I Am Going to Study Geopolitics of Central Europe

Julien Reszka · 2014-03-08T14:45

Russia annexed Crimea and most people I know are confused. I was not. I have Polish roots and I have been studying this region. The structure was legible.

1994 — Year Ukraine signed the Budapest Memorandum, giving up the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the US, and UK — **1994** Year Ukraine signed the Budapest Memorandum, giving up the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the US, and UK Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, December 5, 1994

Russia annexed Crimea last week. Most people I know are confused by it. I was not, and I have been trying to work out why.

I have Polish roots. My family's history runs through a region that has been partitioned, occupied, and redrawn more than once. Growing up in France, that history stayed in the background. But it stayed. The names, the borders, the logic of buffer states and great power competition between Germany and Russia: it was never entirely abstract for me. When Crimea happened, it was not a surprise. It was a pattern I recognised.

So I signed up for a formal course on the geopolitics of Central Europe at the University of Lorraine to close the remaining gaps, not because I am lost but because I want the vocabulary to match the intuition.

What I already understood before the course:

Why Crimea specifically: it hosts the Black Sea Fleet, Russia's only warm-water naval base, and Sevastopol was on a lease that Ukraine could have chosen not to renew
Why Ukraine's military was in no position to resist: years of underfunding and Russian penetration of its officer corps had hollowed it out
Why Poland's reaction is so different from Germany's: Poland has been between these two powers before and knows what the pattern looks like from the inside
Why the Budapest Memorandum produced no response: it was a political commitment, not a treaty, with no enforcement mechanism and no signatory who wanted to be the one to test it

The Crimea annexation is not an isolated event. It is the opening move in something longer. The structure of what comes next is already visible if you know where to look. I am going to study it formally so I can read the next moves more precisely.

Myth: Geopolitics is a subject for diplomats and analysts, not something a design student needs to understand — Reality: The decisions that reshape economies, borders, and supply chains are made by governments reading maps that most people never look at. Understanding the structure does not make you a diplomat. It makes you a less surprised person. — **Myth:** Geopolitics is a subject for diplomats and analysts, not something a design student needs to understandMackinder, H.J. (1904). The Geographical Pivot of History. The Geographical Journal.

When a major event happens that most people find confusing, ask whether you have the structural background to read it or whether you are reacting to the surface. Building that background before the event is what makes the difference.
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Discussion

When an event happens that most people find confusing, do you have enough structural background to read what is actually going on?
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