Space! A complex category that is difficult to define with precision. In simplified terms, it is understood as “that in which material things are physically extended.” It can also be described as “a realm where everything (or nothing) is / is not located and does / does not occur.” It is perceived in different ways: in a divine and spiritual sense, but also in a worldly one— ecological, sociological, mathematical, philosophical…
PERCEPTION OF SPACE AND ITS VALUE
The traditional perception of space is three-dimensional, defined by length, width, and height. As a fourth dimension, time inevitably joins them — which, in a postmodern, dromological sense, as Paul Virilio would say, essentially means speed. In this way, one arrives at a broader chronotopic continuum, a kind of five-dimensionality. In truth, the understanding of space that comes closest to accuracy is a multidimensional one — encompassing economic, cultural, media, cyber, and countless other aspects.
It is generally assumed that, in the context of geopolitical space, geography is the discipline most competent to study it. Geopolitics evaluates it scientifically and practically as territory — politically demarcated space. From a military standpoint, this is the realm of geostrategy. Thus, the conclusion of Yves Lacoste, the founder of the modern French geopolitical school — that “geography is, above all, used for waging war” — appears logical, though perhaps too resolute and one-sided.
Human attitudes toward space have shifted throughout history and in accordance with the social systems people created — ranging from glorification and even fetishization, to the denial of its significance and total marginalization. In theoretical terms, this spans from geographical determinism to geographical nihilism. Possibilists are generally credited with striking the “right balance”: space provides predispositions and opportunities, which humans, depending on circumstances, may utilize to a greater or lesser extent — or fail to utilize at all.
Attitudes toward space have often been ideologically and expansionistically abused, as seen in various grand-state projects or in the conquests of imperial powers. The same is true of European colonial empires, which occupied and “ethnically cleansed” entire continents. The Nazis were particularly “distinguished” in this regard, through the practical implementation of doctrines such as “blood and soil” (Blut und Boden), “living space” (Lebensraum), “power and space” (Macht und Raum), “greater space” (Grossraum), “awareness of borders” (Grenzbewusstsein), and others.
THE FALSE “DISREGARD” FOR SPACE IN GLOBALIST PURPOSES
Even while the transition from a bipolar system to a transitional unipolar one was only being anticipated — in 1989, on the eve of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Bush (senior)–Gorbachev summit in Malta — several months earlier, the National Interest published Fukuyama’s famous essay on the “End of History.” In 1992, amid the global debate over “endism,” he published a book expanding on the same theme. That idea of a symbolic “end of time,” premised on the notion that the entire world was becoming liberal-democratic — and that “democracies do not go to war with each other,” as the axiom goes — received far more attention than the thesis, launched decades earlier, about the marginalization of space, or the supposed “end of geography.”
Marshall McLuhan, regarded as one of the most original thinkers of the 20th century and the founder of modern (mass) media theory, became influential for predicting as early as the 1960s and 1970s that the information revolution and the expansion of global media would produce a “compression of the world” and its transformation into a “global village.” In other words, space would be “defeated” by the speed at which information and innovation spread, leading to the “annulment of space through time.”
It appeared that geographical determinism would be superseded by technological determinism. Seemingly logical — a new “epoch of deterritorialization” was expected to follow, i.e., globalization as a process and globalism as an ideology. This was interpreted to mean not only the “end of geography,” but also the “end of geopolitics,” which would supposedly be replaced by geo-economics, as Edward Luttwak triumphantly proclaimed in the early 1990s.
This was happening precisely when it was becoming evident that Yugoslavia was about to disappear from the political map — the only uncertainty being not whether but how bloody the process would be. The West eagerly awaited the opportunity to intervene, masking its long-prepared plans behind rhetoric about providing “good offices,” even as it became clear (and later fully confirmed) that it intended to manage the Yugoslav crisis and script its ending in accordance with its own interests.
At that moment, the Serbs expressed a desire to build a national Serbian state on the ruins of the former federation — founded on democratic self-determination and delineated according to the ethnic principle — rather than to see it partitioned into the former Yugoslav federal units, the products of a totalitarian Titoist regime.
THE ALLEGEDLY ANACHRONISTIC SERBIAN TERRITORIAL IDEAS AND DEMANDS
From the Euro-American world — intoxicated by its Cold War victory — came a chorus of messages directed at the “Serbian barbarians,” insisting that what the Serbs were demanding was “not democratic,” that “territories do not matter,” that in a globalized world “borders are disappearing,” that “the era of the nation-state is over,” that “the Serbs are prisoners of history,” that “Serbian aspirations for unification belong to the 19th century,” and, of course, that such aspirations represent globally dangerous “Greater-Serbian pretensions.”
Some even claimed that Serbian demands were analogous to the Nazi concepts of Lebensraum and Blut und Boden, arguing that therefore the “Serbian virus must be eradicated.” And when, within Serbian intellectual circles, a Serbian national perspective once again began to emerge in place of the old Yugoslav one—and when geopolitics began to experience a renaissance as an existential necessity—this, for the West and its local auxiliaries, was taken as further proof of “Serbian evil.”
At the same time, that very same West insisted categorically on the territorial integrity of the other former Yugoslav republics and on the preservation of their so-called AVNOJ borders. These borders were “blessed” by the decisions of the Badinter Commission and imposed through political-diplomatic pressure, economic and financial leverage, intelligence activity, propaganda, military intervention, and other instruments. It became clear that “all are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
The Serbs slowly came to understand — though they have not reconciled themselves to it — what the “policy of double standards” actually means. This became especially evident when it was used to justify the amputation of Kosovo and Metohija. In that case, the West assured Serbia that her territorial integrity and internationally recognized borders were suddenly no longer inviolable — that the Badinter “principle” no longer applied.
But the territorial integrity and “administrative line” of the Kosovo statelet, within provincial borders, were declared unquestionable. Why? Because, according to the West — which falsely presents itself as the “international community” — Kosovo is a unique case (sui generis).
MULTIPOLARITY: THE WORLD IS NO LONGER “A SINGLE TERRITORY”
And then it became obvious that the “unipolar moment” was fading, and that the “global territory” under the American boot would, after all, have to be divided into neo-classical or postmodern spheres of influence — for the Chinese, the Russians, the Indians, and various regional powers… though apparently not for the Europeans. And behold — almost overnight, territories and borders once again became fundamentally important. No one today claims that they are “obsolete,” “marginal,” or “belong to the past,” nor are they denounced as retrograde expansionist ideas or associated with a Nazi legacy.
Quite the contrary. The entire world, influenced by media and social networks, has internalized a geographic — or more precisely, geopolitical — way of thinking, especially since the outbreak of the conflict in the Ukrainian theater. This was to be expected. Leading world figures now speak almost daily in explicitly territorial terms.
Trump, without the slightest hesitation, floated “trial balloons” about nothing less than annexing Canada, buying Greenland, and reestablishing unquestionable American control over the Panama Canal. Not to mention aspirations toward resource-rich territories in Venezuela, Ukraine, the Middle East, and beyond.
Putin has repeated countless times that there will be no negotiations over the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions, which have been incorporated into Russia. He has also stressed that he will “not yield to the Kyiv regime on the demand that Russia give up territory,” insisting that these are Russia’s “historic lands.”
China is merely waiting for the right moment to bring Taiwan back under its control — one way or another — even under the formula “one country, two systems.” At the same time, on a micro-territorial scale but with macro-military implications, it constructs artificial islands in surrounding seas while guarding every inch of national territory in Xinjiang, Tibet, and the Himalayas.
India has, for decades, been politically and diplomatically contesting — and occasionally, as recently — militarily clashing with neighboring Pakistan over the disputed Kashmir region. And when it comes to the inviolability of its own share of that territory, New Delhi makes no concessions: “Kashmir’s autonomy is being abolished so that Kashmir does not become a new Kosovo,” India’s Interior Minister Amit Shah declared in parliament long ago.
These are only a few examples — and they concern the world’s most populous and territorially largest nations, all nuclear powers. Meanwhile, almost no one today remembers the justified and well-reasoned Serbian positions regarding territory from three or four decades ago — unless, of course, they wish to invoke them to legitimize their own claims.
