So Angela Merkel said that Germany would take one million refugees and everyone thought ‘that woman is very compassionate,’ and perhaps she is, but when one looks at the decision geo-strategically one finds that there could be other motives behind her decision.
 
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Germany's Struggle
Since its unification in 1871 Germany has been engaged in a Geopolitical struggle with the other core European Powers: France, The United Kingdom and Russia. These four core powers, or empires as they were initially, have for the last 150 years been constantly engaged in the attempt to improve their positions vis-à-vis the others. The Austro-Hungarian Empire also used to be involved in this game, but it was torn apart following the First World War, a reminder of how deadly the game can be. Turkey, initially in the guise of the Ottoman Empire, was also a player in this game, but as they were almost always an ally of the Germans rather than a competitor I will put them on one side for now.
 
So, if we look at what impact Germany’s decision to take one million immigrants has had on its three traditional rivals we start to see the possibility that there might have been more reasons than altruism to recommend this course of action to Germany’s leader.
 

To begin with The United Kingdom.
Less than a month ago we had the dramatic vote for Britain to leave the European Union (EU). Immigration played a major role in that decision and the vote was close. It could certainly be argued that Germany’s sensationalised decision to accept a million refugees helped to convince Britons to choose to leave the European Union.

How does this act affect the comparative power of Britain vis-à-vis Germany?
On the British side of the equation there are many saying that Britain’s economy will suffer by the decision and that the country might fragment with Scotland and Northern Ireland splitting off. Certainly there is a chance of all of this, which would mean the virtual destruction of one of Germany’s tradition rivals. These doomsday predictions, however, may be mightily overstated. I, for one, can envisage Britain enhancing its influence in the world as a result of the Brexit. Whether or not the UK benefits from leaving the EU, though, there is no doubt that their leaving has left Germany in a stronger position within the European Union. Germany was already the strongest country within the European Union, but it could be challenged by Britain and France. With Britain out Germany’s power within the EU immediately grows.
 

What about France?
With Britain out of the EU the only other powerful country left in the EU other than Germany is its old rival; France.

What impact has Ms Merkel’s decision had on the relative strength of France vis-à-vis Germany?
Well, it could be argued that by accepting so many refugees Germany is being seen as a country that is sympathetic to Muslims and it could be argued that Germany has been cultivating this perception since accepting its first influx of Turkish immigrants through its ‘guest worker’ program back in the 60s. So how does this help Germany in its geopolitical game vis-à-vis the other European powers?
 
It should be noted that Germany, to this point, has not suffered from the mass slaughter Islamic terrorist attacks that have hit the UK and particularly France and with this grand gesture to further bolster Germany’s pro-Islamic credentials it could be expected that whatever increase in Islamic terrorism might occur following the decision its targets will be countries other than Germany. France for example is living under a state of emergency due to the frequency of mass casualty Islamic Terror attacks, so it could be argued that Merkel’s decision has contributed to shielding Germany from Islamic terrorist attacks while undermining the civil security of its rival France. Indeed, with the latest attack in Nice horrifying the French people, the chance of a National Front victory at the next election increases and that could lead to a Frexit. A situation that would leave Germany as the sole remaining power within the EU; a situation which would be something akin to Germany taking control of all of the minor countries of Europe; a massive geopolitical advantage to Germany if it should come to pass.

 
And now for the third rival; Russia.
Unlike the others Russia is not in the EU, but Merkel’s decision does have an indirect affect on Russia too. For the past 150 years Germany’s most reliable ally in containing Russia has been Turkey. Russia’s desire to gain control of the sea passage between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean poses an existential threat to the Turkish State and consequently Turkey, or the Ottoman empire as it was then, allied with Germany in the First World War and avoided joining the Allies against Germany in the Second World War until after the result was a forgone conclusion.
By accepting the one million refugees Germany took the pressure off its old ally Turkey, who was the main transit route for the refugees, and it thereby reaffirmed its bond of goodwill with a country that was at the time involved in a military standoff with Russia over the use of its air force in Syria.
 
So, in conclusion, it can be seen that by making her sensational announcement of accepting one million refugees Angela Merkel was taking a step which enhanced Germany’s geo-strategic position vis-à-vis all of its traditional rivals for power within Europe while at the same time appealing to all those who support ‘compassion politics’ both within the western world and abroad.
For those who doubt that the German chancellor and her advisors could have had anything but humanitarian concerns in mind when they made their decision, I would ask you to pose yourself the following questions:
“Was Angela Merkel aware that Britain was going to have a referendum on whether to leave the EU in the near future?”
“Was Angela Merkel aware that immigration would be a significant issue in that referendum?”
“Was Angela Merkel aware that her acceptance of one million, mostly Islamic refugees into the EU via Germany, from where they might later move to Britain or anywhere else they wanted, would be likely to strengthen Britain’s Leave campaign?”
I would posit that the answer to all of the above questions is “Yes.”
 
It should also be known that, tied in with its alliances with Turkey, Germany has a long history with the idea of using Islam as a weapon. In the first instance this was as a tool to be used against the colonial empires of Britain, France and Russia. On the outbreak of the First World War the Germans even established in Berlin a ‘Bureau of Jihad’ “to produce pan-Islamic propaganda to instigate revolts in French North Africa, Russian Central Asia, and, the jewel in the crown, British India with its 80 million muslims.”[1]
The German Legationsrat and friend of Kaiser Willhelm II who oversaw the establishment of this Bureau, Baron Max von Oppenheim, believed that “In the future Islam will play a much larger role…. [T]he striking power and demographic strength of Islamic lands will one day have a great significance for European states.”[2]
Given that its building of the Berlin to Bagdad railway and its support for the Ottoman Empire in its decay form some of the prouder narratives of German foreign policy over the last 150 years one might find it surprising if Ms Merkel’s advisors were not aware of this heritage. Indeed, one might even note that up until the end of the First World War Syria and Iraq were provinces of the Ottoman Empire, Germany’s erstwhile ally of the day. So in accepting the Syrian and Iraqi refugees one might even wonder if Ms Merkel was not in fact making a nod to Germany’s history and reaffirming an old bond of goodwill between her country and the peoples of that region.
 
In conclusion
For those who think that I might be drawing a very long bow in these speculations, I will concede that you might be right. It is the case that although one might have knowledge of enough facts to uncover the criminal in a detective novel it does not automatically follow that you will put the pieces together correctly to figure out what happened. Similarly, though Angela Merkel knew enough independent facts to forsee the effects of her decision upon her three main European rivals, it does not necessarily follow that she came to those realisations or that they were her primary reasons for acting.
Nonetheless, I think it has been a very enlightening exercise to analyse her action in terms of the effects it would have on Germany's geopolitical rivals.
 
 


[1] Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans, Penguin, 2016, p.48

[2] Oppenheim quoted by McMeekin, The Berlin-Bagdad Express, 27, 91 as cited in Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans, Penguin, 2016, p.48

Many people have spoken about Paris being an exceptional place for a whole lot of different reasons, but Paris is, at this point in history, exceptional for a geopolitical reason which I have not heard mentioned by anyone else. It strikes me that Paris is the only capital of the former Western European imperial powers that still retains its role as the most important city in that linguistic empire.

What I mean by this is best demonstrated by example.

The Portuguese, Spanish, English and French all created globe spanning empires that left large parts of the world speaking their respective languages. If we look at these linguistic empires today, though, we find that all of the old European capitals have now been super-ceded in power by one of their former colonies.

For example:
The Portuguese speaking world is now definitely led by Brazil rather than Portugal. No one could doubt that Brazil with its 180 million people has more sway in today’s world than tiny Portugal. Lisbon is no longer the centre of the Portuguese speaking world. That honour must go to either Brasilia, the capital of Brasil, or Sao Paulo the largest city of Brasil and one that boasts a population larger than the entire country of Portugal.

The English speaking world is also no longer led from its former colonial capital of London. Although London is certainly still a city of global significance, there is no doubt that the USA is the current leader of the English speaking world and that either Washington, its capital, or New York, its largest city, are the epicentres of power for the English speaking world.

In the Spanish speaking world the Megacity of Mexico City, presiding over a nation of 150 million people, now has more sway in the world than its former colonial master, Madrid. Admittedly, the power gap between Mexico City and Madrid is not as great as in our other two examples, but as Mexico can be expected to continue to increase its economic power through the century Mexico City will pull further ahead.

Compared with all of these examples of imperial European capitals being overtaken by colonial heirs Paris is exceptional. Not only is Paris still the most important city of a French speaking world that numbers 29 countries where French is an official national language, but there is no other city that even comes close.

As an aside, I am aware that some might ask what about the Dutch empire, isn’t Amsterdam still the biggest Dutch speaking city? My answer to that would be that although the Dutch did rule over a very extensive empire in the past, Dutch is no longer an official language of any of the countries which now occupy that space with the exception of the small country of Surinam and the even smaller island of Aruba, consequently the vast majority of Dutch speakers still live in Europe and that outside of Europe there is not much of a Dutch speaking world to speak of, certainly not on the scale of the legacy of the maritime empires mentioned above.

So, apart from being an interesting historical fact, what is the geopolitical significance of Paris still being the pre-eminent French speaking city?

The significance lies in the fact that a large part of the world still looks to France and Paris for much of its cultural imports. Many countries throughout Africa, the Pacific and other corners of the former French empire are watching French news channels, reading French magazines and following the moods and fashions of metropolitan France. This gives France a great deal of ‘soft power’ in these regions of the world. And, just as the influence of the USA does not come just from its superior military (hard power) but also from the fact that teenagers around the world are listening to American music, watching American movies, consuming American products and dreaming of immigrating, the influence of ‘soft power’ should not be under estimated. Because of the fact that France is still at the centre of the French speaking world the cultural output of Paris is still molding the values and aspirations of the citizens of many nations beyond its borders and that is a powerful force.
 
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As a footnote I am also aware that many will say that Moscow is still the capital of the Russian speaking world, and that is in many senses a vast empire. All of which is true, but Moscow is the centre of a land empire built by conquering neighbours and that is a different sort of empire to that established by the Western European Atlantic Powers.

The human quest for an identity is a very strong impulse.  The reasons for this impulse will not be discussed here, but the consequences of this impulse are very important for geopolitics.  People can have many identities.  They may identify strongly with their family, with their religion or with their occupation or hobby.  Many, however, identify strongly with a sense of being a member of a particular nation.

Many modern academics, particularly from the elites of western society, like to talk as though nationalism is a dying force in our increasingly post-modern world; and perhaps it is.  Waning or not, though, nationalism is still a very powerful force in our world and will continue to be so for as long as people continue to choose to identify themselves by their national ethnicity.

Given the continuing power of national identity in today’s world one can fairly reliably predict geopolitical strife wherever one finds national borders that are drawn in the wrong places.
 
So what is the problem if a border doesn’t exactly align with ethnic groupings; shouldn’t we all be ignoring national and cultural differences now anyway so that we can all live together in harmony?
This essentially is the ‘post-nationalist’ argument against any nationalist’s assertion that a border is in the wrong place.

In theory (and current western morality), they have a strong argument, but I would argue that in practice even someone who believes in the creation of a post-nationalist humanity in the future should be concerned about the placement of borders in the here and now. I say this because those countries which have gone furthest toward establishing a post-nationalist mentality amongst their citizens (by which I mean loyalty to a state apparatus rather than a particular ethnic grouping of people) tend to be those which have had the closest correlation between their state borders and ethnic borders. Here I will refer to Australia, USA, New Zealand and Canada as primary examples. These nations were by the early twentieth century, and often earlier, secure and happy within their borders. There were no large groups of Australians or Americans outside their respective countries’ borders wishing to be included, and likewise there were no significant groups of ‘other’ nationalities within their borders hoping to join with a rival, neighbouring state (certainly there were aboriginal groups in most of these countries which might not have identified with the dominant ‘nationality’ but they had no external national state that held their loyalty and in most cases their numbers were not enough to be significant either). Since the beginning of the twentieth century all of these nation states were happy and secure within their borders (the fact that most of their borders were sea-borders was certainly something which helped to bring about this relatively unique set of circumstances).

So, how do I justify my claim that these former British colonies have ‘gone furthest toward establishing a post-nationalist mentality amongst their citizens’? I base this claim on the fact that these countries have recently transitioned, or are in the processes of transitioning, from being a mono-cultural society to being a multi-cultural society. Certainly other multicultural states exist, but in the vast majority of others the various national groups have been present from the beginning of the state’s formation. These are generally federations or former empires where national groupings have either agreed to work together or been conquered by more powerful ethnicities. What is so remarkable about the countries I have highlighted is that in them we have examples of the dominant ethnic groups choosing to share their territory and power with large numbers of incoming/immigrating members of other national groups.
I would contend that it is no coincidence that these countries which have moved first toward a post-nationalist mindset are also ones in which the state borders have corresponded so concretely with their national/ethnic borders for the past one hundred years. It is only when a state has secure and correct borders that it can afford to begin giving primacy to citizen welfare and start devoting resources to the sort of social advancement agendas/movements which eventually lead via minority rights and multiculturalism to the post-nationalist mentality.

Why is this so?

This is so because one of the first priorities/instincts of any nation is the desire to collect all of its people together into one political entity. This desire is based in rationality not just sentimentality. To begin with, there is strength in unity; the larger the political unit is the better able it will be to defend itself. At the same time, any of the nation’s people that are left outside its borders are at risk of being subsumed into another nationality and lost to the parent national group, thus weakening it.
The first national struggle is always for national self-determination. Consequently, if any part of the national group is left outside the borders of the free nation state then the national liberation project  is left unfinished. As a result, the finishing of that great establishing project always becomes a priority of any newly created nation state. The unfinished business of national unification and liberation will rest heavily on the national consciousness and will take primacy over any other national projects until such a time as it is brought to a satisfactory resolution. Even once the goals of national unification and liberation are achieved, if it is felt that the national independence or territorial integrity is under threat then national security will continue to be of primary importance in the national psyche until such a time as the threat to the nation has passed.

Only when a state feels its borders are correct and secure is it willing to invest greater resources into citizen welfare. An investment which often leads down the path to a post-nationalist mentality.
One might also say that very ‘secure’ states, ones that are not threatened by other nations on their borders, have less fear of diluting their national/ethnic identity and as such are more willing to take in members of other nationalities.
So, having borders in the right places is something which matters to nationalists and should matter to post-nationalists as well, if they are interested in hastening the spread of the post-nationalist mentality.

I will endeavour to illustrate this point by highlighting what I see as a great ‘lost opportunity’ to global citizenship caused by some of the international borders created by the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Following the fall of communism in the former Soviet Union, one certainly hoped that the powerful nation of Russia might reform itself into a state that more closely resembled the freedom and prosperity of the west. One hoped, in fact, that it would become a successful partner to the western nations and the USA in particular, ushering in a new era of pan-European peace and development. One was, however, worried by the fact that the fall of communism had come about through the disintegration of the federation that was the Soviet Union. The fifteen constituent nations of the Soviet Union were now all suddenly free and independent states, many for the first time, and while I rejoiced for the independence of most of these I was at the same time worried by the fact that several of the new borders left some sizeable areas of Russian populated lands within the territories of other countries. I do not wish to get into the arguments over what land belongs to who and the rights and wrongs of the various claims. It is sufficient for my argument to simply acknowledge the fact that there were many Russians who considered the borders of Kazakhstan, Belorussia and Ukraine to be separating them from significant numbers of their compatriots. Given that fact, I expected that the Russian state would be uneasy over these borders and that the prospects for Russia developing into a confident and neighbourly state were not good.  One could say that the prerequisites for Russian development along a citizen’s welfare trajectory towards post-nationalism did not exist. Now, many years later, we find that after an initial period of difficulty the Russian state has coalesced around a nationalist leader and a nationalist discourse. Not only that, but the Russian state has also become involved in conflict over the placement of the Ukrainian border.

To come back to my central contention: the importance of borders even for post-nationalists, I will raise the speculation that had the Soviet Union disintegrated in a way that did not leave large areas of Russian populated land outside of Russia’s borders then we may well have seen a very different development trajectory within the Russian state, and that development may well have been far more pleasing to post-nationalists than the current reality.

The Islamic State (IS) is not a nationalist entity; it wants a Caliphate that will incorporate all the world.  The Islamic State recognises no national boundaries and intends to unite humanity under Islam.  In professing and promoting a religious identity they are in many ways antithetical to any nationalist identity.  This being said, it still appears to me that IS’s success in Syria and Iraq has been another one of history’s many examples of what happens when you put national borders in the wrong places.

The territory that IS has managed to conquer in Syria and Iraq corresponds in broad outline to what would make a sensible nation state.  The area that they now control (with the addition of Tikrit and the regions that they have only recently been pushed out of) fairly accurately corresponds with the areas of Iraq and Syria that are inhabited by Sunni Muslim Arabs.  The areas of Iraq and Syria that IS has been unable to make significant gains in are the areas inhabited by Kurds, Alawites, Druze, and Shia Arabs.  Consequently the border of IS territory has essentially stabilised along a line which would make a sensible border between a Sunni Arab nation and the neighbouring national groups which surround them.

The leaders and evangelists of the Islamic State believe in a religious identity which subsumes all nationalist identity but the shape of their territory suggests that the general population of that area of the Middle East are still strongly attracted to an ethnic/nationalist identity.  The Sunni Arabs of both Iraq and Syria have been existing in states where they have been ruled over by other ethnic groups.  It is not extraordinary therefore to surmise that part of the appeal of the IS for the people within its territory is that it has finally united all of the area’s Sunni Arabs in one cohesive, self-governing and powerful state.

Perhaps the easiest way to defeat the Islamic State ideologues would be for the international community, led by America, to simply abandon the formal borders of Iraq and Syria as they were drawn by the French and British during their colonial occupation and promise the Sunni Arabs their own nation state with borders that correspond to the demographic reality.  Perhaps then many of the Sunni Arabs of Iraq and Syria would stop supporting the aggressive and extremist IS and the region could look forward to a greater degree of peace and stability.