JEOPOLİTİK STRATEJİ

Despite the unfavorable perception of geopolitics by European states and peoples because of its past links with imperialism, nationalism and fascism, geography has always played a central role in determining the internal and external borders of Europe, as well as the design and conduct of European integration.

Geopolitics is not a popular term in Europe despite the fact that earlier geopolitical theories originated there during the second half of 19th century and onwards. Specifically, these theories have been associated with militarism, nationalism and fascism in the early 20th century and then linked theoretically with the Realist school of international relations. Thus the concept of geopolitics has been largely unpopular in Europe, while the arrival of European integration has only consolidated this unfavorable view, since the idea of a supranational union was conceived as an antidote to geopolitical thinking, and hence the EU gained a reputation as an anti-geopolitical entity. With its characteristics of normative and civilian power, the EU experience in foreign policy is not coherent with classical geopolitical thought, either. On the other hand, such breaking points in recent political history as the end of the Cold War, the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Ukraine Crisis, has led to the resurgence of geopolitics and geopolitical thinking in European politics, and have posed a great and disturbing challenge for the EU’s normative and civilian power qualities.

The boundaries between the nations in Europe has been drawn up based upon two different principles: (1) the natural border theory based on the drainage divides of mountains on the borderlines and (2) the principle of linearity and hydrofrontiers such as river or lakes located on the inter-state borders.

The boundaries between the nations in Europe has been drawn up based upon two different principles: (1) the natural border theory based on the drainage divides of mountains on the borderlines and (2) the principle of linearity and hydrofrontiers such as river or lakes located on the inter-state borders.

Drainage divides or water courses play a central role as the basis of the natural border theory. Following physical geography logic, international borders are drawn using these natural formations, while they provide a useful means in mountainous areas of separating one nation from another, as exemplified in southern, northern and central Europe by the FrancoSpanish, Swedish-Norwegian and Polish-Czech and Polish-Slovakian borders in the Pyrenees, the Scandinavian and the Carpathian Mountains respectively.

The second principle relates to linearity which is founded on water courses such as rivers or lakes. This principle is applied in many parts of Europe where there are lots of rivers flowing towards the seas or oceans, and a few lakes forming hydrofrontiers. In the north, the long Finnish-Swedish border is marked by rivers such as Könkämäeno, Muonio and Torne, while the border between Russia’s Kaliningrad and Lithuania follows the Neman River. In southeastern Europe, parts of the Maritsa River constitute the Turkish-Greek border, just as the Danube River, Europe’s second longest, marks the borders between Slovakia-Austria, SlovakiaHungary, Croatia-Serbia and Bulgaria-Romania along its course towards the Black Sea. Lastly, the principle of linearity is also applied in western Europe and is mostly to do with economic and to a greater extent military considerations that force neighboring countries to form linear and thus easy-to-defend borderlines as exemplified by the Franco-Belgian border.

The European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) was first introduced in 2003 “Wider Europe” communication by the European Commission and then launched in 2004 as a response to the eastward and southward enlargements of 2004 and 2007. “The Policy was set as a framework to govern the EU’s relations with 16 of the EU’s Eastern and Southern Neighbours in order to achieve the closest possible political association and the greatest possible degree of economic integration” (EU External Action Service, 2016). In other words, the purpose of this policy was to bring these countries closer together as part of EU integration through further cooperation in areas of economics, commerce, diplomacy and politics. In May 2009, the Eastern Partnership (EaP) was launched in terms of the eastern flank of the ENP, and it was meant to be complementary to the ENP goals. Eastern European EU members such as Poland and the Czech Republic are the most prominent proponents of the EaP, since their approach is geopolitically motivated in the face of the Russian threat with regard to Eastern Europe. Poland emerges here as the “main shaper behind the EaP initiative” and “geopolitical thinking has been central to Poland’s investment in EU Eastern policies…” (Cadier, 2019: 81). In Poland’s opinion, the Eastern neighborhood under the influence of the EU is considered a bulwark against Russian aggression and its imperialistic ambitions. As for the Czech Republic, notwithstanding that geopolitical motivations are not as dominant as in Poland’s case, there are some hawkish Atlanticist circles who think that EaP should be a policy seeking to contain or even roll-back Russia.

The European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) was first introduced in 2003 “Wider Europe” communication by the European Commission and then launched in 2004 as a response to the eastward and southward enlargements of 2004 and 2007. “The Policy was set as a framework to govern the EU’s relations with 16 of the EU’s Eastern and Southern Neighbours in order to achieve the closest possible political association and the greatest possible degree of economic integration” (EU External Action Service, 2016). In other words, the purpose of this policy was to bring these countries closer together as part of EU integration through further cooperation in areas of economics, commerce, diplomacy and politics. In May 2009, the Eastern Partnership (EaP) was launched in terms of the eastern flank of the ENP, and it was meant to be complementary to the ENP goals. Eastern European EU members such as Poland and the Czech Republic are the most prominent proponents of the EaP, since their approach is geopolitically motivated in the face of the Russian threat with regard to Eastern Europe. Poland emerges here as the “main shaper behind the EaP initiative” and “geopolitical thinking has been central to Poland’s investment in EU Eastern policies…” (Cadier, 2019: 81). In Poland’s opinion, the Eastern neighborhood under the influence of the EU is considered a bulwark against Russian aggression and its imperialistic ambitions. As for the Czech Republic, notwithstanding that geopolitical motivations are not as dominant as in Poland’s case, there are some hawkish Atlanticist circles who think that EaP should be a policy seeking to contain or even roll-back Russia.

Indeed both the major powers of Europe such as Russia, France and Italy, and smaller states experienced this unprecedented return of geopolitics in their foreign affairs thinking and practice. Many books and other studies on geopolitics have been published in a wide range of European languages, while the term has widely appeared in newspapers and periodicals across Europe

Another highly criticized aspect of the ENP is the lack of political will on the part of EU member states to cope with authoritarian regimes in neighboring areas for the sake of both stability and the prevention of irregular migration towards Europe. In other words, the EU has remained too soft on the issue of democratization in its vicinity, and this in return has caused a serious backlash for the EU in the form of the return of security threats such as terrorism which it is not ready to fight, given its emphasis on soft-power tools. During the Arab Spring revolts, then, the EU lost its relevance as a democratizing force for the Arab protestors because of its weak commitment to the wave of democratization in the Arab world. Finally, the economic crisis hit the EU severely, and dealt a severe blow in terms of its reliability and credibility for neighboring regions. In addition to the Middle East, the EU has also softened its rigid conditionality in Eastern Europe, as proven by its attempt to convince Ukraine under the Yanukovych government to sign the Association Agreement, which was dubbed as a “bulwark against Russian aggression”, while lifting sanctions on Belarus in 2016, which were imposed because of its poor democracy and human rights record.

Europe sits in the westernmost part of a vast Asian landmass (or World Island as defined by the US geopolitical theorist Nicolas Spykman as it stretches from the Atlantic shores of Portugal in the West to the western parts of Eurasian-wide Russia in the East, i.e. from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Mountains).

The second principle relates to linearity which is founded on water courses such as rivers or lakes. This principle is applied in many parts of Europe where there are lots of rivers flowing towards the seas or oceans, and a few lakes forming hydrofrontiers. In the north, the long Finnish-Swedish border is marked by rivers such as Könkämäeno, Muonio and Torne, while the border between Russia’s Kaliningrad and Lithuania follows the Neman River. In southeastern Europe, parts of the Maritsa River constitute the Turkish-Greek border, just as the Danube River, Europe’s second longest, marks the borders between Slovakia-Austria, SlovakiaHungary, Croatia-Serbia and Bulgaria-Romania along its course towards the Black Sea. Lastly, the principle of linearity is also applied in western Europe and is mostly to do with economic and to a greater extent military considerations that force neighboring countries to form linear and thus easy-to-defend borderlines as exemplified by the Franco-Belgian border. Therefore, the correct option is C.

The geopolitics of Europe also has an external component in the sense of dominating proximate and distant maritime areas to which European influence may extend. While Europeans concentrated on maritime areas surrounding Europe such as the Mediterranean Sea and the Baltic from the era of the Roman Empire to 13th Century due to the lack of technical progress in the naval domain, at a later date they were able to sail overseas by crossing huge oceans with the arrival of technical advancements and thus reach undiscovered territories more easily. Therefore, the correct option is E.

Drainage divides or water courses play a central role as the basis of the natural border theory. Following physical geography logic, international borders are drawn using these natural formations, while they provide a useful means in mountainous areas of separating one nation from another, as exemplified in southern, northern and central Europe by the FrancoSpanish, Swedish-Norwegian and Polish-Czech and Polish-Slovakian borders in the Pyrenees, the Scandinavian and the Carpathian Mountains respectively. This principle of natural limits goes back to the 17th Century, when France and Spain agreed on the border dividing them in the Treaty of Pyrenees. “In 1792, in France, the theory of natural frontiers was invoked for geopolitical ends to justify external conquests in the Hainaut region of Belgium, and, in the south-east, the County of Nice and Savoy.” (Dumont and Verluise, 2016). It survived the subsequent centuries and still applies in many border cases in Europe such as the 1947 Paris Treaty between France and Italy over the borderline on the upper valleys of Tinée and Vésubie rivers, which was drawn on the basis of drainage lines. In northern Europe, the Swedish-Norwegian border is also based on the same natural border principle as it passes through the drainage line of the Scandinavian mountains. Lastly, Poland’s southern borders with the Czech Republic and with Slovakia are other prominent cases of the implementation of natural border theory as both the Carpathians and Sudetes Mountain ranges constitute the natural borderline.

For some European countries such as Italy and Turkey, the end of the Cold War meant a decreasing strategic importance in the Western security architecture, while for others such as the neutral states of Europe including Finland, Austria and Sweden, the post-Cold War era made their neutrality mostly irrelevant in the absence of the opposing camp. Therefore, the correct option is A.

Beyond the national revival of geopolitics, the EU’s launch of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP), also called the Barcelona Process, in 1995 was an ambitious response to the new geopolitical environment in the post-Cold War era. Therefore, the correct option is D.

The Copenhagen Criteria:
Political criteria: democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities;
Economic criteria: the existence of a functioning market economy as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union;
The adoption of the EU acquis: the ability to take on the obligations of membership.

Therefore, the correct option is B.

In the past several decades, both the deepening and enlargement of the EU has affected the meaning of the internal borders and the dynamics of bordering across Europe. With the entry into force of Schengen Treaty in 1985, and the completion of the EU’s single market in 1992, the internal borders of the EU have become fuzzier and individual countries are easily accessible, since border checks and controls have been removed and cross-border interactions have increased steadily. This has led to a change in the meaning of borders across the EU, and external borders have gained a new relevance and importance in the face of security concerns following the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the growing tide of illegal immigrants in the 2000s. Thus, the protection of external borders has become a pressing necessity. “Within twenty years of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, Western Europe, once the main critic of the closed borders of Eastern European communist regimes, has closed its southern and eastern borders, built fences and established an EU agency, Frontex, to help border states guard its long maritime border” (Mamadouh, 2015: 58). These controversial measures, accompanied by the outsourcing and offshoring of external border protection, have been criticized for being exclusionary and otherising.

The eastward enlargement was a strategic decision by the EU. With this decision, Celata and Coletti (2015: 1) argue “The European Union (EU) had to deal with three main challenges: first, to guarantee the security and stability of the Union along its new external border; second, to avoid the emergence of new “dividing lines” between the enlarged EU and its neighbouring countries; and third, to strengthen relations with those countries who, although not EU members nor candidates for accession, are of strategic relevance for the geopolitical and geoeconomic reconfiguration of ‘EU’rope as a global actor.” In other words, this was not only a large-scale enlargement in every sense of the word, but also an ambitious geopolitical undertaking on the part of the EU at the dawn of the 21st Century. Therefore, the correct option is C.

During the heightened Cold War era, Europe was geopolitically divided into two bitterly hostile parts in the form of Eastern Europe (the Socialist bloc) and Western Europe (the Capitalist bloc), signifying the ideological and political enmity between the two competing blocs (Berentsen,1993). At that time, nevertheless, geopolitics was not so popular in Europe because of its past association with the fascist regimes in the 1930s, and has been labeled as a highly militarist and determinist form of Realist International Relations School in the face of the tense Cold War rivalry. In the words of one analyst (Techau, 2013), “The intellectual concept of geopolitics originated in Europe, yet it is here that it is most unpopular today. It smacks of the ugly realism that many Europeans find so difficult to embrace. And it is too disquieting a reminder that history has not ended, and that the current peaceful state of the continent may not last forever.” Indeed the European integration project launched in the 1950s was devised and regarded as an antidote to the geopolitical thinking by nature (Guzzini, 2012: 62): “…the EU has staked its reputation on being an anti-geopolitical unit. In the memorable phrase of Ole Wæver, ‘Europe’s other is Europe’s past’, the EU being a peace organization, a ‘civilian’ or ‘normative’ power, aimed precisely at overcoming the militarism and nationalism, historically associated with classical geopolitical thought, that had plagued Europe’s early twentieth century.” The restoration of peace in Europe after long centuries of conflict between European nations was the main success of the 70 year-long European integration, and due to this success, the EU was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012.