Eso’s Chronicles 233/ 4
The HKG-RIX Axis 04
© Eso A.B.

Hong Kong-Riga axis: the first a part of China on the Europe-Asia south east end, while Riga is on the north-west end of the two continents that dominate the largest remnant of the huge landmass once called Pangaea. If one draws a straight line between the two cities, one transects Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, located perfectly in between.

This observer has been arguing for some time that the present capital of Europe, Brussels, has outlived its usefulness, for the simple reason that the business activity of Europe has moved eastward, from England and France to Germany—an eventuality that two world wars tried to prevent. At this time, no one questions the claims of Hong Kong, though by comparison Riga seems a small provincial city. But is this likely to remain so into the future?

Of course, the plans to make it so go ahead:  http://rt.com/op-edge/eu-us-pact-devastating-566/ But it need not.

If the leading nation of Europe in the future is Germany—as many signs cause one to believe—then Riga, arguably the city which Germans once may have planned to make their capital (see blog 228)—may soon revive. True, unlike in the past, Germany is no longer directly linked with Latvia by way of Prussia, what with Poland, Lithuania, and Russia occupying the middle distance http://www.harveypowers.com/eller/Kaliningrad_map.jpg ; but then Canada separates the mainland of the U.S. from Alaska, and that does not stop Alaskans from being Americans. Given the sell-out of Latvia by the current government of Latvia to Brussels and little good coming of it for Latvians, it is likely that Germany would find most Latvians ripe for the picking.

There is not only TAFTA, but some other geopolitical arguments, which insist that it is not Riga, but Russian Konigsberg that should take the prize of the dominant city in the area. But given the unhappy experience of Latvians with the Soviet Union in the not long ago, and the propaganda barrage against Russia by the Latvian government during the past twenty-one years, the people will feel safer and be less reluctant to consider their future if it comes to them with Germany as mediator. As for the Germans, they can choose TAFTA or an independent course.

The reason for this potentially sudden turn-about in the fortunes of Riga is not Riga of itself or Germany, but the fact that Riga is perfectly situated for a German-Russian relationship and has a similar past relationship to relate to. Moreover, the foreign policy direction of the Latvian government for the past twenty years plus has been a disaster when it comes to hewing a direction that can be considered as promising. Indeed, most Latvians are only superficially aware that there is such an institution as the Foreign Ministry. For the most part, the FM has been an arm of Brussels and/or NATO, which has no interest in the Baltics except as a frontier that abuts Russia it considers its potential enemy.

Russia has for a long time faced serious problems vis a vis NATO, which does not have economic well-being of Europe as its major interest, but subordination of Russia as its chief aim. As Zbigniev Brzinski wrote in his book, “The Grand Chesboard”, in discussing the Ukraine and the nations belonging to the Turkic languages groups (p148): “Russia is too weak to regain imperial domination over the region or to exclude others from it, but it is also too close and too strong to be excluded.”  Brzinski recognizes that the U.S. is “…too distant to be dominant”.

The very same words can also be used with regard to the north-east region of mittelosteuropa, where the Baltic nations are located.

The great danger in the present situation in the Middle East is that instead of acting as if is “too distant to be dominant”, the U.S. by supporting the interests of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Georgia, Turkey, Kurds, and others, has appeared to want not only to dominate, but to undermine the belly of Europe-Asia (Russia-China) with a pepper plaster compress so hot that similar to Soviet Russia, the nations so embraced would expend the greater part of their wealth in armaments, which—like in the case of the Soviet Union—would cause permanent discomfort to their people. One may hope that at this time the financial and economic situation in the U.S. has somewhat corrected American aggression and will cause it to reconsider its strategy.

For the last twenty-one years, the Latvian government has favoured a similar U.S. tactic in the Baltic region. While it has no support of its people for this strategy other than their fear of a repetition of Soviet style dominance, it can be easily seen that with regard to economic policies, this strategy is not only a failure as such, but has exposed the country to existential dangers, re: economic outmigration, demographic decline, chronic under education, chronic poverty, chronic amorality at all levels of society, chronic absence of a positive self-generated culture, and this is only the beginning of the list of compacted social ills, not to mention the  suffering of the people.

So, why not think of a HKG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hong_Kong_Airlines_B-KBE_taking_off_at_Hong_Kong_International_Airport.jpg -RIX economic axis? If at this time Riga http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/00/13/bc/0c/riga-old-town-in-the.jpg  is nowhere near a comparison with Hong Kong, then the industrial capability of Germany and the Scandinavian countries more than compensate for the yet undeveloped infrastructure.

Eso’s Chronicles 230/ 1

New Kursk 01

© Eso A.B.

 

The following link by “Battlefields” on the battle of Kursk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22xpNBJCS4U  in 1943 is lengthy and leaves something to be desired, nevertheless, it shows how the battle took a long time being prepared by both Germany and Russia. The preparations and their length by both sides are most impressive, not least, because they show that both sides had their apprehensions about coming out on the winners’ side. In this writer’s opinion, another such battle (not necessarily of tanks, which may have become an outmoded weapon) is being prepared for in the Middle East and in the Baltic; in other words, a battle across a very wide front indeed.

 

While I cannot give any actual outlines of the battle to come, I will present its rough outlines and raisons d'être in the next few blogs.

 

Just yesterday there was a news item in the Reuters News Service, that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has warned Israel http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/07/us-palestinians-israel-kerry-idUSBRE9A60P220131107  that if it does not join the American-brokered peace negotiations in the Middle East, it was likely to be soon facing a Third Palestinian Intifada and other geopolitical problems in the not too distant future.

 

The Secretary of State’s warning comes in the context of a reassessment of recent American and NATO strategies, which likely caused all the Great Powers who form on what was once Pangaea http://geology.csupomona.edu/drjessey/class/Gsc101/Plate.html , the original land mass of our planet, to tickle their nuclear buttons. In other words, Europe, Asia and all the abutting lands, have for approximately a thousand years been facing a concerted Western strategy to occupy the land whence they themselves originally came from. Wishing to shed the spiritual discipline of their forebears, the Westerners decided that they would create a history of their own, albeit a history of fiction, which would allow them to attack the descendants of the powers that remained in charge of their own ancient homelands.

 

In the thousand years or so since the Carolingian kings the divisions and regroupings occurred among the various powers in the Western lands have been many. The original attacks by the West on the East can be identified with the early Crusades, starting about the 11^th and 12^th centuries of the 2^nd millennium. In these attacks only the peripheral borderlands of the East were chiseled from it, and some beachheads captured, notably at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea and northeastern Europe.

 

My own country, Latvia, is part of the chiseled part of the East. Originally, the Germans, part of the great migration of the Goths (first as Vikings to the Black Sea region, then as various tribes of Goths backing away toward the northeast of Europe (the so-called Benelux countries), under the pressure of the advancing Turkic tribes or, as some prefer to call them—Huns. In the Benelux area, the Goths split up in three four main branches: the Germans, French, English, and Scandinavians. Latvia, then part of a geographical area known as Livonia, has its origins in the German desire to be independent of French Rule and the burden of French Paris as their capital city. Thus, early German warriors, known as Teutonic Knights, ventured into the relatively sparsely settled wooded lands of the European northeast, and established a city we now know as Riga. Originally, Riga was slated to become the future capital of Germany.

 

Riga was founded in 1201 by cannon Albert of Bremen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_of_Riga, who was elevated to the rank of bishop by his uncle Hartwig archbishop of Bremen and Hamburg. Bishop Albert also founded the Teutonic Knights with whom he subjugated most of the Baltic tribes native to the area.

 

Though seldom mentioned and for political reasons never pressed, one of the reasons for the founding of Riga was to found a future capital city for the Germanic people.  One of the subtitles that Bishop Albert gave to Riga was Jerusalem, which indicates, at the very least, that in his mind’s eye Riga in the future was ‘up there’ with Constantinople and other major cities of the West and East. Again for political reasons, this high status for Riga remains unrealized and is reason why the subject is deliberately muted. Nevertheless, those powers, which have an eye on the future, of Europe as a federated state, retain an interest in Riga as a city founded by Germans. Not least among these are Latvians come under the Anglo-Saxon influence and are linking their future with NATO, which in one way or another is replacing the Teutonic Brotherhood.

 

Russia, too, has a no less greater interest in Riga than the West. To understand this better, we have to remember the trading history of Russia, which begins above the polar circle in Murmansk, moved south to Novgorod the Great, and later--with the building of St. Petersburg—moved even further south. By the beginning of the 20^th century, Riga, then still part of tsarist Russia, had become the third largest city in Russia. While today Riga has lost its glory, the recent military maneuvers by Russia and NATO http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/tensions-rise-with-russia-as-nato-to-stage-biggest-war-games-in-seven-years-29733358.html  suggest that its geopolitical importance is not being overlooked in the centers of power and is the cause of considerable hubris in government circles of Latvia itself.