From Steppe Frontiers to Gunboat Frontiers

The Deep Historical Roots of Today's Geopolitics II

Our political and thought leaders often behave like history doesn’t matter. At most, they cherry-pick the historical record to support one argument point or another. That’s not the way to learn from history. As I’ve written on multiple occasions (e.g., here), to do it properly we need a science of history, in which we use the historical record to empirically test theories that explain why societies change in particular ways. And, then, use this understanding to steer our societies towards better outcomes.

In today’s post I will mine the material in my recent book, The Great Holocene Transformation (GHT), as an example of how studying deep history can help us understand the world we live in (see also a previous post, The Deep Roots of Today’s Geopolitics).

A Note on the Margins: the images in this post come from PowerPoint slides that I used to present these ideas in two talks last week.

One of the strongest results in GHT, supported by models, big data analytics, and case studies, has to do with the spatial configuration of imperial powers in Afroeurasia during the ancient and medieval periods. As a reminder, here’s the map from the previous post, showing the Eurasian heartland, which was the home of nomadic pastoralists (indicated by lighter yellow). Over 90% of pre-1500 mega-empires were located on the shores of this “sea of grass.”

This geopolitical pattern began forming around 1000 BC, when people living in the steppes north of the Black and Caspian Seas finally figured out how to control horses while riding them (see the metal horse bit below).

Early horse archers combined horse riding with a powerful composite bow, which was short enough to shoot from the horseback, and iron-tipped arrows. As a result of these and later developments (such as the stirrup) cavalry dominated warfare for the next two millennia. It was the constant military pressure from the steppe that created an intense selection regime in the agrarian regions next to the steppe. We can depict this pressure radiating from the steppe like this:

The white squares in this map indicate the location of the steppe ecological zone, while rainbow colors show the distance from the steppe.

Agrarian area nearest the steppe had two choices: endure constant raiding from the steppe, or unify under the protection of a large and powerful empire.

These empires periodically experienced “end times” and fragmented. But continued pressures from the steppe forced them to unify again and again. This is why in the map Steppe Frontiers and Mega-Empires above we see imperial clusters in Iran-Mesopotamia, Northern China, and Northern India. North of the steppe there were no empires due to lack of agriculture there. In Eastern Europe agriculture arrived late, in the middle of the first millennium. But as soon as it took hold, the same pattern of imperiogenesis (the birthing of empires) was established there also. Towards the end of the first millennium, the geopolitical configuration of Eurasia can be depicted as follows:

Map created by Jakob Zsambok using Gemini Nano Banana

The Steppe power peaked during the thirteenth century, when the Mongols under Chinggis Khan and his successors conquered most of Eurasia. By 1300 China, Iran, and Russia were all ruled by the Chinggisids — the Yuan Dynasty, the Il-Khanids, and the Golden Horde. However, these empires were fairly short-lived and all collapsed during the second half of the fourteenth century.

Furthermore, this brief moment of the Steppe glory also carried within it the seeds of its destruction. The Pax Mongolica fostered immense cultural and technological exchange between the eastern and western ends of Eurasia. The most consequential technology that diffused to Europe from China was, of course, gunpowder.

During the Ancient and Medieval eras chunks of Europe were briefly unified by the Roman, Frankish, and Byzantine empires. But unlike the Eurasian Imperial Belt, we do not see in Europe repeated imperial reconstitution which would follow periodic breakdowns. Most of the time, (Western) Europe existed in a highly fragmented state.

The arrival of gunpowder triggered intense military competition within Europe. There is a huge academic literature on the so-called Military Revolution of the 16th Century, which argues that radical changes in military technology during the 16th and 17th centuries resulted in major lasting changes in governments and society. What’s important for the story in this post is that this technology-driven intensification of inter-state competition had a similar effect on imperiogenesis as the preceding Iron-Cavalry revolution. If in 1500 CE there were many hundreds of states and statelets in Europe, by 1900 CE only some 30 remained, with the rest gobbled up by these survivors.

Most importantly, although it is sometimes forgotten, the second key technology, in addition to gunpowder, was ability to build sailing ships capable of navigating to the far ends of the world. Whereas horse-riding revolution had a continental effect, the “gunboat” revolution had global consequences.

It is actually remarkable how many parallels exist between the two military revolutions. Whereas Steppe-dwellers rode horses and shot arrows, the Europeans rode ships and shot guns. Each group enjoyed huge preponderance of military power over other societies, especially initially, before those could adapt to new challenges. Finally, and most importantly, both groups had a huge effect on state-building and imperiogenesis. These parallels prompted some historians, such as Victor Lieberman, to propose that Europeans were a kind of “White Inner Asians.”

The Early Modern Period (1500-1800) was the period of transition, during which the Steppe power completely waned, with Russia and China dividing most of the Steppe among themselves. At the same time, the power of “White Inner Asians” waxed until they achieved global dominance. The world’s geopolitics transitioned from Steppe Frontiers to Gunboat Frontiers.

The transition from Steppe to Gunboat frontiers inverted the geopolitical configuration of Eurasia. Before 1500 the imperiogenesis engine was located in Inner Asia and exerted pressure on the Imperial Belt surrounding this Heartland (see the Zsambok map above). Around 1500 the engine shifted to Western Europe. And by the mid-twentieth century it expanded further West to North America. Perhaps the most accurate localization would be the Washington-London-Brussels, or “Atlanticist,” axis, in short. Today geopolitical pressures on the Eurasian Imperial Belt come from the oceans and seas surrounding the continent.

This new pattern comes clearly through in the geopolitical writings of Mahon, Mackinder, and Spykman. Here’s an illustration from Spykman 1943 book:

And whereas Spykman’s map is conceptual and schematic, the current implementation of these geopolitical ideas is very much real and concrete:

Source

And this observation brings me to the last question of this post: what can we say about the future evolution of this geopolitical configuration?

The general principle in cliodynamics, which we’ve seen throughout this post, is that if a geographic region is subjected to enduring military press from outside, this creates strong selective pressure for imperiogenesis. It may take two or three centuries, but eventually a large, powerful, and, likely, expansionist empire will evolve in this region.

This principle says that it is, if not inevitable, then exceedingly probable that both Russia and China (and perhaps Iran) will grow more internally unified and externally powerful as a result of the current geopolitical dynamics. In fact, it has already been happening. Modern Russia has evolved under constant pressure from Europe since the sixteenth century. China more recently — roughly, from the First Opium War (1839-42).

Equally important is that the Eurasian empires had a long history before the inversion of the Heartland. They acquired a lot of cultural elements that helped them to effectively resist the original Inner Asians, and could be repurposed for the defense against the White Inner Asians.

It is unlikely that the goal of the United States and allies is to nurture internally cohesive, powerful and antagonistic empires — a huge “blowback” dwarfing in scale the previous examples. Furthermore, external pressures on Eurasian states also promote a strengthening of their alliance, as the expansion of the Shanghai Cooperative Organization suggests.

Similar warnings have recently been made by several retired diplomats and some intelligence and army officers. I recently discussed it with one of them, Lt Col (ret) Daniel L. Davis, on his podcast.

But these critics have been ignored. The official Washington and Brussels continue to steadfastly follow the course laid out in the 1990s by Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski (see the latter’s The Grand Chessboard). Ultimately, though, some tides of history are so powerful that no amount of wishful thinking will be able to prevail against them.