Carl Schmitt's Land and Sea │ Alexander Dugin

In 1942, Schmitt published the most important work, Land and Sea. Together with the later text Planetary Tension between the East and the West and the Confrontation of the Land and the Sea, this constitutes the most important document of geopolitical science. 

 

The destruction of Leviathan by Gustave Doré, 1865.

 » World history is a history of the battle of sea powers against land powers
and of land powers against sea powers. «
Carl Schmitt, 1942.

The meaning of opposing land and sea in Schmitt comes down to the fact that we are talking about two completely different, irreducible and hostile civilizations, and not about variants of a single civilization complex. This division almost exactly coincides with the picture drawn by Mackinder, but Schmitt gives its main elements of thalassocracy (sea forces) and tellurocracy (land forces) an in-depth philosophical interpretation related to basic legal and ethical systems. It is curious that Schmitt uses the name Behemoth for land forces, and Leviathan for forces of the sea, as a reminder of two Old Testament monsters, one of which embodies all land creatures, and the other all creatures of water, the sea.

 

 » The holy king of Gods and men I call, celestial law  (Nomos) the righteous seal of all. «

Orphic Hymns to Nomos 63 (2nd or 3rd century AD).

The Nomos of the Earth exists without alternative for most of human history. All varieties of this Nomos are characterized by the presence of a strict and stable legalizing (and ethical) form, which reflects the immobility and fixity of the land, the Earth. This connection with the Earth, the space which is easily amenable to structuralization (fixed borders, constancy of communication paths, invariable geographical and relief features), gives rise to essential conservatism in the social, cultural and technical spheres. The totality of the Earth’s Nomos constitutes what is commonly called the history of the traditional society. 

 

In such a situation, the water and the sea are only peripheral civilizational phenomena, without intruding on the ethical sphere (or intruding sporadically). Only with the discovery of the World Ocean at the end of the 16th century does the situation change radically. Mankind (and first of all, the island of England) begins to get used to the marine existence, begins to realize itself as an Island in the middle of the waters, a Ship. But the water area is very different from the land. It is impermanent, hostile, alienated, subject to constant change. The paths are not fixed in it, the differences in orientations are not obvious. The Nomos of the Sea entails a global transformation of consciousness. Social, legal, and ethical standards are becoming fluid. A new civilization is born. Schmitt believes that the New Time and the technical breakthrough that opened the era of industrialization owe their existence to the geopolitical phenomenon of the transition of mankind to the Nomos of the Sea. Thus, the geopolitical confrontation of the Anglo-Saxon world of the external crescent acquires a sociopolitical definition from Schmitt: 

 

» The Nomos of the Sea is a reality hostile to traditional society. « 

 

The geopolitical confrontation between land and sea powers acquires the most important historical, ideological and philosophical meaning.

Quoted from:
Alexander Dugin (1997) - Foundations of Geopolitics.

 

See also:

Carl Schmitt (1942) - Land and Sea: A World-Historical Meditation.

Carl Schmitt (1950) - The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum.

Carl Schmitt (1955) - The Planetary Tension between Orient and Occident and the Opposition between Land and Sea.

The Time of the Civilisational States │ Alain de Benoist

The way in which, since the 1990s, the Chinese authorities, claiming to have ‘Asian values’, have rejected criticism in the name of the human rights ideology is significant. In January 2021, at the Davos Forum, Xi Jinping said, ‘Just as no two leaves in the world are the same, no two histories, no two cultures, no two social systems are the same. Each country is unique in all these areas, and no country is superior to another. There is no need to worry about differences, but rather about attempts to impose a hierarchy between civilisations or to force some of them to align themselves with another in terms of history, culture or social system.’

 » The logic of great spaces does not have a universalist scope. The paradigm is no longer national, but spatial.’ «

Carl Schmitt, 1941.

The recognition of the crisis of universalism and Western hegemonism thus goes hand in hand with the feeling that the era of the international order based on the conflicting balance of nation-states has ended, as Carl Schmitt foresaw as early as the 1930s. The rise of civilisational states signals the entry into an era in which the world order is no longer reduced to the unstable equilibrium of nation-states. As civilisational norms become a pivotal point in geopolitics, the main competition is no longer the traditional one between nation-states but the one between civilisations. Civilisational states give rise to a new mode of sovereignty that is no longer that of nation-states. 

 

[...] The notion of the civilisational state is even more reminiscent of the ‘great space’ (Großraum) theorised by Carl Schmitt to rethink international relations beyond the codification of relations between nation-states. A ‘great space’, Schmitt says, requires a ‘great people’, a vast territory and an autonomous political will. ‘Empires’, he writes, ‘are those ruling powers that carry a political idea radiating out into a determined great space from which they exclude, as a matter of principle, the interventions of foreign powers.’ And he adds this essential reminder: ‘The empire is more than an enlarged state, just as the great space is not just an enlarged micro-space.’ ‘The logic of great spaces does not have a universalist scope. It only integrates the historical evolution of the great territorial powers influencing third countries. The paradigm is therefore no longer national, but spatial.’

Quoted from:
Alain de Benoist (Apr 26, 2023) - The Time of the Civilisational States.

 

See also:

Carl Schmitt (1941) - Völkerrechtliche Großraumordnung mit Interventionsverbot für raumfremde Mächte. Ein Beitrag zum Reichsbegriff im Völkerrecht. (Great Space International Law with a ban on intervention by powers alien to the area. A contribution to the concept of empire in international law.)
Carl Schmitt (1940) - Großraum gegen Universalismus. (Great Space vs. Universalism.) 

The Geopolitics of Distributed Heartlands │ Alexander Dugin

The fight to rule Heartland – by Sea Power from without, or in Heartland itself from within – is the main formula of geopolitical history, the very essence of geopolitics. Geopolitics is the battle for Heartland. All schools of geopolitics are founded upon and proceed from this model [...] Just as the multi-polar world arises, so does a contradiction. If we take into consideration only one Sea Power and one Heartland, then when it comes to speaking of a multi-polar world, Russia cannot possibly be the only Heartland. Russia cannot achieve a multi-polar world on its own. In the very least, multipolarity entails four or five of the most important poles in the world. Russia could be the center of this multi-polar world or only one of its poles. But Russia cannot be the only Heartland.

 

 » It is surprising that at the bottom of our politics we always find theology. «
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Les confessions d'un revolutionnaire, 1849.

[...] Over the course of numerous discussions, conferences, speeches, lectures, and articles, I have come to the conclusion that it is high time to introduce the notion of an apportioned, or “distributed Heartland.” To this end, I think it is important to attentively examine the German geopolitics of the 1920-’30’s, which proclaimed Germany to be the European Heartland. Of interest to us is not so much Germany itself as the very possibility of considering an additional Heartland [...] A Chinese Heartland is an altogether different question. China, after all, is Rimland, a coastal zone. If we recognize China as bearing the status of a Heartland, then we are recognizing China as an independent strategic space. If we qualify China as Heartland, then we are emphasizing the conservative aspect of China – China as Land Power. But if China declares itself to be a Heartland against Russia, just as Hitler’s Germany declared itself to be the heart of Eurasia against Soviet Russia, then conflict will immediately arise.

If Russia retains the status of an independent pole, then this “distributed Heartland” acquires a completely different meaning. Then it is possible to consider such Heartlands as a Russian Heartland, as in all traditional geopolitical maps as the “geographical pivot of history”, and a European Heartland. We also arrive at considering a Chinese Heartland, and this means that we consider China as a traditional, conservative, independent, and sovereign state as it is today – and it will only become more so in the future. In the very least, it is important to reconcile the Chinese Heartland with the Russian Heartland, and partially even the European Heartland. But even this is insufficient to constructing a multi-polar world. We necessarily have to consider an Islamic Heartland (covering the historical spaces of at least 3-4 empires, stretching from Turkey to Pakistan). The concept of a distributed Heartland can further be expanded to India, and projected onto Latin America and Africa as well.

As follows, there should be an American Heartland in the multi-polar system. We have become too accustomed to thinking in the terms of classical geopolitics that the US and Anglo-Saxon world can only be Sea Power. In a multi-polar world, America will not be able to play this role, its global maritime range will naturally be reduced, thereby changing the very nature of America. As follows, an American Heartland should arise which, in a multi-polar system, should not be seen exclusively as in opposition to other Heartlands. The vote for Trump represented the contours of this American Heartland. If we begin to conceive of Heartland as a distributed type of culture associated with the reinforcement of conservative identity, then “Make America Great Again” is the thesis of an American Heartland. Stop being a Sea Power, and you will be great again.

[...] Distributed Heartland is the imperative of the new geopolitical model, of multi-polar geopolitics. I think that this concept deserves very serious cogitation, pondering, and description. There should be a number of conferences, or an even entire volume devoted to this inevitable question. The efficacy of this concept of distributed Heartland is, in my opinion, extremely important, insofar as the construction of a multi-polar world now demands clearer and more precise roadmaps.

Quoted from:
Alexander Dugin (2019) - Towards a Multipolar Geopolitics.

 

See also:

Alexander Dugin (2012) - The Theory of a Multipolar World.

Carl Schmitt (1941) - Völkerrechtliche Großraumordnung mit Interventionsverbot für raumfremde Mächte. Ein Beitrag zum Reichsbegriff im Völkerrecht. (Great Space International Law with a ban on intervention by powers alien to the area. A contribution to the concept of empire in international law.)
Carl Schmitt (1940) - Großraum gegen Universalismus. (Great Space vs. Universalism.)