SPATIAL STRATEGIES SOLUTIONS

Written by Dr Anna Markovic Plestovic

The moment that started the end of the cold war: Arrival of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev of the USSR for his first meeting with President Reagan for the Geneva Summit at Fleur D’Eau in Switzerland. (from Ronald Reagan Presidential library collection)

Reading an excerpt on the role feng shui played at the first Reagan-Gorbachev summit (1985) in the book of Judit Szilvásy, my first feng shui teacher, the founder and director of First Hungarian feng Shui Academy, I could not avoid remembering the '80-ies, the feeling of relief upon the end of the cold war and the feeling of rampant enthusiasm on the possibility to build a new, free world. The other thing that could not be avoided was comparation of hopes of those times with the results as seen today. I do not intend to involve in endless debates on ideologies and politics, but have to say that it seems quite clear these days that the USA has won the cold war and has established military and economic world domination, while the Soviet Union (SSSR) and the eastern bloc ceased to exist, leaving behind Russia still struggling to regain influence in eurasian and global politics and economy, along with quite a number of minor states stuck on different levels of devastation, coloquially known as "transition".

The path to this end begun at the mentioned summit of the two most powerful people of the world at the time: Ronald Reagan, the President of USA and Mikhail Gorbachev, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which took place in Geneva 1985. The USA administration and secret services went to great length to choose the perfect place and prepare it in secrecy for a meeting of such importance. There are rumors about feng shui being largely involved in these preparations, rumors that seem not at all unlikely, given that President Reagan and his First Lady were known for often consulting astrology regarding serious decisions. The results of the process that begun there and then also suggest that some kind of spatial strategy was applied to ensure precedence of the western president. I have become curious to find out whether feng shui really has been used.

Though I was not able to find from whom the feng shui advices came from, it seems very probable that the spatial setting of the meeting was carefully chosen by the USA, in feng shui terms, as a place that favors west over east, the American President over the Soviet Secretary General. The actual meeting took place in Versoix, a small, elegant suburbia of Geneva, in Chateau Fleur-d'Eau a castle overlooking the lake. Looking at the site through basic feng shui methods reveals interesting layers of meanings and strategic-spatial relations that could not be assumed by using other methods of spatial analysis.

The town

The whole of Versoix is oriented towards the lake, the back of the settlement being guarded by the mountain range running parallel with the lake shore. The same mountain range encircles the the southern end of the lake, creating a shape resembling a vast accumulation basin at the lakeshore. And, indeed, in this basin the city of Geneva "accumulated". In terms of feng shui, the area of Geneva in relation to Versoix can be red as the "white tiger". The white tiger is associated with the western direction, the place of result, accomplishment, authority, and the future. At given place, USA, and the Western bloc could be associated with west, and thus be sure of the support of accumulated energy on the tiger side of Versoix.

On the opposite side of the town – on dragon side, or eastern side, side of beginnings, creative energy and rootedness – lays open space, a strip of relatively flat land, with a slight elevation of terrain further on the shore towards Lausanne, that could represent a very weak "dragon". Thus the energy of this eastern side can be considered weakened, and – having no point of concentration of equal spatial scale before Geneve - allowing an unhindered flow of energy towards the western side, where it accumulates. The eastern side, naturally, can be associated with the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc, which was given a weaker spatial-semiotic position in negotiations by this setting. Thus the tiger (the west) was not countered by the dragon (the east) and has taken over the spot. The spot in this case can be considered symbolic of the whole world, since it was the fate of the world the two powerful leaders were deliberating on in Versoix. This interpretation is backed also by the fact that the whole world has gradually become dominated by west as the result of ending the cold war, that led to Perestrojka, Glasnost, and falling apart of Soviet Union.

The site

Still, the choice of this spatial setting could be just a lucky coincidence, the supposed influences of which are easy to interpret post festum, knowing the outcomes 25 years later. The repetition of the large-scale pattern of placing at a smaller scale by choosing the Chateau Fleur-d'Eau seems more than a coincidence. The castle is located on the "dragon" side of Versoix, which puts the center of the town in position of the "tiger", ensuring the dominance of west over east at this spatial level, while the main road circumvents the back of the castle, chanelling the flow from east to west, the center of accumulation (town center) avoiding the castle, which could otherwise also accumulate energy.

And for the end...some shorthand symbolic considerations

One more thing that a very basic feng shui knowledge can reveal is that the spatialization of symbolic values of two superpowers at the spot also favours the western power. The Chateau Fleur-d'Eau is oriented towards the lake, to east, while it has solid ground and protective, stable mountains in the back, to west. In order to establish a dialogue at the place, the western power turns its "face" towards east, thus having firm, stable protective back and an open wiew in front. At the same time, the eastern power has to turn its "face" towards west, thus having water and lower ground providing no support in the back, and a mountain range as an obstacle in front. It is very easy to imagine the eastern empire to fall into the water on a slight push, which actually has happened later on.

It is also very hard to resist the temptation to see the likenes of the "white tiger attacking the spot" (the world) in antiterrorist and other wars that followed the end of the cold war era, in forced globalization or in global financial crisis. But I will not go down that alley, can not blame the pictoresque little chateau for everything.

Certainly it was not the Chateau Fleur-d'Eau that defeated the Eastern bloc. The fall of the eastern Empire was the inevidable result of numerous other factors, and the end result of long-term global processes. But the details, signs, symbols and relations indicating that complex spatial strategies were employed to ensure the results the west should not allow for the influence of the place or of spatial strategies to be be easily dismissed. At the end, my assumptions can not be proven right nor wrong, since we will never know, how things would have developed had the first summit take place in a different spatial setting.