The Geographical Pivot of History in Mackinder’s earlier thought

In April 1904 Sir Halford John Mackinder, Reader in Geography in the University of Oxford and Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science, one of the fathers of geopolitics and geostrategy, published a valuable and original article in the Geographic Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, introducing the famous theory of the so called “geographical pivot of history”.

This theory, which would later profoundly influence the geographer’s further theory of the “Heartland”, consisted in a brief analysis over the world’s pivotal area and in how the supremacy over this broad landmass could influence the creation of a hegemonic world empire.

Mackinder begins his argumentation with a lengthy historical dissertation on the geographical discoveries that commenced in the XV-XVI centuries to show how they had affected on the political quest for world hegemony. At his time (1904) - Mackinder considers - the entire world has been completely discovered and conquered, and no land was left that could be owned because undiscovered. Even the inner regions of Asia were ending the long path for their discovery that had begun with Yermak the Cossack by land and Vasco da Gama by sea. Africa too had been almost wholly explored and partitioned by European colonialist powers. Indeed, the post-Columbian age managed to transform the world into a closed political system of worldwide scope, thus leading all international actors to confront each other: international relations could finally become organic and systemic. During the time the author writes, at the beginning of the twentieth century, a correlation linked together all larger geographical and historical generalizations. It was already possible to consider the world’s events as a whole in terms of geographic width: history and geography blend already. This is clearly unveiled when considering how strong and competitive the different geopolitical forces were in international politics. Within this perspective, the aim of Mackinder’s study was that of describing the physical features of the world that had been - and still were - most coercive of human action and presenting the chief phases of history as originally linked to them. This, in other words, meant nothing more than exhibiting human history as part of the life of the world organism, and we may certainly underline how intensively Ratzel’s geographical determinism echoes in this statement.                       

After debating the pros and cons of the alleged European superiority in the history of civilization, Mackinder states that the birth of nations is the result of the pressure of a common tribulation. In other words, using examples like the Hun invasion of Europe or the birth of France, the author believes that nations are wrought under a common need to resist against outer forces. At this point, Mackinder introduces one of the most brilliant ideas that his entire paper would explicate based upon a new interpretation of European history: Europe’s entire destiny and development - he says

 - rely on its relationships with Asia. In other terms, Europe and European history are subordinate to Asia and Asiatic history because European civilization is the outcome of the secular struggle against Asiatic invasions. This revolutionary - yet almost obvious - idea is one of the milestones on which Mackinder’s thought rests and is essential to understand all further implications of his theory.

Now, Europe presents a remarkable contrast that splits it up into two distinctive parts: Russia occupies half the continent, joining the European peninsula with the Asiatic landmass, and the Western powers the remaining territorial appendices. This partition shows a physical contrast between the unbroken lowland in the East and the land variety in the West, and some may consider the existence of a possible correlation between natural environment – its flatness or diversity – and political organization – more representative and centrifugal regime on one hand or more despotic and centripetal on the other. As far as Eastern Europe is concerned, a separation line exists that cuts Eastern Europe into two separated areas: the forest and marsh region in the north, from the Baltic region to the Urals, and the steppe region, from Western Ukraine to Western Turkestan. Beyond this line, while we move westwards, lays peninsular Europe, which commences including three distinguishing natural environments next to its eastern borders: the Hungarian great plain - or Puszta - ; the Carpathian Mountains; the German woods. The above-mentioned separation between forest/marsh and steppe regions slowly diminished during the XIX century because of Russian cultivations, but it had been formerly very coercive for humankind to inhabit.

The arrival in the European peninsula of the Turanian people (V-XVI centuries) - an historical phenomenon that started manifesting with the Hunnish invasion and continued with that of the Avars, Bulgars, Magyars, Khazars, Patzinaks, Cumans, Mongols and Kalmyks - gave birth to the secular struggle between nomadic Asians and settled Europeans. Through the vast gateway between the Urals and the Caspian Sea, thousands of these horsemen originally coming from Mongolia and Turkestan flooded into the fertile and rainy European lands, giving shape to the idea of a common European fellowship united against the Asiatic invaders. Indeed, these continuative nomadic invasions and raids influenced the birth of Western European nations, settling them in their current lands, creating a common European identity, and uniting the European kinsmen after centuries of brotherly struggles against each other. To give examples, the birth of France reflects the expulsion of the Huns from the lands of Gaul, and Austria - formerly Ostmark, or eastern frontier - was in fact a marchland founded by Charlemagne against the oriental invasions. Even the birth of Muscovy before and Russia later is a close consequence of the humbling Mongol yoke, in which Mackinder sees the reason of Russia’s lesser development compared to the rest of Europe and of its peculiar political despotism.

In the author’s words:

“For a thousand years a series of horse-riding peoples emerged from Asia through the broad interval between the Ural mountains and the Caspian Sea, rode through the open spaces of Southern Russia, and struck home into Hungary in the very heart of the European peninsula, shaping by the necessity of opposing them the history of each of the great peoples around – the Russians, the Germans, the French, the Italians, and the Byzantines Greeks”.  

Parallel to the mighty threat of the Asiatic horsemen, another rival mobility power emerged through the river ways and sea ways and waged war against Europe: that of the Vikings in the north and of the Saracens in the south. Whilst the nomadic Asians forced the European frontier in the east, the Norsemen and the Saracens began raiding the continent’s coasts and towns from all other directions – west, north, south. The European settled peoples, while laying gripped between these two pressures, tried to answer with a major cohesion and unity amongst them: both pressures turned to be stimulating, in a way or in another, leading some countries to unite, like France or England, and others to divide, like Italy. At this point Mackinder introduces also a brief note of racial anthropology, bringing back the existence of brachycephalic skulls in eastern and central Europe up into France as a direct consequence of the Asiatic invasions, in contrast with the majority of dolichocephalic skulls in the north, west and south. Nonetheless, the full meaning of the Asiatic influence upon Europe is understandable only after the Mongol invasions (XIII-XV century), indeed the most devastating of all.          

After considering the influence and relevance of the Asiatic nomadic invasions in moulding the European history, civilization and identity, Mackinder focuses on some of Eurasia’s main characteristics from a geographic, demographic and geopolitical point of view.

First, the author detects that the concentration of the world’s population can be found along the relatively small margins of the Eurasian continent, which are closely related to rainfalls: Europe, China and India. If we consider the Sahara desert as the natural, impenetrable, southern border of Europe, rather than the Mediterranean Sea, we can observe that Eurasia was severed for many centuries from central and southern Africa; at the same time, the oceans separated it from the Americas and the Australasian archipelago. This meant that Eurasia represented for many time a closed system focused on the interaction of the populations of its crowded but limited outskirts with the relatively underpopulated but huge inner core. Truly, the continuous landmass of Eurasia, excluding the deserted Sahara and Arabian Peninsula, represents half of all the land on the globe. The core of Eurasia, though mottled with desert patches - that from Syria reach Manchuria passing through Persia - is on the whole a steppe-land that supplies a wide-spread pasture, and there are not a few river-fed oases in it, but it is entirely unpenetrated by waterways from the ocean. In fact, this land is a perfectly appropriate area for the maintenance of sparse horse-riding nomads. Steppes spread continuously from the Hungarian Puszta until the Little Gobi of Manchuria and except in their westernmost extremity, they are untraversed by rivers draining to an accessible ocean. Moreover, each of the Eurasian steppes - whether the Magyar, the Ukrainian, the Turkestanian or the Mongol - present different sea-level locations and specific characteristics. Now, from each of these steppes, originating from the easternmost ones, different Mongolic hordes repeatedly stroke the peripheral rich regions of Eurasia, creating often some tributary or vassal states, if not some real dominating dynasties in Europe, the Middle East and China. Eventually, Russia, Persia, India - despite the natural Himalayan barrier - and China were rather made tributary or received Mongol dynasties. The Seljuk Turks, for instance, overthrowing the Saracen dominion of the Middle East from Baghdad and Damascus - and helping the beginning of the crusades and the unification of the Christian nations of Europe - could spread their power over the so-called “Five Seas”: the Caspian, the Black, the Mediterranean, the Red and the Persian.

Still, how can we conceive Eurasia and in which geographical terms can we describe it? Mackinder describes Eurasia as a continuous land, ice-girt in the north, water-girt elsewhere, with an extension of 21 millions square miles (three times North America), whose centre and north have no available waterways to the oceans but, except in the subarctic forest, are favourable to the mobility of horsemen and camelmen. Here, for the first time, the British geographer introduces some key words of his lifetime studies. To east, south and west of the Eurasian HEARTLAND are marginal regions, ranged in a vast CRESCENT accessible to shipmen: these rim regions that represent the Crescent are four, according to their physical conformation. (Each of them, curiously, embrace a different majoritarian religion or creed: Buddhism; Brahmanism; Islamism; Christianity). The macro regions are:

1)  The Indian Subcontinent;

2) Eastern China and Indochina;

3) The European Peninsula;

4) The Nearer East.

The first two are characterized by the monsoons, and may be considered monsoon lands; together with the third region, they host 2/3 of the world population. The fourth area, though thinly populated, includes the abovementioned “Five Seas” region, or the eastern Mediterranean Sea, the southern Black Sea, the southern Caspian Sea, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Its geostrategic relevance lays on the fact that it partakes of the characteristics both of the marginal belt and of the central core of Eurasia; its weakness/strength descends from its sea-gulfs and oceanic rivers that lay it open to sea power influence and projection.

In considering the evolution of sea power and land power, it is historically detectable that the isthmus of Suez, before being severed, divided sea power into two parts: western (Mediterranean and Atlantic) and eastern (Indo-Pacific), without a continuity line. At the same time the wasteland of Persia, vertically extending from Central Asia to the Persian Gulf, separated, due to nomad-power, India and China from the Mediterranean world. Since the beginning of historical ages, for instance when the civilized ancient oases of Babylonia, Assyria and Egypt were weak, the steppe-peoples could threat the open tablelands of Persia and Asia Minor as forward posts whence to strike through the Punjab into India, through Syria into Egypt, through the Straits into the Balkans and Europe. The natural rival of horse mobility, typical of the Turanian peoples of inner Eurasia, is represented by the shipmen power of the Marginal Crescent dwellers: let us think, for instance, at the Saracens and their sea power - or, best to say, their blend of sea power and camel/horse land power -, that could forge a vast empire also thanks to their central strategic position between the western and eastern oceans and within the geographical Eurasian southern hub. Indeed the main difference between the Saracens and the Turk/Turanian people was that the former blended both sea power and land power whereas the latter possessed only land power.                          

Mackinder does not ignore of course the relevance of river-ways for the rise of civilizations. In fact, he states that the beginning of all greater civilizations relied on two main geographical elements: either the navigation of river-ways connected with the oceans (e.g. China/Yangtze; India/Ganges; Babylonia/Euphrates; Egypt/Nile), or the thalassic power given by navigation (e.g. the Greeks; the Romans; the Vikings; the Saracens).      

Advancing through the centuries until the age of oceanic discoveries, Mackinder believes that the main result of the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope and the prosecution towards the Eastern Indies was that of connecting the western and eastern coastal navigation around Eurasia. This primary event managed to neutralize the strategical advantage of the central position of the steppe-nomads by pressing upon them in the rear, thus delineating neatly the contraposition between LAND POWER and SEA POWER that will be the basis of all subsequent rivalry of powers for hegemony over Eurasia. Moreover, the discovery of the Americas, or Western Indies, reversed the relation of Europe and Asia: whereas in the Middle Ages Europe was caged between an inaccessible desert to south - the Sahara -, an unknown ocean to the west - the Atlantic -, and icy or woody wastes to north and northeast, and in the east and southeast threatened all the time by nomadic horsemen, now it emerged upon the world, wrapping its influence around the Eurasian land power which had always menaced its own existence. Before 1492, England and the British Isles were nothing more than the outmost outskirts of Eurasia, located at the end of the world; afterwards, they assume a central position, becoming in fact the very centre of the world, laying just in-between the oceanic connections of the Old world with the New. After 1492, as new lands and continents were being discovered, the Americas, Australasia, Trans-Saharan Africa and Japan became a ring of OUTER and INSULAR bases for sea power and trade inaccessible to the land power of central Eurasia.

However, during the Tudor age, while Western Europe began its expansion over the seas, at the same time Russian power started carrying from the principality of Muscovy a tireless expansion through Siberia thanks to Cossack explorers and settlers: such momentum would have imposed the Russian rule to the shores of the Pacific Ocean and Alaska within less than three centuries.

Somewhat Mackinder notices in the seaward western and the landward eastern expansion of Europe the prosecution of the ancient opposition between Romans and Greeks, exemplified in the political - and religious - separation into two parts of the Roman Empire. As Teutonic folks were overall civilized and Christianised by the Romans, so were the Slavic ones mostly by the Greeks. Being so things, the Romano-Teutonic European stock embarked upon the ocean enforcing sea power whilst the Greco-Slavic rode over the steppes, focusing on land power, and conquering the Turanian lands.   

It is true that during the XIX century the Russian railways had subjugated the Eurasian steppes, linking together and rationalising these vast landscapes. The Russian army in Manchuria, whose placement there was possible thanks to railway communications, looked like an evidence of mobile land power at the same extent than how the British army deployed in South Africa showed the evidence of mobile sea power. Thanks to the connection of the Eurasian core due to Russian railways Mackinder already foresaw and predicted the birth of a Eurasian specific economic area: the richness of the resources of the Russian Empire and Mongolia - Mackinder writes - is so big that the creation of a more or less apart economic world is inevitable and will be inaccessible to oceanic commerce, and therefore self-sufficient.

After this rather long premise, Mackinder finally introduces in his study the description of what he considers the so-called PIVOT REGION of the world, both in geographical and geopolitical terms:

The pivot region is that inner continental vast landlocked area of Eurasia inaccessible to ships. Though nowadays covered by railways, this area was once lay open to the horse-riding nomads. It is landlocked - or best to say seasonally landlocked - because the only waters that coast it are those of the northern icy sea adjacent to the Arctic Ocean. Let us then divide the world into five main parts according to Mackinder’s world representation:

1) Pivot area (or Heartland): it is wholly continental and includes the major part of Russia (especially central Russia and Siberia), the eastern part of Caucasia, most of Persia, the whole of Turkestan (from present-day Kazakhstan to the land of the Uyghurs in Chinese Xinjiang), Afghanistan and Mongolia.

2) Outer (or insular) crescent: it is wholly oceanic and includes the Americas, the British Isles, all of Sub-Saharan (or Black) Africa, the whole of Oceania including the Indonesian archipelago and Australasia, the Japanese Isles and Alaska.    

3) Inner crescent (or marginal crescent, or Rimland): it is partly continental and partly oceanic and includes all of Western  Europe, the majority of Eastern Europe, Ukraine, the western part of Caucasia, the Anatolian peninsula, the northern part of the Near East, the Persian coast, the entire Indian subcontinent, Tibet, northern, southern and eastern China (but not western), Indochina, Manchuria and the Kamchatka peninsula.                                                 

4) The Desert: it is inaccessible and includes the wastelands of the Sahara and of the Arabian Peninsula.  

5) The Icy Sea: it is inaccessible - at least during the winter - and coincides with the Arctic Ocean.

Given its position of main holder of the pivotal area, Mackinder considers Russia (the Russian empire of yore) the potential hegemonic empire of the world, though penalized for not blending land power with sea power. The author believes that just like the Mongol empire in the past, Russia had the power and the possibility to threaten and pressure all of its rims: Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, Turkey, Persia, India and China. Considering the world at large, the Russian tsardom occupied the central strategic position, the same that the German kaiserdom held in relation to Europe. Due to its position Russia could struck on all sides and be struck from all sides, save the north.

Now, the main concern that Mackinder wants to raise is the following: what if the state that controls the pivotal area, Russia, would expand over the marginal lands of Eurasia, in other words into the inner crescent/Rimland?  If Russia would add its continental resources with the possibility to use them for fleet edification and sea power building then the ultimate world empire would be born. In other words, and this is the main point of Mackinder’s lesson, if the Heartland (pivotal area) unites together with the Rimland (inner crescent) under the rule of the same power this would lead to the birth of a hegemonic incontestable world empire.

Concretely speaking, and remembering that Mackinder speaks as an Englishman for the interests of his own nation, if in 1904 Germany would have allied with Russia the pivotal area and the inner crescent would have significantly joined together, and this could have led France to ally with over-sea powers that belonged to the outer crescent (Great Britain, the United States, Japan, etc.). Within the frame of a potential German-Russian entente countries like France, Italy, Egypt, India, Korea would become bridge heads in which the two block of powers (continental pivotal powers and oceanic marginal powers) would compete and interact, even in terms of warfare. In such a scenario, the strategic role of India appeared even more important for Great Britain: indeed the British military front stretched from the Cape of Good Hope through India to Japan. Things could become even worse if South America was to join Germany instead of the US in a hypothetical world war: an outer-outer crescent would now encircle the outer crescent. The Nearer, Middle and Far East questions - Mackinder reports - were all related to the unstable equilibrium of inner and outer powers in those areas of the marginal crescent where local power is weak.

At conclusion of his study, Mackinder underlines that the pivotal region will always be strategic, no matter which power would control it. Was it to be controlled by China, for instance, China would become a real threat to the world by fusing together the ocean frontage with the exploitation of the inner resources of the vast Eurasian continent: what Russia could not yet do.       

References:

H. J. Mackinder, the Geographical Pivot of History, the Geographical Journal, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Apr., 1904), pp. 421-437.

Kaplan and the “revenge of geography”. A survey on the geopolitical evolution of international relations. Part Two.

If the first part of Kaplan’s book focuses its attention on the theoretic geopolitical models of the past, the second and third parts describe specific present-day international scenarios, exploring them through the pattern pointed out before.

The first chapter of Part 2 is dedicated to the European Union. After proposing some general reflections over the present status of the EU, Kaplan wishes to analyze more accurately the influence of Asian invading hordes throughout European history, along a line of continuity that binds the first Cimmerian invaders of the II millennium B.C. to the final Mongolic ones of the XIII century A.D. Once again, the author underlines the impact of climate and geography for Europe’s development and rise. The landscape of the European continent abounds with mountains, forests, productive fields, jagged shorelines and natural harbors and docks. The multiplicity of European civilization and the variety of the peoples that here dwell hinge upon the natural richness and diversity of the continent’s geography. Diversity, dynamism and particularism have been the key words for the birth of a common “idea of Europe”, which still holds the record of having bestowed the highest contributions to world civilization. The notion of Europe as a sole political unity, as the EU now pretends to be, dates back to the time of Charlemagne, the founder of the Holy Roman Empire. After Charlemagne, other statesmen endeavored to unify Europe into a single polity once again: the Hohenstaufen emperors, emperor Charles V of Hapsburg, Louis XIV of France, Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm and, ultimately, Adolf Hitler: shortly, all of them failed. The European integration process, started with the Treaty of Paris (1951) and the Treaties of Rome (1957), aims at a similar purpose: to forge a political unified Europe through economic ties. Indeed, there are some resemblances between Charlemagne’s Europe and the current EU; for instance, the present EU ruling regions stand where once laid the core lands of the Frankish Holy Roman Empire of old: Burgundy, Flanders, the Netherlands, the Rhineland, Alsace, Lotharingia, Lombardy and Catalonia. Undoubtedly, in the contemporary EU the central, northern and northwestern regions overlay supremacy over the southern (Mediterranean), southeastern (Balkan) and eastern (Eastern European) ones. To be more precise, within this general pattern Germany enjoys the status of hegemonic EU power. Besides, the Balkan countries play a crucial role: first, it is towards these regions, along with the others in Eastern Europe, that the European Union wills to expand and to establish her control; then, the Balkan whole range is just outside Mackinder’s Eurasian Heartland and lays right on top of Spykman’s Rimland. In this context, the roles of Greece and of Turkish Eastern Thrace are particularly significant.

The book then continues speaking of Russia. Actually, Russia is to consider mainly as a land power. By so being, she naturally expresses all of the uncertainties and insecurities typical of land powers that are usually landlocked or semi-landlocked. Historically, Russia was a semi-landlocked country until the XVIII century: in fact, as we know, the Arctic Ocean froze during the winter and trades towards Europe or Eastern Asia stopped. This geographical condition, as well as the need to protect the frontiers, gave birth to Russian territorial expansionism. The imperatives of Russian historical foreign policy were two: on one hand, that of defending the steppes from the ever raids of the nomadic horse-riding Turkish-Mongolian tribes (the continuous struggle between Cossacks and Tatars exemplifies the matter), and on the other, that of seeking for warm waters from which carrying on trading during wintertime. Interestingly, Kaplan believes to find the spring of both tsarist autocracy and soviet totalitarianism in the climate and landscape of the Russian country, showing once more how geographical determinism affects the evolution of political systems. Summarizing Russian history, the author points out the prominence of Ukraine, whose relevance is already contained in the name she bares: “borderland”. The reason for Ukrainian past and present territorial crises rely on the fact that this crammed flatland lays exactly in-between the Eurasian Heartland and the European Rimland. Moreover, the author cites once again the rivalry between tsarist Russia and the British Empire for the control of Eurasia during the nineteenth century also known as “Great Game” or “Tournament of Shadows”. The Russian strategic interest to reach the warm waters could de facto threaten the British communication lines with the Indian Raj and with the English areas of influence in the Orient. As for the conquest of Siberia, her climate and natural conditions implied the birth of a coercive and centralized kind of government. The building of railways helped joining the vast Siberian widths, though suggesting a sense of unsafety and insecurity typical of Russian historical mentality. In Siberia, rivers play a relevant role: the Yenisei splits Western from Eastern Siberia and the Lena Eastern Siberia from the Russian Far East; meanwhile, the Ussuri forms the natural border between the Russian Far East and Chinese Manchuria. The conquest of Siberia obliged Russia to participate to the Pacific geopolitical contest, leading her to compete with Japan, China and, later, the United States for the hegemony over the area: think of the wars fought by tsarist Russia against Qing (Manchu) China or against the Japanese Empire of the Rising Sun. When the Soviet Union replaced imperial Russia, the Bolsheviks had to face the evidence that a land power always suffers the threat of an attack on its outskirts: the gruesome years of the civil war and of foreign interventionism (1918-23) reestablished the difficulty of defending the Russian borders. Bolshevik imperialist realism was able enough to consider moving the back the capital to Moscow rather than Saint Petersburg, a core region from which the Eurasian control would be easier to foster. Later, the United States perceived the birth of the great Soviet empire onto the ashes of the shattered German Third Reich as the happening of Mackinder’s prophecies on the control of the World-Island (i.e. Eurasia). Indeed, after World War 2 appeared two main superpowers: on one side the USSR, that almost encompassed the whole of Mackinder’s Heartland, and on the other the United States of America, that embodied the perfect example of Mahan’s great sea power. Since then, the Eurasian Rimland (including the Greater Middle East, Western Europe and Southeastern Asia) would feel jeopardized both by the spread of Soviet land power and by the pressure of American sea (and air) power. After the USSR’s demise and the outburst of newly discovered nationalistic feelings amongst the variegated former Soviet subjects, vulnerability was again Russia’s keyword, deriving mainly from the unbalanced ratio between Russian demographic rates and geographic extensions of the country. Things have changed now in Eurasia. It seems to be that China is gaining always quicker a hegemonic role on the Eurasian continent. So being things, should Russia focus her attention more on the Eurasian Heartland or on her fringes like the European peninsula and the Pacific Rim? What would Russia need to attract back to her former USSR subjects? Unfortunately, Russia still needs to face the never-ending issue of being, in fact, borderless. Furthermore, Ukraine plays a strategic role for the relationships between the European Union and the Russian Federation: it is throughout the Ukrainian flatland that superpowers currently confront each other and within the present crisis, as foreseen by Brzezinski, Poland could play a pivotal role, for better or for worse. Paradoxically, the Soviet subdivision of Central Asia survived to the downfall of the USSR; despite feeble political movements like pan-Turanianism or pan-Iranianism, Central Asian republics are relatively stable though their ethnic composition does not often coincide with the borders of the existing sovereign Turkestan States. For instance, Kazakhstan, a significant portion of Mackinder’s Heartland, finally returned to its native inhabitants. To conclude the chapter, the author dedicates some space to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), described as a group of Eurasian powers in anti-US fashion whose effectiveness over international politics is still uncertain and in progress. 

The chapter dedicated to China opens with Mackinder’s view over this demographic and geographic giant. China is even more threatening than Russia, because not only does the country possess direct access to the Eurasian Heartland and its resources, but in addition to this enjoys a strategic frontal position towards the Pacific Ocean: this makes China a potential blend of land power and sea power and gives full meaning to her Mandarin name of “Middle Kingdom”. Only now, is this double role of Chinese power arising clearly and becoming a worrisome truth. The concept of Inner Asia, including the lands of Manchuria, Mongolia, Eastern Turkestan and Tibet, appears to be of fundamental geopolitical interest when considering the huge Chinese landscape. In Eastern Turkestan dwell the Muslim Turkic Uighurs that have been continuously struggling for secession from China, finding moral support in other Turkic nations. In Inner Mongolia live the Mongols, unfairly separated by their kinsmen of Outer Mongolia. In Tibet are the Lamaist Tibetans who still oppose as they best can Beijing’s communist regime, attempting to call back from his Indian exile the Dalai Lama.  Finally, Manchuria, a land from where the last Chinese imperial dynasty originated (the Manchus), represents a border region that has been historically claimed by Chinese, Russians and Japanese (think of the birth of the Japanese puppet-State of Manchukuo in 1932). China still suffers in remembering her dishonorable historical break up between the nineteenth and twentieth century, when European powers snatched coercively Chinese territorial concessions, trade deals and juridical capitulations, before the Japanese would start their own continental expansion against China. Beijing conceives its international affairs as a mean to avoid any new possible Chinese loss of sovereignty, reflecting it on its relationships with Taiwan and Hong Kong. Indeed, Russia has to fear the risk of a re-population of Eastern Siberia by Chinese pioneers and settlers, considering that the demographic ratio between Russians and Chinese in the Far East is completely unbalanced making future scenarios in the area uncertain. Historically, the Nixon administration, with the aid of Kissinger’s advice, took the advantage of both Brezhnev’s detent strategy towards the US and of the Sino-Soviet split in order to open diplomatically to communist China within the framework of a truly realistic strategy, devoid of ideology and emotionality. China has been opposing the ethnical diversity within her territory by colonizing the sensitive zone, say, Tibet or Xinjiang, with ethnic Hans. However, the real grand strategy of a Greater China would consist in penetrating Mackinder’s Eurasian Heartland. A Greater China implies a Chinese preponderant over Afghanistan, Pakistan, Central Asia, Southeastern Asia and the Chinese First Island Chain (which, going from north to south, comprises Japan, the Ryuku Islands, the so-called half-island of the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Australasia). As we can imagine, the very idea of a Greater China, with her preponderant influence over almost half of Asia, finds a natural rival in the parallel Indian rise. Evidently, the rivalry between China and India will be a leitmotiv for the future international internationals, among which the Dalai Lama’s exile issue is just the tip of the iceberg, if not a mere casus belli. Besides the enmity for Tibet, an Indo-Chinese “Great Game” is taking place, embracing countries like Nepal and Bhutan (the two Himalayan buffer States) on one side and Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka on the other. The projection of sea power over the city-State of Singapore expresses a risk of a Chinese dominion over the Indian and Pacific Oceans through the trade routes that track the Strait of Malacca. The international relations in the Far East cannot neglect the significant role that North Korea covers for being the pivot of East Asia: the possible reunification of the Korean peninsula under a single State could alter the entire balance of power in Eurasian Eastern Rim. As said above, China is leading a double penetration both in Mackinder’s Heartland and in Spykman’s Rimland: her new task consists in transforming a traditional continental power into a mixed land-sea power. China is trying to absorb the nature of sea power also by building a mighty fleet but still lacks of self-confidence in rushing towards the oceanic challenge. Anyways, through its projection of power over all Eastern Asia, Beijing is newly shaping the Western Pacific’s geographic strategy and altering the balance of power of the region: this could lead in the near future to the need for reconsidering the diplomatic alignments and the strategic alliances for all actors here entangled.

As far as India is concerned, Mahan and Spykman considered this country’s position as critical for being a Rimland power naturally oriented towards the Middle East and China from her maritime subcontinental position. As we have already seen, Eurasia consists of a landmass, which encompasses the former USSR, and greatly populated fringes (Europe, India, Indochina and China): amongst the latter, the Indian subcontinent represents one of the most heavily populated and various from an ethnic, linguistic and religious point of view. Mackinder found India’s vulnerability on her northwestern frontier, from which historical invasions came crossing the Khyber Pass. Describing India’s landscape, her mainland embodies two geographical facts: it appears to be a standing-alone subcontinent on one side, and a vibrant extremity of the Greater Middle East on the other. Moreover, from a linguistic and ethnic point of view India appears to be as split into two areas: the Indo-European north and the Dravidian south. Unlike China, India grew as a democratic and pluralist political system thanks to the British rule of yore, which commenced through the creation of small English footholds on the Indian shores. Britain introduced in India the parliamentary mentality, the common-law juridical system, the European administrative model and, of course, the English language. Thanks to British-built railways, the English governors managed for the first time in history to unite the Indian subcontinent into a single polity. Besides, the countries that neighbor India present a lack of geographical coherence. Pakistan was hastily born in 1947 for unraveling the Indian Muslims from the Hindu majority. Bangladesh was born in 1971, seceding from Pakistan for political reasons. Nepal and Bhutan symbolize two buffer states between India and China. The Afghan borders descend from the Russo-British imperial rivalry in Central Asia (think of the Wakhan Corridor, that currently separates Tajikistan from Pakistan, conceived to keep a bumper zone between the Russian and the British empires). Indeed, Afghanistan holds a strategic position for being a buffer between the Iranian Plateau, the Central Asian steppes and the Indian Subcontinent; verily, it is the crossroad of the entire Asian continent. Today, the Eurasian Heartland is vast landscape where the interests of Russia, China, India and Iran intertwine and where the Central Asian strips, including Afghanistan, play a major role. A stable Afghanistan could become the hub of Eurasia, and all nearby countries would benefit from that. Actually, after the Greater Middle East region, the Greater Indian subcontinent represents one of the least stable geopolitical areas in the world. One of the reason for the somewhat tarnished relations between India and China relies on the fact that the Chinese regime upholds military and political support to India’s regional rivals, significantly Pakistan: India feels somehow surrounded by China. The issue of Kashmir, a land partitioned between Pakistan, India and China, keeps the tensions high amongst them.

For what concerns the Middle East, this pan-region represents a vast quadrilateral where Europe, Russia, Asia and Africa intersect: with the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara Desert to the west; the Black sea, the Caucasus, the Caspian Sea, and the Central Asian steppe-land to the north; the Hindu Kush and the Indian Subcontinent to the east; and the Indian Ocean to the south. One of its main distinguishing features is that it lacks of a single State that has hegemony over the area. In fact, which country should gain the rule of the Middle East? Turkey has a vast population, but is not Arabic. Iran has a vast population too, but it neither Arabic nor Sunni. Saudi Arabia controls the Holy Shrines of Mecca and Medina, but has a small population. Egypt has a large population, but its African location turns it away from the Asian Near East. The weakness of all the Middle East depends on the lack of unity among its countries. Pan-Arabism once embraced the idea of unification of all Arab nations, but even if it had reached the goal, countries like Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan would have stayed out from the union. Within the Middle East, there are three main ethnic strains: the Arab, the Iranian, and the Turkic: each of them declare its respective superiority over the others. The Arabic Islamic world divides in three parts: the Maghreb (Northern Africa), the Mashreq (the Near East) and the Khalij (the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf). All of the Mashreq is instable mainly due to European colonization (keep in mind the British and French mandates over the former Ottoman Near East after World War 1) on one hand and the presence of the Zionist State of Israel on the other. Furthermore, Wahhabism influences greatly the Saudi Arabian view of politics and religion. Its fanatical interpretation of the Quran originated from the central Arabic region of Najd where the society’s backbone consisted in camel-based nomadism; thus, Najd represents the core of Wahhabi rule and Saudi sovereignty. As for Iran, it embodies the Middle Eastern universal juncture, just as the Middle East incarnates the quadrilateral of the World-Island (Eurafrasia). Can Iran become a new geographical pivot despite its reactionary theocracy and its nuclear enrichment program? Though Iran is much smaller than India and China, or Russia or Europe for the matter, it is merely because it is in possession of the key geography of the Middle East in terms of position, population and energy resources that is fundamental to global geopolitics. Indeed, the originality of the Iranian revolution of 1979 lies in the alliance between the clergy and the Islamist intelligentsia. The Iranian state has been stronger and better organized than any others in the greater Middle East, save for turkey and Israel, and the Islamic Revolution did not dismantle the Iranian State, but, rather, attached itself to it. It is also true that the somewhat suffocating Shiite clergy of Iran dispirits an allure of Central Asian, Caucasian or Arabian Muslims towards the country. In addition, Iraq’s destiny is deeply dependent on that of Iran, being a country that hosts a numerous number of Shiite Muslims. Undoubtedly, for better or for worse, Iran will affect the Eurasian future fate. Also, what to say about Turkey? Turkey’s geographical nature is that of a natural land bridge, or almost of an island: it links the Middle Eastern core land with the southeastern European gate. In being one of the most secular and open-minded nations among the Islamic world, Turkey has the opportunity, due to her Kemalist past, to interact effectively with the European nations and the West. Although the current Turkish leadership seems to yield somehow from the Kemalist laicism, the overall positive condition of Turks, the concrete respect for human rights and the membership within NATO make Turkey a good interlocutor for the US, and who knows if this Islamic overpopulated republic will one day join the EU. For sure, Turkey still projects a relevant shadow-power both in the Balkans and in Caucasia, and stands as a gifted opponent to Iranian hegemony over the Muslim world.

Finally, Kaplan dedicates Part 3 of his book to the Americas, particularly North America. Mackinder calls the outlying area that includes the Americas the Outer Crescent in order to differentiate it from the Marginal Crescent or Rimland. As we already know, the entire North American continent comprises the most crucial of the continental satellites around the World-Island and a land from which sea power and air power projects over the Marginal Crescent. Kaplan introduces here some thought-provoking ideas. He highlights that the United States, having dropped down the material barriers towards the Canadian border, stay vulnerable in their southeastern frontier with Mexico. The US own an Anglo-Protestant backbone that the Hispanic Catholic immigration from Mexico may put at stake in the future. American Protestantism closely aligns with nationalism; it helped releasing a typical American mentality based upon dissent, individualism, republicanism and patriotism. This entire scale of values, as well as the white race predominance, is endangered by the risk of a Mexican “Reconquista” of the American southeastern States due to the surprising demographic augmentation of Hispanic individuals and to a difficult containment of illegal immigration from Mexico. Now, Kaplan’s suggestion is very simple and smart: he asks why the US government should worry so much of starting expensive wars in far lands like Afghanistan, entangling in extremely complicated crises and circumstances, when it would be so more useful to fix the problems on the southern border. In other words, the United States of America should care less of foreign countries that lay out of their territorial range and should instead focus the attention on its own mainland. Not only would this political strategy bring closer the public opinion of all those extra-American countries where the US somehow intervened, but also it would utterly mean to uphold the very American-born Monroe Doctrine.                                                                  

Kaplan and the “revenge of geography”. A survey on the geopolitical evolution of international relations. Part One.

Robert Kaplan’s recent book “The Revenge of Geography. What the map tells us about the coming conflicts and the battle against fate” (2012) represents a truly remarkable overview of the international relations during the past years as well as an astonishing outline of the main geopolitical theories of the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. The author follows the history of the world’s pivotal areas showing that timeless geographical truths and natural facts do exist and cannot be overthrown by human forces or globalization. Interestingly, Kaplan deviates from the common view that considers globalization as the key for understanding the new world order and instead proposes geography as the main factor leading to the changes in world events.

In the preface to his book, the author exposes the main thesis that lays behind it, which is the acknowledgment that despite globalization and the global free market economic model, geography still maters when considering the international relations. His explanation of geography’s relevance uses several examples related to the physical characteristics of a country and to elements like climate, topography or distance from the sea, displaying how these affect the foreign policy of States. For instance, Kaplan underlines how mountains represent a conservative force often protecting within their defiles indigenous cultures against the fierce modernizing ideologies that have too often plagued the flatlands: the historical struggle between hill-peoples and valley-peoples is here investigated and summarized. Likewise, the author already contemplates several concrete scenarios such as the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Significantly, he introduces Germany by using the comparison of the “big prison” to clarify that historical Germany always lacked of defined borders on the East and thus was compelled to move eastwards to seek for wider spaces for her crammed population (Drang nach Osten). Indeed, a clear geographic history of Germany is set out in the preface, highlighting the ever vulnerability of man-made borders.

After this short introduction, the book carries on the study in Part 1. First of all, Kaplan describes when was the sense of geography lost in international relations. To understand this loss, he quotes political thinkers like Francis Fukuyama and President Woodrow Wilson. He also tries to explain the limits of liberal universalism and wilsonianism after 9/11. To prove his idea on how illogical can borders be, he describes the fakeness of the Balkan borders after the 1992-95 war in former Yugoslavia and of the African countries that arose from decolonization. The consideration of the idea of Mitteleuropa seen as a shrine for human social and political progress is likewise particularly enlightening and thrilling. In these pages, the author already introduces Mackinder, a thinker constantly cited throughout the whole book: the British geographer did not consider as realistically existing the idea of Mitteleuropa, as revealed by W.P. Parker in his work “Mackinder: Geography as an Aid to Statecraft”. Moreover, the two world wars and the Cold War are interpreted through Mackinder’s thesis on the Heartland, or geographical pivot of history, because the former were all about whether or not Germany would dominate the Heartland of Eurasia whereas the latter whether the United States would manage to contain the Soviet expansion into the Marginal Crescent, beyond the USSR-controlled Heartland. The following pages describe well Prussia’s eastward orientation and portray significant remarks on Germany’s historical frontiers: Western Germany would belong to maritime Europe whereas Eastern Germany to the continental land power realm. Thus, within Germany herself we are able to see the struggle between sea power and land power, or, say, between the European Rimland and the Eurasian Heartland. The geographical features of Germany appear to be of the utmost strategic importance in demarking the Heartland from the coastland; indeed, Germany played a relevant role in making either the maritime or the continental realm of Europe prevail. The German awareness of geography and strategy as tools for survival was the main thrust of German foreign policy over the last centuries. After further considering the situation in the Balkans, Kaplan introduces realism by considering it a political idea in seek for the lesser evil rather than the utter good (cf. Hans Morgenthau). The weakness of the German frontiers has represented a never-ending threat for Eastern Europe, Russia and France and the overall German consolidation and expansion has influenced a lot the political evolution of the neighboring States. Furthermore, Kaplan underlines how geography can affect the political system of a country by setting the examples of Great Britain and Germany. Geography can explain the historical and current conditions of a State: land-lock can be the most notable reason for underdevelopment, the peculiar Sub-Saharan climate and landscape may explain African poverty, American freedom-mentality may be due to oceanic isolation and to the quasi-islander status, latitudes exist that seem to assure better development conditions. The periphery of the balance of power, as exposed by Morgenthau, which means the colonialist expansion unto the peripheral world by great powers, avoided total wars between world powers during the nineteenth century: only as soon as almost all of the peripheries had been already subdued and controlled did a chief conflict break out in 1914. However, what do we mean by considering a geopolitical approach to the study of history? Briefly, nothing more than the relevance of geography for the studying of the history and strategy of nations. Geography is the very basis for strategy and statecraft and, as above said, it leads a State towards a specific foreign policy and towards its own peculiar destiny.

Sir Harold J. Mackinder

All of Chapter 4 is dedicated to Mackinder’s thought. Understandably, the main attention focuses on his famous theory on the “Heartland” or “Geographical pivot of history”. Shortly, the location of Central Asia within the Eurasian Heartland represents the pivot on which the fate of great empires lays. Mackinder thoroughly analyzes the history of Eurasia paying greater attention to the struggle between sedentary and nomadic peoples. The whole birth of the European civilization is an outcome of the combat against Asia. Geography contributed to the origin of the European nations against the wide flatland of Russian steppes. Southward the historical Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Principality of Muscovy laid the heartland steppes and for by far the longest part of its history, Europe had to fight against the land-power hordes coming out from the Heartland on one hand and against the sea-power raiders coasting its shores on the other. The Mongolic invasions of Genghis Khan and descendants left an indelible mark in European mentality. For instance, after the Mongolic subjugation Russia had nourished a sense of insecurity that compelled her to expand in order to feel safe. On the other hand, the European political rise is a consequence of a lesser Mongolic domination. Kaplan keeps closely in mind Mackinder’s model to unfold his analysis. Eurasia holds four main marginal pan-regions: Europe. the Greater Middle East, the Far East, the Indian subcontinent. Each of these are somewhat geographically vulnerable: for instance, the Middle East is vulnerable to sea powers, although at the same time gaining benefits from them. The discovery of the route to India via Cape of Good Hope, bypassing the Muslim-geopolitical barrier, not to mention the discovery of the New World, procured incalculable advantages for Europe. Whilst considering the historical events that occurred in Eurasia, Kaplan describes Russia’s expansion on land as a need to police the steppe, which surprisingly then led to Russian control over the enormous spaces of Siberia. Europe and Russia embodied throughout the centuries the struggle of a liberal sea power against a reactionary land power. Indeed, there seems to be a connection concerning the role of the sea for the birth of liberalism and democracy through the example of the United States. The Eurasian Heartland pivotal region represents a landlocked area, whereas the outer Eurasian regions that lay on top of the Rimland, or Marginal Crescent, do have access to the seas: think of Finland, Poland, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Persia, India and China. The railways guaranteed Russian control over the greater part of the Heartland. Furthermore, the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) embodied the example of a sea power (Japan) winning over a land power (Russia), in a similar fashion as the following victory of Great Britain against Germany during World War 1. In addition, what to say about the two world wars? What else were they if not mere struggles for the control of the Eurasian Rimland, from Eastern Europe to the Himalayas? Similarly, the US containment of the USSR over Caucasia and Central Asia during the Cold War exemplified once again the tensions for the control of the Central Asian pivot, the key for the hegemony on Eurasia (the World-Island) and the rest of the world. We must remember that Mackinder’s pivot thesis dates back to the year 1904; still it already depicted the idea of a global interactive system despite the Euro-centric vision of the time grounded on the continental organization consequent to the Congress of Vienna (1814-15). In his “Democratic Ideals and Reality” of 1919 Mackinder updates his “Geographical pivot of history” view of 1904. This new book describes the history of the contraposition between land powers and sea powers starting from ancient Egypt. The book also introduces the notions of World-Island and dry land; the Eurasian thesis and the World Island’s unicity are furtherly exposed. There is a quick description of the British rule over the so-called “World Promontory”, the entire breadth of Eurasia and Africa represents one organic unit (Eurafrasia), the Heartland again incarnates the area that affects the fate of the World-Island. Finally, Kaplan quotes Mackinder’s well-known statement concerning his geographical pivot of history: “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland: Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island: Who rules the World-Island commands the world”. We may add that the entire structure of this thought follows slightly the shape of a Russian matreshka, with inner smaller parts hidden underneath the bigger ones. It is not until the end of World War 1 that the British geographer introduces the vital need that there should be a tier of States between Germany and Russia: this idea will help forging Clemenceau’s Cordon sanitaire strategy meant to contain the spread of communism through the birth of buffer states between Western Europe and Soviet Russia. The British opposition to the German kaiserdom, the Russian tsardom and the Soviet Union is a consequence of their will to control Eastern Europe and the Heartland. In 1919, Mackinder considered Eastern Europe as the key to gain possess of the Heartland and the area from which the power of Germany and Russia derived. Once again, Eastern Europe was conceived as a “crush zone” liable to be overrun by either a land power originating from the Heartland or by a sea power coming from Western Europe. Notably, the idea of a bulwark of Eastern European States in order to avoid an imperial expansion brought to the birth (or rather re-birth) of those countries that emerged out of the demise of the USSR: Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Only after 1989 has hope arisen that an independent Central Europe could survive, standing between the two land powers of Germany and Russia. Moreover, Mackinder’s international overview somehow foresaw the birth of NATO. In 1919, Mackinder enlarged the pivotal area’s width, thus including the entire Soviet empire in the years of its heyday plus Norway, Northern Turkey, Iran and Western China. As far as the Middle East is concerned, its extension represents a “passage-land” from Europe to the Indies and from the northern part of the Heartland to the southern, and its location, making it the crossroad of the World-Island, is necessarily strategic. The possession of Greece too has a predominant role due to her closeness to the Heartland. Likewise, it is very interesting to consider that India and China, both sited beside the Heartland, managed to self-develop autonomously. Adding the final remarks on Russia, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 denoted a quest of sea power, and the secession, after 1991, of Belarus, Ukraine, Caucasia and Central Asia represented a loss of important parts of the Heartland.

Karl Ersnt Haushofer

After considering Mackinder, Kaplan’s book illustrates German Geopolitik. To start with, the first thinker cited is Friedrich Ratzel. The German geographer focused mainly on the idea of Lebensraum, or vital room, on the belief that a country’s borders are ever shifting, on the doctrine of space and soil and on Darwinist biology applied to geography. The following thinker mentioned is Rudolf Kjellén, a Swedish political scientist that coined the word “geopolitics”. He opposed the idea of Russian expansionism towards the Baltic Sea and starkly supported the birth of a Greater German empire, adding to geographical issues racial and biological concerns over peoples and nations. Another tremendously important German geographer cited in the book is Karl Haushofer. He too stressed his attention on the struggle between land powers and sea powers. He describes in his own words Mackinder’s Heartland, and Kaplan refers to his examinations by calling them the “Nazi distortion”: indeed Haushofer’s ideas influenced National socialist geopolitics and Hitler’s personal foreign policy agenda. Haushofer proposed the dissolution of Eastern Europe into small buffer States, the demise of the British Empire and the crash of Soviet Russia, whilst supporting the birth of a Greater German empire. He also coveted to partition the world into several pan-regions, ruled respectively by the United States, Germany, Italy and Japan (this plan was somehow the theoretic basis from which the idea of the Tripartite Pact came out). He likewise offered the Germans (specifically the Nazis) a coherent imperial doctrine, overturning Mackinder’s balance of power geopolitics and considering the need to wipe out all frontiers and to build roads for the master folk instead. In Haushofer’s point of view, German Geopolitik was obliged to serve the purpose of leading an unending warfare in seek for room for the crammed Teutonic nation. Nonetheless, Haushofer approved the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and was skeptical towards the successive German invasion of the USSR, although he was clearly aware of the importance for Germany to gain control over the Soviet-controlled Heartland. Believing in a never-ending state of war amongst nations, Haushofer’s political thought can be somewhat linked to that of Hobbes and Darwin. His whole analysis takes the move from idea that nations suffer from a crisis of room that compels them to expand in order to survive: a lack of expansion and a territorial stagnation would then lead a folk to its natural death.

The study of Nicholas J. Spykman’s Rimland thesis follows the chapter on German Geopolitik. Once again, geography is the central pivot for the Dutch-American thinker. Indeed, he considers the American location as the world’s best. He begins his speculation with the idea that international relations rely on anarchy and therefore the quest for power incarnates little more than a mere need to survive. Unlike Haushofer, however, Spykman does not believe in domination but rather in the safety of equilibrium and thus seeks for a balance of powers in international relations. He believes that only in temperate latitudes can history advance, by which he means the Northern Hemisphere between the 20th and 60th parallel north. Whereas Mackinder bared a Eurasian-centric view, Spykman uncovered a worldwide one. In considering the regional hegemony of the US in the Western Hemisphere, he reminded that America built her hemispherical power through controlling the Caribbean basin. Mackinder considered the struggle for the Heartland as a contraposition between land power and sea power, with a Heartland-based land power in the better position; instead, Spykman believes the opposite: it is the sea power laying in a far better position, he states. Spykman writes about Russian encirclement and describes his own personal view of the Heartland, seeing it contained within a belt of mountains that run from the Carpathians to the Korean peninsula: people would have always fought over this area. Thence, Spykman states that outside the Heartland lays the Rimland and that the control of it opens the door to world power. This depends on the fact that whereas Mackinder’s Heartland can only irradiate power over Eurasia, the maritime-oriented Rimland can over both Eurasia and the outside marginal world. Accordingly, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan epitomizes the attempt to combine land power and sea power, when a Heartland-dominating superpower tried to control gradually the Rimland and its seashores starting from the Afghan pivotal land. In fact, during World War 2, the USSR had full control over the Heartland and the Axis powers an increasing dominion over the Rimland at the expenses of Britain and the United States, until the latter re-affirmed on it their own hegemony by stopping the Axis territorial expansion in North Africa, the Pacific Ocean and Indochina. After that conflict, the competition for the Rimland continued throughout the Cold War. Under these circumstances, the containment was an attempt of sea powers (USA and UK) to marginalize USSR’s land power. To oppose the containment strategy, the Soviets interacted with Rimland countries, going so far as to support militarily filo-Soviet governments in the Greater Middle East, in the Korean Peninsula, in Indochina, etc. Containment is the name used by peripheral sea powers for what the Heartland powers call encirclement. Helping us with a scheme, we may affirm as follows:

Sea power = Containment                 vs.                    Heartland power = Encirclement

↓

In relation to the control over the Rimland

↓

Sea power’s interest = to avoid that Heartland and Rimland are under the same ruler and thus controlling bridgeheads on the Rimland

Heartland power’s interest = to break the sea power encirclement by gaining control over parts of the Rimland

Spykman opposed all kinds of European unification for the sake of safeguarding the balance of power: the idea of a federal Europe would have altered the United States’ predominance over the Atlantic Ocean and weaken its position in the whole Western Hemisphere. Briefly, we can assert that both Mackinder and Spykman’s concerns were two:

That of a single land power dominating Eurasia by joining the Rimland to the Heartland;

That of a single sea power dominating the Eurasian Rimland from its Motherland headquarters and through the rule over the seas.

Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan

Finally, Chapter 7 of Kaplan’s book introduces American Admiral Alfred T. Mahan’s studies and the effect of sea power over geopolitical thought. According to Mahan, sea power represents a lesser threat to freedom because the mastery over the sea spontaneously lead to less autocratic political systems and to a predominance of trade over economic autarchy. The hinges of geopolitical interest lay not in the Heartland of Eurasia but rather in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans: through their control, a maritime nation can project power around the Eurasian Rimland. Consequently, a nation like Russia appears to be particularly vulnerable because of her distance from the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. Indeed, the nations sited underneath Russia and above the Indian Ocean characterized the debatable ground of Asia: not per chance, this area was the core of the contraposition between czarist Russia and imperial Britain during the nineteenth century. As we can see, all of Mahan’s thought relies upon an ocean-centric view. Notwithstanding, his sea power doctrine ultimately underestimated a land power’s sudden rise and expansion through land, as occurred with Nazi Germany. Still, the control of the seas is the way through which a nation can gather wealth and richness via trade and exchanges, but to become possible it implied the birth of a maritime fellowship: only a multilateral system of maritime alliances could afford to defend the global commons such as free trade. There is no doubt that Mahan’s book “The Influence of Sea Power upon History” helped the hasty naval buildup prior to World War 1, that we know being one of the main reasons for the conflict’s breakout.

To conclude, Kaplan’s book first part contains very accurate descriptions and examples on what has been the geopolitical thought of yore. The author does not neglect the major thinkers that contributed to the enrichment of this discipline. The geopolitical theories that up to now we have tried to illustrate are not just something belonging to the past but are indeed very current in today international relations. Kaplan’s statement is correct when he clinches that globalization did not eradicate the overwhelming power of geography.         

Haushofer's pan-regional world