Europe’s new geopolitics following the Russian presence in Syria and Iraq

After the shooting down of the Russian Su-24 aircraft by a Turkish F-16 fighter, some analysts are envisaging a future scenario of waged war.

Nothing can be ruled out, but the possibility of a third world war – visible and bitterly fought with real weapons – for Mesopotamia, the area in which, however, the Eurasian identity was born, is not fully rational.

What is certain is that the Russian Su-24M aircraft was shot down at 10.24′ Moscow time. There is no evidence of the ritual communications between two countries which are not at war with each other, as always happens in these cases and, however, the NATO rules are strict on these issues. Russia stated that its plane was shot down four kilometers from the Turkish border.

Moreover, we do not know yet what happened to the Russian helicopter Mi-8AMTSh which had rushed to the rescue of the Su-24 pilots and was attacked, presumably not only by the “Turkmen” operating on the edge of the Latakia region, with the final destruction of the helicopter with US-made TOW anti-tank missiles, which probably ended up there as a result of some triangular operation between the Gulf region, Cyprus and Turkey.

The Russian Federation has already deployed several S-400 missiles for air defence in al-Humaymin, on Syrian territory and, in all likelihood, they will be the first military asset against a Turkish attack, unless Turkey does not organize a “children’ crusade” of EU countries still eager – after the terrible massacre in Paris – to “bring democracy” to Syria.

The problem does not lie in the point where the Fencer – as NATO calls the Sukhoi 24 – fell down, but in the political logic underlying this fact.

Now, with their documents, the news agencies in Moscow demonstrate that the low-flying Russian bomber was downed within the Syrian borders, but again this is not the core of the issue: Turkey, the largest Islamic country of Eurasia, the second NATO military power after the United States, wants to make the Atlantic Alliance fall into in the Syrian-Iraqi chaos, with the results we can easily imagine.

So far the United States have supported Turkey which, however, should be the NATO future geopolitical pivot against Russia.

The United States look to China and, in the meantime, surround the Russian Federation with advanced electronic weapons systems.

Although probably not fully aware of this, the United States want to separate the Eurasian peninsula from the central Sino-Russian system – a new edition of the Atlantic system, but without a US military presence on site.

And even without those guarantees which enabled the Cold War to full enter into the “thirty glorious years”, as the economist Jean Fourastié called the years from 1943 to August 15, 1971, the date marking the end of the Bretton Woods system, based on fixed parities between the US dollar and the currencies of Europe, Canada, USA and Japan.

What remains of the ”Invertebrate Europe” today, in a context in which the US walk out and, indeed, design the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) – a complex and still secret commercial treaty – the Middle East is on fire and the Maghreb region is becoming – after the Libyan disaster – a gun aimed at Italy and Europe which, however, does not realize it?

Nothing, but it is a nothing deprived of any strategic rationality.

Nevertheless we may think of common intents between the European Union, Russia, China and some Central Asian countries.

Nothing is ever certain in today’s intelligence war between Turkey and Russia, but some consequences are easy to infer from the context of the operations over the skies of Latakia: 1) Turkey wants to internationalize the Syrian-Iraqi conflict, by possibly involving the Jewish State.

The latter, however, would have no place where to stay. Certainly it cannot side with the Russian-Syrian-Iranian coalition – the collection of its fiercest and most traditional enemies, except for Russia.

2) The State of Israel cannot even side with the Coalition of “rebels” ranging from the Jabat al Nusra Front – the Qaedist branch in Syria – to the “Division 30” trained by the United States and then immediately included in the Caliphate’s forces, or with the United States which sometimes clash with the sword jihad and sometimes help it against Bashar El Assad.

Without a project, without a strategic idea, without real allies and, however, without guarantees for the Jewish State – the only Middle East centre we can trust.

Everyone wages and fights its war on the same ground, without a serious geopolitical goal: the United States want to oust the Syrian “tyrant” Assad – obviously the fall of the “tyrant” Saddam Hussein did not teach anything to them, not to mention the fight against the other “tyrant”, Muammar Al Minyar El Gaddafi, which ended as we all know. Everybody knows that in the Middle East tyrants do not exist.

It seems that the United States still want to blindly apply – in the Arab-Islamic world – the same splitting up theory that Zbigniew Brzezinski had managed effectively in the Balkans’ case.

Brzezinski, one of the most brilliant foreign policy analysts of the last decades, was born in Poland and had the same anti-Communist ideas of General Pilsudski, who thought that revolutionary Russia could be destroyed by breaking it up by ethnic lines and groups.

Today, in the market-world and in global finance, such projects are bound to end quickly: the small countries are intended to be either self-sufficient – and then survive – or, when this does not happen, Mozart’s famous “stone guest” – namely organized crime – comes and leads them to death.

Hence if we do not think in a radically new way, it will be impossible to redesign the world order effectively.

Moreover, with its operations in Syria, the Russian Federation has sealed the geopolitical space of the Eurasian peninsula.

3) Russia has closed the European geopolitical space from both directions.

Along the border of the former Warsaw Pact, Russia is sufficiently armed to be able to deter an increasingly weak and confused NATO.

In the Middle East, with its presence in Syria, Russia can easily and safely negotiate a peaceful management and settlement of the dispute with Ukraine and still close the East to the European Union.

This is exactly what it needs, with President Xi Jinping’s new Chinese policy of the “new Silk Road”.

The United States are now clearly withdrawing, thus leaving Mesopotamia to the clash between Shiites and Sunnis, with a European Union which, recklessly, is already full of Islamic people who can be often radicalized or full of “travel companions.”

The solution could be a Eurasian pact with Russia.

Obviously Eternal Russia targets the Eurasian peninsula presenting itself as a “Third Rome”, according to the Eurasian fascinating theories by Alexander Dugin, a close and trusted advisor to President Vladimir Putin. Nevertheless, Putin must be reminded of the fact that two great European politicians (dare I say strategists) spoke – before anyone else – of the union between the peninsula and the Heartland.

One was Pope John XXIII, whose experience as a diplomat and political theorist of the Vatican foreign policy in terrible years and during the Cold War is scarcely recalled.

Pope John XXIII spoke of “Europe from the Mediterranean to the Urals”, while the other supreme statesman planned to unite “Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals”.

It was not a threat to the unity of the USSR, as only a naïve interpretation could lead us to assume.

It was the idea of a continuum of civilizations spanning from the First to the Third Rome, possibly through the second, Constantinople, which regards many nations’ deep interest.

Russia of European ethnicity cannot be part of peninsular Europe, while the large steppes dominated in the past by the “Golden Horde” must still be exploited and managed with the wisdom of the Roman Empire.

Without this union, the Islamic world will engulf us, regardless of the US presence in the Euro-peninsular region.

Giancarlo Elia Valori
Giancarlo Elia Valori
Advisory Board Co-chair Honoris Causa Professor Giancarlo Elia Valori is a world-renowned Italian economist and international relations expert, who serves as the President of International Studies and Geopolitics Foundation, International World Group, Global Strategic Business In 1995, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem dedicated the Giancarlo Elia Valori chair of Peace and Regional Cooperation. Prof. Valori also holds chairs for Peace Studies at Yeshiva University in New York and at Peking University in China. Among his many honors from countries and institutions around the world, Prof. Valori is an Honorable of the Academy of Science at the Institute of France, Knight Grand Cross, Knight of Labor of the Italian Republic, Honorary Professor at the Peking University