New Global Configurations: The Hostile Beginning of the Millennium’s World Order

Early in the new millennium, a type of book began to appear with increasing frequency. This set of books offered a fresh analysis of the global diplomatic situation.

Exemplary of this category were Asia’s Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific by Robert Kaplan, which underscored how little attention was being paid to southeast Asia by the mainstream American news media; The Shadow War: Inside Russia’s and China’s Secret Operations to Defeat America by Jim Sciutto, which pointed to the coordination of seemingly unrelated events; The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower by Michael Pillsbury, which encompassses a longer view of China’s global ambitions; and The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age by David Sanger, which highlights the relentless, constant, and hidden cyberwar unfolding across the globe.

Although two of these works contain the word ‘America’ in their subtitles, none of them are parochial in perspective. The systemic patterns which they reveal will interest readers in Zambia and Chad, in Paraguay and Bolivia, in Cambodia and Thailand.

Neither are these books overly sensationalistic, although their publishers may have titled and marketed them with passion.

The picture which emerges from these books is that any and every nation around the globe is under constant cyberattacks. Every country must therefore be engaged in cybersecurity and countermeasures.

This ceaseless cyberwarfare is no mere harassment, but can be quite deadly, and is also coordinated with economic pressure and occasionally with direct military action. This ongoing conflict is invisible and largely ignored by the news media.

While huge amounts of media coverage were and are devoted to Iraq, Afghanistan, and North Korea, actions undertaken by the much larger aggressors - Russia and China - go unreported by newspapers and unchallenged by world governments, as Robert Maginnis writes:

A major factor in the new great power competition is the leadership at the helm of these countries. Both China and Russia are headed by autocrats who test international order just as the United States seems to be losing its way.

China and Russia carefully watch any response to their espionage and weaponized cyber activity. When they see little or none, the increase such efforts. Robert Maginnis continues:

In the fact of this confrontation, the West seems feckless at stopping Putin’s and Xi’s great power ambitions, efforts driven by their authoritarian personalities and evidently accepted and cheered by their domestic power bases.

The nations of the world need a greater degree of awareness, both about China’s and Russia’s plans and goals, and about the consequences which the world would endure, should those goals be realized.

China’s “Belt and Road” strategy includes selling technology and construction projects to ‘emerging’ third-world nations. When those nations can’t pay the debts incurred by those purchases, China offers to ‘forgive’ the obligations in return for permanently stationing Chinese military in those nations, and in return for trade and transportation rights being given to China in, around, and through those countries.

The global community of nations also needs to form a steady resolve to resist, and to engage in countermeasures against, cyber aggression and economic extortion by Russia and China.

Spain’s Conviviality: How It Ended

The 711 A.D. marks a turning point in the history of Spain. Prior to that year, a diversity of people lived peaceably with each other.

The cultural diversity included Germanic Goths, Romans, native Celts, and Semitic individuals from the Middle East. The linguistic diversity was composed of Latin, Germanic dialects like Gothic, Hebrew, and Celtic. Religious diversity consisted of Jews, Christians, and a few reclusive adherents of Celtic paganism.

These groups coexisted in a largely amiable way. Certainly they did not agree with each other on all points, but there was no large-scale conflict or violence among them.

The year 711 A.D. would change that.

An Islamic invasionary fleet landed on Spain’s southern coast. The officers were largely Arabic; the soldiers and sailors were mainly recruited from the Berber population of northern Africa. As historian Dario Fernandez-Morera writes, “Spain was conquered and colonized by the forces of the Islamic Caliphate.”

To make their intentions clear, the Muslim officers burned their ships after the invasionary force had landed on the beaches. The message to the soldiers was clear. There was no option for retreat. The only way to survive was to defeat the inhabitants of Spain.

“The conquest was carried out by force,” as Fernandez-Morera notes. After conquering large portions Spain, the remaining portions sometimes chose to surrender and submit to a life of dhimmitude. The word ‘dhimmitude’ describes a non-Muslim who has been allowed to live in an Islamic region; the non-Muslim must agree to an inferior status as prescribed by Islamic law.

The Islamic invaders burned Jewish synagogues and Christian churches. The rules of dhimmitude, sometimes referred to as the ‘Pact of Umar,’ prevented non-Muslims from wearing certain types of clothing or constructing any house or building of significant size.

Even if they had to endure the humiliation of Islamic ‘Sharia’ law, many of the Spaniards chose to surrender to the Muslim armies, so that they could at least live and hope for the eventual liberation of Spain:

The Muslim conquerors used force to defeat the resistance of the Christian Visigoth kingdom, a nascent civilization. But they also granted pacts to those Visigoth lords and Christian leaders who saw it as advantageous to accept the offered “peace” and become dhimmis (those Christians and Jews living in sub­altern status in Islamic lands) rather than face the consequences of resisting. Behind the “peaceful pacts” was always the threat of brutal force.

Thus began several centuries of “religious and therefore cultural repression in all areas of life and the marginalization of certain groups — all this in the service of social control by autocratic rulers and a class of religious authorities.” Spain was not fully liberated until 1492.

But neither was Spain fully subjugated. The Spaniards resisted. Some parts of northern and northeastern Spain were never defeated by the Islamic armies. The Spaniards defended those regions successfully.

Even in the regions which were occupied by the Muslim armies, many Spaniards risked their lives by secretly engaging in acts of defiance, meeting to carry on their religious traditions.

Austria’s Place in the World: Mutating from Century to Century

The modern nation of Austria is geographically smaller than Germany or Poland, and a bit smaller than Hungary too. Austria’s population is likewise smaller than the populations of Germany, Hungary, and Poland.

In previous centuries, however, Austria was bigger in terms of geography, in terms of population, in terms of world influence, and in terms of historical importance.

During the early Middle Ages, Austria did not exist as a concept. Rather, a number of smaller kingdoms which occupy the area which is now Austria functioned semi-independently of each other. Starting in the 700s and 800s, the region came under the influence of the Frankish Empire, which would later be known as the Holy Roman Empire (HRE).

In the late 1200s, the Habsburg family rose to power within the HRE, and would remain in power until 1806. The Habsburg dynasty was an Austrian family, and so the Austrians took control of the empire which had at first been an external influence on Austria. The Habsburg dynasty would develop influences reaching as far as Spain, and therefore be at least the nominal head of nearly all of Europe.

The rulers of the HRE did not have absolute power like the earlier Roman emperors or the later French monarchs. Their reigns were contingent on forming a consensus among a group of electors, called Kurfürsten, of whom there were approximately six.

So for nearly a thousand years, Austria’s identity was that of a loosely connected collection of kingdoms within the HRE, but forming a significant power bloc in the empire because, for the last five centuries of that millennium, the ruling dynasty had its family roots in Austria.

A significant change in Austria, as well as throughout the rest of Europe, happened in 1806. Napoleon’s French army was on a rampage. He was attempting to make himself ruler of all Europe – as well as parts of Africa, Asia, and the Near East. Napoleon, despite some early brilliant victories, failed decisively. In the aftermath, however, the HRE was dissolved.

Austria emerged as its own standalone empire, allied for the most part with the various Germanic kingdoms which would later combine to form Germany. But in the 1860s, Austria pivoted away from those alliances, and formed new alliances, primarily with Hungary. Hungary had been a territory under the rule of the Austrian Empire, but became a proper part of the empire in the 1860s. This new entity was called the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Also incorporated into this new empire were parts of Poland, Ukraine, Romania, and Serbia, as well as all of Bohemia, Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Bohemia would later be known as the Czech Republic. Austria also included Tyrol, part of which is in modern-day Italy.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire was large: it included approximately 240,000 square miles of territory, compared to Austria’s area of 32,382 square miles at the beginning of the 21st century.

The Habsburg dynasty retained control, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire was a major political, diplomatic, economic, and military player in European affairs.

Prior to 1900, people rarely confused Austria with Germany. But today, partly due to sloppy education in American high school History classes, such mixups are common, as historian Lonnie Johnson writes:

Austria is often almost exclusively associated with its imperial past or frequently confused with Germany. Germany began to play a much more important role in Europe at about the same time that Austria gradually lost influence in European affairs towards the end of the 19th century.

For nearly all of its existence, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was ruled by Francis Joseph I, or Franz-Josef I. He was coronated as Emperor of the Austrian Empire in 1848, and became Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867. He reigned until his death in 1916.

Because of his long reign, Franz-Josef was influential, well-known, loved by many, and hated by some.

When World War I ended in 1918, the empire was dissolved. Austria became a standalone country without an empire, assuming its present geographical boundaries. The Republic of Austria lasted from 1919 to 1933, when it ended abruptly by means of external and internal Nazi takeovers.

At the end of World War II in 1945, Austria’s future was in peril. It seemed as if the Soviet Socialists would enslave Austria as they had enslaved Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and other eastern European nations. The Austrians, however, managed to buy their freedom from the Soviet Socialists. The Soviet army, which had occupied much of Austria in 1945, left in 1955, and the Austrians gave the Soviets $152 million dollars and ten million metric tons of crude oil.

The modern nation of Austria has a complicated past, and unless the details of this past are studied, misunderstandings abound, as Lonnie Johnson notes:

With the collapse of the Habsburg Empire in 1918, Austria assumed a role in Europe comparable to its radically reduced size, and this is one explanation for the fact that so many Austrians associations tend to predate World War I. They have the faded charm of old photographs and awaken nostalgic or sentimental feelings about the good old imperial days of Strauss waltzes, operetta, or the grandfatherly emperor Francis Joseph. Associations with Germany, on the other hand, are frequently as harsh as a 20th century newsreel: World War I, Hitler (incidentally one of the most frequently disclaimed Austrians), World War II, the Iron Curtain, or the Berlin Wall. However, if these historical associations are not present in one way or the other, Austria is nowadays sometime[s] confused with Germany or demoted [in people’s imaginations] to the status of being some kind of a German province.

At the beginning of the 21st century, then, Austria shares a language with Germany, but also has huge cultural influences from Serbia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. The daily customs and cultural life grow out of a shared past with other German-speaking regions, but modern Austria, especially the eastern half of the nation, is socially and ethnically shaped to a significant degree by the Slavic regions of eastern Europe.

Austria has its own distinct identity. Students of history and culture will note the differences, and anyone walking the streets of Vienna will not confuse them for the streets of Berlin.