haushofer advocated
peaceful coexistence of several competing "Grand
Areas" or "Monroes". Carl Schmitt used
the concept of Grossraum, General Haushofer of
"Pan-region".
(53) The political
objectives stated in the NSC-68 were after the end
(sic!) of the Cold War again restated in the Pentagons
Defense Planning Guidance. With the Soviet Union gone
United States embarked on a new policy of expansionism.
(54) Nicholas
Spykman Geography of Peace , New York, 1944.
(55) David Galleo
ibid. p. 30.
(56) Hans J.
Morgenthau The Mainsprings of American Foreign Policy
Robert A. Goldwin (ed) Readings in American Foreign
Policy (Oxford University Press, New York, 1971) p. 642.
(57) Ronald Steel
Temptations of a Superpower ( Harvard University Press,
1995) p. 70.
(58) N. Spykman
America’s Strategy in World Politics p. 468.
(59) Clyde
Eagleton, Review of America’s Strategy in World
Politics , 222 Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science (July 1942), 189-190, P.
190. here quoted in David Willkinson Spykman and
Geopolitics in C. Zoppo and C. Zorgbibe (eds) On
Geopolitics: Classical and Nuclear (Martinus Nijhoff,
Dortrecht, 1985), p. 82.
(60) Nickolas J.
Spykman and A.A. Rollins "Geographical Objectives
in Foreign Policy I, American Political Science Review ,
vol. 33 , 1939 , p.394
(61) David P.
Galleo and Benjamin M. Rowland America and the World
Political Economy. Atlantic Dreams and National
Realities (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1973)
p. 18.
(62) Ibid. p. 44.
(63) Ibid. p. 46.
(64) Ibid. p. 61.
(65) Stephen E.
Ambrose, The Military Dimension : Berlin, NATO and
NSC-68 in Thomas G. Paterson The Origins of the Cold War
(D.C. Heath and Company, Lexington, 1974) p. 178.
(66) Stephen
E. Ambrose The Military Dimension : Berlin, NATO and
NSC-68 in Thomas G. Paterson The Origins of the Cold War
(D.C. Heath and Company, Lexington, 1974) p. 117.
(67) Stephen E.
Ambrose , ibid. p. 182.
(68) The Wall
Street Journal, April 5, 1949.
(69) Kenneth
Thompson -Political Realism and the Crisis of World
Politics- An American Approach (Princeton University
Press, Princeton, 1960) - at p. 124.
(70) Leopold Kohr
-The Breakdown of Nations -ibid., at p. 203.
(71) Benjamin
Schwarz and Christopher Layne "NATO: At 50, It’s
Time to Quit" (The NATION Magazine, May 10, 1999
pp.17, 18.
Reproduced by permission of the
author Nicolai von Kreitor.
Professor Nicolai von
Kreitor's web page
|
THE
CONCEPT OF GROSSRAUM IN CARL SCHMITT’S JURISPRUDENCE
The
Historical Necessity of a New Russian Grossraum
by Nikolai von Kreitor
The most fundamental
principle in geopolitics is the principle of Grossraum (=Great Area)
formulated by the prominent German jurist Carl Schmitt in his book Völkerrechtlishe
Grossraumordnung mit Interventionsverbot für Raumfremde Mächte (1) and
seen by him as a foundation for the science of international law and
international relations.
A Grossraum is an area
dominated by a power representing a distinct political idea. This idea was
always formulated with a specific opponent in mind; in essence ,the
distinction between friend and enemy would be determined by this
particular political idea. As an example Carl Schmitt cited the American
Monroe Doctrine and its concept of non-intervention by foreign powers in
the American Raum. “This is the core of the original Monroe Doctrine, a
genuine Grossraum principle, namely the union of politically awakened
people, a political idea and, on the basis of this idea, a politically
dominant Grossraum excluding foreign intervention.”
Carl Schmitt’s
knowledge and sense of history were equaled by his ability to define core
issues. That ability enabled Schmitt to quickly grasp the essence of
national foreign policy , articulate it in his book, relate the idea and
implementation of the American Monroe Doctrine to the concept of Grossraum
, subject Grossraum to analysis, incorporate it into the framework of
international law and contrapose American Grossraum to a new German
Grossraum, opposed to and competing with the American. By subjecting
Grossraum to scholarly investigation and by placing it in the context of
global politics, Schmitt had hoped to enlarge the horizon of learning and
to update the state-centered system of international law to include
relations between Grossräume (Different Great Areas).(2)
In so doing he
subjected the political theology of American expansionism, the American
state-policy and objectives of world domination formulated and codified in
the Monroe Doctrine and its various extension, to a demystifying and
critical analysis showing that the essence of Wilsonian universalism
before, during and after the World War II was in fact an insidious
ideology to equate American national interest, American expansionism and
the principles of the Monroe Doctrine with the interest of mankind(3).
Discussing emerging political realities , Schmitt noted that Germany
needed to formulate her own Grossraum and to conceptualize the nature of
international law as a relationship between different Grossräume,
rejecting thereby the universalistic claims of the United States.
The center of Carl
Schmitt’s discussion was the geopolitical and the ideological substance
of the Monroe Doctrine, especially the series of ideas articulated prior
to Theodore Roosevelt’s reinterpretation of it justifying a
“capitalist imperialism”(4) and Woodrow Wilson’s reinterpretation
that sough to justify a “kind of pan-interventionist world
ideology”(5) , i.e. to justify the principles of the Monroe Doctrine and
the new international law it created in the Western Hemisphere to
principles valid for the whole world. The substance of the new American
international law, created by the Monroe Doctrine, was in fact an absence
of international law, understood traditionally as law of nations created
by mutual consent of those nations, in the Western Hemisphere, since the
Monroe Doctrine postulated that the only source of the new international
law was the will of the United States. According to Schmitt the Monroe
Doctrine, historically seen, was the vehicle of American subjugation of
the Latin American countries and transformation of those countries into
virtual American protectorates.
President Woodrow
Wilson’s objectives at the end of the W.W. I to elevate the principles
of the Monroe Doctrine to universally valid principles for the whole world
was in fact America’s first bid for world domination. On April 12, 1919,
at the Paris Peace Conference , President Wilson assured the delegates
that the Monroe Doctrine was “the real forerunner of the League of
Nations” and asked rhetorically ,”Indeed are we not assembled here to
consecrate and extend the horizon of this document as a perpetual charter
for all the world.”(6)
The Monroe Doctrine,
that nineteenth-century formulation of American foreign policy, has
according to Schmitt a profound relevance for the Germany of his day.
Though Schmitt recognized that the realities of power politics in the
Western Hemisphere of the nineteenth century were different from those on
the European continent of the twentieth century , he realized that the
Monroe Doctrine had extended the parameters of international relations. As
far as Schmitt was concerned, the Monroe Doctrine was “the first and
until now the most successful example of a Grossraum principle”(7) that
had over a period of time acquired validity, for it was referred to in
every important text and dictionary of international law and was defended
by the United States as “an expression of the inalienable right to
self-defense”(8) Calling the Monroe Doctrine, i.e. the American
expansionism, a “right to self-defense”, clearly showed the substance
of American political theology-the ideological justification of U.S.
imperialism as well as the equation in the ideology of expansionism with
self-defense: an important ideological component that will became a
center-peace of American mystification of U.S. expansionism.
Carl Schmitt points
out that at the end of the W.W. I, at the Paris Peace-conference which
resulted in the Treaty of Versailles and the creation of the League of
Nations , United States succeeded to include the Monroe Doctrine in the
Article 21 of the League’s Covenant. Inclusion of the Monroe Doctrine in
the Article 21 in the League of Nation’s Covenant, which reads
“Nothing in this Covenant shall be deemed to affect the validity of
international engagements, such as treaties of arbitration or regional
understandings like the Monroe Doctrine, for securing the maintenance of
peace.” symbolized for Carl Schmitt Europe’s defeat by the United
States and the end of the old Jus Publicum European, which had been the
foundation for all preexisting international relations. For one thing ,
the League of Nations, purportedly an universal international organization
and predecessor of the United Nations, was excluded from asserting any
jurisdictional claims in the American Grossraum, i.e. the Western
Hemisphere. Western Hemisphere was excluded from the purview of the
League. Thus the United States asserted the pre-eminence of its will and
the ordering principles of her Grossraum, i.e. her unrestricted hegemony
in the Western Hemisphere, over the League of Nations.
Schmitt emphasizes
that before Grossraum could be anchored in international law it had to be
legitimized by a political idea. The geopolitical and ideological
conviction behind the original Monroe Doctrine, proclaimed in 1823 - the
belief that the Americas had to be defended from the “status quo powers
of legitimacy”(9) , the Holly Alliance, the European Con-cert formed
after the defeat of Napoleon - justified its proclamation and gave it
credibility. President James Monroe announced the doctrine in response to
rumored intervention in America of the Holy Alliance. The United States
justified its policy on the basis of its inalienable right of self-defense
, a principle on which international law is found. Hence the declaration
warning the members of the Holy Alliance that the United States “would
consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion
of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety” and that the
U.S. government would “view any interposition for the purpose of
oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any
European power in no other light than as manifestation of an unfriendly
disposition toward the United States”. As a corollary of the principle
of nonintervention, Monroe declared that the United States was committing
itself to a policy of non-intervention “in the internal concerns of any
European powers.”(10)
Carl Schmitt notes
that the Monroe Doctrine , originally proclaimed as a vehicle of defense
against interventionism and European colonialism, transformed itself into
it’s opposite, becoming the main legal and ideological instrument of
American interventionism, expansionism, economic imperialism and
colonization of the Western Hemisphere.(11) The language of the Monroe
Doctrine lended itself to a political-semantic corruption of the English
language: American interventionist policies were still presented as
defense, American colonialism was heralded as establishment of democracy,
installation of puppet regimes in Latin-America serving their American
masters was called a preservation of civilized forms of government, the
many repeated American military interventions to keep the puppet regimes
in power and to expand American economic penetration - a peace-keeping
operations and, quite consistent with what George Orwell would latter call
a New Talk, the enslavement of Latin-American countries, their
transformation into protectorates was heralded as enlargement of the
frontiers of freedom.
The interventionist
substance of the Monroe Doctrine was clearly emphasized in 1904, in the so
called Roosevelt Corollary pronounced by President Theodore Roosevelt
shortly after the Hague Peace Conference the same year. Roosevelt proposed
to make an exception to general international law in favor of the Western
Hemisphere and this exception were to be made by “ a unilateral American
pronouncement , not through a universally agreed amendment to
international law.”(12) Roosevelt explicitly rejected the notion that
the new international law in the Western Hemisphere could be created
through multilateral, inter-American action, instead, Roosevelt asserted,
its creation was only through unilateral action by the United States, i.e.
the source of the new international law was solely the will of the United
States.
”Instead of
abolishing intervention in the Western Hemisphere, Roosevelt explicitly
sanctioned this practice and claimed for the United States a monopoly of
the right to engage in it... Finally the Roosevelt corollary applied to
American intervention of all kind and for whatever purpose.”(13) The new
international law in the Western Hemisphere, as formulated by Theodore
Roosevelt, was in fact an absence of international law, or, to put it in
another way, the foreign expansionist policy of the United States was
elevated into a quasi international law. Thus the Roosevelt corollary
defined the principle of organization and control of geopolitical space
under American domination. That principle of domination suspended the
operation of general norms of international law and elevated the
imperialist will of the United States into the sole normative source. Or,
as Secretary of State Olney had earlier expressed it: “United States is
the sole sovereign in the Western Hemi-sphere and its will is a fiat.”
Carl Schmitt also emphasized the territorial criterion of the Monroe
Doctrine for the international law. He noted that the doctrine introduced
territorial lines of delineation and demarcation into the body of
international law, infused the international law with the concept and
substance of geopolitics.
THE CONCEPT OF GERMAN
GROSSRAUM
Based on the
perception that the Monroe Doctrine provided the precedent for
justification for both German and Japanese Grossraum, Schmitt observed
that the traditional Eurocentric order underlying international law-
relations between and among sovereign states- had been superseded by
relations between and among sovereign Grossräume(14) As far as Germany
was concerned , her Grossraum consisted, according to Schmitt’s view
during the 30-ties, predominantly of Central and Eastern Europe. Though
Schmitt failed to define the precise territorial dimensions of Germany’s
Grossraum, he cited the Monroe Doctrine as the basis for maintaining that
Grossraum in not something abstract and diffuse but contains
“recognizable territorial limits”(15).
According to the
Monroe Doctrine, Schmitt argued, the leading or hegemonial power is the
one that determines the governing political idea for its realm. United
States asserted the political idea that it had the hegemonial right to
exclude from the Western Hemisphere any foreign power, or any foreign
influence. After the end of the Word War I United States also asserted
that the newly formed international organization , the League of Nations ,
was also excluded from asserting any jurisdiction in the Western
Hemisphere. Schmitt emphasized that the new German Grossraum , seen by him
as analogous to the American Grossraum, should also exclude any foreign
interference, and above all American influence, and argued for the
proclamation of a Ger-man Monroe Doctrine. Schmitt rejected the false
universalist claims of the United States and noted that as a matter of
principle non-interference by European states in the affairs of the
American continent cannot be justified unless the United States likewise
refrains from interference in the affairs of the European continent. In
Carl Schmitt’s view geopolitics and international law have been joined
in the Germanic Monroe Doctrine underlying the German Grossraum.
Carl Schmitt defined
also the concept of a national Grossraum principle by extending his
analysis to encompass the Reich . Though “the concept of Grossraum
belongs to the concept of Reich (Empire, Realm) , the two are not
identical because “not every state or every people within the German
Grossraum is part of the Reich”. A Reich, according to Schmitt, “is
the leading and sustaining power whose political idea radiates over a
specific Grossraum”. And the code that governs relations between Grossräume
is that of nonintervention.(16) Schmitt asserted that in the middle of
Europe the German Reich faces the interventionist claims of the
Anglo-Saxon pseudo-universalism. Against those claims it contraposes the
principle of national life style “based on the principle of national
respect.”(17)
Whereas relations
between Grossräume were to be governed by the principle of
nonintervention , intra-Grossraum relations in Schmitt’s construct were
to be based on respect for every nation and nationality. Although in
Schmitt’s configuration this connoted a policy of domination exercised
without the need to resort to the extraordinary means of intervention ,
decision about whether to intervene, reflecting power-political realities,
would not be made in any capital of the German Grossraum other than
Berlin. One possible justification for intervention in a nation in the
Reich was that it pursued foreign policy goals inimical to the security
interests of Germany. In another work Carl Schmitt defines the Reich as
“the leading and supporting powers whose political idea is radiated over
a specified major territory and which fundamentally exclude the
intervention of extra-territorial powers with regard to this
territory.”(18)
It should be noted
that Carl Schmitt, while recognizing that the historically changing world
order and nature of international relations necessitated the reformulation
of the international law in terms of equal relationship between competing
Grossräume, he nevertheless never advocated an unrestricted expansion of
a singular Grossraum i.e. geopolitical objectives of total world hegemony
by for example Germany. Quite to the contrary : the substance of his work
Grossraum gegen Universalismus is a strong criticism of the American
ideology of universalism and from that ideology derived foreign policy on
which U.S. embarked in a limited scope during the presidency of Theodore
Roosevelt, and which became the ideological hallmark of the Wilsonianism
during and after the World War I.
American universalism
, emphasized Schmitt, globalized the principles of the Monroe Doctrine to
principles valid for the whole world i.e. to universal principles and thus
, ideologically and politically, laid claims for extension of American
hegemony in the Western Hemisphere to a hegemony over the whole world.
American objectives for world conquest and domination used the ideology of
universalism to revise the geographical limitations of the Monroe
Doctrine- the very principle of geographical delimitation and demarcation
of the concept of Grossraum- and to justify American interventionism in
the European continent. While American universalism was a rejection of the
idea of co-existence of different Grossräume and thus not only a
rejection of the concept of Grossraum with its principles of geographic
delimitation but also a claim for global world hegemony, so was also
Hitler’s concept of Lebensraum which served as an ideological device for
foreign policy objectives of establishment first of German continental
hegemony and latter of global world hegemony . In other words there were
ideological and geopolitical similarities between Wilson’s universalism
and Hitler’s Lebensraum. Both Wilsonian universalism and
Nazi-Germany’s Lebensraum were falsification of a genuine Grossraum
principle and both universalism and Lebensraum rejected the very notion of
international pluralism, of co-existence of Grossräume.
Both universalism and
Lebensraum as concepts were antithetical to Schmitt’s concept of
territorial limits of Grossraum and both universalism and Lebensraum
encompassed no territorial limits serving as ideological justification for
global world domination.(19)
In formulating the
concept of Grossraum Carl Schmitt wanted to broad the framework of
international law to include relations between Grossräume. His concept
allowed for the rational conduct of international relations and provided a
compelling principle for the international law that would correspondent to
new historical realities.
THE RELEVANCE OF THE
CONCEPT OF GROSSRAUM FOR RUSSIA
Prior to the
dissolution or , I would rather say, subversion of the Soviet Union in
1991, in the bipolar world of two superpowers , there existed two
competing Grossräume ( Great Areas) or two opposing political blocks,
each with its sphere of influence and thus geographical delimitation and
demarcation: the Atlantic Grossraum, dominated by the United States, and
the Eurasian Grossraum, dominated by the Soviet Union. The political
competition between the two blocks gave a substantial latitude for
autonomy and independence for countries included in the sphere of
influence of the two blocks. However after 1991 a completely new world
order has been created. The bipolar world landscape of two superpowers has
been transformed into a mono landscape of one superpower imposing its will
on the rest of the world. The concept of a New World Order, propounded
first by President Bush and now implemented by the neo-Wilsonian foreign
policies of President Clinton, must be seen as a realization and assertion
of the principles on the Monroe Doctrine to principles valid for the whole
world, or, in other words, as a Roosevelt corollary for the whole world,
with a new international law equated with the U.S.’s will. The
globalization of the Monroe Doctrine , the pronouncement of the
Bush/Clinton corollary is the assertion of the legitimacy of American
intervention in the world for whatever purposes United States deem
necessary, in other words , it is the equation of the United States will
with grounds for intervention, an equation which is not only a radical
repudiation of the priciples of non-intervention contained in the United
Nations Charter, and thus a repudiation of the essence and substance of
the United Nations, but is also the substance of the new international law
of the New World Order. In the post-Cold War political landscape , United
States, invoking and asserting her principles of legitimacy of American
world-wide hegemony , is in a position visavi Europe similar to the
position of the former Holy Alliance visavi America in the past. American
intrusion into the Eurasian geopolitical vacuum after the demise of the
Soviet Union, has necessitated a formulation and implementation of a
global policy of pseudo-universalism and intervention. Therefore an
absolute geopolitical necessity for Russia now, tantamount to her national
survival, is the re-establishment of her Grossraum, which is a
prerequisite not only for the future independence of Russia but also for
the independence of other European countries as well. Re-establishment of
the Russian Grossraum and a necessary new geopolitical alliance, which one
my symbolically call “a second Treaty of Rappalo”, will be the
beginning of disintegration of the global system of American universalism
and interventionism and thus a necessary prerequisite for the rebirth of
America-free Europe. During the interwar years, in the Europe after the
Treaty of Versailles , Carl Schmitt, observing the universalist claims of
international law of American and British imperialism, asserted that
“behind the facade of general norms of international law lies, in
reality, the system of Anglo-Saxon world imperialism”(20)
Today, observing the
new American expansionism, the American invasion in the geopolitical
vacuum of the Eurasian Grossraum, the decline and fall of the United
Nations and the perversion of this international body into a legitimacy
facade for the United States bid for world conquest and hegemony in the
New World Order , one may say, as it was said once before by Carl Schmitt
, that behind the facade of general norms of international law , lies now
in reality the system of American world imperialism and expansionism. For
the substance of the New World Order is the globalization of the American
hegemony without any geographical limitations, the triumph of the old
Wilsonian universalism or the neo-Wilsonian policies of President Clinton,
a universalism that is a radical rejection of the notion of peaceful
co-existence of Grossräume, of a pluralistic world order build on respect
for existing state sovereignties.
The primary foreign
policy objective of Russia must be the formulation of her own Monroe
Doctrine, geographically delimiting Russian Grossraum, which would exclude
the intervention on foreign powers and above all the United States.
A formulation of a
Russian Monroe Doctrine implies by necessity a rejection of the pseudo-universalist
claims of the American New World Order and the validity of a new
international law that legitimizes that order. It also implies a firm
rejection of American legal nihilism and revisionism, it mandates a
restoration of a world order codified by the Helsinki Accord. Thus a
Russian Monroe Doctrine will be an expression of a genuine and inalienable
right to self-defense against American expansionism and it’s new
territorial ambitions. Integral to the purpose of self-defense must be a
Russian claim for respect for Russian minorities in any state where they
are to be found as well as prevention of foreign policy inimical to the
security interest of Russia , such as membership in NATO , prevention of
coming into power of governments serving as agents of foreign power , in
short , of governments of American Quislings.
The geographical
delimitation of the Russian Grossraum is the territory of the former
Soviet Union, countries belonging to the former socialist block ,
including Yugoslavia, now subjected to a war of aggression by the United
States.
A Russian Grossraum
can only be a genuine, geographically delimited Grand Area and the
international law it would create will be, according to Carl Schmitt’s
visions, an international law encompassing the co-existence of Grossräume
and thus a rejection of the international law of the New World Order- the
universalization of American principles of legitimization of global and
unlimited American expansionism and domination. A peaceful co-existence of
Grossräume can hardly be achieved without the geopolitical expulsion of
the United States from Eurasia.
In the past the United
States has been successful in theologization of American geopolitical
objectives of world domination - the ideology of Wilsonian pseudo
universalism-and demonization of geopolitical competitors and thus
rejection of the very notion of geopolitical pluralism. The restoration of
the Russian Grossraum is therefore the only guaranty for international
peace and renewed respect for international law, constructed not as the
will of the United States but as the collective will of sovereign
countries and geopolitical blocks. Russian Grossraum is the only guaranty
against the future anti-utopia of a Monroe Doctrine for the whole world.
The historical
necessity and actuality of a new Russian Grossraum, excluding American
interference in Eurasia, confluence with Charles de Gaulle’s vision of a
free Europe from Atlantic to Urals and beyond to Vladivostok, which could
only exist as America-free Europe. Without a reconstitution of a Russian
Grossraum, the future not only of Russia but also of other European
countries, will be the present of Latin America. In other worlds, the
historical necessity of a Russian Grossraum is a decision for a future of
freedom and national and cultural authenticity, a decision against the
future as American protectorate. And again, the Russian choice is also the
choice of Europe.
ENDNOTES
(1) Carl
Schmitt -Völkerrechtliche Grossraumordnung mit Interventionsverbot für
Raumfremde Mächte- Ein Bitrag zum Reichsbegriff im Völkerrecht (Duncker
& Humblot, Berlin, 1991)
(2) some authors trace
the concept of Grossraum in earlier writings of Friedrich Naumann and
others. “According to their concept of Mitteleuropa , modern political,
economic, and technological considerations necessitated the creation of a
German empire in the center of Europe that would allow Germany to survive
in a world dominated by political units larger than a typical European
nation-state, namely Russia, the British Empire , and the United
States..Raumtheorie was first established as a specialized field of study
in the twenties , when it became an integral part of the developing sciene
of geopolitics” -see Joseph W. Bendersky-Carl Schmitt (Princeton
University Press, Princeton, 1983) - at p. 251
(3) Carl Schmitt -
Grossraum gegen Universalism in Positionen und Begriffe im Kampf mit
Weimar- Genf- Versailles 1923-1939 (Duncker & Humblot , Berlin , 1988)
(4) Carl Scmitt -Völkerrechtlische
Grossraumordnung - ibid. p. 37
(5) Carl Schmitt- Völkerrechtlische
Grossraumordnung- ibid. pp 38-39
(6) Stephen Bonsal
-Unfinished Business (New York, 1944) pp. 184-185; also Arthur P.
Whitaker-The Western Hemisphere Idea (Cornell University Press, New York,
1954) at p. 125
(7) Carl Schmitt- Völkerrechtlische
Grossraumordnung- ibid. p. 23
(8) Carl Schmitt- Völkerrechtlische
Grossraumordnung- ibid. pp. 17, 19, 27-30
(9) Carl Schmitt- Völkerrechtlische
Grossraumordnung- ibid. p. 34
(10) see Thomas A.
Bailey - A Diplomatic Hisstory of the American People (Englewood Cliffs,
N.J., 1980), pp. 183-184
(11) see Carl Schmitt
-Völkerrechtliche Formen des modernen Imperialismus in Schmitt Positionen
und Begriffe
(12) Arthur P.
Whitaker- The Western Hemisphere Idea -ibid. - p. 100
(13) Arthur P.
Whitaker- The Western Hemisphere Idea -ibid. - p. 100
(14) Carl Schmitt -
Volkerrechtliche Grossraumordnung- ibid. p. 76, 77, 81
(15) Carl Schmitt -
Volkerrechtliche Grossraumordnung- ibid. p. 16
(16) Carl Schmitt -
Volkerrechtliche Grossraumordnung- ibid. p. 66
(17) Carl Schmitt -
Volkerrechtliche Grossraumordnung- ibid. p.71
(18) Carl Schmitt -
Der Reichbegrif in Völkerrecht in Positionen und Begriffe - ibid. at p.
303
(19)in fact American
universalism can be seen as Lebenraum for American economic imperialism
(20)Carl Schmitt - Völkerrechtliche
Formen des modernen Imperialismus ibid. p.43
NATO
AS INSTRUMENT OF UNITED STATES EXPANSIONISM:
THE GEOPOLITICS OF AMERICAN LEBENSRAUM
Prof. Dr . Nikolai von Kreitor
A new consciousness seems to
have come upon us — the consciousness of strength— and with it a new
appetite, the yearning to show our strength. It may be compared with the effect
upon the animal creation of the taste of blood...The taste of empire is in the
mouth of the people even as the taste of blood in the jungle. It means an
imperial policy, the Republic , renascent, taking her place with the armed
nations.”(1)
Each year the society
inclines to accept more unreservedly the theory that war is only an extreme
phase of economic competition, and...it follows that international competition,
if carried far enough, must end in war...America’s attack is based not only on
her superior resources and her more perfect administration ...No wonder the
European regards America as a dangerous and relentless foe. ..United States is
determined to yield nothing , but is resolved to push all her advantages to the
uppermost...If Americans are determined to reject reciprocity in all its forms ,
to concede nothing to the adversary; if , having driven in the knife , they mean
to turn it in the wound, they should recognize that they are provoking reprisals
in every form and accept the situation with the uppermost. To carry out an
aggressive policy in some security, the United States needs 300.000 trained men
whom she can put in the field in twenty days, with an ample reserve of officers
and of material. More especially, she needs a Navy.”
Brooks Adams(2)
Americans must recognize
that this is war to the death—a struggle no longer against single nations but
against a continent. There is no room in the economy of the world for two
centers of wealth and empire. One organism, in the end, will destroy the other.
The weaker must succumb.
Brooks Adams(3)
The father of containment
George Kennan pointed in his 1993 published book Around the Cragged Hill that
“The time for the stationing of American forces on European soil has passed,
and...the ones now stationed there should be withdrawn...as soon as it is
conveniently possible“.(4) Kennan further argued that his long-term hope was
for the development of a “new European security structure...of which the
United States was not a member..” Recently he warned against the planned
expansion of NATO:
“Expanding NATO would be
the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era...Such
a decision may be expected...to restore the atmosphere of the Cold War to East
West relations, to impel Russian foreign policy decidedly not to our liking.
And, last but not least, it may make it much more difficult , if not impossible,
to secure the Russian Duma’s ratification of the Start II agreement and to
achieve further reduction of nuclear weaponry. It is of course unfortunate that
Russia should be con-fronted with such a challenge at a time when its executive
power is in a state of high uncertainty and near-paralysis. And it is double
unfortunate considering the total lack of any necessity for this move.(5)
George Kennan’s political
realism and responsibility for the future of the international world order
parallels the German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel’s conclusion that European
security cannot be created in confrontation with Russia.
Unfortunately the American foreign policy in the period after 1991 has not been
based on political realism but on geopolitical expansionism compared in scope
with the US expansion-ism after the end of the W.W.II. The question of expansion
of NATO is “The struggle for mastery in Europe”(6), points General William
E. Odon in his study NATO Expansion: The Unifinished Business in Post Gold War
Europe , the last chapter of which is being played now.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw pact was not followed by the
logical dissolution of the other Cold War military alliance NATO. Quite to the
contrary: Washing-ton embarked on a new global geopolitical expansionism using
NATO as the foremost instrument of extending its world wide “open door”
empire and the dynamic and ideology of that expansionism predominates the post
1991 period.
Beginning in 1991 the ideological drive of the United States was directed toward
the goal of “socialization of larger policy community’s a priory faith that
NATO is the only global ‘security’” framework which is bound to subsume
the vast space of the created geopolitical vacuum in Eastern Europe and parts of
the former Soviet Union. Pentagon’s Defense Planning Guidance from 1991,
mirroring the geopolitical objectives of the main Cold War document , NSC-68,
outlined the paramount geopolitical objective of the United States: control of
all geopolitical areas —Japan, Western Europe, former Soviet Union—the
consolidation and/or mobilization of which could lead to a competition with the
United States. The ultimate goal was American domination over the entire
landmass of Eurasia. The expansion of NATO to include not only the ex- Warsaw
Pact states but also republics of the former Soviet Union, was the strategy
chosen in furtherance of that goal. “Expansion of NATO” was the geopolitical
code and the paramount paradigm of American dominion over the entire Eurasia.
Countering the American expansionist ideology by Russia resulted in a clash of
incompatible paradigms. Russian initiatives, based on entirely different
paradigm, which emphasized the sovereign equality of countries and envisioned
the anchor of security in Europe in revitalized CSCE, which would supersede
NATO, lead to a frontal confrontation with the American paradigm- the domination
of both Western and Eastern Europe by the United States through the military
instrument of American hegemony- NATO.
Across the political spectrum in the US. the support for American expansionism,
epitomized by the expansion of NATO, has been strong. Resorting to old
imperialist vocabulary Henry A. Kissinger exclaimed : now is the opportune
moment , when Russia is weak, to extend American “protection” (sic) to
potential targets.(7)
Jeane Kirkpatrick at the conservative American Enterprise Institute , Morton
Abramowitz, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
Zbigniew Brzezinski , the former National Security Adviser Anthony Lake and the
Assistant Secretary of State Strobe Talbot have emphasized that NATO is the
anchor of American influence (an euphemism for hegemony) in Europe and a
guaranty for permanence of the regime of preponderance of power and “open
door” expansionism. Brzezinski went so far as to bluntly state in the
influential magazine Foreign Affairs that American hegemony in Europe is
axiomatic.(8) Thus the true roll of NATO is to serve as a pillar for that axiom
crushing all potential anti-hegemonic forces. “United States is the world’s
policeman, owing to its unique ability to project power” conclude the RAND
analysts David Gompert and Richard Kugler. As the only nation able to project
mili-tary power United States has monopolized the use of force and that monopoly
rests on a “NATO power projection capability”.
The evolution of American
expansionism
Unilateralism has been historically the foreign policy orientation of the United
States, either from a position of preponderance of power or aiming at
preponderance of power. Following that historical pattern, the American
expansionism after the dissolution of the Soviet Union has produced a new
strategic concept of world domination , that emphasizes, in addition to largely
rhetorical and ideological to the point of orthodox theology assertions of
NATO’s roll as “European pillar” , a vehicle of “open door” policy and
anchor of the New World Order, creation of quick-reaction forces and two
political military initiatives to extend the Alliance’s “security”
umbrella as far as the Urals. This new strategic concept is not only a dramatic
expansion of the number and nature of conflicts in which NATO may be involved
but also presupposes a quick , blitzkrieg-like subsumption of a vast new
geopolitical space- Balkans, Eastern Europe , Caucasus and other parts of the
former Soviet Union, subordination of international institutions under NATO, as
the war in Yugoslavia has shown, and perversion of the pre-existing
international law into quasi-legal norms serving the American expansionism.
Beginning with the 1990 NATO summit meeting in London , the 1991 summit in Rome
and the Pentagon’s Defense Planning Guidance of the same year, a doctrinal
“new strategic concept” was formed. The American political scientist
Jonathan Clark calls that concept “battle plans” or American war aims under
the guise of a New World Order. (Jonathan G. Clarke NATO in Eastern Europe in
Ted Galen Carpenter (ed.) The Future of NATO, Frank Gass, Lon-don 1995)
The “battle plan” was a blatant statement of expansionist intent,
dramatically expanding the geographical scope of NATO. The underlying philosophy
of this statement is that “secu-rity interests “ of the United States are
inseparably linked not only with both Western and Eastern Europe but also with
the Baltic countries and other former Soviet republics. Using the ideological
clichés of the political vocabulary of the Monroe Doctrine, disguising
expansionism as “security” or “defense”, it in many respects can be seen
as analogous to the Truman Doctrine in the past. For the purposes of American
grand expansionist design the 1994 NATO Brussels declaration defines Europe
“as comprising the whole CSCE membership and, therefore including not only the
Baltic countries and Ukraine but also the former Soviet Central Asian and Trans-caucasian
republics.”
The Brussels declaration stated that “NATO increasingly will be called upon to
under-take missions in addition to the traditional and fundamental task of
collective defense of its members, which remains a core function.” “Missions
“ was defined as military operations utilizing rapid response military forces.
Combined Joint Task Forces (CJTF) were created to provide rapid military
intervention capabilities. President Clinton’s Presidential Directive 13
outlined the planned interventions in the future in all Europe to the Urals,
envisioning deployment of NATO forces from the Atlantic ocean to the Ural
mountains. The Presidential Directive 13 was conceived as operationalization of
the American war aims. Amplifying the Directive 13 William Pfaff, writing in
Foreign Affairs in 1993, called for NATO interventions in Eastern, East-Central,
and Balkan Europe and envisioned NATO forces in the Baltic republics.
The formation of North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) was NATO’s first
organizational attempt to incorporate the former republics of the Soviet Union
and the ex-Warsaw Pact countries into the sphere of American domination.
Announced at the Rome summit meeting of the North Atlantic Council in November
1991 it went on to a mission to fill the strategic vacuum created by the
collapse of the Soviet Union..... At the end of 1991 NATO made a decision to
extend NACC membership to all former Soviet republics. Armenia, Azerbaijan and
Georgia were of special concern. During 1993 NATO actively participated in the
ongoing dismembering of Yugoslavia and destruction of the world order based on
and guaranteed by the He
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