Nicholas John Spykman, the Balance of Power, and International Order

Abstract

Nicholas John Spykman was probably America’s finest geopolitical theorist of the twentieth century, even though he was an active participant over the course only of five years (1938–43). He is rightly viewed as a worthy intellectual successor to Sir Halford Mackinder in Britain. Spykman originated the (Eurasian) Rimland concept, which is of continuing political and strategic utility today. He was controversial and notably outspoken while his writings make it quite clear that his concern with the acquisition of power was contextualised by serious concerns for world order.

Key Words:

• Balance of Power
• International Order
• Mackinder
• Rimland
• Spykman

Notes

¹ It is hard to imagine Bernard Brodie’s early book on the atomic age being organised and achieved in the absence of Spykman, had he been around to lead the investigation. The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order (New York: Harcourt, Brace 1946), edited by Brodie, was officially flagged as a publication of the Yale Institute of International Studies that Spykman directed from its founding in 1937 until 1940.

² In his ‘Introductory Statement’ to Spykman’s second book on geopolitics, the posthumous work, The Geography of the Peace [1944] (Hamden, CT: Archon Books 1969), Professor Frederick Sherwood Dunn, the successor as Director of the Institute of International Studies at Yale University, attested to his predecessor’s ‘brilliance as a lecturer … that left a lasting impression on a long line of Yale students’ (xii). In 1976 I was fortunate to be able to have a detailed conversation with William T.R. Fox, a youthful then contemporary of Spykman at the Yale Institute. Fox told me that notwithstanding the unquestionable authenticity of The Geography of the Peace as an extended statement of Spykman’s theory and opinions, he had not actually seen the actual manuscript of this book that bears his name as sole author. To date, by far the most impressive critical analysis of Spykman’s whole oeuvre remains the chapter by David Wilkinson, ‘Spykman and Geopolitics’, in Ciro E. Zoppo and Charles Zorgbibe, eds., On Geopolitics: Classical and Nuclear (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff 1985), 77–129. My own analysis is more positive than is that by Wilkinson.

³ The principal elements in the Mackinder geopolitical canon were produced in the course of a 39 -year span from 1904 to 1943. Mackinder’s rather startling grand theory of geopolitics, with a central working element privileging continental landpower, was presented initially to a probably rather bemused though politically influential lecture audience at the Royal Geographical Society on 25 Jan. 1904. ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’ was a potent theory. It is reprinted in Mackinder’s 1919 book, Democratic Ideals and Reality [1919] (New York: Norton 1942), 241–64. His concluding thoughts on geography and world power, expressed in a Foreign Affairs article in July 1943, also was reproduced in the 1942 reissue of the 1919 book. Sir Halford Mackinder has attracted a small, but high quality, cluster of scholarly biographies, the leading items in which are W.H. Parker, Mackinder: Geography as an Aid to Statecraft (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1982), and Brian W. Blouet, Halford Mackinder: A Biography (College Station: Texas A and M UP 1987).

⁴ The continuing plausibility of much of Mackinder’s theory is claimed and defended in Colin S. Gray, ‘In Defence of the Heartland: Sir Halford Mackinder and His Critics a Hundred Years On’, in Brian W. Blouet (ed.), Global Geostrategy: Mackinder and the Defence of the West (London: Frank Cass 2005), 17–35. I admit freely that my current close acquaintance with Spykman’s writings has made me noticeably more critical of Mackinder than once was the case.

⁵ Dunn emphasised Spykman’s willingness to be unpopular in a good enough cause. ‘I never knew him to hesitate in following the logic of his thinking, even though it led to conclusions which were personally unpalatable to him or unpopular with his friends.’ Dunn, ‘An Introductory Statement’, xii.

⁶ See Nicholas J. Spykman, ‘Geography and Foreign Policy, I’, American Political Science Review 32/1 (1938), 28–50; Nicholas J. Spykman, ‘Geography and Foreign Policy, II’, American Political Science Review 32/2 (1938), 213–36; Nicholas J. Spykman and Abbie A. Rollins, ‘Geographic Objectives in Foreign Policy, I’, The American Political Science Review 33/3 (1939), 391–410; Nicholas J. Spykman and Abbie A. Rollins, ‘Geographic Objectives in Foreign Policy, II’, The American Political Science Review 33/4 (1939), 591–614. In addition, one should note the Public Address delivered by Spykman in New York before a joint session of the Association of American Geographers and the American Political Science Association on 31 Dec. 1941. Spykman’s text was published as ‘Frontiers, Security, and International Organization’, Geographical Review 32/3 (1942), 436–47.

⁷ The style in these words just quoted is indicative of a scholar quite far advanced down the path of conviction that he is uttering revealed truth. Given the prevalence of modest self-doubt fairly typical in academic writing, it is not hard to see why Spykman’s style might jar on liberal sensibilities: Spykman, ‘Geography and Foreign Policy, I’, 45.

⁸ The American academic scene in the 1930s and indeed since has been adamant in its claims for the authority of science, almost no matter how in plausible the claim can be held to be. For an intensely sceptical assessment of the claims for science of a ‘social’ kind, see Jakub Grygiel, ‘Educating for National Security’, Orbis 57/2 (2013), 201–16.

⁹ Nicholas J. Spykman, America’s Strategy in World Politics: The United States and the Balance of Power [1942](New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers 2007), 41.

¹⁰ The characterisation of the reaction to America’s Strategy as a ‘storm of protest’ was offered by Ladis Kristof in his article, ‘The Origins and Evolution of Geopolitics’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 4/1 (1960), 32. Ominously, Kristof wrote that ‘[i]t was only after a storm of protest arose over both Spykman’s book and Bowman’s enthusiastic endorsement that the latter realized the true meaning and spiritual affinities of Spykman’s idea’. 32.

¹¹ Spykman, America’s Strategy, 11.

¹² Edward Mead Earle, ‘Power Politics and American World Policy’Political Science Quarterly 58/1 (1943), 102. It was not so much Earle’s strategic logic that was unsound, but more the facts that he misidentified the range of political and strategic discretion open to the United States in 1942.

¹³ Spykman, ‘Frontiers, Security, and International Organization’, 447.

¹⁴ Ibid.

¹⁵ Kristof, ‘The Origins and Evolution of Geopolitics’, 21, n. 14. This lengthy philosophical disquisition was almost lethally poisonous. Kristof was pleased to deploy yet again the more negative of the thoughts about Spykman that had flowed many years previously from Bowman and Earle in particular.

¹⁶ Ibid., 31. This mischaracterisation was seriously unpleasant, as well as being no less seriously erroneous.

¹⁷ Ibid., 33.

¹⁸ Jakub J. Grygiel, Great Powers and Geopolitical Change (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP 2006), 8.

¹⁹ Ibid.

²⁰ Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History (Oxford: OUP 2013), 120–2.

²¹ Spykman, America’s Strategy, 18.

²² Ibid., 7.

²³ Ibid., 7–8.

²⁴ Spykman, The Geography of the Peace, 43.

²⁵ Mackinder, ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’, reprinted in idem, Democratic Ideals and Reality, esp. the map titled ‘The National Seats of Power’, 261.

²⁶ Spykman, The Geography of the Peace, 43. ‘… there has never really been a simple landpower-sea power opposition. The historical alignment has always been in terms of some members of the rimland with Great Britain against some members of the rimland with Russia, or Great Britain and Russia together against a dominant rimland power.’

²⁷ ‘The surrounding [the Rimland] string of marginal and mediterranean seas which separates the continent from the seas completes a circumferential maritime highway which links the whole area together in terms of sea power.’ Ibid., 38.

²⁸ Spykman, America’s Strategy, 22–3.

²⁹ Ibid., 25.

³⁰ See Robert J. Art, ‘The United States, The Balance of Power, and World War II: Was Spykman right?’ Security Studies 14/ 3 (July–Sept. 2005), 365–406; and Patrick Porter, ‘A Matter of Choice: Strategy and Discretion in the Shadow of World War II’, Journal of Strategic Studies. 35/ 3 (June 2012), 317–43.

³¹ See Mungo Melvin, Manstein: Hitler’s Greatest General (London: Weidenfeld 2010); and Karl-Heinz Frieser, The Blitzkrieg Legend: The 1940 Campaign in the West (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press 2005).

³² The most obvious scholarly villain of this story is Edward Mead Earle of Princeton. See David Ebkladh, ‘Present at the Creation: Edward Mead Earle and the Depression-Era Origins of Security Studies’, International Security 36/3 (2011/12), 107–41.

³³ Raymond Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations (New York: Doubleday 1966), 585, ‘prudence is the statesman’s supreme virtue’.

³⁴ Spykman, America’s Strategy, 256.

³⁵ Spykman, America’s Strategy, 12.

³⁶ Edgar S. Furniss, Jr, ‘The Contribution of John Spykman to the Study of International Politics’, World Politics 4/. 3 (April 1952), 400–1.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Colin S. Gray

Colin S. Gray is Professor Emeritus of Strategic Studies at the University of Reading. He has taught at universities in Britain, Canada, and the United States. Also, he has served in the US government and as an adviser to the UK government. He is a strategic theorist and an analyst of contemporary defence issues. He is the author of many studies, articles and books, most recently The Strategy Bridge: Theory for Practice (OUP 2010), Perspectives on Strategy (OUP 2013), and Strategy and Defence Planning (OUP 2014).