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http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/00summer/fettweis.htm
Sir Halford Mackinder, Geopolitics, and Policymaking
in the 21st Century
CHRISTOPHER J. FETTWEIS
>From Parameters, Summer 2000, pp. 58-71
"A victorious Roman general, when he entered the city,
amid all the head-turning splendor of a `Triumph,' had
behind him on the chariot a slave who whispered into
his ear that he was mortal. When our statesmen are in
conversation with the defeated enemy, some airy cherub
should whisper to them from time to time this saying:
Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; Who
rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; Who
rules the World-Island commands the World." --Sir
Halford Mackinder, 1919[1]
"Few modern ideologies are as whimsically
all-encompassing, as romantically obscure, as
intellectually sloppy, and as likely to start a third
world war as the theory of `geopolitics.'" --Charles
Clover, 1999[2]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The world today hardly resembles the one that Sir
Halford Mackinder examined in 1904, when he first
wrote about the advantages of central positioning on
the Eurasian landmass. His theories would have
influence throughout the century, informing and
shaping US containment policy throughout the Cold War.
Today, almost a century after his "Heartland" theory
came into being, there is renewed interest in the
region that Mackinder considered the key to world
dominance. The Heartland of the Eurasian landmass may
well play an important role in the next century, and
the policy of today's lone superpower toward that
region will have a tremendous influence upon the
character of the entire international system.
Eurasia, the "World Island" to Mackinder, is still
central to American foreign policy and will likely to
continue to be so for some time. Conventional wisdom
holds that only a power dominating the resources of
Eurasia would have the potential to threaten the
interests of the United States. Yet that conventional
wisdom, as well as many of the other assumptions that
traditionally inform our policy, has not been
subjected to enough scrutiny in light of the changed
international realities. Many geopolitical "truths"
that have passed into the canon of security
intellectuals rarely get a proper reexamination to
determine their relevance to the constantly evolving
nature of the system. Were the world system static, no
further theorizing would be necessary. Since it is
not, we must constantly reevaluate our fundamental
assumptions to see whether or not any "eternal" rules
of the game, geopolitical and otherwise, truly exist.
Geopolitics is traditionally defined as the study of
"the influence of geographical factors on political
action,"[3] but this oft-cited definition fails to
capture the many meanings that have evolved for the
term over the years. Dr. Gearoid � Tuathail, an Irish
geographer and associate professor at Virginia Tech,
has identified three main uses of "geopolitics" since
the end of World War II. First, it is sometimes used
to describe a survey of a particular region or
problem, to "read the manifest features of that which
was held to be `external reality.'"[4] Geopolitics,
according to this usage, is a lens through which to
survey a problem: "The Geopolitics of X, where X is
oil, energy, resources, information, the Middle East,
Central America, Europe, etc." Second, geopolitics can
be synonymous with realpolitik, which according to �
Tuathail is "almost exclusively the legacy of Henry
Kissinger."[5] Kissinger used the term to describe his
attempts to maintain a "favorable equilibrium" in
world politics, and his singular ability to see the
proper course and set sail for it. His Machiavellian
approach was infamously devoid of ideology (or
"sentimentality"), and as such caused the term
geopolitics to fall out of favor with many of the
foreign policy practitioners who followed. Last, and
most important for our purposes, geopolitics has
become synonymous with grand strategy, "not, as in
Kissinger, about the everyday tactical conduct of
statecraft."[6] Theorists like Colin Gray place
geography in the center of international relations and
attempt to decipher the fundamental, eternal factors
that drive state action. This belief traces its roots
directly back to Sir Halford Mackinder and his
theories of the Heartland.
A Brief History of Geopolitics in Theory and Policy
To the early 20th-century British geographer Sir
Halford Mackinder, world history was a story of
constant conflict between land and sea powers. In the
past, during what he described as the Columbian Epoch,
increased mobility that the sea provided put naval
powers at a distinct advantage over their territorial
adversaries. The classic example of this advantage was
the Crimean War, in which Russia could not project
power to the south as effectively as the sea-supplied
French and British, despite the fact that the
battlefields were far closer to Moscow than to London.
But the Columbian Epoch was coming to a conclusion at
the turn of the 20th century when Mackinder was first
writing, as evolving technology, especially the system
of railroads, allowed land powers to be nearly as
mobile as those of the sea. Because land powers on the
World Island had a smaller distance to travel than the
sea powers operating on its periphery, any increase in
their mobility would tip the balance of power in their
favor. These "interior lines" gave the power with the
"central position" on the World Island the ability to
project power anywhere more rapidly than the sea
powers could defend. Thus, who ruled the Heartland
would have the possibility of commanding the entire
World Island.
Mackinder believed that the world had evolved into
what he called a "closed system." There was no more
room for expansion by the end of the 19th century, for
colonialism had brought the entire world under the
sway of Europe. Power politics of the future,
Mackinder speculated, would be marked by a competition
over the old territories rather than a quest for new
ones. His Heartland concept recalled the 18th-century
strategists' notion of the "key position" on the
battlefield,[7] the recognition of which was crucial
to victory. Traditional military strategists thought
that control of the key position on the map was
crucial to winning the war, and since Mackinder
recognized that the round world was now one big
battlefield, identification and control of the key
position would lead to global supremacy.
Mackinder's theories might have faded into irrelevance
were it not for their apparent influence on the
foreign policy of Nazi Germany. A German geopolitician
and devotee of Mackinder, Karl Haushofer, spent the
interwar period writing extensively about the
Heartland and the need for Lebensraum (additional
territory deemed essential for continued national
well-being) for the German people. One of Haushofer's
pupils was Rudolph Hess, who brought his teacher into
the inner intellectual circles of the Reich. Haushofer
was appointed by Hitler to run the German Academy in
Berlin, which was "more a propagandic institution than
a true academy in the continental European sense,"[8]
according to one observer. The actual effect of his
teachings upon German policy is open to
debate--Haushofer may have had an enormous effect on
Hitler through his pupil,[9] or he may have been "a
neglected and slighted man who would certainly enjoy
learning about the hullabaloo raised by his doctrine"
in the United States.[10] It cannot be proven that the
Drang nach Osten (eastward push) was affected by a
desire to control the Heartland. Here policy may just
overlap with, rather than be dictated by, geotheory.
But the possibility that there was a secret master
plan at work in Berlin created a whole new interest in
geopolitics and what Mackinder and geopolitics had to
say.
Haushofer's ideas probably had a larger influence upon
American strategic studies during the war than they
did on German policy. Wartime paranoia fed an image of
a secret German science of geopolitik that was driving
Nazi action, bringing Mackinder and Haushofer onto the
American intellectual radar screen. In 1942 Life
magazine ran an article titled "Geopolitics: The Lurid
Career of a Scientific System which a Briton Invented,
the Germans Used, and the Americans Need to
Study,"[11] which captured the mood of the period,
imagining a cabal of foreign policy "scientists"
dictating policy for the dictator. Opinions differed
between those who prescribed rapid acceptance of
geopolitik and those who dismissed it as
pseudoscience. The latter opinion was strengthened, of
course, by Germany's eventual defeat.
>From Hot War to Cold
The most influential American geopolitician to emerge
out of the furor created by Haushofer and the quest
for Lebensraum was Yale University professor Nicholas
Spykman. Spykman, considered one of the leading
intellectual forefathers of containment, speculated
about power projection into and out of the Heartland.
Whereas Mackinder assumed that geographical formations
made for easiest access from the east, Spykman argued
that the littoral areas of the Heartland, or what he
called the "Rimland," was key to controlling the
center. He updated Mackinder, positing, "Who controls
the Rimland rules Eurasia; Who rules Eurasia controls
the destinies of the world."[12] Spykman put an
American twist on geopolitical theory, and laid the
intellectual foundation for Kennan and those who
argued that the Western powers ought to strengthen the
Rimland to contain the Soviet Union, lest it use its
control of the Heartland to command the World
Island.[13]
Geopolitics as grand strategy was one of the important
intellectual foundations for the West's Cold War
containment policy. Canadian geographer Simon Dalby
recognizes it as one of the "four security discourses
(the others being sovietology, strategy, and the
realist approach to international relations) which
American `security intellectuals' have drawn on in
constructing the `Soviet threat.'"[14] According to
one of the preeminent historians of the Cold War, John
Lewis Gaddis, in the late 1940s "there developed a
line of reasoning reminiscent of Sir Halford
Mackinder's geopolitics, with its assumption that none
of the world's `rimlands' could be secure if the
Eurasian `heartland' was under the domination of a
single hostile power."[15] Gaddis describes how the
containment policy evolved from countering Soviet
expansion at every point in the rimlands to
concentration of defense on a few key points,
especially Western Europe and Japan.
While Mackinder's warnings of the advantages inherent
in central positioning on the Eurasian landmass
certainly became incorporated into Cold War American
strategic thought and policy, some observers seem to
believe that the principle architects of US foreign
policy throughout the Cold War era must have been
carrying Mackinder in their briefcases. Colin Gray
wrote:
By far the most influential geopolitical concept for
Anglo-American statecraft has been the idea of a
Eurasian `heartland,' and then the complementary
idea-as-policy of containing the heartland power of
the day within, not to, Eurasia. From Harry S Truman
to George Bush, the overarching vision of US national
security was explicitly geopolitical and directly
traceable to the heartland theory of Mackinder. . . .
Mackinder's relevance to the containment of a
heartland-occupying Soviet Union in the cold war was
so apparent as to approach the status of a clich�.[16]
Indeed, many policymakers came from the world of
academia, where they were certainly exposed to
Mackinder's geopolitical theories. As was described
above, Henry Kissinger used the term geopolitics to
denote any policy dependent upon power principles at
the expense of ideology and "sentimentality."
Kissinger's worldview was less dependent upon
geographical realities than some of the other Cold
Warriors, especially Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was
President Carter's National Security Advisor and a
graduate-school mentor of Madeleine Albright.
Brzezinski has made Eurasia the focus for US foreign
policy in all of his writing, consistently warning of
the dangerous advantages that the Heartland power had
over the West.[17]
It is of course very difficult to trace the
progression of ideas into policy. But theories and
assumptions, whether articulated or not, provide the
frameworks which guide decisionmaking. Without those
frameworks, the proper course for the nation, or the
national interest itself, cannot be identified or
pursued. So while it is possible that geopolitics and
containment simply coincided, it is highly unlikely
that Western policymakers could look at a map of the
world, see the red zone in the Heartland, and not
remember the warning from Mackinder's cherub.[18]
After the Cold War
One might expect that geopolitics would have faded
into the intellectual background with the end of the
Cold War and the defeat of the Heartland power.
Strangely, though, Mackinder received a fresh look by
some scholars in the 1990s, both in the United States
and abroad, and especially in the Heartland
itself.[19] In a recent issue of Foreign Affairs,
Charles Clover identified the growing discussion of
geopolitics among some circles in Russia today:
Many Russian intellectuals, who once thought their
homeland's victory over the world would be the
inevitable result of history, now pin their hope for
Russia's return to greatness on a theory that is, in a
way, the opposite of dialectical materialism. Victory
is now to be found in geography, rather than history;
in space, rather than time. . . . The movement
envisions the Eurasian heartland as the geographic
launching pad for a global anti-Western movement whose
goal is the ultimate expulsion of "Atlantic" (read:
"American") influence from Eurasia.[20]
Clover argues that the modern Russian geopolitik is
being used as the glue to form bonds between the
ultra-left and ultra-right, hinting at a "red-brown"
coalition that could become dominant in Russian
politics in the years ahead, with ominous implications
for international stability.
This eventuality would of course be quite problematic
for an America that still views Eurasia as the
chessboard upon which the game of global control will
be played. The World Island is still the central focus
of US policy, and the Russians are still considered to
have the most fortunate position on the map. Yet is
there now, or was there ever, any reason to believe
that the Heartland of Eurasia bestows any sort of
geopolitical advantage to the power that controls it?
Examining Mackinder
Mackinder's theories have been attacked from many
directions over the years, but their remnants persist
in our intellectual memory. Mackinder (and the
geopoliticians who have followed) thought that
geography favored the Heartland power for five key
reasons: the Heartland was virtually impenetrable to
foreign invasion; technological changes offered
increased mobility which favored land powers; the
Heartland was in the central position on the World
Island, giving it shorter, interior lines of
transportation and communication than a power
defending the Rimland; the Heartland was loaded with
natural resources waiting to be exploited that could
give the area the highest productivity on earth; and,
last, the Eurasian World Island, being the home to the
majority of the world's land, people, and resources,
was the springboard for global hegemony. Every one of
these assumptions collapses under even the most
cursory scrutiny.
Impregnability
"The Heartland is the greatest natural fortress on
earth," Mackinder wrote. He envisioned it being
guarded by natural geographical formations that make
it almost impregnable to attack, specifically the
"ice-clad Polar Sea, forested and rugged Lenaland
[Siberia east of the Yenisei River], and the Central
Asiatic mountain and arid tableland."[21] The fortress
had one weakness, Mackinder concluded: there was an
opening in the west, between the Baltic and Black
Seas, which was not blocked geographically. This gap
in the natural defenses led to the famous conclusion
that whoever ruled Eastern Europe would be in an
advantageous position to rule the Heartland, and
therefore the World Island, and therefore the world.
Mackinder seemed to ignore the fact that to the extent
these geographical formations protected a Heartland
power, they also prevented it from projecting outward.
Walls tend to keep residents in as effectively as they
keep invaders out. The geographical boundaries of the
Heartland, to the extent that they were ever
obstacles, would have hampered any attempt to use it
as a springboard for hemispheric dominance.
But more important, the Heartland can be considered a
fortress only by standards of 19th-century technology.
A modern army, should it want to attack the Heartland,
would have little trouble bypassing "Lenaland," or
slicing right through Central Asia. Even its most
seemingly impenetrable boundary, the Polar Sea, offers
little protection from attack from the sky by planes
and missiles. The greatest natural fortress on earth
is certainly vulnerable to 21st-century weaponry,
offering little inherent advantage to the power
within.<J243>
The essential irrelevance of the "natural defenses" of
the Heartland was pointed out during the first stages
of debate on Mackinder during World War II. In
debunking geopolitics as a "pseudoscience," Ralph
Turner made the seemingly obvious point in 1943 that
"the high mobility of land power on the steppes . . .
is now amplified or offset by the far greater mobility
of air power."[22] Yet many geopoliticians remain
unconvinced. Colin Gray, perhaps the leading
geopolitician of our time, has responded to this
argument by saying, "That technology has canceled
geography contains just enough merit to be called a
plausible fallacy."[23] He then argues from a tactical
standpoint, pointing out that logistical factors make
geography's influence permanent. Surely he is correct
when he points out that "it mattered enormously" that
the Falklands were islands and Kuwait a desert, and
geography still has a great impact upon military
tactics and how battles are fought. But it has a
decreasing impact upon determinations of when states
choose to fight or who prevails. Gray does not make
the case for the permanence of geographical factors
upon grand strategy. The experiences in the disparate
conditions of the Falklands and Kuwait show that
technology can indeed overcome the geographical
boundaries of any natural fortress, including those of
the Heartland.
Perhaps the projection of power out of the Heartland
was not crucial to Mackinder's concept. Perhaps the
important point was that geographical defenses would
allow the Heartland power to exploit its resources and
consolidate its power, uninterrupted by conquest and
devastation. But even by this conception, the
Heartland falls far short. Russia has been devastated
time and again throughout history. Mongols, Turks,
Arabs, Persians, Swedes, French, Germans, and many
other groups have penetrated the walls of the
fortress, repeatedly laying waste to the area and
inhibiting long-term, steady growth. The Heartland was
not impenetrable to the technologies of the last two
millennia, much less those of the next.
Mobility
To Mackinder, the Heartland power had a distinct
geopolitical advantage at the end of the Columbian
Epoch because changes in technology allowed for rapid
troop movement and power projection. The railroad put
land powers on equal footing with those of the sea,
and the vast flat steppes put the Heartland in the
best position to exploit that new technology and
mobility, especially since the Heartland afforded
shorter, interior lines of movement.
But, as was discussed above, technological advancement
did not stop with the railroad. The mobility that air
power brings changes all the calculations of
Mackinder. There is no longer an advantage to being
able to choose the point of attack, for armed forces
can be airlifted between any two points on the globe
in a matter of hours. Rail mobility offered a
tremendous advantage before the advent of air travel,
but not nearly so much since.
Gray and others argue that planes have to land, and
therefore geographical positioning is still vital. But
this too is rapidly becoming obsolete. Mackinder
clearly did not anticipate, and Gray does not take
into account, the implications of bombers that can
take off from Missouri, drop their bombload on Kosovo,
and land back in Missouri. In our rapidly shrinking
world, where air power can now be projected around the
world from any position, the geographical location of
bases (and indeed geography itself) is becoming
increasingly irrelevant.
Central Position
Mackinder would have us believe that central
positioning is an advantage to a Heartland power, for
it allows shorter, internal lines of transportation
with which the Heartland power can choose the point of
attack. To Cold War strategists, this central
positioning made containment a nightmare, for it
necessitated defense of the enormous littoral
rimlands.
Mackinder might have been the first strategist in
history to suggest that the surrounded have the
advantage. When has central positioning ever been
advantageous to any nation? No one spoke of the
"interior lines of communication" of the Third Reich,
for instance. Germany has always been at a
disadvantage because of her position in the heart of
Europe. Similarly, the central positioning of the
Heartland of Eurasia has never been geopolitically
advantageous to its inhabitants. Rather than providing
a springboard to attack in any direction, central
positioning has rendered the Heartland power
vulnerable on all sides. Rather than providing a
heightened security, this position actually heightens
the Heartland's insecurity. Indeed, Russian history is
filled with attacks from the east, west, and south,
feeding an insecurity and a paranoia to which
Americans, historically protected by vast oceans,
cannot relate.
Central positioning is an advantage only to a
Heartland power bent of expansion. Realpolitik and
geopolitik informed the West that while their
intentions in the Rimland were benign (or at least not
offensive in nature), the Soviets had imperial designs
on every region of the world. To the West, the Soviets
were not threatened from all directions, but rather
were threatening to all directions. This assumption of
the eternality of Russian imperialism continues to
affect our policy today, and we continue to see the
Russian littoral as threatened by its vast neighbor.
The inability to understand the other's view is one of
the great historical features of US foreign policy. We
still are not able to understand that the quest for
empire in Russian history is at least in part an
attempt to bolster the insecurity that its position
has always entailed. Russia's imperial outposts in
Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and elsewhere provided
buffer zones against the attacks that have
periodically devastated Russian land. Central
positioning has led to a state of permanent
insecurity, which has poisoned Russia's relations with
its neighbors. The West clumsily heightens that sense
of insecurity with every new foray into the Rimlands.
Productivity
Ironically, the real reason behind the ability of the
Heartland to resist attack also guarantees that it
will never be able to live up to Mackinder's forecast.
In order to dominate the World Island, a Heartland
power would have to exploit its vast resources. But
since virtually all of the pivot area lies
latitudinally above the continental United States, the
harsh climate makes mining difficult, growing seasons
brief, and successful attack nearly impossible.
Large sections of the Heartland are not and will never
be productive. So it is hard to imagine that the
productivity of the region will ever match Sir
Halford's key condition for dominance of the World
Island.
"Who rules the World Island commands the World"
Using Mackinder's own qualifications, it appears that
he has placed the key geographical position in the
wrong part of the world. It does not appear true that
the Eastern Hemisphere bestows any strategic advantage
over the Western. In fact, control over the Western
Hemisphere has allowed the United States to rise to an
unprecedented position of power, for many of the very
reasons Mackinder identified with the Heartland. The
oceans provide it with heretofore virtually
impregnable boundaries, and it has command over a
collection of resources far greater than any Eurasian
power could effectively exploit, given climatic
realities. It seems hard to argue that geographical
factors favor Mackinder's Heartland over the American,
or to see why so many strategists continue to put
Eurasia as the center of the world. Heterogeneity
alone seems to predestine the Eastern Hemisphere to
infighting, and to disadvantages when compared to the
Western.
The point here is not to reinvent the Heartland,
however, or to argue that "who rules North America
commands the world." Rather it is to show that even by
the terms he used, Mackinder's Heartland never was
capable of bestowing any extraordinary advantages upon
its inhabitants. If anything, it was and is a
disadvantage, especially when compared to other, more
manageable, geographical positions.
Implications for Policy and Theory
One of the reasons that Mackinder is being resurrected
yet again is because policymakers are searching for
ways to conceptualize and deal with the heart of his
Heartland--Central Asia and the Caspian Sea--which is
a region that has the potential to become a major
source of great-power contention in the next century.
Some analysts estimate that the fossil fuels in the
region will transform it into a "new Saudi Arabia" in
the coming decades.[24] Its vast deposits made the
Soviet Union one of the largest exporters of oil
during the last decades of the Cold War, and new
reserves have been discovered through intensive
exploration since. An apparent power vacuum within the
region is once again the subject of rivalry from
without, and a new "great game" (an analogy to which
we will return) seems to be unfolding, with Russia,
China, Iran, Turkey, and the United States as the
players. Desire for fossil fuels and the wealth they
create has the potential to damage relations between
the global and regional powers, if diplomacy is
mishandled.
Russian behavior toward the states of Central Asia,
and indeed toward all the other former Soviet nations,
is often seen to be a bellwether of its new nature.
Some observers assume that Russian meddling in the
affairs of the states on its periphery is an
inevitable sign of neoimperialism, which is a
permanent characteristic of its eternal national
character. To head off any return to empire, many feel
that the West must be firm in discouraging a growth in
Russian influence in the new states. Thus the United
States is interested in projecting power into Central
Asia in the belief that filling power vacuums is
necessary to prevent the Russians from doing so, and
to keep the Cold War from recurring. Russia and China
today are regional powers that seek influence only in
their littoral; the United States projects power
everywhere. The three overlap in Central Asia, which
is the only region where the Cold War tradition of
"triangular diplomacy" may well become a reality again
if geopolitical concerns dominate our strategy.
The heart of the Heartland is floating on top of a sea
of oil. Before we decide on the nature of our policy
toward the region, we must examine some of the
assumptions that we bring into the debate. The
theories of Mackinder and the geopoliticians still
linger, affecting the ways that our policy is made,
despite the fact that the foundations upon which those
theories are built are intellectually shaky at best.
Geopolitics and Eternal Realities
Geopoliticians, by all uses of that term, seem to
claim to understand the eternal and fundamental
geographical realities in a way that automatically
places their analyses above those of ordinary
strategists. Mackinder, Kissinger, Brzezinski, Gray,
and the rest all would have us believe that they can
see the proper course for policy because they
understand the "eternal" realities that the earth
provides, despite the fact that their assumptions are
often baseless or archaic. � Tuathail has described
this phenomenon, and his remarks are worth quoting at
some length:
To understand the appeal of formal geopolitics to
certain intellectuals, institutions, and would-be
strategists, one has to appreciate the mythic
qualities of geopolitics. Geopolitics is mythic
because it promises uncanny clarity and insight in a
complex world. It actively closes down an openness to
the geographical diversity of the world and represses
questioning and difference. The plurality of the world
is reduced to certain "transcendent truths" about
strategy. Geopolitics is a narrow instrumental form of
reason that is also a form of faith, a belief that
there is a secret substratum and/or a permanent set of
conflicts and interests that accounts for the course
of world politics. It is fetishistically concerned
with "insight," and "prophecy." Formal geopolitics
appeals to those who yearn for the apparent certitude
of "timeless truths." Historically, it is produced by
and appeals to right-wing countermoderns because it
imposes a constructed certitude upon the unruly
complexity of world politics, uncovering transcendent
struggles between seemingly permanent opposites
("landpower" versus "seapower," "oceanic" versus
"continental," "East" versus "West") and folding
geographical difference into depluralized geopolitical
categories like "heartland," "rimland," "shatterbelt,"
and the like. Foreign policy complexity becomes
simple(minded) strategic gaming. [� Tuathail makes
reference to Brzezinski here] Such formal geopolitical
reasoning is . . . a flawed foundation upon which to
construct a foreign policy that needs to be sensitive
to the particularity and diversity of the world's
states, and to global processes and challenges that
transcend state-centric reasoning.[25]
As unsettling as it may be, there are no "timeless
truths" in world politics. The international system
changes as fast as we can understand its functions,
and often much faster. It seems to be natural for the
human mind to use analogies and slogans to comprehend
situations that are difficult to grasp. If
policymakers indeed simplify the world into frameworks
to make it comprehensible, then they must beware not
to base those frameworks on outdated and
intellectually sloppy assumptions of geopolitics.
Analogies and Policy
Policy is driven by analogy, both historical and
theoretical. One common, and dangerous, analogy that
drives US Eurasian policy is "the game." Brzezinski
speaks of chess; Central Asian policy is the "new
great game"; Kissinger and Nixon used game analogies
throughout their reign and in their writings
afterward.[26] Impenetrably complex problems are
simplified to games, which was problematic enough
during the Cold War but is acutely poisonous today.
Take Brzezinski's chess analogy. Chess has two
players, and one opponent; it is zero-sum, and to the
finish; there is a winner and a loser, with no middle
ground. The opponent of the United States to
Brzezinski is, and has always been, Russia. If we
approach Eurasia as if it were a chessboard, then we
will be met by opponents, and cooperation and mutual
benefit would be removed from our calculations. If the
leaders of the most powerful nation on earth were to
conceptualize foreign policy as a chess game, it would
virtually ensure that other nations would as well. A
Eurasian alliance to counteract growing US influence
would be virtually inevitable.
Mackinder's Heartland theory is a another example of
inappropriately applied analogy. Sir Halford took
Britain's traditional fear of the dominance of the
resources of continental Europe by one power and
extended it to encompass the entire world. To many
geopoliticians, the United States is an island power,
peripheral to the crucial and decisive land of
Eurasia. The only way America can be safe is if the
continent does not unify against her.
England's fear of a united European continent in the
19th century was understandable, because only a
continental power unconcerned with land enemies would
be able to concentrate its resources to challenge the
Royal Navy. The analogy with the World Island and the
United States falls apart, for no nation that
dominates that continent would ever be able to
threaten our hemisphere. Even if it were conceivable
that one power could dominate Eurasia (which of course
it is not), such an imbalance would not necessarily
threaten American interests, and the dominant power
presumably would not be able to project power over the
oceans. Any imaginable alliance of Eurasian powers
would be too unwieldy and disparate to operate
effectively. Some fear that a Eurasian alliance would
be capable of shutting off trade with the United
States, ruining our economy and standard of living.
While this may have had some relevance when there was
the potential for the rest of the world to be
dominated by the communists, as long as the great
powers of the World Island continue to be wedded to
the free market (and do not perceive US power to be
threatening), then there is little danger of their
voluntarily shutting their doors to the American
market and investment structure.
Paradoxically, our attempts to prevent a Eurasian
anti-American alliance may make that outcome more
likely. As Steven Walt has persuasively shown,
imbalances of threat, not imbalances of power, drive
alliances together.[27] Our attempts to project power
into the Heartland, if done clumsily, can heighten
threat perceptions in its capitals, making such
counterproductive alliances more attractive.
British uneasiness with the European Union is
reflective of this fear of continental alliances. But
is there really any threat of a state marshaling
forces against the British Isles? Analogies, and their
accompanying "eternal interests," tend to persist long
after their useful life is over. Sometimes we fail to
perceive the end of that intellectual shelf life.
Frameworks for Grand Strategies
The Clinton Administration has been criticized from
the beginning for running a foreign policy that is at
best reactive and at worst rudderless and confused.
While this characterization may not be entirely
accurate or even fair, it is apparent that running a
foreign policy without the framework provided by a
global rival can appear to be unfocused and ad hoc.
Without a vision of what the next century ought to
look like, no policies can be formulated to bring it
about.
During the Cold War, foreign policy decisions were
never easy, but at least the Soviet Union provided an
enemy to be opposed. Conventional wisdom recommended
countering every Soviet move, no matter how trivial.
Today the United States is at a unipolar position in
every possible sense--militarily, economically,
culturally, politically, and on and on. The world
looked to the United States at the end of the Cold War
to lead a new century, to redefine the rules by which
the system operates. As Fareed Zakaria has noted,
after the last two world wars, "America wanted to
change the world, and the world was reluctant. But in
1999, the world is eager to change--along the lines
being defined by America--but now America is
reluctant."[28]
American policymakers have continuously underestimated
the impact that a hegemon can have on the "rules of
the game" because they are wedded to the archaic
realist and geopolitical notion that those rules do
not change. Yet as disconcerting as it may seem, the
rules evolve as quickly as "the game" itself, and
policymakers must have the vision to anticipate that
evolution and adjust accordingly. The end of the Cold
War has provided the United States an unprecedented
opportunity to shape the nature of the system. In
order to do so it is necessary to jettison antiquated
and baseless concepts like geopolitics once and for
all.
Conclusion
"Eternal" geopolitical realities and national
interests are mirages. The idea that a Heartland power
has any advantages due to its position on the map
cannot be historically or theoretically justified; the
notion that an imbalance of power in Eurasia (even if
it were conceivable) would somehow threaten the
interests of the United States is not tenable; and the
idea that geographic "realities" of power can operate
outside of the context of ideology, nationalism, and
culture is pure fantasy. Worse than mirages, these
ideas can cripple the way we run our foreign policy in
the new century.
Debunking the fundamental assumptions of geopolitics
is an important task when one considers how policy is
made. Policymakers operate with a set of assumptions
and frameworks through which they interpret
international events. As Richard Neustadt and Ernest
May have persuasively argued, historical (and often
wildly inappropriate) analogies, banal slogans, and
outdated theories often become the driving forces in
policymaking.[29] One of these outdated theories that
persists in our intellectual memory is Sir Halford
Mackinder's geopolitics.
Policymakers in the United States vastly underestimate
the hegemon's potential to shape the nature of the
international system. Intellectuals wedded to old
ideas about the unchanging nature of power have so far
failed to lead the world in the new directions that it
expected. The unparalleled unipolar position that the
United States found itself in when the Cold War
abruptly ended is being wasted by politicians with no
vision for shaping the future. The debate that
occasionally resurfaces over the "isolationist" nature
of the United States misses a key dimension: if
nothing else, America has certainly been
intellectually isolationist in the post-Cold War era,
hiding behind walls and refusing to lead the world in
new directions that its unprecedented power has made
possible. The rules that govern international
relations evolve. No so-called permanent interests, or
eternal geographical realities, exist. The only way
that the next century can be better than the one we
are leaving is with a reevaluation of the assumptions
and attitudes that underlie our actions. A prolonged
investigation into the utility of all geopolitical
theory would be a good place to start.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTES
1. Halford Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1962 [original publication
1919]), p 150.
2. Charles Clover, "Dreams of the Eurasian Heartland,"
Foreign Affairs, 78 (March/April 1999), 9.
3. From Jean Gottman, "The Background of Geopolitics,"
Military Affairs, 6 (Winter 1942), 197.
4. Gearoid � Tuathail, "Problematizing Geopolitics:
Survey, Statesmanship and Strategy," Transactions of
the Institute of British Geographers, 19 (1994), 261.
5. Ibid., p. 263.
6. Ibid., p. 267.
7. For more on this, see Alfred Vagts, "Geography in
War and Geopolitics," Military Affairs, 7 (Summer
1943), 85-86.
8. Ibid., p. 87.
9. For this perspective, and summation of Haushofer's
writings, see Hans W. Weigert, Generals and
Geopolitics (Oxford, Eng.: Oxford Univ. Press, 1942).
10. Vagts, p. 87.
11. J. Thorndike, "Geopolitics: The Lurid Career of a
Scientific System which a Briton Invented, the Germans
Used, and the Americans Need to Study," Life, 21
December 1942.
12. Nicholas J. Spykman, The Geography of Peace (New
York: Harcourt & Brace, 1944), p. 43.
13. For more on Spykman, and his links to Mackinder
and Kennan, see Michael P. Gerace, "Between Mackinder
and Spykman: Geopolitics, Containment, and After,"
Comparative Strategy, 10 (October-December 1991),
347-64.
14. Simon Dalby, "American Security Discourse: the
Persistence of Geopolitics," Political Geography
Quarterly, 9 (April 1990), 171.
15. John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment
(Oxford, Eng.: Oxford Univ. Press, 1982), p. 57.
16. Colin S. Gray, "The Continued Primacy of
Geography," Orbis, 40 (Spring 1996), 258.
17. See, for instance, Brzezinski's Cold War writings
like Game Plan: A Geostrategic Framework for the
Conduct of the U.S.-Soviet Contest (Boston: the
Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986) and The Grand Chessboard
(New York: Basic Books, 1997) from after it was over.
18. For an analysis of the effect of geopolitics,
Mackinder, and the Heartland on US Cold War foreign
policy, see G. R. Sloan, Geopolitics in United States
Strategic Policy, 1890-1987 (New York: St. Martin's
Press, 1988), esp. pp. 127-239; and Colin S. Gray, The
Geopolitics of Superpower (Lexington: Univ. of
Kentucky Press, 1988).
19. See, in addition to those works already cited,
reviews of the current literature in Colin S. Gray,
"Geography and Grand Strategy," Comparative Strategy,
10 (October-December 1991) 311-29; David Hansen, "The
Immutable Importance of Geography," Parameters, 27
(Spring 1997), 55-64; John Hillen and Michael P.
Noonan, "The Geopolitics of NATO Enlargement,"
Parameters, 28 (Autumn 1998), 21-34; and Gerald
Robbins, "The Post-Soviet Heartland: Reconsidering
Mackinder," Global Affairs, 8 (Fall 1993), 95-108.
20. Charles Clover, "Dreams of the Eurasian
Heartland," Foreign Affairs, 78 (March/April 1999), 9.
21. Halford J. Mackinder, "The Round World and the
Winning of the Peace," Foreign Affairs, 21 (July
1943), 603.
22. Ralph Turner, "Technology and Geopolitics,"
Military Affairs, 7 (Spring 1943), 14.
23. Colin S. Gray, "The Continued Primacy of
Geography," Orbis, 40 (Spring 1996), 251.
24. Carl Goldstein, "Final Frontier," Far Eastern
Economic Review, 10 June 1993, p. 54.
25. Geraoid � Tauthail, "Understanding Critical
Geopolitics: Geopolitics and Risk Society," Internet,
http://www.majbill.vt.edu/geog/faculty/toal/papers/stratstud.html.
26. � Tuathail documents Kissinger's usage of the game
metaphor in "Problematizing Geopolitics," pp. 266-67.
27. See Steven M. Walt, The Origin of Alliances
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1987).
28. Quoted in Thomas Freidman, "The War Over Peace,"
The New York Times, 17 October 1999, op-ed.
29. Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in
Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers (New
York: Free Press, 1986).
-------------------------------------------------------
Christopher J. Fettweis is a Ph.D. candidate in the
Department of Government and Politics at the
University of Maryland, College Park. His fields are
international relations and comparative politics, and
his dissertation addresses US foreign policy toward
Central Asia and the Caspian Sea.
=====
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As I've often told Ginsberg, you can't blame the President for the state of the
country, it's always the poets' fault.
You can't expect politicians to come up with a vision, they don't have it in them.
Poets have to come up with the vision and they have to turn it on so it sparks and
catches hold.
KEN KESEY (1935 - 2001)
http://www.sinkers.org/news_earth.html
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