Russia, Turkey, and Austria-Hungary seem to be back. There are good reasons for this. But modernity pushes in new directions. The US must think ahead about it as it will also impact China.

Just a hundred years ago, after WWI, three polities, which for centuries disputed the true legacy and, thus, the authentic spread of Rome’s ancient power, crushed and crumbled.

The Russian Empire, the third Rome, was trashed by the Soviet revolution that boasted of leaving behind the Czar and his Orthodox Church. Russia’s colonized Asian people became “ethnic minorities” with their republics in a new federation. The Ottoman Empire, conqueror of the Second Rome, Constantinople, became a Turkish military republic shedding its religious and non-ethnic legacy — the Greeks were expelled, the Armenians wiped out, and the Kurds turkisized. The Austrian-centered Holy Roman Empire, which had forged Europe together with the Pope for a millennium, was reduced to a German-speaking statelet.

All discarded the old link with their homegrown religions (Russian orthodoxy, Sunni Islam, Roman Catholicism). All gave up their non-ethnic heritage and found a new nationalist identity (Austria and Turkey became German and Turkish) or internationalist (Russia became Soviet with its global communism).

But institutions that shaped people and territories for centuries can’t be wiped out in just a few decades.

Russia’s experiment with communism went bankrupt, and subsequently, in the late 1990s, it also got cold feet with its complete transition to a market economy. At that point, President Vladimir Putin gradually shifted the country onto a neo-Czarist path to recover old borders. Chechenia’s pro-independence forces were obliterated in 1999, Georgia was carved up in 2008, and Ukraine was deprived of Crimea in 2014. But those regions have their plans and resist a return to Soviet or czarist Russia.

Similarly, Turkey was rejected from an EU association in 2016, the same year it cracked down on the modern-oriented Gülen movement following a failed coup. At the same time, since the first Gulf War in 1990, it confronted the danger and opportunity of crumbling Arab states on its borders, Iraq and Syria, and the rise of new Kurds’ national entities and ambitions in those territories and its eastern regions.

Therefore, to keep all these pieces together, its president, Recep Erdogan, now voices a return to the Ottoman roots. But Israel has changed the geography. With the war in Gaza, more Muslim Arabs and Druze have become active in Israel. The ultra-orthodox Jews became less privileged (they now have been drafted into the army). Israel has better ties with the Arab countries, which fear Hamas radicalism more than Israeli business. These Arabs, squeezed between Turks and Persians, may prefer fellow Semites in Israel.

Almost in parallel, present independent nations like Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, and Austria are all voting for the conservative rightist parties, and Italian regions, formerly part of the Austrian empire or in its orbit (Friuli, Veneto, Lombardy), are pressing Rome for a law granting them greater autonomy. Vienna is a magnet for them all. They seem to share a mutual sensibility against a “foreign Islamic invasion,” represented by the immigrants from Muslim countries. They may have common interests in opposing a new rising axis of Polish-Ukrainian-Baltic interests. They would like to project themselves between Central Europe and the Adriatic Sea through Trieste and maybe even Venice.

These new pulls and pushes have already been reshaping the map of Europe and the Mediterranean. They can’t be trifled with.

Changing Religions

When the future looks uncertain and vague, a past model provides a secure anchor, with its specific bond between politics and religion and, thus, daily life.

The new pulls have problems because a hundred years don’t pass in vain. The past imperial fantasies clash with complex realities born in the meantime. Ukraine doesn’t want to go back to Russia; Israel opposes Turkish expansionism, and Italy could break up if the Northeast were given greater autonomy. Here are also the differences among these different pushes.

Russian ultimate shove in Ukraine created unexpected resistance by Ukraine and other neighboring states. Turkish ambitions seem to fill a void created by the defeat of Iranian dominance in Syria and Lebanon after the Israeli attacks. The Austrian fascination occurs with the twin political weaknesses of Italy and the European Union.

Moreover, religions have grown different too. As Lorenzo Prezzi argued [i], in 1721, Peter the Great abolished the Orthodox patriarchate and replaced it with a governing body called the Holy Synod, directly under state control. It effectively made the Church an arm of the state until the restoration of the patriarchate in 1917, with the revolution. The patriarchate was persecuted by the communists; then, it resurfaced with the collapse of the USSR. Since the war, it has moved constantly in support of Putin, but the relationship remains murky, and the hierarchical relationship between President Putin and Patriarch Kiril is blurred.

In parallel, the Ottoman Caliph was the defender of the Islamic faith and claimed to be the supreme religious authority in the Islamic world. Kemal Ataturk’s Turkish Republic abolished the caliphate in 1924, and all successive attempts to re-establish one have failed so far. Sharia courts in Turkey were abolished, and even the Arab script was forfeited for the Latin alphabet. With the fall of the USSR, Turkey claimed a new role as a polar star of the Turkic people, once under soviet rule — Azerbaijan on the western shores of the Caspian Sea and Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kirgizstan, Uzbekistan on the eastern shores. However, a stronger Turkic identity rubs against the ambitions to rule the Arab world in the name of an Ottoman heritage. The Ottomans were non-ethnic; they simply didn’t look at the national identity of the rulers. Now Turkey is and wants to be very Turkic, and Recep Erdogan has no credentials to be a Caliph, despite his religious leanings.

The confusion in Central Europe, around Vienna, is even greater, as no one called for a return of the Habsburg Emperor, and the dreams of a Crusader Pope clash with the Pope’s different drams to reach out to Asia.

The present world is the product of Protestant reform, Catholic adaptation (France), or outright rejection of religion. These religious rituals (masses, ceremonies) have a less pervasive role, which doesn’t mean there is less religion in life. However, fewer religious rituals also mean greater difficulty in returning to some old model (imperial) with close religious ties.

On Civiltà Cattolica, Giancarlo Pani[ii] argued about the significant contribution of the Reformation to the life of the Church, and the Pope, with his trips to Germany and northern Europe, tried to mend fences and build bridges, paving the way for a greater Christian reconciliation with the heirs of the Reformation.

Catholicism wants to find a new space for religion in life, not alongside old emperors but modernity. The Pope is the religious leader possibly most projected into the future, with a religion distinct from the state.

This is the future, however vague and hazy it may be. Simultaneously, the past can’t be forgotten with a shrug. It should be essential to hold these different threads together, cast a line for change, and not be dragged down by the past.

At the same time, thinking of new geopolitical courses is essential. What will Middle Eastern geography be without Iran’s tentacles over Syria and Lebanon? Does Europe accept the weakening of Italy and the EU to strengthen a new Austria-Hungary, or does it want to push in the opposite direction? The American voice will be decisive in all these matters because a pathway for these “empires” will impact the US’ main concern on the other end of the Eurasian continent, China.

finis

[i] https://www.settimananews.it/?s=prezzi+ortodoss and private conversation