World Geostrategic Insights interview with Michael P. Gerace on his “Geopolitics of Closure” theory and how it can be used to explain Russia’s past and present foreign policy, including the invasion of Ukraine.
Michael P. Gerace is a political scientist, economist and lawyer living in Massachusetts, USA. He is currently working on a book on the geopolitics of closure.
Q1 – Geopolitics has become an increasingly used word in the last decade, although there is no uniformity on what this term means. In very general terms, geopolitics is the study of the influence of geographical, economic, historical and cultural factors on the international politics of states. Or even, the study of issues related to the power competition of states over certain territorial areas. The basic assumption of geopolitics derives from the location of states, regions and resources within their unique environments, each of which exerts an impact on the behavior of countries. In particular, locations and places are certainly important in the study of countries’ objectives in foreign affairs, in addition to other associated factors: topography and demography, distance, climate, borders, size and shape of countries and continents, among many others. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in December: “We’ve shifted into a disordered multipolar world where everything is a weapon: energy, data, infrastructure, migration…… .Geopolitics is the vital word, everything is geopolitics.” You are developing a new theory, “The Geopolitics of Closure.” Can you give some details here about the main features of your theory, and how it differs from the theories of classical geopolitical thinkers?
A1 – Generally, the geopolitics of closure concerns the behavior of a power to block, shut down or regulate access to an area by imposing its control. This operates on the land, on the sea and in the air. The advent of closure dynamics in outer space may exist in nascent form today, but will undoubtedly become more evident in the future.
Closure dynamics and the conflicts around them can also operate economically, politically and technologically (as in the Internet). Political, economic or technological matters can become concomitant arenas of conflict that take on the contours of a spatial/geographic closure dynamic (that is, to open or close political, economic or technological access) and can be used as weapons in such a conflict. A closure dynamic and associated conflict can also operate politically, economically and technologically, however, without being grounded in a spatial/geographic closure dynamic. This is a more abstract idea that I will not delve into here.
Closure has been remarkably common in the policies of many countries, however, and it has been a fundamental driver in some (e.g., Russia). The imposition of closure, whether physical or otherwise, is generally a protective act designed to address a vulnerability arising from others. Such vulnerabilities can be from present realities, a reflection of past experience or perspective in nature.
An act of closure is defensive/protective from the enclosing power’s point of view, however, and may (and most often has) been seen by others as being a dangerous and imperialistic act of aggression. In fact, acts of closure have frequently involved the use of military power and other forms of coercion, such that people living in areas subject to enclosure or those excluded by it have often suffered harsh consequences.
Acts of closure, however, are distinct from acts focused on acquisitive or imperialistic ends. In fact, the geopolitics of closure is in some sense the conduct of a power which finds itself the actual or potential target of the expansionary and intrusive acts of another power. Conflict arising from an act of closure is viewed from the other end of the telescope. Instead of the traditional starting point of viewing a state’s power projection beyond its territory as reflecting its ambitions or its acquisitive ends, for example, the geopolitics of closure views such an issue from the recipient’s or target’s point of view where the actual or potential vulnerability arising out of another power’s intrusive and expansionary conduct is remedied by imposing an enclosure on an area to bar or regulate outside access.
In cases where one or more outside power is seen as the source of threat or vulnerability, then the essential battle between or among opposing forces is that of access and closure.
There are also cases where a threat or vulnerability arises from a power existing within the area to be enclosed itself rather than from outside the area, however, such that the enclosing power will attempt to destroy that power and pacify the area to perfect its enclosure.
The power or state seeking closure is called the enclosing power. The power that seeks to gain access to an area (for any number of possible reasons which can be warlike or peaceful) is called the accessing power. And the power that exists within the area to be enclosed is the resisting power.
There are numerous scenarios among countries where a closure dynamic is operating.
1) There is the one-power case where the enclosing power does not face opposition from an accessing or resisting power, but may seek closure prospectively in case of a future threat, or may seek to block access to an area by outside peoples (e.g., migrant flows), or may seek to prevent people within the enclosure from exiting the area or accessing outside people or information.
2) One type of two-power case is a contest between an enclosing power and an accessing power where one side seeks to impose or maintain closure and the other side seeks access to the area or to undermine the enclosure.
3) Another type of two power-case is where each side establishes its own line of closure against the other, where there may or may not be buffer states in between the two lines of closure. Here, each power is threatened or made vulnerable by the other and thus seeks to block further advancement of the other. This scenario does not imply any moral equivalence between the two powers. One of the powers could have acquired its enclosure through horrendous and unjust brutality inflicted on the enclosed peoples, while the other could be a largely voluntary association that seeks to avoid war. The issue between the two powers is a struggle where each attempts to halt the advancement or undermine the enclosure of the other while maintaining the integrity of its own line of enclosure. The general contours of the Cold War in Europe resemble this scenario.
4) There is also the two-power case between an enclosing power and a resisting power, which can lead to a number of different outcomes, including a broadening of the conflict where the resisting power gains an outside power as an ally.
5) Then there are a series of multi-power cases with three or more powers, which can become complex and very entangled—a difficulty I will humbly decline to entertain here.
All of the scenarios outlined above can operate on land, sea and air, which makes a closure dynamic spatial in nature, geographically specific in location, and highly conditioned by the capabilities of the relevant powers (economic, technological and otherwise).
The imposition of closure on land, and sometimes on the sea, has also involved the creation of hardened, man-made structures to support the enclosure.
One of the oldest land examples of this is a physical wall. Like other hard, man-made structures, a wall is an augmentation of geography designed to govern movement. Here a wall compensates for the absence of a sufficient natural barrier to effectuate closure. Like other geopolitical expressions of power, the imposition of a wall reflects the capability of the enclosing power (technical, economic, financial, military and police) and the geography of the area in which the wall is imposed.
Perhaps most walls are or were designed to keep people out. Some of these walls are/were designed to achieve this end during wartime (e.g., the Maginot Line, the Mannerheim Line, the Siegfried Line, the so-called Stalin Line), and some are/were intended to operate more generally during peacetime or during both wartime and peacetime (e.g., the Great Wall of China, the Israeli Barrier, a Castle Wall, the barrier being built along China’s 3,000 mile southern border which includes a fence erected on its border with Vietnam, fences at China’s North Korean border and in its Xinjiang region, and the partly constructed US southern border wall).
Walls designed to keep people out reflect security objectives to address vulnerabilities arising out of the actual or potential influx of people, such as soldiers, pirates, illicit traders, uninvited migrants and terrorists.
In these types of walls, one issue is whether the enclosing power can impose control or use force on the outside of the wall to disrupt or confuse an adversary or to impede its ability to actually reach and/or breach the wall. Here outside forces or people who may try to reach and breach the wall are not under the control of the enclosing power and, as a result, may generally be mobile (on foot, on horse or camel, or using motorized vehicles), they may have communications capability (especially today with cell phones) and they may have weapons.
An outside force can breach such a wall by 1) breaking through, 2) going over, 3) going under, and 4) going around (on land or sea). The wall’s effectiveness can be improved if the enclosing power can direct force toward an adversary outside the wall.
Some walls are designed to keep people in, however, such as the Berlin Wall or a prison wall. The effectiveness of a prison wall in keeping people in, for example, is related not only to the wall’s formidability and the presence of armed guards, but also to the fact that the inmates are generally immobilized inside the prison itself. They can spend long periods of time locked in their cells and their time outside their cells is highly controlled. The prison authorities are themselves highly mobile and dominate movement inside the prison by controlling an internal system of maze-like fortifications of corridors, stairwells and rooms that can be compartmentalized and sealed off from adjacent areas by heavy steel doors which, in modern prisons, are electronically controlled.
The communications of inmates is also controlled by having their visits monitored, telephone conversations and mail that inmates may send and receive. Inmates also have limited to no ability to communicate with other inmates housed in different parts of the prison and are often forbidden from sending letters to inmates housed in other prison facilities. The capacity to control the mobility and communications of prisoners, then, reinforces the effectiveness of the surrounding outer wall because inmates have little or no ability to reach the outer wall much less breach it.
Other hard structures, such as roads, rails and canals, are usually thought to create access (the opposite of closure), but they can also create closure of one kind while providing access to another. A modern highway illustrates the point. Such roads are designed for high-speed motor vehicles and can continue for hundreds or thousands of miles/kilometers. The access provided by a highway, however, is a hard channel along a geographically specific pathway, such that one can only access areas that the highway physically allows. While a highway may allow access from one city to another because access roads to and from the highway connect to the cities, the highway may also disallow access to another city because no routes were built to connect the highway to this other city. Access to sensitive areas can be denied, for example, while also providing access to other areas.
Geopolitical thought has traditionally been too general regarding the implications of new transport technologies, such as motor vehicles and trains. Even air travel, hailed by early air power theorists as being free of geography and capable of flying in any direction, actually moves along specific, hard pathways of travel, with some areas being forbidden to air traffic by order of civilian or military authorities, and with some airports included in the flight path and others not. The power to enforce compliance with designated air travel lanes, forbidden air space and connections to authorized airports provides a similar hard pathway in air travel that geography naturally allows on land.
This is but one way in which the impact of transport technology on geography and the resultant power projection opportunities afforded to states has been overly general in geopolitical thought. I will leave the other ways in which this is true for another time, given the very lengthy nature of the issue.
Q2 – One of the most famous translations of geopolitical assumptions into geopolitical realities was the “Heartland” theory of classical geopolitical thinker Halford Mackinder. Mackinder postulated that control of the central core of Eurasian territory would be the key to global power: “He who rules Eastern Europe commands the Heartland – He who rules the Heartland commands the World Island – He who rules the World Island commands the world.” For Mackinder, the conflict between maritime and territorial powers was a recurring theme in European history. He also emphasized the strategic importance of the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea to the Russians, who had long sought warm-water ports. Mackinder argued that geography, not economics, is the fundamental determinant of world power and that Russia, simply by virtue of its physical location, inherits a primary global role. What is his view? How do you explain Russia’s foreign policy, of recent years, including the invasion of Ukraine, viewed through the lens of your theory of “Geopolitics of Closure”?
A2 – I assert here (without showing) that the expansion or evolution of Russian borders throughout Russia’s history has been overwhelmingly concerned with the geopolitics of closure. Russian security needs have often been driven by actual or potential danger around its periphery, ranging from violent local populations to larger and more threatening forces on horseback. The resulting struggles, some short-lived and others long-lived, led to violent efforts to pacify localized dangers and incorporate the territory under Russian control or to the imposition of closure over an area to bar future access from an outside power.
Other drivers in the expansion of Russian borders have also been evident, such as imperial ambition and resource/wealth acquisition, but a closure dynamic has been the dominant and ever-present factor in Russian security policy and remains so today.
In terms of Russia’s recent history and policy regarding closure, however, I would start with Russian/Soviet control over eastern Europe after World War II, that is, with the so-called “empire” on the western end of Eurasia.
The Imposition of Soviet Closure in Eastern Europe
When the Soviet Union maintained its military in Eastern Europe after 1945, imposing communist dictatorships on the countries under Moscow’s control and finally, in 1949, imposing the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance on them (creating an “autarkic” trade bloc under Moscow’s control), it imposed a three-tiered “wall” (military, political and economic) around Eastern Europe to enclose the entire region. This act of closure certainly severed Eastern Europe’s independent connections with the outside world, but its fundamental purpose was to prevent Western access to the region. It was aimed at outsiders on the other side of the closure line.
As outrageous as it may sound (given the sufferings of the peoples of these countries), the Soviet imposition of closure on eastern Europe was a strategically defensive act, however offensive, violent and aggressive it was to the peoples so enclosed and however threatening it was to the West. It was strategically defensive because it addressed a critical vulnerability Russia has faced in modern times on the western end of Eurasia, a vulnerability similar to others faced in the Soviet and Russian past in other geographic regions.
That vulnerability is invasion from the West through eastern Europe. Three times in modern history, Russia and/or the USSR was invaded by sovereign states from the West, each of whom were wealthier and more advanced than Russia/USSR and where each invasion brought disaster. I am referring to Napoleonic France and Germany in both world wars.
The German invasion of World War II, which commenced in the early hours of June 22, 1941, was by far the greatest and most horrendous invasion ever faced by Russia. In fact, the land war in the USSR itself was the largest (in terms of men, materiel and land area involved), the most violent, destructive and murderous land war in all of recorded human history. The very survival of the USSR and all of its people were actually at stake.
While none of this experience from the Nazi invasion sanitizes Soviet treatment of its own people under Stalin or excuses the brutalities the Soviets inflicted beforehand on the eastern portion of Poland, the Baltic States, Bessarabia and northern Bukovina when the Soviets invaded these areas as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Agreement of 1939, it also does not alter the Soviet perception and reality of strategic vulnerability from the West. In other words, Moscow can be concerned with a real vulnerability while also being guilty of aggression and brutality itself.
The explanatory power of this vulnerability, however, is that it accounts for the Soviet geostrategic objective of achieving total domination and control over eastern Europe after the war. Enclosing the region to the exclusion of western power was of paramount importance to Stalin.
Stalin’s demand for closure was evident in his geopolitical musings at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, with Poland being central to his concerns. Stalin indicated to FDR and Churchill that the Soviet need for security on his western borders reflected experience from the German invasions in both world wars.
The closure dynamic evident in Stalin’s thinking about eastern Europe, however, appeared to have two components. One was the overall need to shut down access to the region to any future western power that might attempt invasion of the USSR. Stalin spoke of closing the “Polish Corridor,” the flat plain running through Poland between Germany and the USSR, as being of overriding importance to him.
The second component of Stalin’s thought was that potential threats arising from any east European state after the war had to be prevented and/or eliminated. Aside from hostility and resistance to Soviet ambitions there, there were territorial issues as well. Poland was again the focal point of Stalin’s concern, given that he clearly saw Poland as a potential threat. The recent war between Poland and the new Bolshevik state (not yet the USSR) from 1918 to 1921, which included territorial matters, coupled with recent Soviet treatment of Poland could fuel a live threat after the war where Poland could become a resisting power in the way of Soviet objectives.
The implication for imposing an enclosure on the region is that Poland, not to mention the other states within the line of closure, had to be weak and thus amenable to Soviet control.
Stalin’s language at Yalta appeared to hide this, but a close inspection of his words and deeds actually revealed his plan. Stalin told the allies at Yalta that there must be a strong Poland to help shut down access through the “Polish Corridor,” because it cannot be closed from the outside by Russia. It had to be done from inside Poland itself, which is why Stalin said he supported a strong and independent Poland. If the allies believed that Stalin would allow a strong, free and independent Poland, then they were not paying attention. The absence of a strong and independent Poland after the war, of course, revealed Stalin’s intent after the fact.
Stalin actually wanted a weak Poland under the total control of Moscow and he engaged in acts to ensure that end. A strong Poland could threaten Russia, thwart Stalin’s objectives and, at the very least, could become a difficult resisting power that could embolden other states in the region and attract allies.
Perhaps the most egregious and telling act intended to ensure a weak future Poland was the Katyn Forest Massacre of nearly 26,000 Polish officers in 1940. The officers were imprisoned in different gulags, along with the many thousands of other people the Soviets had kidnapped and shipped into the USSR by train to the slave labor camps after the Soviet invasions under its 1939 pact with Germany. If Stalin wanted a strong Poland, then he would not have ordered the extermination of the Polish officer corps. By doing so, however, he ensured massive and immediate postwar military weakness of Poland, which would make the imposition and consolidation of Soviet control all the easier.
The desire to enclose eastern Europe and subordinate the region to Moscow, then, was at the heart of Soviet policy for the postwar period.
The Maintenance of The Enclosure
The Soviet enclosure of eastern Europe, however, had the imperfection of the western exclave of West Berlin, which existed within the Soviet line of closure. This would be akin to an enemy encampment existing inside the castle wall. The Berlin Blockade in 1948, under the pretext of Soviet protest over the advent of a new West German currency (introduced into West Berlin as well), the Soviets (among other things) imposed a blockade of the road, rail and waterways through East German territory to bar western access to West Berlin. The blockade, of course, failed to remove the western exclave because the allies flew over it in a massive airlift to supply West Berliners and Moscow ultimately relented.
The erection of the Berlin Wall, which began in 1961, was a closure event indicating public resistance in the Soviet domain. The wall had fully encircled West Berlin, thus isolating it from East Berlin and the rest of East Germany, was designed to keep people in rather than out. That is, the wall was to prevent people from East Germany from escaping into the West. The East German regime’s laughable propaganda at the time was that the wall was necessary because the capitalist West was trying to undermine their ability to achieve full communism.
The wall, however, was actually much like a prison wall because its focus was to keep people in. Like a prison, a mobile police force dominated East German society and turned it into a system of controls. Telephones and mail were monitored. Media was controlled. Foreigners were followed and citizens were interrogated for speaking with them. The wall itself was formidable and heavily guarded and the state dominated the movement and communications of the public. Only when these internal controls were relaxed and political authority acquiesced to this did the wall come down.
Other acts of resistance to enclosure in the 1950s and 1960s, such as in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, were also put down with varying degrees of force.
The western response to the Soviet imposition and subsequent consolidation of closure in eastern Europe was to produce its own line of closure that faced the Soviet line and was separated from it with distance only by a few neutral states in between. The advent of US containment policy was the ultimate byproduct of perceived threat from the USSR, in light of its enclosure of eastern Europe and its aggressive/subversive conduct beyond its line of closure in the West.
Western containment, focused on stopping the Soviet advance, acquired emergency proportions in Europe with the advent of the Korean War in 1950. In addition to a military tier to the western enclosure with the advent of NATO in 1949, there were political and economic tiers as well. The political tier was much softer than it was in eastern Europe and became more of a club than a closed wall. Economically, however, the US imposed an export control regime on the USSR and its allies (extended to China after the Communists came to power there) with the Export Control Act of 1949 (later named the Export Administration Act), and a multilateral counterpart was created among the new US allies (known as COCOM, or the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls).
The export controls were designed to prevent the transfer of militarily significant technology to the USSR and its allies. It reflected a vast turnaround from US wartime policy of Lend-Lease aide, where the US provided the USSR with truly massive amounts of military goods (e.g., finished weapons and vehicles, component parts, fuels and lubricants, munitions, manufacturing technology, plans and even entire factories that were set up in the USSR, raw materials and foodstuffs). The US provided this aid along with the British, bearing the cost and dangers of shipping through war zones (which did entail losses), and the US loans to the USSR for this aid never really had to be repaid (and never were).
Western export controls, then, were an economic tier to the western enclosure arising out the new state of enemy-hood.
There was no imposition of closure by the US barring Soviet and east European participation in the US-centered trade and monetary systems set up to govern postwar economic relations, but the USSR refused to participate and would not allow eastern Europe to do so either. Their formal severance from the capitalist world economy after the war occurred with the imposition of the CMEA in 1949.
The economic tier to Soviet enclosure here was really about a strategic Soviet objective of shutting down access to eastern Europe for reasons explained above and was not really a reflection of communist ideology (however convenient communist ideology may have been for Moscow to justify its conduct). Communist ideology certainly did not bar Stalin from receiving the massive aid from capitalist America during the war and, despite post war conflict, ideology did not prevent the USSR from trying to satisfy its appetite for militarily significant technology from the capitalist West through various espionage programs.
The Ultimate Failure of Soviet Closure
The “gateway” that eastern Europe represented in Stalin’s geopolitical thought and which he closed and barricaded after the war was open from 1989 when the states within the enclosure began to breakaway and Moscow acquiesced and declined to use force to maintain its closure. The pressures leading to the ultimate failure of Soviet enclosure here was largely internal to the region and to the USSR.
This failure of closure, which deprived Russia of a long-term belt of outer security far from its own borders, was only the first failure of closure. There was then a second failure and at least the threat of a third.
The second failure of closure was the end of the USSR itself, where Russia lost (consensually) another belt of security represented by the republics outside and around the Russian border itself. These Soviet republics represented an inner belt of closure that, in both the imperial and communist past, pacified dangerous adversaries and closed the areas to outside powers. The borders of the Russian federation itself, containing non-Russian peoples, many of whom are Muslim, also reflect a closure dynamic from the past which also provided Russians with security by pacifying actual or potential local dangers and barring access from outside powers. If this innermost belt of closure were stripped away, then Russia would (for the first time in centuries) be strategically naked and again exposed directly to potentially dangerous forces.
I will not delve too deeply into this issue here, but the Chechen wars posed at least the possibility that closure could have failed within Russian borders themselves, that is, if the Chechens succeeded and other peoples followed suit and also sought to breakaway. Viewed through a closure lens, then, the Chechen wars could have become the start of a grave threat to Russian security by stripping the last vestiges of closure away.
As soon eastern Europe was open again, the issue of western expansion into the region emerged—regarding both economic and military expansion. The evidence suggests that Moscow was ill at ease with the expansion of both the EU and NATO.
Regarding NATO, US diplomacy under Bill Clinton spent much time trying to get the Kremlin to accept the idea of NATO expansion as not being a threat to Russia. The principal initiative here became the Partnership for Peace (PCP) idea, where Russia would be a true and equal partner of the US in security matters. This was ultimately a failure, as Moscow came to see the PCP as a mere placating device. The public justification for NATO expansion under Clinton also wore thin, which was that NATO expansion was really about ensuring the stable and peaceful integration of Europe as a whole—an odd-sounding justification for an otherwise defensive military alliance.
It was clear, however, that the states who wanted to join NATO sought a security blanket to protect them from Russia. That Russia was not an enemy at the time or threatening these states did not matter. Concerns over a Russian threat were prospective in nature. From Poland’s point of view, for example, NATO expansion was a desired act of closure against a future Russian problem (among other objectives).
As NATO kept expanding eastward in successive waves over the years, Russia watched its former enemy alliance swallow Russia’s former “empire” and the three Baltic states. It must have sounded odd to the Kremlin to continually hear western critics claim that Russia was trying to rebuild its old empire.
NATO and EU expansion began to tread on highly sensitive Russian concerns by offering membership prospects to both Georgia and Ukraine. Without recounting the history, the 2008 war in Georgia was a loud message that western power would not be tolerated in the Caucasus. The same message was later evident regarding Ukraine.
There is the unanswered question of why the US and some west European leaders basically ignored Russia’s expressed concerns, as if they would just go away and not lead to conflict. I do not offer an answer to that question here.
I will state that western efforts to enter Georgia and Ukraine were encroachments into Russia’s security zone that convinced Moscow (along with other actions by the US) that they were dealing with an adversary after all.
I will also say that Russia’s use of military force in Georgia in 2008, in Ukraine in 2014 and in Syria in 2015 (a long-term ally of Russia) were responsive to US actions. While it may sound outrageous to a traditional western ear, an argument can be made that these three examples of Russian military force were part of a Russian containment policy against the US to halt further US encroachment. If so, they reflected a counterpoint strategy rather than a line strategy.
What does the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 represent? Is it an attempted act of closure of part or all of Ukraine, perhaps an effort to establish a containment line to foreclose any further encroachment?
I pose this question to be suggestive, but a thoughtful answer to this question would be very lengthy.
Q3 – You have applied your theory to explain the underlying reasons for some key international events, such as NATO’s war against Libya in 2011, which you describe as an example of “failed closure,” with particular reference to the free opening of the Libyan littoral as a result of the NATO attack. Can you give more details of your thinking on this here?
A3 – If closure functions to offer the enclosing power a defensive security, then the failure of closure exposes that power to the very vulnerability to be avoided. Here failure can occur in the act of closure itself, that is, as an unsuccessful attempt to impose a closure. Failure can also occur after the fact, that is, after a period of successful closure.
In the case of the war against Libya in 2011, the littoral of the southern Mediterranean is at issue.
Mackinder himself spoke eloquently in chapter 3 of his 1919 book, Democratic Ideals ana Reality, of this very issue where the conquest of the eastern Mediterranean by the Greeks and the later conquest of the entire Mediterranean littoral by the Romans was motivated by vulnerabilities that arose when the littoral was open, that is, when powers could access the sea and thus cross to Europe to loot and make war. By garrisoning off the littoral through direct military action and destroying any powers in opposition, the Romans shut down access to the sea to any such powers and thus eliminated this danger. From then onward, Roman domination of the entire littoral of the Mediterranean required only a policing function on the water to keep good order (hence the phrase Mare Nostrum). Roman policy here was clearly an act of closure necessitated by the dangers that arose from an open littoral, especially in the south.
Once Roman power decayed, however, then the littoral was open again and, as history would have it, great danger again crossed the water to Europe, this time by a new power from the east and south, Islam, which lasted for quite some time. The later decline of Muslim power was a reprieve from this danger, but Europe would again encounter this problem in the future.
If we fast forward to contemporary times, the war against Libya amounted to the destruction of the closure along the Libyan littoral, resulting in untold numbers of people crossing the waters to European shores and with Italy taking the brunt of this. While the peoples crossing the water today do not appear to be soldiers or terrorists (at least, not yet), they are unwanted and do impose a range of serious costs on recipient countries.
As such, the maintenance of closure on the southern littoral of the Mediterranean Sea is as critically important today as it has perhaps always been, especially for the safety and integrity of countries facing the influx of people crossing the water directly.
It is evident that today, in contrast to Roman times, there are three basic ways to deal with this problem. One is the old way, like the Romans, to garrison off the littoral area with military force in order to shut down access to the sea. This, of course, is risky, dangerous and expensive. It would also smack of an imperialist/colonial style policy that would likely engender much opposition and difficulty.
The easiest and least expensive way to deal with this problem is to have sovereign states control their own littorals and thus prevent the problem altogether. Despite leakages of people from the Libyan shore over the years, the Libyan state was otherwise functionally in service of Europe’s need for closure here. It would be principally important then not to destroy such a state, absent an even greater danger emanating from it.
Both of the above policies achieve closure of the littoral. If closure cannot be attained, however, then the third option achieves the desired result through alternative means. This would be to use one’s coast guard and navy to prevent any persons from coming ashore. Italy could have accomplished this task with little difficulty once the great flood of people commenced from the Libyan shore.
From a practical point of view, preventing people from reaching one’s shore creates the secondary problem of what to do with them once they have been barred from access to one’s territory. One could attempt to return them to the shores they came from, and face any dangers that arise from those shores (e.g., armed resistance). One could try to return the people to their countries of origin, another expensive and possibly risky prospect. One could take the people out of the water and house them temporarily in shelters, perhaps built on Mediterranean islets, until they are willing to return home. Or, one could do nothing after preventing the people from accessing one’s shore and, instead, let the people crossing the water bear the risk of their conduct—even up to the point of letting them drown (modern western leaders do not appear to have the stomachs for this last option).
Italy did not have any of these policies. Instead, Italy followed EU rules and let these people come ashore and bore the expense, risk and other costs of doing so.
It is a profound wonder why the Italian government decided to support and participate in the war to begin with. Italy could have spoken very loudly over the pro-war and supposedly moralistic noises emanating from France and Britain and articulated its important national interests instead. It could also have rudely threatened a veto in NATO (and perhaps got Germany to go along with it). At the very least, Italy could have declared that its vital national interests were at stake, such that it would prevent anyone crossing the sea from coming ashore in Italy once the war began.
The very countries who benefited from the closure of the Libyan littoral are the very ones who destroyed that closure and there remains no satisfactory or convincing explanation of why they actually sought that war.
A good deal more could be said about this, but I will leave my answer to this question here.
Michael P. Gerace – Political scientist, economist and lawyer.
Image Source: Reuters