The fourth and last root of Neo-Eurasianism – essential for contextualizing the scope of this study – is the misuse of geopolitical concepts. This subsection makes a contribution to strengthening the characterization of Neo-Eurasianism as ideology. Although Dugin claimed to be scientifically objective in his lectures at university, he dismissed the pos-itivist approach and the scientific method as such (Dugin, 2011). Naturally, this also affected how Dugin dealt with the tools of geopolitical studies, as will be demonstrated.
31 “…absolute revolt – spiritual (traditionalist) and social (socialist)” (Dugin, 2011). Mystic approaches or objectives are incompatible with a scientific geopolitical study.
32 “…our common victory over the Beast, american-atlantist-liberal-globalist-capitalist-Post-Modern Beast” (Dugin, 2011).
33 A note on the Revolutionary Mentality seems to be in order to close this topic. As stated elsewhere (Morgado, 2017, p. 305), in explaining Carvalho’s formulation the Revolutionary Mentality is characterized by: (a) a radical belief that an ideal better world is possible (radical transformation of the society); (b) “a mechanism of retroactive justification” (inversion of the notion of time); and (c) duplicity or multiplicity of justifications and tacticsfor the concentration of power in order to get to that “better world” (no limits on political action).
Dugin traced the origin of the modern Russian school of geopolitics to the 1980s (2014a, p. 24). Still, the “school” (i.e. Neo-Eurasianism) – with its roots in “the Slav-ophiles, Eurasianists…” among other mentioned influences – was truly established only after 1991 (Dugin, 2015, pp. 84-85). This means after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In fact, it is believed that the simultaneity of these events was not a coinci-dence. In this way, it was not a coincidence either that Dugin compared the origins of the Russian School of Geopolitics with the German School of Geopolitics, both having appeared as reactions to the power contractions of their states, as politically engaged, and as violating Aristotle’s dualism between the observer and the agent.
Thus, the premise that Dugin does not understand geopolitical studies as a scientific approach is truly convincing.
Although one of Dugin’s geopolitical benchmarks is that Russian geopolitics is impossible without the study of Russian society, Russian government, and Russian territory (Dugin, 2015, p. 1) (these are de facto geopolitical factors), the conflicting evidence that all geopolitical concepts were imported from the West remains.34 The same West that Dugin claims to resist. Despite Dugin trying to link Neo-Eurasianism to classical Eurasianism as much as possible, the truth is that Neo-Eurasianism is the Russian product (in the Russian philosophical worldview) more influenced than per-haps anything else by Western ideas – with perper-haps the exception of Petr Chaadaev.
From the perspective of a real scientific study, this does not constitute a problem, as science has a universal methodology (which Dugin paradoxically denies). The prob-lem lies, once again, with ideological and strategic directives that distort science for political and military purposes. In this context, Dugin has used the following geopo-litical concepts and ideas: (1) Heartland; (2) Thalassopolitics and Telluropolitics (i.e.
a “clash of Sea vs. Land”), and (3) Pan-Regions and Civilizations. The study will now address those three geopolitical concepts and subjects.
Mackinder’s Heartland concept is the pivotal concept in a theory that articulates a clash between “Land” on the one side and the “Sea” on the other (Mackinder, 1904).
Looking at history through the lens of geography, Mackinder divided World History into three epochs – (i) Pre-Colombian; (ii) Colombian; and, (iii) Post-Colombian – and sustained that the “Geographical Pivot of History” or “Pivot Area” (later named
“Heartland”) – an area impossible to access from the sea – is core to understanding the World’s power dynamics.35
34 “We can accept them [Western geopolitical concepts] unreservedly” (Dugin, 2015, p.3).
35 Ecce Mackinder’s famous aphorism (Mackinder, 1919, p. 194):
“Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;
Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island (Eurasia);
Who rules the World-Island controls the World.”
Map 1: Mackinder’s Heartland
(Source: Mackinder, 1904, p. 435)
Dugin grasped that these formulations are extremely useful and, consequently, that they must be taken as the common ground of Russian applied geopolitics Therefore, Dugin established that Russia is the Heartland, Russia is a tellurocracy; i.e. a “Civili-zation of Land.”36
As Mackinder was a representative of the sea power of that time – the British Em-pire – that was concerned with land power hegemony, Mackinder expressed the neces-sity of creating a cordon sanitaire, separating Germany from Russia – thus encourag-ing a proliferation of states from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. After World War I, that proliferation of Eastern European states was achieved, appearing on the map as the mentioned buffer zone between communist Russia and Weimar Germany.37 Dugin had to invert the prescriptions – needless to state – since the ideological objectives were now Russian and not British. Yet Mackinder never offered a plan for World dom-ination, as Dugin did. Mackinder only looked, in extremis, to contain a Land power from becoming a Sea power too.38 While comparing this statement:
Pour nous l’Heartland, la “Terre du Milieu,” c’est le cœur de notre Empire, le centre de notre Grande Nation, le bloc continental Eurasiatique qui s’étend de l’at-lantique au pacifique. (Douguine, 2006, p. 7) and Maps 2 and 1, one may infer that
36 “…to acknowledge the essence of Russian history in the tellurocracy. The Russia is the Heartland, so Geopolitics-2 is the Russian cause. Thus, were laid the foundations of modern neo-Eurasianism” stated Dugin (2012).
An interesting topic of research is investigating how this assumption relates to the empirical evidence of Russian interest in the Arctic Ocean, and Russian naval doctrine in general.
37 That buffer zone disappeared with the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
38 That was the point of the Theory of Midland Ocean, a colligation of states [NATO] aimed at containing the continental [Soviet] bloc.
Dugin’s ideological goals distort the borders of Mackinder’s Heartland, revealing the clear expansionist purposes of Neo-Eurasianism.
Map 2: Dugin’s Heartland
(Source: Дугин 2000, p. 17).
On this level, if Mackinder correctly identified the problematic objective of the Land power at stake constituting an extensive coastline and consequently becoming a Sea power too, ergo, the Russian geopolitical continuity of “expanding” to obtain access to warm seas is a problem to be analyzed. For example, Castex devoted all Part V of his Tome V to this problem: to the Russian struggle to get access to warm seas, identifying the geographical directions of that objective: the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, through Persia, through India, and to the Far East (Castex, 1935, pp. 555-732). At this point, one is faced with a deep contradiction: if the Land power seeks to become Sea power, is it not logically compulsory that the clash Land versus Sea is provisory only, meaning that the clash needs necessarily to disappear at the moment that Land power becomes a Sea power as well?
A second set of concepts that Dugin takes from classical geopolitics to elaborate his ideas is the mentioned opposition between Land and Sea, between telluropolitics and thalassopolitics. In fact, one cannot understand Neo-Eurasianism if one ignores the confrontation between maritime and territorial power as a transversal element of the entire proposal of Dugin. As mentioned above, after identifying Russia with Telluro-cracy and with the Heartland, Dugin moved to another premise: “…Russia is doomed conflict with the civilization of the Sea…” to (Dugin, 2015, p. 10).
The “civilization of the Sea” means the U.S.A. and its allies. Dugin distorted Mack-inder, moving from an already controversial Land versus Sea opposition as “geopo-litical dynamics” to drawing an incompatibility among land and sea “civilizations”
(Dugin, 2014b, p. 120). Apart from the fact that this approach overflows with deter-minism; and apart from the fact that all these arguments have ideological purposes, the approach itself is sometimes beyond logic and rationality. For example, Dugin’s strange interpretations of history based on the clash Land vs. Sea (Dugin, 2019). The Manichean dualism Land vs. Sea is used by Dugin to divide everything: geopoli-tics, political systems, and military alliances stricto sensu, societies and nations, even religions, as mentioned. Dugin took a hypothesis of looking at geography through history, made it a universal truth, and then forced any aspect of reality to fit into that dualism. Dugin went as far as calling that dualism “… the main geopolitical law…”
(Dugin, 2012).
Insisting on Mackinder’s Land versus Sea opposition, Dugin made his argument labeling the West and the U.S.A. “thalassocracy,” “Atlantists” (“unipolarity-globali-zation-financial oligarchy-modernization-capitalism”), and Eurasia, represented by Russia and China, as “tellurocracy” (militarism-sovereignty of state-traditional so-ciety[crypto-socialism]). While debating with Carvalho, Dugin had to react to Car-valho’s hypothesis of a third globalist project identified as the Islamic bloc. In geo-graphical terms, that globalist project would fit in Spykman’s Rimland – “…from the Maghreb through the Middle East to […] Central Asia and further to Islamic societies of the Pacific.” To adapt this new element raised by Carvalho to his dualism, Dugin stated that the Islamic bloc tends to incline towards Russia and China (Dugin, 2011).
The conclusion is that Dugin’s dualism always needed to prevail. Nonetheless, that idea of Islamic inclination towards Russia and China is extremely interesting taking into account (i) Carvalho’s three globalist projects (Morgado, 2017), and (ii) the events of the Arab Spring, with the clear-cut efforts of President Obama’s administration to destabilize and radicalize the area, promoting regimes and governments to oppose the U.S.A. and the West (e.g. Libya). Within the intricacies of Dugin’s confusing ar-guments, the concept of Rimland becomes merely instrumental, while it seems that it should be the first line of importance. Without the Rimland concept, the explanation of (a) Russia’s geopolitical continuity through obtaining access to open oceans, (b) the traditional interest of Russia in Constantinople (Castex, 1935, p. 144-145), (c) the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, and (d) the events in eastern Ukraine, for example, remain incomplete.
In the mentioned group of geopolitical concepts and ideas, the third topic received notorious influence from both Haushofer and Huntington. Pan-regions – as well as the concept of Groβlebensformen – were developed within the German School of Geopoli-tics. Dugin recaptured them with the “four great spaces” conception. However, perhaps the main prescription from Haushofer that Dugin seized for his purposes was an alliance between Germany and Russia, which not only eradicates Mackinder’s buffer zone in Eastern Europe but also makes the German Drang nach Osten run up until its limits,
while joining the borders of the Russian lands. Concerning the notion of Groβlebens-formen, Dugin contended: “Geopolitically, Russia is something more than the Russian Federation in its current administrative borders [sic]” (Dugin, 2015, p. 11).
Consequently, it is not only the imperialistic goal of pursuing the inclusion of CIS countries that is perfectly identifiable – once more, expansionism connected to the traditional idea of Imperial Russia – but this purpose is also covered by the use of some aspects of Huntington’s thesis (2011).39 Some aspects only indeed, because while the concept of “civilization” – great spaces with common cultural and religious bonds – serves Dugin, Western Civilization, as Huntington mapped it, would need to be bro-ken up in Dugin’s project by separating Europe, or at least part of Europe (and Latin America) from North America. Dugin works to achieve that separation. Nevertheless, it is not simple to achieve this goal. The study of civilizations reveals that great po-litical transformations, in terms of structure, do not happen by chance, and they are preceded by values and a certain culture. Examples of this can be found in the Empire of Alexander the Great and ancient Greek philosophy; in Feudalism and Papal su-premacy; the solidification of European monarchies and the Renaissance movement;
the French Revolution and le siècle des Lumières, etc.
Moving groups, peoples, and civilizations is part of the Neo-Eurasianist programed modalities of action. If Huntington predicted correctly that after the collapse of the Soviet Union Islam would become the biggest obstacle to the West, Huntington got it right in the sense that Dugin also wants to use Islam against the West. Russian-Iranian relations (with regard to the balance of powers and oil circulation in the region) are particularly significant in this maneuver.
In linking “civilization” with tellurocracy versus thalassocracy, Dugin has per-ceived Sea and Land as “geopolitical subjects” projected respectively on the West and the East. West and East are less seen as geographical locations than as “blocs of civilizations.” In this way, whereas to Dugin Land is hierarchy, order, the masculine principle, tradition; the West is chaos, dissolution, the feminine principle, and con-temporaneity (Douguine, 2006, pp.172-173). Land is the civilization of socialism and the Sea is the civilization of liberalism (Douguine, 2006, p. 176).
39 Brill paid significant attention to Huntington under a perspective of geocultural analysis, to conclude with criticism about monocausal analysis (Brill, 2008, p. 307).
Map 3: The West as target by Dugin
(Source:Дугин 2000, p. 217).
It seems important to repeat that this kind of generalization is not only abusive, at the least, but also becomes false. Dugin has put the focus on geography, on the geographical centrality of the Eurasian space, escaping from historical examination.
In fact, while examining the history of Russia, either there was no “state history” (cf.
Chaadaev), or there was loads of blood and piles of (millions of) murdered people (cf.
Soviet History). To Dugin, it is better to ignore both of these for ideological reasons connected and committed to the success of the political project. Hence, Neo-Eura-sianism represents an example of geography becoming an instrument of power in the worse forms denounced by critical geopolitics and, therefore, is something that neoclassical geopolitics must definitely exclude.