EUROPE: A EURASIAN PENINSULA

Europe has become a single economic space in recent years but still lacks the political and military sovereignty and unity required to fulfil its destiny and its professed ambitions as one of the major blocs in a new multipolar world. The enduring submission of the EU to US hegemony, which relies on the perpetuation of intra-European divisions to maintain an Atlantic alliance directed against Russia, China, North Africa and West Asia is detrimental to continental unification and harmful to the real interests of the old continent.

TIBERIO GRAZIANI ALFRED

THE POLITICAL IRRELEVANCY OF EUROPE

“If Europe had a foreign policy, I wish someone would give me its phone number”! With that lapidary statement some thirty years ago, Henry Kissinger described the condition of Europe. Either with a sense of humour mingled with glee, or on the contrary with frustration, depending upon the leanings of the observers of the moment and the prevailing interests of the times, the former American Secretary of State underlined not only the lack of European coordinated diplomacy but even more so, the absence of political unity on the “old continent”. The situation has not improved over the years despite some relevant developments. These include the transformation of the European Community into the European Union (EU) and its expansion to include former Soviet bloc countries; the adoption of a single currency by 13 EU member states out of 27 and the definition of a European defence strategy based on the adoption of the document—European Security Strategy–A Secure Europe in a Better World (December 12, 2003); the creation of the European Defence Agency (June 12, 2004) and the build-up of cooperative institutions like the Political and Strategic Committee and the EU Military Committee.

Based on official statements by civil servants in Brussels and European heads of state, official literature and quantitative data—such as the rapid expansion of territory (4,326,253 square kilometres for 27 EU members), demographic volume (492,860,000 citizens) and the gross domestic product (GDP) (US $ 13,841 billion)—one would be entitled to regard the EU as a gigantic actor on the world scene, formally affirming its ambition to project its might through initiatives like the European Politics for Security and Defence since 2003. The first military operation under EU command began in 2003. By May 2006, three missions had been carried out and 16 operations conducted in five theatres—the Balkans, the Caucasus region, Indonesia, the Near East and Africa. The operations were Concordia (Macedonia, from March to December 2003, completed); Artemis (Congo, June–September 2003, completed); EUPOL Proxima (Macedonia, 2004–5, completed); EUPAT (Macedonia, 2005–6, completed); Altea (Bosnia– Herzegovina); EUPM (Bosnia–Herzegovina); Amis II (Sudan, Darfur); EUSEC (Congo); EUPOL (Congo); EUFOR (Congo); EUPOL COPPS (Palestinian territories); EUBAM (Palestinian territories); EU Just Lex (Iraq); AMM (Indonesia); Themis (Georgia) and EUPT (Kosovo) (available at, www.consilium.europa.eu). Despite these achievements, the influence of the EU in the field of global politics is minimal, if not altogether negligible. Its “numerical” assets are belied by the scant efficacy of its timid and sporadic incursions in the international arena. The EU’s inability to take on a single clear role, for example, in the ongoing crises of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq has demonstrated the lack of a coherent foreign policy, held hostage to a sixty-year strategy of the United States (US), not to mention specific national and corporatist interests. In the absence of a unified diplomatic line, the situation is worsened by major internal divisions within the Union, regarding other issues that are critical to its survival, such as the Constitutional Treaty, social and energy policies, etc. The lack of real political unity and a shared external policy prevent the EU from building its own geopolitical doctrine. In the current global context, these deficiencies force it to submit to the decisions of the US and assume an ancillary strategic role in support of transatlantic designs. What is essentially missing in the European ruling elite is a geopolitical awareness congruent with the present historic moment. Today’s Europe sees itself as a part of the US-centric West, to the point of obsessing about a supposed “Western” identity, an identity which has provided the ideological and symbolic moorings of the American nation, since the proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 and which maintains Europe in the thrall of the US. Such a belief is the basis for the proposal voiced last year by the German Chancellor Angela Kasner Merkel, as Chair of the European Council (EC) and the G8, for the creation of a Unified Transatlantic Economic Space. The proposal to build a single Western geopolitical entity, originated in the Transatlantic Declaration of November 22, 1990. This document, endorsed by the US and the EU and its member states, defines the framework in which a series of recommendations will take shape, mainly through the transatlantic policy network, to “build a bridge across the Atlantic” by means of various policy papers and agreements. These include the Transatlantic Business Dialogue (Sevilla, November 1995), the New Transatlantic Agenda (Madrid, December 1995), the Transatlantic Economic Partnership (London, May 18, 1998), the Transatlantic Consumers’ Dialogue (September 1998), the Transatlantic Environment Dialogue (May 1999) and the Positive Economic Agenda (May 2002). Thus, the 27-member EU appears to be a mere “geographic convention” between Russia and the Mediterranean and a nought in geopolitical terms. From a geostrategic viewpoint, the EU is in fact a bridgehead for the USA on the Euro–Afro–Asian landmass. As for their economic and financial health, EU member states can take credit for destroying in less then twenty years a social balance—however precarious, fragile and in need of improvements and correction—that had provided a powerful factor of cohesion at national and continental levels. Their greatest mistake was in not building an alternative structure or formulating a valid hypothesis for the construction of an economically stable and socially conscious EU. The neoliberal “drunkenness” heralded by Thatcherism in the late seventies affected the political culture of continental Europe. It promoted—in the name of a unilateral notion of modernisation—antisocial practices and above all dramatically submitted political choices and national and Pan-European interests to the economic expansionistic logic of American “turbocapitalism” (Edward Luttwak, Turbocapitalismo, Milano: Rizzoli, 1999). The socioeconomic dimensions of the neoliberalism of the last few years have benefited only narrow select sections of the European population and painfully widened the gap between the rich and poor. On the cultural scene, things are no better. The mass culture industry, which critically influences the behaviour of new generations—even those that would like to be “alternative oriented” and dissident—seems to be dominated by stereotypes from across the Atlantic, as is the culture of the elites. The European ruling classes, be they political, economic, financial or intellectual are mostly coopted by American power structures and sold on the “American way of life”. Their views and actions seem to reflect the selfish interests of their caste and since the first Gulf War, the economic–financial goals of Wall Street and the strategic thinking in Washington DC.

US “soft” power has worn away resistance from many sectors of the European Left, which was traditionally anti-American, as well as from several quarters in the otherwise nationalist Right, which used to be more concerned with the interests of the continent. The co-opting strategy has won through the election of “Transatlanticists” like Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy to the acme of the Western European (Franco–German) axis. The new Franco–German leadership, in keeping with the goals of US and British foreign policy, seems willing to bury, for good, the alternative to a Euro–Atlantic alliance. Nowadays, the realistic agreements between chanceries in Paris, Berlin and Moscow are only a vague memory, as are the names of former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, former French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine and former President Jacques Chirac of France. The writer, philosopher, adviser to the present French President and self-proclaimed Atlanticist André Glucksmann in an interview to the Italian daily Corriere della Sera (May 7, 2007) declared with pseudo-Gaullist rhetoric that, thanks to Sarkozy and his convictions “France recovers her place in the world. France becomes again the land of human rights. ... Sarkozy will put an end to French realpolitik, which everywhere, from Africa to Asia, has condoned the worst despots”. Due to a lack of healthy political realism, hegemonic power groups in Europe keep the EU in a state of perpetual subordination to US interests. As Ambassador Sergio Romano (“L’America Imperiale, L’Europa Irrelevante”, Il Rischio Americano, Milano: Longanesi, 2003) put it, Europe is “irrelevant” because, after more than sixty years it has yet to emancipate itself from its “liberators”—it is not free to make its own decisions. Only the future will tell how and when geopolitical tensions within the continent will be reborn and the calls for sovereign unity prevail over the markedly “Western” choices of the current Franco–German couple.

EUROPE AND THE CONTINUING ATLANTIC SAGA

From the beginning of the twentieth century, Europe—while its leading nationstates gradually lost their global preponderance—abandoned its traditional Eurocentric perspective on cultural, historical and political issues, especially in its relations (then mostly of a colonial nature) with other parts of the world. This was replaced by an “Occidental” and Atlanticist political praxis and position, which have gradually divorced it from the imperatives of its geographic location and the real interests of its population. Morales and Rafael Correa) and new agreements between Brazil and Argentina—a pro-Atlantic choice for Europeans is likely to be a losing proposition. Europe in the conflict between the two opposing tendencies—unipolar and multi-polar—will be used and sacrificed by its American “ally” as it lacks sufficient energy resources for continued economic development, efficient military structures, internal cohesion or even a common geopolitical awareness.

On the other hand, the Eastward expansion of the EU is creating major problems for many of its members in their relations with the Russian Federation. With regard to its expanded territorial space and geographic positioning, the EU has jeopardised its equation with its most important continental partner—Russia. It has eaten into the Kremlin’s sphere of influence in the Baltic States and Poland without working out a suitable coordinated foreign policy towards Moscow, backed by strong economic agreements and above all by an autonomous defence mechanism. The latter development is held hostage to the transatlantic military agreements that bind European nations to the USA.

If for de Gaulle, London was a Trojan horse for the USA inside the EC, in Russian eyes Brussels is the Trojan horse of the USA in the continental neighbourhood. The policy of annexation followed by the EU has been “sterilised” from its inception, by Brussels’ diplomatic short-sightedness and the simultaneous expansion of NATO to former members of the Warsaw Pact. Generally, in geostrategic terms the concurrence between these two processes follows the script laid out by Zbigniew Brzezinski who assigned to Europe the role of a “democratic bridgehead” in Eurasia. To prevent any “rebellious” deviation in Brussels, Washington backed by London rushed to build special relations, through massive financial aid programmes, with the new Eastern member states of the EU. Playing off these nations’ fear and distrust of the Commission’s bureaucracy, Germany’s predominance and Russia’s intentions, Washington brought them into its sphere of influence. Thus, the US administration drew a new fault-line through the EU with a view to pre-empt any future Euro–Russian strategic alliance.

In the weeks preceding the Anglo–American aggression against Iraq, Chirac, Schröder and Vladimir Putin tried to oppose the invasion. In reaction to the Paris–Berlin–Moscow axis, former US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, called for a “New Europe” to the East, a backup Europe as it were, more amenable to US pressure and influence than the Franco–German duo. The Bush Administration, faced with the threat of a fractured Western bloc acted in the most classical diplomatic manner by invoking the principles of a balance of power.

It is opportune to point out that the EU, while it has enlarged its internal market, industrial potential and ability to muster and coordinate new infrastructure designed to accelerate the integration process with the addition of new members, has still not resolved the problem of energy supplies. Many have recently argued that, as far as the nuclear sector is concerned, each member state of the Union should decide for itself how to proceed. This is further proof of the trouble the EU has in agreeing on a common energy policy. Similar deficiencies appear in the areas of fundamental and industrial research. assessment was restated recently by the new President of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Medvedev and by Dmitry Rogozin, the Russian Ambassador to NATO (Dmitry Rogozin, “Global Security and Propaganda”, International Herald Tribune, July 1, 2008).

Meanwhile, on the institutional level, the EU is rushing to conclude transatlantic framework agreements and treaties. One of the most important, signed in Washington at the Euro–American Summit of April 2007, met the desire of the German Chancellor for the development of transatlantic economic integration between the EU and the USA. The Working Program of Cooperation facilitates economic integration in strategic areas such as intellectual property, financial markets and innovation, while one of the joint declarations deals with the support of “Euro–Atlantic perspectives” for “promoting peace, human rights and democracy worldwide”. Such treaties, beyond the humanitarian rhetoric loved by democracy’s exporters, tie the EU’s fate more closely to that of the US while pulling it apart from its natural neighbours—Russia and the countries on the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean.

THE “ATLANTIC” MEDITERRANEAN

European backing for a US-centric system precludes a genuinely autonomous EU policy towards the nations located to the south of the Mediterranean. The creation of a common geopolitical space, based on sharing responsibilities between coastal states, is not compatible with the imperialistic designs of the US in the region. In this theatre too, the EU has been preceded by NATO, which has already set up, under the heading of “Mediterranean Dialogue”, a series of dispositions that inhibit not only any autonomous policy of the Union in the area but also pre-empt any possibility to shape the Mediterranean space in a manner not congruent with the national interests of the US.

To secure global hegemony, the separation of Europe from Russia and the Mediterranean, as a corollary of its inclusion in the “Western bloc” controlled by the US, has been the goal pursued by Washington since the end of the Second World War. During the times of the Soviet–US dipole (1945–89), the Western bloc called itself “the free world” and the ideological conflict based on the dichotomy “Democracy–Communism” masked the fundamental geopolitical rivalry between American thalassocracy and the continental Russian empire, for control of Eurasia and Africa. It is in this optics that the events of that period must be revisited—the strategy of tension; the attempted coup d’état (true or surmised) in Italy; the dictatorship of the Colonels in Greece; the Arab–Israeli Wars and the Soviet–Afghan War of 1979. Today the ideological conflict is hazier and harder to identify. It revolves mainly around the issue of human rights, the absence of press freedom and is manifest in the obsessive accusations of “authoritarian and oligarchic drift” against the Russian Government. Similar charges are regularly raised against China, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea and others who in reaction to US strategic and economic goals embody, like India, Brazil and South Africa, potential regional poles for a multi-polar order.

A new and decisive fact, which can help understand present-day dynamics, is the “diabolisation” of “Islamists”. The identification of Islam with terrorism, fundamentalism tendentially uni-polar system and a multi-polar, diverse but stable world shared by regional blocs. Europeans will soon have to make a choice between those two models. A Eurasian dialogue and Pax Mediterranea are two vectors that should define the geopolitical scene in the twenty-first century, if Europeans so decide.(Palestinian territories); EU Just Lex (Iraq); AMM (Indonesia); Themis (Georgia) and EUPT (Kosovo) (available at, www.consilium.europa.eu).

Despite these achievements, the influence of the EU in the field of global politics is minimal, if not altogether negligible. Its “numerical” assets are belied by the scant efficacy of its timid and sporadic incursions in the international arena. The EU’s inability to take on a single clear role, for example, in the ongoing crises of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq has demonstrated the lack of a coherent foreign policy, held hostage to a sixty-year strategy of the United States (US), not to mention specific national and corporatist interests. In the absence of a unified diplomatic line, the situation is worsened by major internal divisions within the Union, regarding other issues that are critical to its survival, such as the Constitutional Treaty, social and energy policies, etc. The lack of real political unity and a shared external policy prevent the EU from building its own geopolitical doctrine. In the current global context, these deficiencies force it to submit to the decisions of the US and assume an ancillary strategic role in support of transatlantic designs. What is essentially missing in the European ruling elite is a geopolitical awareness congruent with the present historic moment.

Today’s Europe sees itself as a part of the US-centric West, to the point of obsessing about a supposed “Western” identity, an identity which has provided the ideological and symbolic moorings of the American nation, since the proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 and which maintains Europe in the thrall of the US. Such a belief is the basis for the proposal voiced last year by the German Chancellor Angela Kasner Merkel, as Chair of the European Council (EC) and the G8, for the creation of a Unified Transatlantic Economic Space. The proposal to build a single Western geopolitical entity, originated in the Transatlantic Declaration of November 22, 1990. This document, endorsed by the US and the EU and its member states, defines the framework in which a series of recommendations will take shape, mainly through the transatlantic policy network, to “build a bridge across the Atlantic” by means of various policy papers and agreements. These include the Transatlantic Business Dialogue (Sevilla, November 1995), the New Transatlantic Agenda (Madrid, December 1995), the Transatlantic Economic Partnership (London, May 18, 1998), the Transatlantic Consumers’ Dialogue (September 1998), the Transatlantic Environment Dialogue (May 1999) and the Positive Economic Agenda (May 2002). Thus, the 27-member EU appears to be a mere “geographic convention” between Russia and the Mediterranean and a nought in geopolitical terms. From a geostrategic viewpoint, the EU is in fact a bridgehead for the USA on the Euro–Afro–Asian landmass.

As for their economic and financial health, EU member states can take credit for destroying in less then twenty years a social balance—however precarious, fragile and in need of improvements and correction—that had provided a powerful factor of cohesion at national and continental levels. Their greatest mistake was in not building an alternative structure or formulating a valid hypothesis for the construction of an economically stable and socially conscious EU. The neoliberal “drunkenness” heralded by Thatcherism in the late seventies affected the political culture of continental Europe. It promoted—in the name of a unilateral notion of modernisation—antisocial practices and above all Its interests should logically dictate a policy creating co-prosperity to the East and Southeast, with North Africa, West Asian nations and Russia. The Eurocentric vision and related political praxis were closely tied to national interests, i.e. to the interests of the ruling classes of the time versus those of the rest of the world. Hence, they sometimes complemented and sometimes competed with the United Kingdom’s imperialistic policies. Germany for a moment broke with the status quo as an emerging continental power that after 1933 and throughout the Second World War, adopted a “third worldly” foreign policy of supporting anti-colonial forces against British dominance, whether in keeping with the doctrines of Friedrich Ratzel and Karl Haushofer or simply because of strategic necessity.The right perspective on the subcontinent, as a part of the Asian landmass similar to the Indian subcontinent and bordered by the Mediterranean, should have led European policy makers in the changed post-war context, characterised by the overwhelming presence of an overseas power on European soil, to pay greater attention to the Soviet Union, North Africa and West Asia in order to keep a certain degree of freedom, if not full autonomy. Such a realistic attitude was adopted to varying degrees and with important nuances, by Charles de Gaulle, Enrico Mattei and Willy Brandt, but could not prevail against ideological considerations (the war on communism) which took Western Europe even further away from its Eastern half and Russia. Within European states, it fuelled a low intensity civil conflict that simmered until the fall of the Soviet Union. Transatlantic business and financial interests took the upper hand and gradually undermined the domestic forms of capitalism of the old continent as well as the defensive strategies of trade unions. The “bandwagoning” policy took over European decision-making after the 1956 Suez Crisis, which made North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) states increasingly submissive to US directives.

Today Europe, although in a different geopolitical landscape, finds itself as in the earlier period in a “Cold War”, at a crossroads: either it remains in the Atlantic orbit and performs the role that the USA and Great Britain assign to it or becomes a global actor according to its geographic situation and the achievements secured in the process (howbeit derailed) of integration. The choice between a maritime or continental option also lies before the decision-makers of other insular and peninsular powers such as India and Japan.

Exopolitics: Extraterrestrial Interventions & the Context Communication Theory

In the first case, Europe will maintain a Euro–Atlantic position and remain a bridgehead for the London–Washington axis as well as the West’s frontline on the Mediterranean and the Near East. Such a geographic function would highlight the subordination of Europe to an overseas power and the lack of real sovereignty of European national governments and of the Union as a whole demonstrated by the presence of nuclear weapons on NATO bases in Italy and the many recent instances of breaches of sovereignty by the USA such as the issue of Sigonella, the Cermis accident and the kidnapping of Abu Omar. However, on a rapidly transforming geopolitical scene, either in reaction to the still current US hegemony or because of regional issues, from uni-polarity to multi-polarity—as a result of the rise of China and India; Moscow’s Eurasian positioning; “Bolivarian” endeavours to unite South America (by Hugo Chávez, Evo Since the start of the “European Research Space” in 2001, apart from the creation of a few “networks of excellence” in certain strategic sectors, concrete results are slow in coming.

OLD EASTERN TENSIONS IN THE NEW US STRATEGY

In the present situation, it can be assumed with a fair degree of confidence that the Franco–German alliance, Atlanticist as it may be, will be both economically and financially a powerful counterweight to the “new” Eastern Europe made up of countries which Russia defines as being part of its “near abroad”. How will the Baltic States, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova react to the new convergence between Western Europe and Washington after the “misunderstandings” of the last few years, especially those stemming from the Anglo–American attack on Iraq? The new Anglo–Franco–German axis seems designed to offset the Baltic States’ league. This competition will particularly affect two closely related structural problems of the EU—the issue of energy and relations with Russia.

According to Glucksmann, the “Treaty Light” for the EU promoted by Tony Blair and now Sarkozy, to be oligarchically adopted by parliamentary vote, to avoid the bruising and risky trials of national referenda, provides a “more pragmatic and rapid solution, which will enable Europe to seize again the initiative on energy issues. It is scandalous—says Glucksmann in the afore cited interview—that the EU, originally built around the issue of energy (as the Community of Coal and Steel) is negotiating with Putin in a piecemeal, country by country manner, without coordination and hence without enough leverage”. An Atlantic-leaning Europe, dominated by the quartet of “pro-US EU modernisers” answers the call from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank rather than the hopes and needs of European populations. The historic German tropism towards the East, combined with the personal preferences of the present French President, who is also the current EU President and aspires to build a Mediterranean Union, are sure to create tensions that may prove fatal to the fragile continental balance. German ambitions and Sarkozy’s Mediterranean Neo- Atlanticism will predictably be utilised within global US strategy—against European integration, against the Euro–Russian dialogue and against any attempt at appeasement with Iran.

The “bad mood” in the states of “New Europe” with regard to both Brussels and Moscow, is a powerful asset for Washington strategists who are already harnessing it to maintain their own hegemony in Europe and build an anti-Russian front. In the near future the US Administration will focus on two “special relationships”— the Franco–German one, which is already under British control and the East European connection, strategically important because of the geographic location of the area comprised between the Baltic and the Black Sea. Eastern Europe was earlier co-opted and enrolled by the Anglo–Americans in their attack on Iraq. These two special relationships will be used according to the new doctrine of the containment of the Russian bear, which was denounced by Putin and his foreign minister, especially during their respective speeches at the Forty-third Security Conference (February 10, 2007) and at the Twenty-fifth Assembly of the Foreign Policy and Defence Council (March 17, 2007). Their and other evils has become a common practice that gained momentum after September 11, 2001 and has been institutionalised through the doctrine of “War on Terror” as an instrument of psychological pressure on European populations. The ultimate goal of that media strategy, fully consonant with the theory of “Clash of Civilisations” and articulated around themes borrowed from certain Westerncentric and anti-Arab historiographies, is to mentally prepare Europeans to erect barriers between them and their neighbours and hunker down in a “Western fortress”, thereby uncritically accepting the US’s justifications for its openly neo-colonial militaristic plans in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.

With Sarkozy in the Élysée, Bernard Kouchner in the Foreign Ministry and Jean-David Levitte as the President’s Chief Diplomatic Counsellor, the “neoconservative” and Atlanticist French Government has become a prized ally for the US State Department. Sarkozy’s project for the Mediterranean, clearly intended to contain Turkish and Iranian power while controlling the Arab coastal states, is congruent with the US Greater Middle East Initiative but it will be harshly tested by reality and the laws of geopolitics. West Asia could turn out to be an indigestible prey and the Anglo–Franco–German front, if it does not adopt a healthy and pragmatic realism may—instead of ruling Europe—break apart, in spite or perhaps because of its American backers.

THE MEDITERRANEAN DIALOGUE AND PAX EURASIATICA

If Europe intends to be a global actor and manifest its cultural, political and economic power for the benefit of its population and mankind at large, it will have to take geopolitical responsibilities for the building of a new multi-polar system. To that effect, the EU will have to reconsider its situation and reassume its place, after the long separation endured during the twentieth century, as a full member of the great Euro–Afro–Asian landmass, otherwise known as the Old World, by recovering its traditional role as a balancer and a bridge between the two larger continents. This is necessary, not only for utilitarian reasons related to energy, raw materials and markets but also in view of a shared Eurasian spirituality, which was the fountainhead of the many cultures of the Old World and which the “Westernising drift” has tragically ignored or subverted. To affirm its sovereignty and global mission, Europe will first have to reclaim its own space, outside the Atlantic alliance and rebuild its relationship with Russia and Asia on an equitable basis in keeping with the strategic, economic and political realities of the continental landmass, by means of a Eurasian dialogue. It will also have to take initiatives intended to achieve a real Pax Mediterranea, outside of intrusive and disruptive US activities. Furthermore, it will have to undertake, with other concerned states, the achievement of a realistic and practical alternative to the hegemonic designs of the USA in the Near and Middle East.

A new and genuine multi-polar system will only become possible if and when in the face of the current hegemonic power—expansionistic by its oceanic nature—one or more geopolitical spaces of equivalent importance arise and regain sovereignty over their own coastlines in Euro–Afro–Asia and Latin America. Europe can play a leading role in the construction of a more balanced global system. The alternative is between an unstable, tendentially uni-polar system and a multi-polar, diverse but stable world shared by regional blocs. Europeans will soon have to make a choice between those two models. A Eurasian dialogue and Pax Mediterranea are two vectors that should define the geopolitical scene in the twenty-first century, if Europeans so decide.