By: Jafe Arnold

Initiatic Geopolitics

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“Geopolitics”, coined in 1902 by Rudolf Kjellén and informed by Friedrich Ratzel’s 1897 “political geography”, is an esoteric term. Most generically, geopolitics is presented as the science of the relationship between geography and politics in international relations; and for this seemingly materialistic binding of the complexity and passions of human politics to physical earth and resources, geopolitics is often berated as “cynical”, “deterministic”, “reductionist”, or “materialist.” Of course, this misrepresentation is immediately based on an overlooking or misreading of the 19th and early 20th century founders of geopolitics, but the problem runs much deeper: it lies in a loss of the meaning and implications of space as encapsulated in geo- and politics.

The word geopolitics is nominatively composed of Greek gê (“earth”) and politika (“of, concerning the polis”). The definitions of polis and politika are the subject of immense controversy and are generically translated as “city-state” and “of, by, and for the city-state and/or its citizens”, although it is clear that in both cases we are dealing with the common denominator of a space with superstructural content – a socio-political space. If we trace the etymology of earth back to Proto-Indo-European, we have dheghom and h₁er-, whereby we arrive at a sense of earth as the space of humans, what they inhabit, what they dig in, what they are made out of – indeed, from this sense arises the notion of man as a microcosm of the earth as seen in numerous Indo-European linguistic and cosmological derivations.[1] Here must be added Ancient Greek khôra, which might be from the Proto-Indo-European gher (“to yearn for” as well as “to enclose”) and/or ghoros (ritual surrounding, e.g., with dance, music, etc.), and which nominally refers to “land” or “country”, particularly that surrounding the polis, but whose interpretations generally concern qualitative space. In Plato’s designation, khôra is the dimension of the “country” that shapes Being, the transitional realm between between forms and their realization. [2] In other words, we are dealing not merely with “earth-places” or, in the most scientific sense, “geography”, but space in a dimension that encompasses humans, their polities and politics, and is indivisible from their intimate sense of being part and parcel of the cosmos. At its etymological-cum-conceptual core, geopolitics thus deals with space as something qualitative, as something tied to subjectivity and humans; it deals with man and space as inseparable, not disconnected and not disenchanted.

In his Foundations of Geopolitics, Alexander Dugin summates: “Geopolitics speaks of ‘spatial man’ defined by space, formed by it, and conditioned by its specific quality…This conditioning vividly manifests itself in man’s large-scale social manifestations in states, ethnoi, cultures, civilizations, etc…” The quality and magnitude of these manifestations of space “are only seen at a certain distance from the individual”, as “civilizations” themselves are “one of the largest concepts that the historical consciousness of mankind is capable of generating…which possess extensive spatial, temporal, and cultural boundaries…[and] possess a considerable volume, i.e., they should last a long time, control significant geographical areas, and produce a special, expressive cultural and religious (and sometimes ideological) style” [3]. We have quoted Dugin’s presentation of geopolitics in his 1997 textbook not only because it has shaped the discourse and heavily influenced major actors of geopolitics in the 21st century, but because its value also lies in Dugin’s cogent argument that the worldview of modernity and the worldview of geopolitics are ultimately opposed. Here should resonate Dugin’s side-by-side theses that “the path is from geopolitics to sacred geography” and that, simultaneously, geopolitics has become the essentially defining barometer of contemporary processes, particularly multipolarity. The resulting deduction is that the geopolitics of the current period are taking us towards the archaic. Continue reading →

From the Indo-Europeans to the ‘New World’

he world’s diversity of cultures has successfully defied the “globalization” of the Atlanticist, Liberal, unipolar “End of History” scenario proclaimed in the 1990’s. It is increasingly recognized both de facto and de jure that we are in transition towards a multipolar world order. The historic drama of this process is not always appreciated for what it is: we are on the way towards a world order promising unprecedented cooperation between civilizations based on the refusal of hegemony of any one state, ideology, and identity. From the point of view of international relations, political science, geopolitics, and indeed the history of civilizations, this is a revolution.

In the modern world, we also often forget to appreciate the original meaning of words. “Revolution” is usually etymologically traced back to Latin revolutio, or “the act of revolving”, meaning a radical change aimed at restoring an original position in a cycle. However, “revolution” as a word and concept can be pursued not only even further back to Greek verbs meaning “to wind around” or “to enfold,” but the Latin, Greek, and other Indo-European linguistic expressions of “revolution” all trace back to the original Proto-Indo-European root welh- or kʷel- literally meaning “to turn” or “to rotate” but more often than not connoting “surrounding.” The original Indo-European term encompasses the origins of the concept of “revolution” as it would be derived in all the complex understandings of the Indo-Europeans’ descendant languages and cultures, among which Greek and Latin are prominent European cases. [1]

The Indo-European homeland and linguistic evolution a la Anthony

Indo-European languages in 21st century Eurasia

Global distribution of Indo-European languages by state

The original Proto-Indo-European set of terms that would yield “revolution” referred to the most important aspects of life for the original Indo-European people: war (the military maneuver of “surrounding” an enemy, which vanquishes a threat and therefore “returns” the cosmic balance), pastoral life (the cycle of herding and grazing livestock, the cattle cult sacrifice cycle in their cosmogony), and the celestial-divine (the gods “surrounding” men with powers, protection, tribulations, the celestial cycles, etc.). The Proto-Indo-European kʷel- is also the root for the word “wheel”, or kʷékʷlos, which was of supreme importance to the Proto-Indo-Europeans’ view of the cosmos and their historical movement: the wheel or circle of the cosmos and life is predominant in Indo-European mythologies and it was thanks to the Indo-Europeans’ domestication of the horse (another linguistic correspondence: h₁éḱwos) and their utilization of wheel and chariot technology that allowed them to spread across the globe, with which they left a primordially and still relatively similar cultural and linguistic sphere stretching from the European peninsula to the Indian sub-continent (hence the 19th century term “Indo-Europeans”). These are not merely intriguing linguistic observations: the Indo-European conceptual and linguistic roots of “revolution” have informed many of the earth’s cultures’ understanding of such complex concepts as radical change, “revolving order”, or “restoration.” That these roots or significations have been denied or lost does not mean that they do not exist.

What does this have to do with multipolarity? Multipolarity, as a revolution, is of both the past and the future: it is a radical negation of Atlanticist, Liberal, unipolar modernity in favor of a new international system and it is a restoration of or return to the world’s natural diversity of civilizations, identities, and ideologies. Continue reading →