BORDERS: THE NATIONAL 'SQUID GAME'

There is a peculiar form of popular geopolitics in central Europe: A quasi-religious sentiment that involves worshipping the pre-1920 borders. In Hungary this quasi-religion is particularly strong. The dominant discourse is that Hungary "lost" 2/3 of its territory to its neighbors. (Never mind that it was not "Hungary" but the Hungarian lands of Austro-Hungarian Empire--a land-based, contiguous, multiethnic suprastate entity never supported by any form of democratic decision making, ruled by the Habsburg family, an imperial scandal itself, widely considered to have overstayed its shelf life, never mind that none of those territories had even anything close to a majority Magyar population.)

This is a condition not unlike much of the rest of Europe, betraying a deep sense that no firm and strongly drawn borders could fulfil the French republican dream of the "nation-state" (i.e., a bourgeois state with a single ethnicity recognized as fully endowed with collective political rights). Certainly the successor states of the erstwhile Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Habsburgs is one where absolutely no ethnically just border can be drawn based on some kind of phoney "historical" claim. Put differently, every square cm of land in this part of the world--just like pretty much everywhere else, by the way, for that matter--can be "rightfully" claimed by more than ethnicity. Ergo, no such ethnic exclusivist claims should be allowed. The only solution to this deadend is

• explicit acknowledgment that the "nation-state" is a fiction,
• search for political solutions explicitly to dissolve "national" borders, and
• severely fighting the popular geopolitics of ethno-national sovereignty to the exclusion of all others.

I am saying this because, apparently, on 2/22, 2022, the Russian President decided to break the territorial sovereignty of Ukraine by recognizing two secessionist republics. This is a rather bold (or, is it pig-headed?) chess move in a truly complex geopolitical situation. We can glean a number of considerations that might have gone into it on the Russian side. Some have to do with relative geo-economic power of the two countries (see, e.g., my earlier post on that), others with the obvious fact that Russia is doing pretty much what other powerful geopolitical actors, including, prominently, major "western" states, have been doing: projecting its power to the outside world, expanding its realm of control in space, like a proper contiguous empire. What's so attractive specifically about the two regions--Donetsk and Luhansk/Lugansk? A host of considerations emerge (those two are among the most industrial areas of Ukraine, their economy is very strongly integrated with Russia, e.g., by now they use exclusively the Russian Ruble, the Russian language is used in everyday life by approximately 35% of the local population--although that is a very muddled problem, language use is notoriously difficult to measure, not to mention that Ukrainian and Russian are closely related and it is often impossible to tell local dialects from each other--etc. Besides, who cares? Dozens of states share languages--so what?).

Clearly, there is also the fact that both regions have been affected by Russian-identified ethnic secessionist movements. A collective sense of otherness, a veritable superiority complex, a petty desire "to be one with the mother country", the whole Spiel. Central Europeans know this posture very well--this is what irredentist / national-narcissist popular geopolitics has been all about, involving, e.g., Hungary and all of its neighbors, Romania and Moldova, Poland and a host of its neighbors, not to mention the numerous entanglements on the Balkan Peninsula, etc. And that does not even address the rest of Europe--and indeed the world.

I have no way to estimate the degree to which the Russian President, his advisors and the diplomatic and intelligence services are aware of this--but this incursion could turn out to be an extremely dangerous move. Way more than what they can see now.

For, it can easily be something that's seen (and I am almost certain it is seen) by irredentist, extreme-nationalist forces world-wide as a precedent. It allows a number of false, highly dangerous, in fact pretty much genocidal, conclusions, ideas such as

• the existing borders are violable with impunity,
• that it is the moral obligation of ethnic kin states to bring military and civilian geopolitical wherewithal to "help" state-level minorities that have, or simply claim, local or regional majority status, to engage in perfectly irrational variations of borders and, ultimately, to commit heinous crimes against the local minorities, or that
• moving, re-appropriating and re-configuring borders can be a viable option, more attractive than the alternative: decreasing the practical significance of borders. Or, more broadly, the simple but disastrous idea that
• self-contradictory situations, overlapping cultural terrains, complex borders need to be "fixed", and that fixing can / should only be done via military violence.

Since yesterday, the whole world has got a push, by extreme-cynical political operatives everywhere, toward the "right." A push to pretend as if world history were a series of poorly organized, exceedingly bloody Olympic games, where "national teams" compete, and the one who collects the most "gold", whatever that might be, wins.

A veritable national squid game. The losers lose their future, their loved ones, their limbs, their lives, their children.

What do the winners win? A big, fat nothing. Being able to see that others die--before they die. And they love it.

CODA: I am unfortunately not able to dismiss out of hand the thought that members of the governments of east-central Europe, Hungary included, are having hot flashes and wet dreams about the possibility that they might take a bite into Ukraine. To "liberate" their kin nationalities, of course, nothing else. A new tiny world order is being created, in the dreams of immature boys with big guns. And a global military alliance behind them. I hope I am wrong.