AS WEST LEAVES THE FRONT LINE, ‘THE HORRORS OF HISTORY’ RETURN
World Tribune
March 11 2014
Special to WorldTribune.com
By Alexander Maistrovoy
The West has left the forefront of history which is repeating itself
in force and with dispatch throughout Eurasia.
While condemning the actions of Russia in Crimea, John Kerry said
that the time of empires is long gone; we live in the “21st century,
and not in the 19th century”. After speaking with Putin, Angela Merkel
told him that he had lost touch with reality and that he lives “in
another dimension”.
In my opinion the time of empires has not passed and Putin is in full
harmony with reality.
The United States, and with their assistance a significant part of
Europe have created an isolated civilization: extremely successful
and advanced, but isolated.
Geography played a great role because the U.S. and Britain are island
states and mainland Europe is a peninsula. From a cultural stand point,
this civilization has been based on ancient models of Greek democracy
and Roman law; ethnically – on a relatively homogeneous population
in a very limited space.
For millennia the giant Eurasia had existed in a completely different
position that has never changed.
Mircea Eliade wrote with bitterness that his people, Romanians, like
other Balkan peoples consistently lived in fear of the “The Horror
of History”. It’s difficult to create and develop sustainable forms
of democracy when you live in perpetual state of hordes, intrusions
and tyrannies. Meanwhile, leading Eurasian powers – Russia, China,
Turkey and Iran – were formed in exactly such an ominous environment:
endless open borders, limitless vastness, mixed, diverse and often
hostile to each other and its governments population dispersed over
an infinite space.
Only through harsh centralized power was it possible to maintain
such population, these areas and these boundaries. This was a natural
prerequisite for creation of the empires.
Every Eurasian state – from Persian’s Achaemenids and ancient China
(Tianxia) to Ottomans and Tsarist Russia to the Soviet Union, Communist
China and Islamic republic of Iran – desired to expand its boundaries
to resist its rivals and hostile, spontaneously emerging entities
(such the Mongols, The Mughal Empire, the state of Tamerlane), to
keep rebellious population and augment the resources.
In the 19th-20th centuries these common threats were supplemented by
the expansion of the West: The British Empire and the United States.
No one, not even modern powers, had forgotten the “surprises”, in
the face of nomads or Islamist gangs, by constantly bustling steppe
spreading from the Caspian Sea to Mongolia.
The ruling power could not afford to discuss issues of law and justice
in a state of permanent external hazards, especially when a significant
part of population looked forward to enemy invasion. Any resistance
had to be crushed by an iron fist and troops mobilized as promptly
and as quickly as possible to launch an attack on the enemy on his
own territory. Such a tactic, with different degrees of success, was
used equally by Sassanids and Sultans after the Ottoman defeat at the
Battle of Ankara; the empire of the Great Ming in China and Shahanshah
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi after the invasion of Iran during World War II
by Soviet and British forces; Stalin, Chinese Communists and now Putin.
Democracy in such circumstances was not just impossible – it was fatal.
It was perfectly clear to Montesquieu when he wrote that democratic
societies are possible only in relatively small isolated ethnic
homogeneous communities that existed in Europe, and utterly impossible
and implausible in vast spaces of the continent with restless masses
and heterogeneous populations.
Modern passionate supporters of democracy have completely forgotten
this although the situation has not changed a bit. Russia, China,
Turkey and Iran are huge conglomerates with diverse populations,
bordering with other aggressive and powerful nations. As has occurred
many times before – lightly loosened reins would cause a state to
collapse: during the unrest in Iran in the late 18th century; in Turkey
in the early 20th century; in China in the era of the Three Kingdoms
(AD 220-280), during the Boxer Uprising and other periods of unrest
in the late 19th – early 20th century; in the course of the Russian
Provisional Government in 1917 and after the dismantling of the USSR.
Rigid ruling demanded clear game rules. In order to survive, a
full submission of peoples of empires to the regime was required
– otherwise, a catastrophe would incur upon them similar to the
one happened to the Armenians and Assyrians in Turkey, Chechens,
Circassians and Tatars in Russia.
Small independent entities immediately become the object of
confrontation: obviously, not being a part of one Empire, they
automatically become part of another and subsequently a place of
arms for further offenses. This happened with the Kurds, occupied
by the Turks, Iran and Iraq; with Tibet, which lies on the border of
India and China; with Caucasus, which divide the Ottoman and Russian
empires; with South Azerbaijan, which occupied by Russians, Turks,
Soviet Union and eventually by Iran in 1946, and with Armenia.
This is exactly what’s happening now with Ukraine and especially
the Crimea peninsula with a massive Russian population and as a
strategically important base for Russia’s naval fleet in Sevastopol
which Russia wouldn’t give up to anyone – neither NATO, nor Turkey. A
land without an owner is doomed to become an enemy outpost and a
threat to the Empire.
These principles were, are, and will always be eternal for mainland
Eurasia. This is why, first of all, there will never be strong liberal
democracy, similar to the island civilizations, and secondly, fighting
for territory will never stop. It is the very essence of survival,
and not a whim of Putin, the Chinese Communists, the actual Turkish
rulers (no matter, army or Islamist) or the Iranian regime, either
Shah or ayatollahs.
The natural aspiration of Eurasian empires for expansion can only
be restrained vigorously. West fears any serious interference;
eternal mechanisms are at work, as in nature, with full force, and
any moralizing by Obama, Kerry, Merkel and Cameron becomes a reason
for mockery in Kremlin, Beijing and Teheran.
Ayatollahs, Communists in China and Islamists in Turkey are
carefully following the developments around Ukraine. They want to
see what actions the West will take next, in order to make their own
conclusions. They have all the reasons to believe that the West would
limit itself by verbal reprimand.
The West has voluntarily left the stage of History. So it is not
surprising that history returns bringing horror to world.