This was an amazing interview! Thank you so much, to both of you. Very enlightening. Daniel, you are brilliant! (and great questions Van) I am very surprised this doesn't have more reviews/comments, it should.
Ivan Krastev gave an important talk recently at the Munk School (watch it on UA-cam) about international order as a hall of mirrors. It's not directly about geopolitics but he breaks down Putin's logic in Ukraine which is essentially geopolitical. Krastev argues that Putin is not trying to recreate the USSR, but rather trying to recreate the Russian Empire. In the USSR, Russia was deliberately given inferior status among the other Soviet Republics, which (unlike Russia) all had their own Communist parties and their own governments. Post-imperial Russia had made a tradeoff to save its own power and primacy based on ethic Russian dominance rather than institutional dominance. Hence after 1989 the other former Soviet Republics had a much stronger basis of national identity formation than the Russian Federation, which never saw the redefinition of its borders as final. Yeltsin's intention was to break up the USSR as the only way to get rid of Gorbachev, and then to reunite Ukraine and Belarus as part of the Russian Federation. Gorbachev instead had a post-national vision in line with the new liberal world order, because his intention was to keep the Soviet Union intact and even join NATO, and in fact George Bush Sr. advised the Ukrainians not to separate from the USSR. So Putin's 2022 invasion of Ukraine was the culmination of 30 years of Russia trying to figure out what Russian national identity means today. Krastev argues that for Putin it means a return to the Russian Empire. As for Mackinder, wasn't his argument about a "world island" the keys to which were control of two geopolitical poles, the Atlantic and Pacific? This is what gave America its dominance after WWII, it now controlled both poles of the world island. Obviously, Russia and China are now the two powers threatening this control. On a related tangent, what role does geopolitics play in domestic politics? Biden gave his big "soul of the nation" speech against MAGA Republicans. One way to read Biden is as a mirror of Putin. Both feel like they have lost national territory to Nazis or "semi-fascists" as Biden called MAGA. American domestic politics is pretty much a geopolitical war, with two blue coasts, red heartland in the middle and "battleground states" dotting the continent. American politics is in many ways a mirror of Eastern Europe e.g. migration crises, the sense of national identity/territory that must be "taken back." Anyway, Ivan Krastev's speech is a goldmine of analysis for what's going on in Ukraine, starting with the triumph of identity politics over geopolitics e.g. the Cold War was about ideology politics that transcended geography (states were evil, people/countries were seen as good, even people in the USSR), but now ideological politics has been trumped by identity politics which is geopolitical in nature i.e. existentially concerned with borders and sovereignty. As Krastev discusses, after the Cold War, open borders were a sign of freedom in Eastern Europe, but as people started leaving Eastern Europe for the West, the closing of borders and minds became existential priorities in places like Poland and Hungary. Their perceived "problem" is not, as in liberal Germany or France or the USA, "invading immigrants." Their problem is now preserving ethnic homogeneity and keeping their own people inside their borders. This is key to Putin's war in Ukraine, it's partly a demographic panic as the Russian population has dwindled and reconquest of territory is seen as a geopolitical imperative in order to preserve Russia for ethnic Russians e.g. in Ukraine and Belarus.
This isn't to denigrate the video as a whole, but the 21st century is still prepubescent. You can't make claims about the book's importance within it so early
This was an amazing interview! Thank you so much, to both of you. Very enlightening.
Daniel, you are brilliant! (and great questions Van) I am very surprised this doesn't have more reviews/comments, it should.
Ivan Krastev gave an important talk recently at the Munk School (watch it on UA-cam) about international order as a hall of mirrors. It's not directly about geopolitics but he breaks down Putin's logic in Ukraine which is essentially geopolitical. Krastev argues that Putin is not trying to recreate the USSR, but rather trying to recreate the Russian Empire. In the USSR, Russia was deliberately given inferior status among the other Soviet Republics, which (unlike Russia) all had their own Communist parties and their own governments. Post-imperial Russia had made a tradeoff to save its own power and primacy based on ethic Russian dominance rather than institutional dominance. Hence after 1989 the other former Soviet Republics had a much stronger basis of national identity formation than the Russian Federation, which never saw the redefinition of its borders as final. Yeltsin's intention was to break up the USSR as the only way to get rid of Gorbachev, and then to reunite Ukraine and Belarus as part of the Russian Federation. Gorbachev instead had a post-national vision in line with the new liberal world order, because his intention was to keep the Soviet Union intact and even join NATO, and in fact George Bush Sr. advised the Ukrainians not to separate from the USSR. So Putin's 2022 invasion of Ukraine was the culmination of 30 years of Russia trying to figure out what Russian national identity means today. Krastev argues that for Putin it means a return to the Russian Empire. As for Mackinder, wasn't his argument about a "world island" the keys to which were control of two geopolitical poles, the Atlantic and Pacific? This is what gave America its dominance after WWII, it now controlled both poles of the world island. Obviously, Russia and China are now the two powers threatening this control. On a related tangent, what role does geopolitics play in domestic politics? Biden gave his big "soul of the nation" speech against MAGA Republicans. One way to read Biden is as a mirror of Putin. Both feel like they have lost national territory to Nazis or "semi-fascists" as Biden called MAGA. American domestic politics is pretty much a geopolitical war, with two blue coasts, red heartland in the middle and "battleground states" dotting the continent. American politics is in many ways a mirror of Eastern Europe e.g. migration crises, the sense of national identity/territory that must be "taken back." Anyway, Ivan Krastev's speech is a goldmine of analysis for what's going on in Ukraine, starting with the triumph of identity politics over geopolitics e.g. the Cold War was about ideology politics that transcended geography (states were evil, people/countries were seen as good, even people in the USSR), but now ideological politics has been trumped by identity politics which is geopolitical in nature i.e. existentially concerned with borders and sovereignty. As Krastev discusses, after the Cold War, open borders were a sign of freedom in Eastern Europe, but as people started leaving Eastern Europe for the West, the closing of borders and minds became existential priorities in places like Poland and Hungary. Their perceived "problem" is not, as in liberal Germany or France or the USA, "invading immigrants." Their problem is now preserving ethnic homogeneity and keeping their own people inside their borders. This is key to Putin's war in Ukraine, it's partly a demographic panic as the Russian population has dwindled and reconquest of territory is seen as a geopolitical imperative in order to preserve Russia for ethnic Russians e.g. in Ukraine and Belarus.
This isn't to denigrate the video as a whole, but the 21st century is still prepubescent. You can't make claims about the book's importance within it so early