The year 2025 could mark the comeback of revisionism in the Eastern Mediterranean, with global implications, setting new standards and trends in world politics for decades to come
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This article is a part of the essay series “Budapest Edit”
The Eastern Mediterranean is a crucial region in terms of interregional and global geopolitics, trade, and economic integration. Since the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007 and the Arab Spring of 2011, there is a pattern to most of what happens in this crossroads of a region. Geopolitics as a discipline means different things to different experts—it is about power dynamics, vacuums. and shifts. These shifts have, until recently, been subtle in the Eastern Mediterranean. The key players and their endgame were unclear because the scale of the changes was largely unacknowledged. Forget East Asia, the global power dynamic is shifting back to the Indo-Mediterranean super region for the first time in 500 years. While this is largely positive, it could also awaken dormant forces of the past or unleash current expansionist desires. Some of this trend seems anticipated, and the latecomers racing to capitalise on them. Almost 500 years ago, the Indian system, a trans-regional ecosystem, collapsed because one of its mainland trade routes to Europe was destroyed by the Ottomans, a possible battle plan. They knew that this would destroy most of the economic power of the Middle East, the Balkans and Central Europe, making conquest easier. The search for alternative routes then led to conquest and colonialism. Today, the desire to disconnect Europe from the dynamics of the Indosphere could lead to the same thing. The year 2025 could mark the comeback of revisionism in the Eastern Mediterranean, with global implications, setting new standards and trends in world politics for decades to come.
Ramachandra Byrappa is a Senior Research Fellow, at the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs
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Ramachandra Byrappa is a Senior Research Fellow and Research Coordinator at the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs (HIIA), focusing on international relations, grand strategy, and ...
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