The ancient Greeks came up with the names Europe and Asia. Europe was the land they had access to and knew about, and Asia was the territory behind enemy lines, behind the Iranian border. Herodotus wrote, “For my part, I cannot conceive why three names (Europe, Africa, and Asia).” His judgment has been overlooked.
Three of the great texts of ancient times favor Herodotus’s insight—even though he wrote one of them! Herodotus’s Histories chronicles the Greco–Iranian Wars. Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War is about Athens and Sparta, but Iran (or as he called it Media) is ever-present as the third power conspiring with one against the other. And Homer’s The Iliad is about the Greeks who sailed to Troy in Asia Minor, now part of Turkey. As long as there is written history, European and Asian affairs have been intertwined.
When these great authors wrote their books, Iran and Greece were the only great powers of Eurasia. Around two centuries B.C., China unified, and Rome conquered Greece. This made for three empires in Eurasia: Iran, sandwiched between Rome and China.
Despite Chinese initial isolationism, disputes with Iran existed, while Iran tried, and often failed, to prevent commercial relations between its two neighbors.
I mentioned that Iran was the middle empire. In the medieval era, Rome fell to the Carolingians, who would go on and create the Holy Roman Empire. Europe was divided between them and the Eastern Roman Empire, or the Byzantine Empire. Iran would soon fall to the Arabs with their new empire. The Turks overthrew the Arabs and the Byzantines, establishing the Ottoman Empire. Throughout the past two and a half millennia, empires have risen and fallen across Eurasia, but they have often divided themselves into two camps, climaxing in war.
However, a significant event occurred a century ago that profoundly changed the world: The Ottoman Empire fell, and nothing took its place. For the first time since the time of Cyrus the Great, there has not been a middle empire in Eurasia.
New technology matters, too. After the Ottomans conquered Constantinople, they closed the Silk Road, sparking the Age of Discovery. Railway was invented in the 19th century, and the Trans-Siberian Railway became operational in 1916 (just a few years before the fall of the Ottoman Empire). The construction of the Suez Canal shortened the maritime route. Digital technology and online banking have deepened financial ties, with China being a major part of the European economy.
All of these are to say that the politics of Eurasia, from Berlin to Beijing, became interconnected more than 2,000 years ago, and they are more entangled than ever.
Russia is a key player here. It is the largest country in the world and the only Eurasian country with direct access to both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. It neighbors, through waters, Japan and China in the east and Europe in the west. Its war efforts against Ukraine are supported by China, Iran, India, and Hungary, covering every region of Eurasia.
Yet, there is greater emphasis on regionalizing Eurasia today than ever. Once upon a time, Eurasia was divided into Europe and Asia. Today, as interdependence has increased and with greater physical access, we have Northern, Southern, Western, and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Central, South, East, and Southeast Asia. And I am confident that I am missing something here.
Regional military strategies make sense to a point: The United States needs artillery in Europe against Russia and submarines in the Indo–Pacific against China (the good news is that it does not have enough of either). But on a policy level, there is an increasing emphasis on doing less somewhere to do more. This view ignores a simple fact: The interconnectedness of Eurasia means that, if war erupts in one region, it will spread. Let me explain.
I mentioned that nothing replaced the Ottoman Empire as the middle power. This is because the United States replaced all the old powers in the Eurasian rimland. Whereas land access through Eurasia once depended on Ottoman blessing, it has been safeguarded by America for the last eight decades.
In this time, no great war has disrupted Eurasian politics. There are many reasons for this, especially the introduction of nuclear weapons; however, the American hegemony in Eurasian rimland, where most people live and most wealth exists, was the single most important reason.
Powers would often ally and conspire against each other, leading to anxieties among themselves and chaos in the system. Under Elizabeth, Russia allied with the Holy Roman Empire during the Seven Years’ War. Peter III, her teenage nephew, succeeded her to the throne, and he was impressed by Frederick II’s masculinity and switched sides for this simple reason. Prussia, which was on its back heel in the war, triumphed in the war, accelerating the Holy Roman Empire’s decline and fall in 1806. This is an extreme case, but it should give you an insight into the uncertainties that the pre-American Eurasia had to deal with.
This has not been the case since 1945. The continuity and stability of the American regime at home is the assurance to the Eurasians that our policy there will continue as well. So it must not be surprising that, once we became reluctant to enforce the order we have created and committed to, wars began to erupt. The bipartisan desire to “pivot to Asia” was followed by reduced presence in Europe and the Middle East, where wars have been happening. These wars have in turn distracted the United States from Asia for the last four years and taken away our military and financial resources from Asia.
Today, a new axis has emerged. China, Iran, and North Korea are supplying Russia militarily, as well as Cuba to a lesser extent. Put these four down as Eurasia’s primary revisionists. India and Turkey are both strategically important U.S. partner and ally, respectively, but neither is fully committed to the Eurasian order. And you still have to deal with Muslim terrorism as a phenomenon. We might call these the 4+3. (There are other bad-faith actors, such as Qatar and Hungary, but I am only counting the military problems here.)
The 4+3 are present in most distinct regions of Eurasia, often in coordination, and in North Africa, which is important for Europe.
In the early 20th Century, Max Brooks, Halford Mackinder, Nicholas Spykman, and A.T. Mahan agreed that Eurasia was a singular unit concerning its order, and they debated the right strategy to maintain that order.
The new name of this newsletter, The World Islands, is an homage to Halford Mackinder, who was the first strategic thinker to talk about “Euro-Asia,” even though the concept predates him, and even though I am more invested in Spykman’s ideas. Nonetheless, all four are worth revisiting today, especially by the U.S. policymakers who wish to divide Eurasia and do away with the parts they are not interested in.