Strategy&Future aspires to be the premier European geopolitical centre for understanding international competition and for exploring the strategies and military concepts pursued by international actors in the 21st century.
Focused on the future, reporting daily on the present and drawing abundantly from the lessons of the past, we offer to dive into the very essence of knowledge on world affairs, as seen through the lenses of geopolitics and geostrategy.
Warsaw on the Vistula river (photo: Henryk Niestrój)
Our core mission is to explain unfolding events and trends that impact the lives of people and shape the destinies of nations around the world. We also aim to help develop innovative, resource-informed concepts, galvanise public debate, and spur action – should such a need arise.
We want to share with our subscribers the European and especially the Central & Eastern European perspective on world affairs, permanently influenced by the fluid balance of power in Eurasia and elsewhere in an increasingly volatile and fragile security environment that badly needs to be understood, not only by political and military leaders but also by individuals and business leaders.
This need for understanding will be ever intensified as the fragmentation of the current era of globalisation (triggered by the end of uncontested US supremacy) transforms the so far relatively benign web of international interactions into a maze of vulnerabilities and leverages. The first symptoms of this happening are already discernible.
For centuries, this part of Europe has been a playground for great power competition, witnessing devastating wars, excessive turmoil and revolutions. Just as importantly, in times of stability and power consolidation, it has also tended to foster its own strategic culture. Being traditionally squeezed between the sea and continental powers in a crush zone composed of a 1200 km long belt of multiple nations, it stretches from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, right along the main geopolitical crossroads of strategic flows, between a vibrant European peninsula and the formidable militaries of the Eurasian landmass. At Strategy&Future, we seek to cultivate a lively tradition of strategic thought and mental mapping that is unique to the region and its inhabitants.
Warsaw, Old Town (photo: Studioyayo)
Today, two concurrent developments are structurally altering the global order, undermining the last 30 years of US unipolar supremacy. The US has long relied on its power projection capability, radiated across the World Ocean from its continental land base in North America, to maintain status and influence in the Eurasian supercontinent either side of it. Recently however, this reach has been undermined and pushed back both by Chinese and Russian Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) capabilities. This development is leading to an erosion of US security guarantees in the grey zones of the geopolitical crossroads where strategic flows traverse, notably in the East and South China Seas but also in the Indian Ocean. In Europe, the main corridor of strategic flows traverses the Northern European Plain, with its centre of gravity stretched across Poland, Belarus and Ukraine, with an additional Romanian contribution in the Danube river system estuary, effectively monopolising strategic trafficbetween the Black and Baltic Seas and suitably located between Russia and Western Europe on the projected path of the China’s new Belt & Road Initiative.
A second equally consequential development is the looming spectre of economic competition over questions around who controls the global supply chain, where the most important parts of supply chains (particularly frontier technologies enhancing connectivity and new divisions of labor) are located, and who ultimately controls the key mechanisms of the global economy. A rapidly rising China is now effectively attempting to break the Western-oriented global economic model which has rested for roughly the last 500 years on the supremacy of the World Ocean as the main thoroughfare of the world’s strategic flows, thus enabling the entrenched political and economic dominance of the coastal and sea powers of the Atlantic world.
As of writing these words, the world has already entered into a transition period, manifested by the great power competition between the US and China, with Russia playing its role in spanning the Eurasian landmass in an eternal balancing game of geopolitics. All the major powers are attempting to project political power into key geostrategic locations in Eurasia and in its littorals, trying to seize the upper hand in the power game of perceptions and capabilities. They also compete over who has effective leverage in shaping regional decisions on directions and volumes of strategic flows that are the testbed of a rivalry, resembling the ever fluid correlation of power. This contest will define the world order of this new century.
Paradoxically, it seemed after 1989 that Warsaw was located conveniently close to the Atlantic coast, making it easy to embrace a Transatlantic Western community then engulfed in the conviction that ‘History’ had ‘Ended’ with the remarkable victory over Soviet Union being its last chord. Instead, it turned out that history never ends, and in terms of distance, Warsaw is half-way between Beijing and Washington D.C. One may walk to Moscow or Beijing while they cannot do the same across the ocean to the United States. This matters very much in geopolitics. Traditionally close to this part of Europe are the powers of Germany, Russia and Turkey, who are reorienting or will soon be reorienting their policies and strategies in order to adjust to the ongoing structural shift. All that is framing the environment in which Poland and other nations of continental Europe are operating. Regardless of our best will and desires, the flux that ruthlessly follows any structural shift of power will certainly affect all of Eurasia. Depending on our informed decisions, the shift may affect us in various ways. We are inviting you to Strategy&Future to be informed observers of that unfolding.
Our principle vision is to set the terms of debate on geopolitics, geostrategy, security, defence, nations’ grand strategies and to drive change in strategy, strategic culture, operational and military concept development, as well as to guide our subscribers through the uncharted waters of the current era, characterised by great power competition in Eurasia.
The World (photo: Pixabay)
We wish to offer varying and modern forms of strategic thought, geopolitics and geostrategy, encouraging further self-education and further broad reading in the hope that all of you will find something of interest at Strategy&Future. We intend to boldly provide our assessments of threats as well as remedies to the coming challenges. We have been informed that some of you prefer longer assessments and dense reports, others – just short briefs. Some like to listen to long lectures and heated debates, others just love short podcasts and watching films or animations. We will do our best to provide the proper mix. Last but not least, we are not afraid to also compete on the global intellectual market. We know this market very well.
All in all, Strategy&Future aims to provide timely, impartial and insightful analyses, focusing on key questions related to existing and emerging threats to European and world security. Meeting these challenges might require transforming conventional perceptions and we are devoted to helping achieve this end.
Money always comes in one way or another with strings attached, unless provided from the theoretically unlimited or at least large pool of those who are willing to pay for a product that is worth its price. Creating a community financially committed to supporting our efforts and in exchange offering the informed knowledge that helps evade bias and permits to strive for truth rooted in independence of thinking, we look to pursue an approach whereby, after an initial period of free access to Strategy&Future, you are able to make your own decision based on an informed product evaluation.
Welcome to Strategy&Future.
Autor
Jacek Bartosiak
CEO and Founder of Strategy&Future, author of bestselling books.
Strategy&Future
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