Thursday, November 8, 2012

Foundations of geopolitics and how it relates to Georgia


People often think of geopolitics as something complicated and sometimes even mystical. In reality it is something very simple and intuitive.

In the essence, the geopolitics states, that if two countries are not separated by geographic barriers, their relationships will be tense at best. A good example would be India and Pakistan, which have very complicated relationships with each other, yet have no problems with any other country. This happened because they are isolated from the rest of the world by the Indian Ocean and the Himalayas. The lack of geographic barriers makes a military aggression possible, and whatever is possible, will happen at some point in time - as the saying goes, if there is a rifle on the wall in the first act of the play it will fire in the fourth. One could argue everything else in geopolitics can be derived from this rule.

Let’s see where this simple rule takes us in analyzing such a geopolitically interesting country as Israel. Israel is small country with geographically well defined borders. To the west it borders with the Mediterranean, to the south and east it has deserts. There is a narrow corridor near Golan Heights, from which an invader could enter. One could recall Mount Megiddo, from which the word Armageddon originates, is in there as well, making the whole area the place of the last stand. In this sense, Israel is quite safe. The problem for Israel is that it is a very small country surrounded by much bigger neighbors, be it Egypt, Mesopotamia or Anatolia. Those neighbors, or a major foreign power like Roman Empire, could overwhelm Israel, despite its geographic advantage. Because of all of the above, Israel has managed to fend off much larger invaders but it has also been defeated by an overwhelming power.

So the more geographic barriers a country has, the safer it is, everything else being equal. The safest case is, of course, if geography defends it from all sides. That is, if you are Great Britain, you are quite safe. If you are the Roman Empire, you occupy a peninsula, but Alps defend you from the north, so you are in good shape again. This is a blessing, because you are getting security basically for free and don't need to support large armies. This means you can use your resources to develop economically. Later you can support a professional army and use it to project power far from home. This is basically what a sea power is like. The opposite is the land power which does not have natural barriers and are prone to invasion. These need to have a large, usually conscripted army and usually are less advanced than sea powers.

Let's see how this relates to Georgia. Georgia is obviously not a sea power, but to its advantage it has clearly defined and easily defensible borders (here I am including currently occupied regions). The Great Caucasus ridge is virtually impassable for the invading army - Russian army passed it with Georgia's permission in 1801 and they never left since then., To the west it has Black Sea. Armenia and Azerbaijan do not pose a military threat and Iran does not border Georgia directly.Turkey does border Georgia, but it would be hard and costly to try to occupy Georgia from southwest with questionable benefits. Another geopolitical advantage Georgia has is that, for all of its neighbors (except Russia), friendship with Georgia serves their national interests better than hostility with Georgia, so unless Georgia threatens their core national interests, it can be quite safe.

To summarize, Georgia's Geopolitical imperative is to control all of its territory. As long as Abkhazia and Tskhinvali region are outside of Georgia's control, Georgia is not a viable state, in which case discussing geopolitics makes no sense. Once Georgia regains control of those lands, threat from Russia will become almost non-existent. It will go down to complete zero if there are other sovereign entities between Georgia and Russia. Threat from Iran will become real if Iran dominates, or outright annexes Armenia or Azerbaijan. Threat from Turkey will emerge if Georgia itself threatens some of Turkey's core interests. These are the threats that Georgia should be monitoring and acting accordingly.

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