Romania between Eurasia and the West

The present work signed by the Italian professor Claudio Mutti has a special significance for public opinion in Romania. We do not think we are exaggerating if we say that there are enough elements that make it a real milestone in terms of geopolitical thinking in our country.

First of all, Professor Claudio Mutti is a very good connoisseur of Romanian realities. So much so that one of his Romanian translators, Răzvan Codrescu, rightly remarked that Professor Mutti's knowledge and understanding (in the sense of comprehension) of the history of modern Romanian culture often far exceeds the level of many Romanian scholars. With such a qualification, Professor Mutti can make statements or hold value judgments or opinions about Romania that directly and dramatically concern us, and we must reflect on these ideas of his as coming from an alter-ego of ours.

Secondly, the work we are talking about is mainly a geopolitical one, which appears in Romanian at a very special moment from a geopolitical perspective. The interest of the Romanian public, specialist or not, must therefore be great.

What kind of geopolitical perspective does the Italian professor propose? Starting with the title (Romania, between Eurasia and the West), Professor Claudio Mutti is keen to set out the major trajectory of his geopolitical thinking. Accustomed to the image we have been given over the last two and a half decades, in which, geopolitically, Romania was supposed to go over to the camp of the hardest and purest Atlanticism, Professor Mutti's geopolitical thinking, on the contrary, anchors us in the camp of a broad cultural Eurasianism, which we would do well to understand before we have the reflex (common to many commentators here) to reject it as unnatural and inappropriate.

Eurasianism in the Italian professor's version means much more than a strictly geopolitical conjunctural option of the moment. It is a rather metaphysical option, which results from the particular profile of the author's cultural and spiritual commitment: Professor Mutti's traditionalism, in the major line of René Guénon or Julius Evola, but also of authors like Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Mircea Eliade or Henry Corbin, represent the basis, the pedestal on which an entire ideological construction is built which aims to recover the unity of Eurasia despite the apparent differences which separate the peoples of the Great Continent. The scholarly studies included in this volume that propose such a spiritual-unifying vision of Eurasia represent masterpieces of style and basic pieces of a perennial Eurasianist dossier, not tied to the strictly political conjunctures of the present time (we can list here the titles in the volume that fall into this category: Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and the unity of Eurasia, Mircea Eliade and the unity of Eurasia and Henry Corbin: Eurasia, a spiritual conceptIn order to argue for the unity of the substratum of Eurasia, Claudio Mutti will make an impressive excursion into the traditions of the peoples of this area, taking into account what Ananda K. Coomaraswamy called the "inner life" of the peoples living here, and about which the Anglo-Indian scholar wrote decisively: "The inner life of Asia and Europe is identical". To which Professor Mutti adds, "But where is this essential Eurasian identity to be sought? The Anglo-Indian writer refers us to the spiritual sources of Eurasia: to the Upanishads, to Lao-tze, to the 'Asiatic prophets', to Plato, to Rumi, to Jakob Boehme, to Ruysbroek, to Nietzsche himself". These are the names on which the idea of Eurasian unity rests...

The Romanian case and Romania's place in the Eurasianist geopolitical and spiritual plane is supported above all by the particular vision of Mircea Eliade, who, as a historian of religions, was perhaps best able to realize the spiritual unity of Eurasia: "The fact is that Eliade, Claudio Mutti tells us, as a Romanian, was not a Westerner by birth, but belonged to a nation that was born at a geographical crossroads, in a region that occupied a "crucial" position in relation to the migrations of peoples, so much so that Eliade's compatriots frequently manifested a certain vocation to fulfil the role of cultural mediators and creators of syntheses (3). To put it in his own words: "We (Romanians, ed.) were aware of being situated between East and West (...)".

But, in order to better understand the meaning of Professor Mutti's spiritualist geopolitics, it is appropriate to invoke in this brief presentation of the volume the ideas of the first study of the work (Geopolitics, sacred geography, geophilosophy), which refers to the sacred roots of geopolitical concepts, by analogy with Carl Schmitt's ideas about the sacred roots of concepts of political thought: 'The question is: could Carl Schmitt's famous statement that "all important concepts of modern state doctrine are secularized theological concepts" also apply to geopolitics? In other words, is it plausible that geopolitics itself is a modern echo, if not a secularized derivation of theological concepts related to 'sacred geography'? If so, geopolitics would find itself in a situation analogous in some respects not only to 'modern state science', but to modern science as a whole'. Seen in this way, as thinking about sacred space, traditionalist geopolitics reveals its infinite potential for spiritual synthesis and becomes something quite different from a modern 'science' in search of the efficiency of state power.

A perfect illustration of these traditional influences in today's geopolitical landscape is the study Hyperboreain which mythological elements are interwoven with 'objective' elements in a very special way and form an impressive picture of the openings in sacred time and sacred geography of many European and Asian peoples. From the ancient authors who evoke this people of the hyperboreans, Professor Mutti will go so far as to invoke the special tradition of Vasile Lovinescu's work, which in turn is based on the writings of Nicolae Densusianu and has as its theoretical 'friends' authors who differ in expression, among whom we can mention Mihail Sadoveanu, Mircea Eliade, Mihai Vâlsan, Matila Ghyka, Mihai Avramescu, Nichita Stănescu, etc.

Another powerful idea that Professor Mutti will support, in various forms, throughout his geopolitical work is the idea of empire. As in the case of Eurasia mentioned above, it seems to be a strange idea, with which many will feel uncomfortable, given on the one hand the historical "realities", old or new, and on the other hand the recent propaganda strictly destructive of the Empire, seen as an element not in keeping with the innovative spirit of modern times. As a traditional political form, the Empire, Professor Mutti warns us, is the only viable political formula invented by Europe (by extension, we may consider Asia as well). It is therefore imperative that the European spirit seek to express itself in the imperial form. But what does this form entail? Those who hasten to criticise the Empire confuse its spirit with the spirit of so-called imperialism (hardly a modern, toxic deviation that really needs to be censured). Quoting Louis Sorel, after reviewing the main manifestations of Empire from the Iranian to the last European empire, the Habsburg Empire, Professor Mutti draws our attention to the correct definition of Empire and the emphases it implies: 'Empire is not simply a great politico-military power exercising its own control over a vast territory. Rather, empire can be defined as 'a type of political unity associating diverse but related ethnicities, peoples and nations united by a spiritual principle. Respectful of identities and animated by a sovereignty based on loyalty rather than direct territorial control". Every historical manifestation of the imperial model has in fact been shaped, beyond its geographical dimension and the ethnic and confessional variety of the corresponding peoples, by a unitary order determined by a higher principle". So a superior order and not just a military, economic or other power. Not mere domination, but a higher order of cohabitation based on spiritual principles. Europe will have been like that in the past. Professor Mutti links Europe's present decline and its near-sincidence in geopolitics to the decline of the imperial principle, which has turned it into a vassal of Atlantic interests and an enemy of Eurasia. In other words, a Western and Atlantic Europe becomes, in Claudio Mutti's interpretation, a depowered, weak and suicidal Europe: 'As far as Europe is concerned, the Empire has always been its ideal and political heart, its centre of gravity, until, with the decline and then the definitive disappearance of the most recent imperial forms, Europe itself became increasingly identified with the West, until it became an appendage of the transatlantic superpower and its bridgehead for the conquest of Eurasia'.

The section of the book dedicated to Romania ("Romania - at the crossroads of Eurasia") is built, apart from the Eurasianist elements we have already listed, on the concept - dare we say - "sacred" or spiritual crossroads. In our opinion, in Professor Mutti's writings there is a particular emphasis on the idea of Romania's geopolitical centrality in relation to the Great Eurasian Continent. Invoking the whole school of classical (but also current) Romanian geopolitics, which he knows very well, Professor Mutti draws our attention to the Romanian geopolitical self-identification with the idea of crossroads. To be at the crossroads is potentially to be crucified, but it is also to be saved. Provided that the crossroads is the place where the elements that meet become synthesis and not tension. The current Romanian geopolitics, in which the central point, the centrality or the crossroads is diverted in an Atlanticist sense in the middle of the Eurasianist spiritual centre, is an impossible situation that cannot last very long. Professor Mutti, with remarkable finesse, draws our attention to our country's latest geopolitical choices: "If we theoretically assume that Romania could adopt a policy based on the principles of European sovereignty, then this country, instead of being reduced to a mere pawn of the Atlantic strategy, should recover a function appropriate to its own geographical position, proposing not to be a sentinel of the West, but a connecting element, a bridge between Europe and Russia. But this hypothesis is very far from the possibilities offered by today's reality, because the current Romanian political class does not seem at all capable of conceiving, let alone realising, a geopolitical project of this kind".

Professor Mutti's work also makes, as is to be expected, an extensive foray into current geopolitical hot topics. An entire section of the book is devoted to topical issues, and the studies contained in this section are truly breathtaking reading. "The Geopolitics of Europe Yesterday and Today", the last section of the book, brings together studies that either refer to famous historical episodes in geopolitical terms (Mussolini and the Sword of Islam, Evola and Nasser, Who Wanted Mattei Dead), or to elements relating to the future of the European continent (Refounding the European Union). Special mention should perhaps be made of a study that we think readers will receive with great interest (In search of Europe. How to get out of the Western darkness?), a study which, in the author's characteristic style, overturns common and comfortable ideas about East-West relations by drawing on a vast classical bibliography and mobilizing the resources of spiritual understanding of these relations. Thus, by invoking authors such as Dante, René Guénon, Heidegger and Virgil, Professor Mutti launches a major challenge when he asks whether: "... Europe was supposed to arrive - and will indeed arrive in Dante's time, at the very beginning of our era - in the vicinity of that historical-cultural phase which, according to René Guénon, 'represented in reality the death of many things'?".

With these ideas, Professor Mutti's approach is definitively fixed in what I have called spiritualist geopolitics. Romanian readers now have the opportunity to get in touch with one of the most interesting and convincing geopolitical approaches, one that suits the traditional and largely anhistorical spirit of the Romanian people (anhistoricism is, in this respect, a positive fact!). We are confident that Professor Mutti's work will enjoy recognition in Romania worthy of its real value, that of a spiritual teaching, above and beyond the contingencies of the current flashing.

Cristi Pantelimon