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Geopolitical Journey, Part 2: Borderlands
Editor's Note: Stratfor's George Friedman is continuing his trip this week across the region that includes Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Poland, Serbia, Turkey and Azerbaijan. This report on the same region was written in 2010, as he was returning from a similar journey that explored the geopolitical imperatives of those states. The observations and forecast then in many ways mirror the reality today, four years later. By George Friedman A borderland is a region where history is constant: Everything is in flux. The countries we are visiting on this trip (Turkey, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine and Poland) occupy the borderland between Islam, Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity. Roman Catholic Hapsburg Austria struggled with the Islamic Ottoman Empire for centuries, with the Ottomans extending northwest until a climactic battle in Vienna in 1683. Beginning in the 18th century, Orthodox Russia expanded from the east, through Belarus and Ukraine. For more than two centuries, the belt of countries stretching from the Baltic to the Black seas was the borderland over which three empires fought. There have been endless permutations here. The Cold War was the last clear-cut confrontation, pitting Russia against a Western Europe backed -- and to a great extent dominated -- by the United States. This belt of countries was firmly if informally within the Soviet empire. Now they are sovereign again. My interest in the region is to understand more clearly how the next iteration of regional geopolitics will play out. Read more » |
