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The idea of the unity of the Central and Eastern European space between the Adriatic, Black and Baltic Seas is not new. It was manifested in various forms long before the emergence of the terms «Intermarium» and «Meso-Eurasia» and the corresponding attempts to fill them with conceptual content.
As a geo-cultural crossroads between the West (Europe) and the East (Asia), North and South, this region has long been a place where trade routes and civilisational influences intersect. Economic and cultural expansion was followed (and sometimes preceded) by military and political expansion. Therefore, it was natural for the peoples of the region to seek to defend themselves against external expansionist encroachments.
Throughout history, the conditions for the unification of the Baltic-Adriatic-Pontic space have been created many times. First and foremost, the need to consolidate defence efforts led to the emergence of the phenomenon of multi-ethnic «buffer» empires in these areas, which served as the borderline «frontier» of the West - the Polish-Lithuanian and Austro-Hungarian states. Both imperial states, formed on the feudal-dynastic principle, periodically united most of Central and Eastern Europe under the rule of one dynasty: the rule of the Lithuanian Jagiellons in the late 15th century extended to Polish, Prussian, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Western and Southern Russian, Croatian and part of Wallachian (Romanian) lands, and the Austrian Habsburgs' rule before the mid-eighteenth century - to Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, Croatian, part of Polish, Romanian and even Italian and - temporarily - Serbian territories.
It is noteworthy that after the decline of each of these «buffers», the imperial powers of Western Europe began to strengthen the Eastern European frontier: in the eighteenth century - France (inspired by the Sweden-Poland-Turkey axis against Moscow, later Napoleon hatched plans for various confederations in the east of the continent), in the early twentieth century - Kaiser's Germany (the vision of «Middle Europe» - Mitteleuropa).
In particular, the German-centric «Middle Europe» was planned as a powerful political and economic space between France and Russia on the one hand and between the Baltic and the Mediterranean on the other. It declared the right of Eastern European countries located within these geographical boundaries to liberate themselves from Russian imperial rule and to subsequently achieve national and political self-determination. In essence, the «Middle Europe» project can be considered an Eastern European prototype of the modern EU, which takes into account the confessional, ethno-cultural, linguistic and even economic and regional specifics of the participating countries. Each state, regardless of its own resources, political positions and geopolitical role, did not lose its sovereignty. Interethnic conflicts were to be resolved by an interstate security structure (like the future League of Nations and the United Nations). In the end, due to the First World War and the defeat of Kaiser's Germany, the Mitteleuropa project never got at least a chance to be implemented.
«Slavocentric» ideas of uniting Eastern European peoples «between the three seas» were developed within the framework of Pan-Slavism and Polish Prometheanism. Pan-Slavism (professed in particular by Cyril and Methodius) in its local Balkan version, Yugoslavism, was the basis for the creation of the Yugoslav Federation (1918-2003).
In the interwar period, the quintessence of Prometheanism as part of the broader Jagiellonian tradition of Polish politics was the concept of a Warsaw-oriented partnership - up to and including a confederative union - of nation-states between the Baltic, Adriatic and Black Seas. This «Intermarium» or, as it was later defined, the «Third Europe» was to serve primarily to strengthen Polish influence in the region as opposed to Moscow's.
In the post-communist era, the geopolitical manifestations of the aspirations of the peoples and elites of the region are now interstate political, economic, defence and security formats such as the Visegrad Four (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary), the Bucharest Nine (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria), the Three Seas Initiative (Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Greece, Ukraine, Moldova, and the Baltic States), and the Lublin Three (Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine).
In general, all previous attempts to structure and consolidate the Baltic-Pontic space were fundamentally dictated by the need to unite efforts to protect against alien expansion from the East (the Horde, Muscovy), West (Teutons, German imperialism) or South (Ottoman Turkey, Islamic fundamentalism). In other words, the peoples of the future Intermarium have a rich historical experience of unity against each other.
However, as time has shown, the need for protection and counteraction alone cannot (and should not) serve as a reliable basis for a sustainable macro-space. Its formation requires a positive programme of cooperation, an understanding of what we should actually unite for, and for what purpose we should agree to a common destiny and mission. From this point of view, existence in the «eternal frontier» or «cordon sanitaire» mode is not really very attractive and promising in terms of development needs.
Therefore, the main focus of the new union should be the implementation of a certain creative, ideological mission. The defence and security function should ideally be important, but still opportunistic in relation to the main purpose of the Intermarium.
Therefore, although the idea of the Baltic-Black Sea Intermarium historically precedes the Intermarium, these two concepts are not identical. The Intermarium is a political and geographical concept and in its geopolitical dimension was planned primarily as a defence plan - in essence, a buffer defence block.
Instead, the Intermarium is a civilisational and metapolitical doctrine of active, offensive orientation. It is no coincidence that there is a proposal to use the more activist definition of «Meso-Eurasia» (by analogy with Central American Mesoamerica as the cultural and civilisational generator of both Americas) to describe the Central and Eastern European space instead of the defensive-oriented polonocentric definition of «Intermarium».
The ideology that Intermarium is intended to be a springboard for is the Third Way in its broadest sense. Geographically, to the west of the region, individualistic Western doctrines prevail, with the absolutisation of the human individual and his or her rights, up to and including the right to lead an antisocial and destructive lifestyle. In contrast, to the east, conservative communist ideologies derived from ancient Eastern despots dominate, with the unequivocal primacy of the collective over the individual - up to and including the outright denial of individual freedom. The vocation of the future Intermarium will obviously be to remove this eternal dichotomy, which will allow us to take the best of Western individualistic «human centrism» and Eastern collectivist conservatism at the same time.
In general, the emergence of a new ideological and civilisational space in the east of the continent with the prospect of its spread to the whole of Europe (the Second Reconquista) is the most symmetrical «response» of European civilisation to the challenges of the modern era. And Ukraine today has a chance not just to wait for the corresponding change in geostrategic reality, but to take an active part in its creation. However, we should not have unnecessary illusions: The Intermarium will be created one way or another, regardless of Kyiv's participation or non-participation in this process, because this is the demand of time and the will of history.
In the future, the Intermarium should be only the first step towards a larger integration of European and Asian states - on different ideological principles than those envisaged by the visions being implemented today (EU - European Defence Initiative and EAEU - CSTO - SCO).
As a key link in the intercivilisational Intermarium, Ukrainian and neighbouring lands should not become an «eternal frontier» of the West against the East, or an «Asian spearhead stuck in the heart of Europe», or even a «bridge between civilisations», but rather a pivotal axis of the Euro-Asian unity of the future as a new metapolitical reality. After all, its optimal point of balance is the Ukraine-centric Baltic-Pontic space.