Geopolitics in the Mediterranean: Geographical and Identity Realities in and beyond the Mare Nostrum

Nuno Morgado

This article zooms in on the Mediterranean region with the objective of describing a set of geographical and identity realities which impact the foreign policy conduct of European countries located in the area. Knowing these realities means, therefore, a better understanding of the considered states’ behaviour.

The structure of the text is circular, inspired by the outlines of the Mediterranean Sea resembling a very imperfect oval shape. The article starts with Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean and then covers the west, Greece, Italy, Malta, France, Spain, and Portugal. These countries form the EuroMed 7 Group, an informal alliance within the European Union. However, the text also includes a reference to the UK, a country with bases in both Gibraltar and Cyprus, thus returning the reader to the east of the sea. The article is a collection of case studies, unified by the theoretical–methodological framework of neoclassical geopolitics.1

Among the EU countries located in the Mediterranean, Cyprus is the one that seems to deal with the most severe problems from the point of view of political and military stability. The “far eastern” position of that island on the sea, in a transition area between Europe and the Middle East, certainly contributed—and still does—to that fact. The island—located in a place that was under the consecutive control of the Roman and Byzantine Emperors, the Crusaders and the King of Jerusalem, the Ottoman sultan, and the British Crown—is today divided into two “countries”: the Republic of Cyprus and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (recognised only by Turkey). This division was a result of the persistent resentment between the Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots—brother communities in a sole nation that speaks two languages and practices two religions—which was worsened by fratricide attacks during the 1960s and 1970s and subsequent evictions and population exchanges between the north and south. The resentment out of all these tragic events still persists, blocking the path to the island’s reunification, and, all things being equal, they do not seem to give any sign of disappearing in the next years. Consequently, there could not be too much expectation about recent efforts by UN Secretary-General António Guterres in this respect.2 Moreover, the island also needs to deal with further complications, meaning that roughly 35% of its territory is occupied by the Turkish army, which backs up the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), and, thus, the island keeps facing major struggles to achieve political and social stability.3 Nicosia remains the last divided capital

Mediterranean Sea

Paphos KYRENIA Kyrenia

Famagusta

Limassol

Akrotiri (UK)

Larnaca

Dhekelia (UK)

The area administered by Greek Cypriots The area administered by Turkish Cypriots United Kingdom Sovereign Base Areas United Nations-administered buffer zone (Green Line)

of Europe as both a material and a symbolic result of this conflict.

Cyprus joined the EU in 2004. Although the whole of the island, including the UN buffer zone, the exclaves, and all the territories with complex issues, joined on paper, the control over the north-east of the island is de facto exercised directly by the TRNC and indirectly by Turkey. As a geographical reality, Cyprus balances between Greece and the EU (and, consequently, NATO and the US); Turkey, the Middle East, and the Gulf states; and Russia and the Eurasian landmass. It, thus, represents one of the most interesting cases from the angle of geopolitical studies. Concerning Russia, it is noteworthy that Cyprus has ties with this country through Orthodoxy, cultural sympathies involving businesses, financial transactions, and citizenship rights, in addition to a somehow left-wing solidarity (e.g., until 2013, the president of Cyprus was the proRussia communist, Demetris Christofias).

One of the priorities for Cyprus is certainly to influence the EU agenda by laying Eastern Mediterranean issues—on the table, especially the ongoing dispute between Cyprus and Turkey on the exploration of oil and gas in Cyprus’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

Similarly to Cyprus, Greece, one of Europe’s cultural birthplaces, is also located in the eastern Mediterranean and, therefore, suffered a centuries-long Ottoman occupation, too. The Hellenic sphere lost some territories with much significance to the Ottoman Empire, the most important of which is perhaps the old city of Constantinople (Istanbul). Both of these geographical and historical facts predetermine tense relations between modern Greece and Turkey, justifying why Athens spends 2.6% of its GDP on defence;4 all this in a context where Greece and Turkey are member states of the same politico-military alliance, NATO.

Greece is a mountainous country, a condition that complicates domestic power projection, communication and transportation, and agricultural production. The country also has an unusual geographical configuration, for it controls roughly 6,000 islands and islets and has an impressive 13,676-kilometre coastline—a geographical beauty and, at the same time, a defence nightmare. Nevertheless, the fact that the Greek is among the most powerful navies in Europe may help dissuade military adventures. In addition, the Greek merchant navy capacity

is in the world’s top ten. Greek defence can be visualised in two concentric circles: a narrower one in the Aegean Sea, with Athens in its very centre, and a wider one extending over the eastern Mediterranean. Therefore, Greece not only used to be a conventional sea power built upon a maritime culture, it still is.

The country’s geographical position makes it a gateway from the African and Middle Eastern regions to Europe. Unsurprisingly, Greece has been in the front line of receiving thousands of illegal immigrants coming from the south and the east since 2015. The EU depends on Greece, just as on other Mediterranean countries, to enforce the law and protect EU borders from any disturbance originating from the mentioned geographical directions.

Greece has been haunted by serious economic problems due to weak economic and land transportation structures, a huge public sector, and a tendency for overspending. The country has received international bailouts but does not seem to be able to overcome its economic fragilities. These problems certainly limit the potential of the state and, consequently, Greece’s international position. The idea of abandoning the EU has been sporadically mooted, but Greece does not seem to have an alternative to membership, given its regional context and the threats it faces.

Unlike the Byzantine Peninsula or the Iberian Peninsula, the Italian Peninsula is unified into a single country. To this fact, constituting an important element of unity, another one can be added—Italy enjoys religious homogeneity, as most of the Italians are Roman Catholic.

On the other hand, Italy struggles with very strong regional identities (e.g., that of Lazio, Lombardy, Piemont, Tuscany, Umbria, Veneto), which create centrifugal forces that weaken political unity. Mafia groups and organised crime also have a role at this level, opposing, therefore, any force for centralisation (i.e., the one coming from Rome). This trait can easily be explained by the Italian Peninsula’s long history of fragmentation following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. It was a history of small Italian states, Papal states, the Republic of San Marino (for some, the oldest country of Europe), and wars and conflicts among them. Italy was unified only in 1871, in the same year when the Unification of Germany into the German Empire took place. Interactions between diverse regional identities certainly reflect the aspects of Italy’s geographical setting—the country is mostly rocky (because of the Apennines, the Alps, etc.) but with various other topographical features (an alpine north and a very dry south). The physical geography of the territory also correlates with different economic realities—the industrialised and rich north stands in contrast with the agrarian and poor south. The Po Plain in northern Italy, for example, with its industrial production, can certainly be considered the Italian state’s ecumene.5

Italy boasts a long coastline of 7,600 kilometres and the two largest islands in the Mediterranean: Sicily and Sardinia. The country has a central position in the Mediterranean Sea. This position can largely explain the success and longevity of the Roman Empire, which controlled not only the whole of southern and western Europe but also the north of Africa, the Anatolian peninsula, and the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East. It is, therefore, unsurprising that one can still find ideas about “the enlarged Mediterranean” along with a commitment to Europeanism and Atlanticism in Italy’s foreign policy.

Delimitation agreements between Greece and Italy (1977/2020)

Delimitation agreements between Greece and Egypt (2020)

Greek continental shelf Greek EEZ

Mediterranean Sea

The vast Greek exclusive economic zone surrounding its islands—one of the reasons for its high defence budget

> 35,000 30,001–35,000 25,001–30,000 20,001–25,000 ≤ 20,000

Although Italy is the third-largest economy in the eurozone, the Italian economy has an exceptionally high public debt, a weak banking sector, and other structural problems. Still, Italian brands and high-quality goods continue to be in demand, especially in the luxury market.

Like Italy, Malta is also located in the very centre of the Mediterranean Sea. Consequently, control over the Maltese archipelago has been of crucial importance to the maritime dominance of the entire sea by different peoples (e.g., Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Saracens and Moors, the Knights of the Order of Malta, the Spanish, the French, the British) throughout history. Their location also makes the Maltese islands, and especially the Malta Freeport, an important trans-shipment point. With its small area of 316 square kilometres, Malta’s terrain is mostly rocky and has many

coastal cliffs, which are of great splendour and a help in defence, too. Yet, they create natural difficulties in establishing additional ports and, thus, forming part of international sea lines of communication and shipment more. The Maltese merchant navy is also in the world’s top ten, with a total of 2,207 ships, which makes it larger than the Greek or the British ones.

Malta became independent from the UK in 1964 and joined the EU in 2004 and the eurozone in 2008. Like that of Cyprus, Malta’s core foreign policy also includes bringing the Mediterranean vocation to the centres of the EU. The country is a financial centre, a film production spot, and an ideal tourist destination due to its beauty and warm climate.

France can be considered as a country having a privileged position for a set of reasons: it is the only European state regarded as both a Northern and a Southern European country, and it is surrounded by buffer zones and “protected” areas that make the “French fortress”: the Atlantic Ocean in the west, the North Sea in the north, the English Channel in the northeast, the Rhine and the mountains of the Ardennes, the Vosges, and the Jura in the east, the Alps in the southeast, the Mediterranean Sea in the south, and the Pyrenees in the southwest. The weak point in this geographical “fortress” is the northeast—the border with Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany—from where the invasions of France, notably, the German invasions in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), World War I (1914–1918), and World War II (1939–1945), traditionally came.

In this way, expanding and controlling territories to the east (in the areas of the old Lotharingia and the Holy Roman Empire) has been, unsurprisingly, a geopolitical continuity in French grand strategy throughout the centuries. Furthermore, the capital, Paris, is located at the intersection of the Seine and Marne, thus having a central position and making the projection of power to the rest of the country easier. Aymeric Chauprade described this setting as “a strong political centre and weak peripheries,”6 which can certainly explain why France was one of the first European countries to develop into not only a nation state but also a highly centralised country.

Apart from its excellent position, France retains a dense, 8,500-kilometre network of navigable rivers. The Rhine, Meuse, Marne, Seine, Loire, Rhone, Dordogne, Garonne, and many other rivers allow easy fluvial transportation and economic development, making refinement to political control possible. Furthermore, the network of rivers provides freshwater, which, together with its fertile soils and good climate conditions, makes France one of the world’s leading agricultural powers, having more capacity to produce food than any other western or southern European country.

The French terrain is comprised of flat plains with some hills in the north and the west and more mountains in the south. France is the largest of all EU member states by total land area, and its more than 68 million people make it the most populous country of the EuroMed 7 Group. Metropolitan France includes various coastal islands, among which the largest is Corsica (where Bonaparte was from), and the country still enjoys sovereignty over five overseas regions—French Guiana in South America, Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean, Mayotte in Africa, and Réunion in the Indian Ocean. In addition to these, France possesses other territories and collectivities around the world (e.g., Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saint Martin, Saint Barthélemy, French Polynesia, the Kerguelen Islands, Adélie Land) providing an example of continuity of its territorial integrity.

The EU as a political structure serves as a tool for France to contain Germany’s power (also meaning that it helps secure the geographical weakness of the north-eastern and eastern borders) and, at the same time, to reinforce the French aspirations and ambitions on the international chessboard: moving the Mediterranean from the periphery to the centre of the Euro-Atlantic concerns is an important goal of Paris since its return to NATO (let us remember, e.g., the case of Libya). France is the only country of the EuroMed 7 Group that has a permanent seat at the UN Security Council.

Escault

Rouen

Seine Amiens

Reims

Moselle Nancy

≥2.50

1.80

1.60

1.50

1.40

1.20

1.00

No through navigation

Loire Nantes

Bordeaux

Garonne Dijon

Lyon

Toulouse

Canal du Midi Montpellier

Rhone

Avignon

Marseille

Rhine

Spain’s access to both the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea can be considered an incentive from geography to maritime expansion. This is a common trait of Spain and France; the Spanish colonial empire, however, chronologically preceded the French, the former reaching its apogee in the 16th and 17th centuries (ending with the War of the Spanish Succession), and the latter in the 17th and 18th centuries (finishing with the Seven Years’ War).

Located at the entrance of the Mediterranean Sea, surrounded by the Pyrenees and France in the east, the Atlantic Ocean in the north, Portugal in the west, and a few kilometres away from Africa, Spain is in a region that contains one of the world’s most important choke points— the Strait of Gibraltar. This spot served as the gateway to the invasion of the Iberian Peninsula by the Moors, the Islamic-military force that occupied the region from 711 until 1492. The rock of Gibraltar has been under British rule since 1704, which allows the UK control over the only natural entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. In this distribution of capabilities, Spain controls two autonomous cities in Africa—Ceuta and Melilla—which are part of the Strait of Gibraltar’s security complex, in addition to other seventeen autonomous communities, including the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands.

Within its Iberian territory—Spain is actually the second-largest state in the EU—the country struggles with topographical features that have political consequences, to some extent, in a similar way to Italy. The dissected plateau surrounded by rugged hills creates regional autonomies, linguistic variation, the diversification of interests, and separatist ambitions that make communications and central control difficult and fragile. The relocation of the Spanish capital from Toledo to Madrid in the 16th century certainly tried to tackle this problem that has continued to our days, as one can observe in the domestic turmoil of recent years caused by the independence movement of Catalonia, in addition to the Basque Country’s long-term aspirations for independence.

Despite the mentioned problems, Spain is the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy and rules over the ports of Valencia and Algeciras, two of the top-five container ports in the Mediterranean Sea.

As Políbio Valente de Almeida summarised it, “Portugal is geoblocked by Spain.”7 Therefore, the country has been constrained to look overseas for allies and support in order to balance the continental menace since its independence—not only a geographical but a demographic, political, and military threat. Among those allies, England

Extended continental shelf (submitted)

Azores EEZ

Madeira EEZ

Portuguese continental shelf Portuguese EEZ

Continental Portugal EEZ (the UK) is the most important. As for the other type of counterbalance it found overseas, the most important one was the creation of the Portuguese sea power (the first world-scale sea power in human history) with the country’s strategic efforts in Asia in the 16th century, in South America from the 17th to the 19th centuries, and in Africa from the 19th to the 20th centuries. These grand strategies that created a pluri-continental state and a multiracial nation ended with a left-wing coup d’état in 1974, after which the country suffered a radical foreign policy shift from having a sea-power orientation to becoming an EU member state—a reality studied elsewhere by the author.8

Even though some literature claims that Portugal balances between the Atlantic and Europe—the Atlantic component in this context means that the country maintains special relations with Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, among others, and also keeps the Anglo-Portuguese alliance and the partnership with the USA, coupled with the NATO membership, going—the fact is that Portuguese key policy documents like its National Strategic Concept assert that Portugal has its primary interests in Europe and that its European identity comes first.9 It is a logical evolution of its post1974 choices, which boil down to the fact that Portugal is a “norm taker” regarding Brussels’ decisions.

In terms of space as a geopolitical factor, the two most important rivers of Portugal (the Tagus and the Douro) flow from east to west orienting the geographical setting to the ocean (from the lands generally higher in the interior to the lower places by the sandy beaches in the coastline). The same orientation exists in Portuguese identity due to historical traditions, culture, and seaside habits, together with aspirations for sea power-oriented foreign relations. The country has homogeneity in language, culture, and religion.

Apart from its mainland in the Iberian Peninsula, Portugal has two archipelagos in the Atlantic Ocean: the Azores and Madeira. The three parts of the territory form a triangle that creates a 1,727,408-square-kilometre EEZ, one of the largest in the world, giving the country strategic depth with maritime space. However, Portugal is also characterised by its fragile economy and

dependence on energy resources, which cause high levels of emigration and energy security concerns.

Although the UK is relatively far away from the Mediterranean Sea, appearances can be deceiving. The country possesses several bases in the region, which are essential to exert control over the sea lines of communication. Examining these choke points from the west to the east seems to be an appropriate logical exercise to conclude the text.

As mentioned in the section about Spain, the UK dominates the peninsula of Gibraltar, which is a British dependent territory with a Permanent Joint Operating Base.10 The Port of Gibraltar located within is used as a training area, ship repair, and includes an RAF airbase. With its control over Gibraltar, the UK owns a share of power in the only natural connection between the Mediterranean Sea and the open oceans.

The other entrance to the Mediterranean Sea from the open oceans—an artificial one via the Suez Canal—also has British forces nearby. The British military presence in Cyprus continues until the present day. The British Forces Cyprus constitutes a Permanent Joint Operating Base11 in Akrotiri (Western Sovereign Base Area) and Dhekelia (Eastern Sovereign Base Area). The territories, like Gibraltar, are British dependent ones and have RAF airbases, too.

Apart from the above-mentioned advantages, control over these territories guarantees the UK not only infantry presence, ways of supply, surveillance, and military communication but, in case of war, some power to cut off or to regulate the passages in or out of the Mediterranean Sea.

This article offers insights into and empirical evidence about the countries of the EuroMed 7 Group and the UK from the perspective of neoclassical geopolitics. The countries of the east Mediterranean (Cyprus and Greece), central Mediterranean (Italy, Malta, and France), and western Mediterranean (Spain and—for the purpose of this paper—Portugal) are gathered in facing economic problems and migration pressures, among other problems and threats. Finally, a short note on the region that balances between two vital world choke points, the Strait of Gibraltar and the Suez Canal: as this brief study showed, no matter the technological advances, the re-arrangement of political alliances, and identity and demographic transformations, geography seems to continue having a word to say in politics.

This study was supported by the Social Futuring Center of the Corvinus University of Budapest.

1 Nuno Morgado: Neoclassical Geopolitics: Preliminary Theoretical Principles and Methodological Guidelines. Međunarodni problemi–International Problems. 2020/1. 129–157. 2 Time to engage again for peace in Cyprus. European External Action Service. 8 March 2021. <https://bit.ly/3o0Lg4E > 3 Goals and Objectives. Republic of Cyprus, Ministry of Foreign Affairs. <https://bit.ly/3f6CQod > Accessed: 17 February 2021. 4 Military expenditure (% of the GDP). World Bank. <https://bit. ly/2SAc5kl > Accessed: 18 February 2021. 5 “A country’s area with the highest density of population and the thickest network of communications and transports.” Nuno Morgado: Towards the New World Order? A Geopolitical Study of Neo-Eurasianism and Meridionalism. PhD thesis. Charles University, Prague, 2017. See also Saul B. Cohen: Geopolitics. The Geography of International Relations. Rowan & Littlefield, Lanham, 2009. 171–172. 6 Chauprade Aymeric: Constants, Strengths and Weaknesses of French Geopolitical Designs. In: Geopolitics in the TwentyFirst Century. Territories, Identities, and Foreign Policies, edited by Nuno Morgado. Nova Science Publishers, New York, 2021. 91–93. 7 Políbio Valente de Almeida: Do Poder do Pequeno Estado. Enquadramento geopolítico da hierarquia das potências. Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Políticas, Lisbon, 2012. 402. 8 Nuno Morgado: Portugal as an old Sea Power: exploring the EU Membership as Geopolitical Design. Journal of Territorial and Maritime Studies. 2021/2. 59–73. 9 Conceito Estratégico de Defesa Nacional. República Portuguesa, XXI Governo Constitucional. <https://bit. ly/3tIOtXX > Accessed: 19 February 2021. 10 Approx. 570, see United Kingdom. The World Factbook, CIA. <https://bit.ly/3o6do6h > Accessed: 30 April 2021. 11 Approx. 2.200. Ibidem.