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ABSTRACT
This article argues for the continued relevance of the work and theories of the British Geostrategist Sir Halford J. Mackinder (1861-1947). It asserts that commentators and scholars who seek to marginalise Mackinder have too often dismissed his theories without setting them in the context of their continued endorsement in crucial areas of the globe. After 1945, despite his theories being tainted by association with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, both Moscow and Washington recognised the utility of Mackinder’s work and tailored policy accordingly. The end of Cold War saw Mackinder fall out of favour as his model was deemed unsuitable for policy analysis by a number of influential thinkers. It is argued here that, in recent years, the arena of international politics has seen a rehabilitation of Mackinder, accompanied by a resurgence of interest in Geopolitics. Finally, the piece examines those areas of the contemporary globe where Mackinder’s influence is greatest.
Notes
1 Halford J. Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality: A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction, intro. Stephen V. Mladineo (Washington DC: National Defence UP 1996 [1919]), 176.
2 Nicholas J. Spykman, The Geography of the Peace (New York: Harcourt, Brace 1944), 4–5. This article was originally published with errors. This version has been corrected. Please see Erratum (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2015.1021037).
3 Mackinder was a leading proponent of treating human and physical geography as constituting a single academic discipline. For an important early article, see H.J. Mackinder, ‘On the Scope and Methods of Geography’, Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography 9/3 (1887), 141–74. For an obituary, see E.W. Gilbert, ‘The Right Honourable Sir Halford J. Mackinder, P.C., 1861–1947’, Geographical Journal 110/1/3 (1947), 94–9. For a full-length study, see Brian Blouet, Halford Mackinder: A Biography (College Station, TX: Texas A&M UP 1987).
4 Hew Strachan, ‘The Lost Meaning of Strategy’, Survival: Global Politics and Strategy 47/3 (2005), 34.
5 Hew Strachan, Carl von Clausewitz’s On War: A Biography (London: Atlantic Books 2007), 106.
6 See, for example, Nick Megoran, ‘The Task and Responsibility of Geopolitical Analysis’, Geopolitics 13/2 (2008), 403–7; and Simon Dalby, ‘Imperialism, Domination, Culture: The Continued Relevance of Critical Geopolitics’, Geopolitics 13/2 (2008), 413–36.
7 Paul Kennedy, ‘The Pivot of History’, Guardian Weekly 171/2 (2004), 2 July 2004.
8 This explains Russia’s centuries-old desire for a warm water port, and the inexplicability of Ethiopia’s acquiescence in surrendering access to the sea when Eritrea became independent in 1993. On these cases, see Bertil Nygren, The Rebuilding of Greater Russia: Putin’s Foreign Policy towards the CIS Countries (Abingdon, UK: Taylor & Francis 2007), 14–15; Dominique Jacquin-Berdal and Martin Plaut (eds), Unfinished Business: Ethiopia and Eritrea at War (Lawrenceville, NJ/Asmara: The Red Sea Press 2005).
9 Henry Kissinger, The White House Years (London: Weidenfeld and Michael Joseph 1979), 914. On Kissinger’s Geopolitical vision, see R. Gerald Hughes and Thomas Robb, ‘Kissinger and the Diplomacy of Coercive Linkage in the ‘Special Relationship’ between the United States and Great Britain, 1969–77’, Diplomatic History 37/ 4 (2013), 864–6.
10 On this, see Geoffrey Sloan, ‘Sir Halford J. Mackinder: The Heartland theory Then and Now’, Journal of Strategic Studies 22/3 (June 1999), 15–38. For a defence of traditional geopolitics, see Mackubin Thomas Owens, ‘In Defense of Classical Geopolitics’, Naval War College Review 52/4 (1999), 59–74.
11 Andro Linklater, ‘Selective Vision’, a review of Jerry Brotton’s A History of the World in Twelve Maps, The Spectator, 8 Sept. 2012.
12 Beatrice Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy: Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge: CUP 2010), 217. Fisher (1841–1920) was First Sea Lord 1904–10 and 1914–15.
13 Barry Gough, Anchors of Empire: Ruling the Waves and Keeping the Peace before Armageddon (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2014), 36. The ‘keys’ were Gibraltar, Alexandria/Suez, Singapore, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Straits of Dover. On Fisher, see Nicholas A. Lambert, Sir John Fisher’s Naval Revolution (Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press 1999). The global reach of the Royal Navy’s coaling stations was also essential and these performed a number of useful functions beyond that of refuelling. Thus, long after the demise of coal-fired ships, such outposts retained their strategic utility. On this, see B.M. Blechman and R.G. Weinland, ‘Why Coaling Stations are Necessary in the Nuclear Age’, International Security 2/1 (1977), 88–99.
14 Hansard, HC Deb, fifth series, volume 41, column 920, 22 July 1912.
15 Gearóid Ó Tuathail, ‘Understanding Critical Geopolitics: Geopolitics and Risk Security’, in Colin S. Gray and Geoffrey Sloan (eds), Geopolitics, Geography and Strategy (London: Frank Cass 1999), 113.
16 Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History (Oxford: OUP 2013), 122. Ratzel (1844–1904) coined the term Lebensraum. On this, see Woodruff D. Smith, ‘Friedrich Ratzel and the Origins of Lebensraum’, German Studies Review 3/1 (1980), 51–68. On Ratzel, see Harriet Wanklyn, Friedrich Ratzel: A Biographical Memoir and Bibliography (Cambridge: CUP 1961) and J.M. Hunter, Perspectives on Ratzel’s “Political Geography” (Lanham, MD: UP of America 1983).
17 Charles Clover, ‘Dreams of the Eurasian Heartland’, Foreign Affairs 78/2 (1999), 9.
18 Russia’s ‘Near-Abroad’ refers to the newly independent republics which emerged after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. William Safire, ‘On language: The Near Abroad’, New York Times, 22 May 1994.
19 Hilary Appel, ‘The “Near-Abroad” Factor: Why Putin Stands Firm over Ukraine’, The National Interest, 23 May 2014, <http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-near-abroad-factor-why-putin-stands-firm-over-ukraine-10517>.
20 Burnham’s Mackinderite thinking, alongside the perceived wartime division of the world by the ‘Big Three’ (Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill) greatly influenced George Orwell (especially with regard to his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four). Thomas Pynchon, ‘Introduction’ to George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (London: Penguin 2003 [1949]), xii–xiii.
21 Dmitri Trenin, The End of Eurasia: Russia between Geopolitics and Globalization (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 2002), 88.
22 Serhii Plokhy, The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union (London: Oneworld 2014), 406.
23 Christopher Bellamy, ‘Ghosts of battles past return to torment the Russian bear’, The Independent, 22 Feb. 1997.
24 A.P. Tsygankov, ‘Mastering space in Eurasia: Russia’s geopolitical thinking after the Soviet break-up’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 36 (2003), 101–27.
25 David Aikman, ‘Reviving the Great Game’, review of Zbigniew K. Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard in The American Spectator, March 1998.
26 Aleksandr Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki: Geopoliticheskoe budushchee Rossii (Moscow: Arktogeya 1997). On Dugin, see Alan Ingram, ‘Alexander Dugin: geopolitics and neo-fascism in post-Soviet Russia’, Political Geography 20 (2001), 1029–51; and Andreas Umland, ‘Aleksandr Dugin’s Transformation from a Lunatic Fringe Figure into a Mainstream Political Publicist, 1980–1998: A Case Study in the Rise of Late and Post-Soviet Russian Fascism’, Journal of Eurasian Studies 1 (2010), 144–52.
27 Timothy Snyder, ‘Fascism, Russia, and Ukraine’, New York Review of Books, 20 March 2014, <www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/mar/20/fascism-russia-and-ukraine/>.
28 Jacob W. Kipp, book review of Dugin’s Osnovy geopolitiki, European Security 6/3 (1997), 170.
29 Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: Basic Books 1997), 46.
30 John Berryman, ‘Geopolitics and Russian Foreign Policy’, International Politics 49/4 (2012), 539–40.
31 Ahmed Mahdi, Energy and US Foreign Policy: The Quest for Resource Security after the Cold War (London: I.B. Tauris 2012), 180–1.
32 Time, ‘Person of the Year 2007: Putin Q and A’, 19 Dec. 2007, <http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/personoftheyear/article/0,28804,1690753_1690757_1695787,00.html>.
33 Natalia Morozova, ‘Geopolitics, Eurasianism and Russian Foreign Policy under Putin’, Geopolitics 14/4 (2009), 667–86; Marcel H. Van Herpen, Putin’s Wars: The Rise of Russia’s New Imperialism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Citation2014), 128–9.
34 See, for example, Gerry Kearns, Geopolitics and Empire: The Legacy of Halford Mackinder (New York: OUP 2009); Brian Blouet (ed.), Global Geostrategy: Mackinder and the Defence of the West (Abingdon, UK: Taylor & Francis 2005); Nick Megoran and Sevara Sharapova (eds), Central Asia in International Relations: The Legacies of Halford Mackinder (London: Hurst 2013); Lucian Ashworth, ‘Realism and the Spirit of 1919: Halford Mackinder, Geopolitics and the Reality of the League of Nations’, European Journal of International Relations 17/1 (2011), 279–301; Richard Powell, ‘Echoes of the New Geography? History and Philosophy of Geography 1’, Progress in Human Geography 34/4 (2011), 518–26.
35 Kearns, Geopolitics and Empire, 173.
36 Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500–2000 (New York: Vintage 1989).
37 J.F. Unstead, ‘H. J. Mackinder and the New Geography’, Geographical Journal 113/1 (1949), 47–57.
38 M. Jones, R. Jones and M. Woods, An Introduction to Political Geography: Space, Place and Politics (London: Routledge 2004), 6.
39 David N. Livingstone, The Geographical Tradition: Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise (Oxford: Blackwell 1992), 195.
40 H.J. Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality: A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction (London: Henry Holt 1919), 194.
41 W.H. Parker, Mackinder: Geography as an Aid to Statecraft (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1982).
42 H.J. Mackinder, ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’, Geographical Journal 23/ 4 (1904), 421–37. On this, see Pascal Venier, ‘The Geographical Pivot of History and Early Twentieth Century Geopolitical Culture’, Geographical Journal 170/4 (2004), 330–6.
43 Tristram Hunt, ‘A very foreign policy’, The Guardian, 24 Sept. 2009.
44 Linklater, ‘Selective Vision’.
45 Mackinder, ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’, 434–6.
46 Blouet, Mackinder, 114.
47 George N. Curzon, Russia in Central Asia in 1889 and the Anglo-Russian Question, 2nd ed. (London: Longmans 1889), 398–9.
48 Halford J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas (London: William Heinemann 1902).
49 Mackinder, ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’, 436.
50 On this, see Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812, 2 volumes (Boston, MA: Little, Brown 1892).
51 Blouet, Halford Mackinder, 108.
52 The détente of 1907 addressed a number of issues, not least of which were Curzon’s fears about the Russian threat in Central Asia. On this, see Ira Klein, ‘The Anglo-Russian Convention and the Problem of Central Asia, 1907–1914’, Journal of British Studies 11/1 (1971), 126–47.
53 The National Archives, Kew (TNA): Public Record Office (PRO): CAB 25/95, Supreme War Council, memorandum from E Branch (E/5), ‘German policy in Russia and the Far East (German point of view)’, 15 March 1918.
54 TNA: PRO: CAB 24/94/26, ‘Letter from the Allies to Admiral Kolchak (May 1919)’.
55 TNA: PRO: CAB 24/87/57, ‘Memorandum on the political questions reacting on the military situation in South Russia’, Intelligence (IP 890), 20 July 1920. Major-General H.C. Holman, Chief of the British Military Mission, Ekaterinodar, South Russia, to Secretary of State for War (Churchill).
56 Gwyn Prins, ‘Don’t be too quick to discount Mackinder’, letter to The Guardian, 29 Sept. 2009. Prins is the director of the LSE Mackinder Programme for the Study of Long Wave Events.
57 TNA: PRO: CAB 24/94/26, ‘Draft Instructions for Mr. Mackinder’, Foreign Office, Nov. 1919.
58 TNA: PRO: CAB 24/97/17, ‘Report on the situation in South Russia by Sir H. Mackinder, MP’ to Lord Curzon, Foreign Secretary, 21 Jan. 1920.
59 TNA: PRO: FO 800/149, Lord Curzon, Foreign Secretary, to Lord Stamfordham, private secretary to George V, 21 Nov. 1919.
60 David Lloyd George, War Memoirs: Volume II (London: Odhams Press 1937), 1909.
61 TNA: PRO: CAB 23/20/6, Cabinet Conclusions, CC 6(20), 29 Jan. 1920.
62 Bodleian Library, Oxford: Fisher MSS, box 17: H.A.L. Fisher diary, 29 Jan.1920.
63 Thomas Otte, ‘“A very internecine policy”: Anglo-Russian Cold Wars before the Cold War’, in Christopher Baxter, Michael L. Dockrill and Keith Hamilton (eds), Britain in Global Politics: Volume 1: From Gladstone to Churchill (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2013), 35–6.
64 TNA: PRO: CAB 24/89/24, ‘Final Contribution to General Denikin’, Cabinet Memorandum from the Secretary of State for War, Winston S. Churchill MP, 25 Sept. 1919.
65 TNA: PRO: CAB 800/251, Mackinder to Cabinet, 29 Jan. 1920. See also A.I. Denikin, The White Army (London: Jonathan Cape 1930), 340.
66 On this, see Clifford Kinvig, Churchill’s Crusade: The British Invasion of Russia 1918–1920 (London: Hambledon Continuum 2006).
67 Geoffrey Best, Churchill: A Study in Greatness (London: Penguin 2002), 93.
68 B.W. Blouet, ‘Sir Halford Mackinder As British High Commissioner to South Russia, 1919–1920’, Geographical Journal 142/2 (1976), 228–36.
69 TNA: PRO: CAB/24/98/96, ‘The Position in South-West Russia’, memorandum by the Secretary of State for War (Churchill), quoting from an enclosed telegram from Major-General Holman, Constantinople, 16 Feb. 1920.
70 Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality, 186.
71 Dan Diner, ‘‘Grundbuch des Planeten’: Zur Geopolitik Karl Haushofers’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 32/1 (1984), 1–28. On British fears of Russo-German détente, see Stephanie Salzman, Great Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union: Rapallo and After, 1922–1934 (London: Royal Historical Society 2003).
72 From 1907 until the early 1930s the LSE ran a course, conceived and run by Mackinder, for officers of the British Army. Geoffrey Sloan, ‘Haldane’s Mackindergarten: A Radical Experiment in British Military Education’, War in History 19/3 (2012), 322–52.
73 Henning Heske, ‘Karl Haushofer: His Role in German Politics and in Nazi Politics’, Political Geography 6/2 (1987), 135–44; Mark Bassin, ‘Race Contra Space: The Conflict between German Geopolitik and National Socialism’, Political Geography Quarterly 6/2 (1987), 115–34; Christian W. Spang, Karl Haushofer und Japan: Die Rezeption seiner geopolitischen Theorien in der deutschen und japanischen Politik (Munich: Iudicium 2013).
74 On Haushofer, see Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Karl Haushofer: Leben und Werk, 2 volumes (Boppard: Harald Boldt Verlag 1979).
75 Jerry Brotton, A History of the World in Twelve Maps (London: Penguin 2013) 369.
76 Karl Haushofer, ‘Pfight und Anspruch der Geopolitik als Wissenschaft’, Zeitschrift für Geopolitik 12 (1935), 443.
77 Edmund A. Walsh, Total Power: A Footnote to History (Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1949), 48.
78 Herman Beukema, ‘Introduction’, Andreas Dorpalen, The World of General Haushofer: Geopolitics in Action (New York: Farrar & Rinehart 1942), xiii.
79 Blouet, Halford Mackinder, 177–80. Haushofer and the Nazis nevertheless enjoyed a shared vocabulary on certain political matters. It was this that undoubtedly initially attracted the Nazi regime to Haushofer. See, for example, Karl Haushofer, ‘Atemweite, Lebensraum und Gleichberechtigung auf Erden!’, Zeitschrift für Geopolitik 11 (1934) 1–14.
80 Diner, ‘‘Grundbuch des Planeten’, 6
81 Robert Edwin Herzstein, When Nazi Dreams Come True: The Third Reich’s Internal Struggle over the Future of Europe after a German Victory: A Look at the Nazi Mentality, 1939–45 (London: Abacus 1982), 18–23.
82 Günter Heyden, ‘Kritik der geopolitischen Expansionstheorien des deutschen Imperialismus’, in R. Schulz (ed.), Beiträge zur Kritik der gegenwärtigen bürgerlichen Geschichtsphilosophie (Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften 1958), 483–543.
83 Frank Ebeling, Geopolitik: Karl Haushofer und seine Raumwissenschaft 1919–1945 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag 1994), 13.
84 Isaiah Bowman, ‘Geography vs. Geopolitics’, Geographical Review 32/4 (1942), 646–58.
85 Sloan, ‘Sir Halford J. Mackinder’, 36.
86 Derwent Whittlesey (with the collaboration of Charles C. Colby and Richard Hartshorne), German Strategy of World Conquest (New York: Farrar & Rinehart 1942).
87 For Bowman’s works, see, for example, Isaiah Bowman, The New World: Problems in Political Geography (New York: World Books 1921); idem, ‘Geography vs Geopolitics’. On Bowman, see Geoffrey J. Martin, The Life and Thought of Isaiah Bowman (Hamden, CT: Archon Books 1980).
88 On this, see Lucian Ashworth, ‘Mapping a New World: Geography and the Interwar Study of International Relations’, International Studies Quarterly 57/1 (2013), 138–49.
89 Gearóid Ó Tuathail, ‘Putting Mackinder in his Place: Material Transformations and Myth’, Political Geography 11/1 (1992), 100–18. Quote at 102.
90 Peter Taylor, Political Geography: World-Economy, Nation-State and Locality (Harlow, UK: Longman 1989), 52; John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (Oxford: OUP 1982), 57.
91 Geoffrey R. Sloan, Geopolitics in United States Strategic Policy, 1890–1987 (New York: St Martin’s Press 1988); Colin S. Gray, The Geopolitics of Superpower (Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press 1988).
92 James Burnham, The Struggle for the World (New York: John Day 1947); idem, The Coming Defeat of Communism (New York: John Day 1949); idem, Containment or Liberation? An Inquiry into the Aims of United States Foreign Policy (New York: John Day 1953).
93 Nicholas John Spykman (1893–1943) was a Dutch-American Geostrategist who became known as the ‘Godfather of Containment’.
94 On Spykman and ‘Containment’, see Michael P. Gerace, ‘Between Mackinder and Spykman: Geopolitics, Containment, and After’, Comparative Strategy 10/4 (1991), 347–64.
95 Nicholas J. Spykman, America’s Strategy in World Politics: The United States and the Balance of Power (New York: Harcourt, Brace 1942), 21–2.
96 Spykman, The Geography of Peace, 43.
97 Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, 364.
98 James Burnham, ‘The Goal of Soviet Policy’, American Mercury 64/280 (1947), 394.
99 TNA: PRO: CAB 129/9/6, CP. (46) 156, ‘The future of Germany and the Ruhr’ (Gen. 121/1), Cabinet Memorandum by Ernest Bevin MP, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 11 March 1946.
100 TNA: PRO: CAB 129/25, CP. (48) 72, ‘The Threat to Western Civilisation’, Cabinet Memorandum by Ernest Bevin MP, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 3 March 1948. On British perceptions of the increasing Soviet menace, see Percy Cradock, Know Your Enemy: How the Joint Intelligence Committee saw the World (London: John Murray 2002), 25–49; and Michael S. Goodman, The Official History of the Joint Intelligence Committee: Volume I: From the Approach of the Second World War to the Suez Crisis (London: Routledge 2014), 225–48.
101 Goodman, The Official History of the Joint Intelligence Committee, 238, 242.
102 Bevin, Jan. 1947. Quoted in Cradock, Know Your Enemy, 46.
103 Colin S. Gray, The Geopolitics of the Nuclear Era: Heartlands, Rimlands, and the Technological Revolution (New York: Crane, Russack 1977), 14.
104 Tristram Hunt, ‘How to rule the world: few recall his name, but the ideas of Sir Halford Mackinder may have unwittingly inspired Hitler – and now dominate global political thinking’, 19 Sept. 2009; Tristram Hunt, ‘A very foreign policy’, The Guardian, 24 Sept. 2009.
105 TNA: PRO: PREM 19/136, Thatcher to Carter, 26 Jan. 1980; Richard Smith, Patrick Salmon and Stephen Twigge (eds), Documents on British Policy Overseas, Series III, Volume III, The Invasion of Afghanistan and UK-Soviet Relations, 1979–82 (London: Routledge 2012), 98–9.
106 Robert W. Merry, ‘Reagan’s Éminence Grise’, The National Interest 132 (July—Aug. 2014), 56.
107 Leslie W. Hepple, ‘The Revival of Geopolitics’, Political Geography Quarterly 5/4 (1986), 21–36.
108 Hunt, ‘How to rule the world’.
109 Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (London: Simon & Schuster 1994), 813, 814.
110 On Mahan, see John Sumida, ‘Alfred Thayer Mahan, Geopolitician’, in Gray and Sloan (eds), Geopolitics, Geography and Strategy, 39–62.
111 Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783 (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1942 [1890]), 29–89
112 Alfred Thayer Mahan, Naval Strategy Compared and Contrasted with the Principles and Practice of Military Operations on Land: Lectures Delivered at US Naval War College, Newport, RI, Between the Years 1887 and 1911 (Boston, MA: Little, Brown 1911).
113 Philip A. Crowl, ‘Alfred Thayer Mahan: The Naval Historian’, in Peter Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton UP 1986), 453–5. See also Barry M. Gough, ‘Maritime Strategy: The Legacies of Mahan and Corbett as Philosophers of Sea Power’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies 133/4 (1988), 55–62.
114 Paul Kennedy, ‘Mahan versus Mackinder: Two Interpretations of British Sea Power’ (1974), in Strategy and Diplomacy 1870–1945: Eight Studies (London: Allen & Unwin 1983), 46, 85.
115 Mackinder, ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’, 421–37, specifically 434.
116 Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 25.
117 By 2012, the TSR was ‘Russia’s most important artery, carrying more than 250,000 containers a year and about 30 per cent of Russian exports.’ Anthony Lambert, ‘The epic history of the Trans-Siberian Railway’, Daily Telegraph, 19 Oct. 2012.
118 Li Yu and Peng Cha, ‘High tech, rapid rail driving foreign trade in Chengdu’, China Daily USA, 22 Aug. 2014.
119 Patrick Wintour, ‘US forms ‘core coalition’ to fight Isis militants in Iraq’, The Guardian, 5 Sept. 2014.
120 Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York: Harper Brothers 1948), 506.
121 James R. Holmans and Toshi Yoshihara, ‘China and the United States in the Indian Ocean: An Emerging Strategic Triangle?’, Naval War College Review 61/3 (2008), 41–60.
122 Kearns, Geopolitics and Empire, 1–3.
123 Denis Judd, Empire: The British Imperial Experience from 1765 to the Present (London: Fontana 1997), 146.
124 Timothy Garton Ash, ‘Stagger on, weary Titan: The US is reeling, like imperial Britain after the Boer war - but don’t gloat’, The Guardian, 25 Aug. 2005. For a refutation of the comparison, see Piers Brandon, ‘Like Rome Before the Fall? Not Yet’, New York Times, 24 Feb. 2010.
125 Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (London: Allen Lane 2003).
126 Niall Ferguson, ‘Hegemony or Empire?’, Foreign Affairs 82/5 (2003), 154–61. Quote at 154.
127 On this, see Matthew Edwards, ‘The New Great Game and the New Great Gamers: Disciples of Kipling and Mackinder’, Central Asian Survey 22/ 1 (2003), 83–103; and Rein Mullerson, Central Asia: A Chessboard and Player in the New Great Game (New York: Columbia UP 2007).
128 Ferguson, ‘Hegemony or Empire?’, 155.
129 Editorial: New York World, 29 Dec. 1926. Quoted in Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (New York: Transaction Publishers 1980), 237.
130 Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire (London: Allen Lane 2004) 24. For an insightful critique of Ferguson’s book, see Martin Jacques, ‘The true story of Uncle Sam? Niall Ferguson’s analysis of America’s imperialism in Colossus is both fine and flawed’, The Guardian, 5 June 2004.
131 Ferguson, Colossus, 197–8.
132 Niall Ferguson, ‘Tell me where I’m wrong’, letter to the London Review of Books, 27/10, 19 May 2005.
133 Kirill Nourzhanov, ‘Mackinder on the Roof of the World: Contemporary Geopolitical Discourse in Tajikistan’, in Megoran and Sharapova (eds), Central Asia in International Relations, 170.
134 Sevara Sharapova, ‘The Intellectual Life of the Heartland: How Mackinder Travelled to Uzbekistan’, in Megoran and Sharapova (eds), Central Asia in International Relations, 173.
135 Milan Hauner, ‘Russia’s Asian Heartland Today and Tomorrow’, in Megoran and Sharapova (eds), Central Asia in International Relations, 143.
136 Levent Hekimoglu, ‘The Heartland fallacy: Central Asia, Geography and Globalisation’, in Megoran and Sharapova (eds), Central Asia in International Relations, 289
137 Terry Lynn Karl, ‘Crude Calculations: OPEC lessons for the Caspian Region’, in Robert E. Ebel and Rajan Menon (eds), Energy and Conflict in Central Asia and the Caucasus (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield 2000), 29. The notion of a Caspian ‘El Dorado’ has long been disputed. Robin Knight, ‘Is The Caspian an Oil El Dorado?’, Time 151/26, 29 June 1998.
138 Halford J. Mackinder, Money-Power and Man-Power: The Underlying Influences Rather Than the Statistics for Tariff Reform (London: Simkin Marshall 1906), 2.
139 Andreas Goldthau, ‘Energy Diplomacy in Trade and Investment of Oil and Gas’, in Andreas Goldthau and Jan Martin Witte (eds), Global Energy Governance: The New Rules of the Game (Berlin: Global Public Policy Institute 2010), 27.
140 Kirill Nourzhanov, ‘Caspian Oil: Geopolitical dreams and real issues’, Australian Journal of International Affairs 60/1 (2006), 59–66. Quote at 60.
141 Michael Klare, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict (New York: Owl Books 2002), 3.
142 Mahdi, Energy and US Foreign Policy, 45–53.
143 Phillipe Le Billon, ‘The Political Economy of Resource Wars’, in Jakkie Cilliers and Christian Dietrich (eds), Angola’s War Economy: The Role of Oil and Diamonds (Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies 2000), 24.
144 This theme is addressed by D.R. Smith, who highlights the susceptibility of large parts of Post-Soviet Central Asia to water-related conflict on the grounds of limited supply, quality and social unrest as a consequence of environmental degradation an out-migration. D.R. Smith,‘Environmental Security and Shared Water Resources’, Post-Soviet Geography 36/6 (1995), 351–70.
145 Kirill Nourzhanov, ‘Mackinder on the Roof of the World: Contemporary Geopolitical Discourse in Tajikstan’, in Megoran and Sharapova (eds), Central Asia in International Relations, 149–70. Quote at 165.
146 Hekimoglu, ‘The Heartland Fallacy: Central Asia, Geography and Globalisation’, in Megoran and Sharapova (eds), Central Asia in International Relations, 288.
147 Simon Dalby, ‘Anthropocene Geopolitics: Globalisation, Empire, Environment and Critique’, Geography Compass 1/1 (2007), 103–18; Klaus Dodds and James Sidaway, ‘Halford Mackinder and the “Geographical Pivot of History”: A Centennial Retrospective’, Geographical Journal 170/4 (2004), 292–7.
148 Ashworth, ‘Mapping a New World’, 139, 148.
149 See Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard.
150 BMI Defence & Security, ‘Russia Defence & Security Report’, ‘Market Overview’, 4th Quarter, Oct. 2014. See also, Berryman, ‘Geopolitics and Russian foreign policy’, 539–40.
151 Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard, 123–50.
152 Robert D. Kaplan, ‘The Revenge of Geography’, Foreign Policy 172 (May/June 2009), 96–105; idem, The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us about Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate (New York: Random House 2012).
153 Richard N. Rosencrance, ‘Want World Domination? Size Matters’, New York Times, 28 July 2013.
154 Anne Applebaum, ‘Putin’s Grand Strategy’, The Spectator, 21 Feb. 2015.
155 Robert D. Kaplan, ‘Opinion: Countering Putin’s Grand Strategy’, Wall Street Journal, 11 Feb. 2015.
156 In 1904, Mackinder had written: ‘[T]he function of Britain and of Japan is to act upon the marginal region, maintaining the balance of power there as against the expansive internal forces. I believe that the future of the world depends on the maintenance of this balance of power.’ Spenser Wilkinson, Thomas Holdich, Mr Amery, Mr Hogarth and H.J. Mackinder, ‘The Geographical Pivot of History: Discussion’, Geographical Journal, 23/4 (1904), 443.
157 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press 1992).
158 Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster 1996).
159 Even in the realm of extra-terrestrial geopolitics Mackinder’s principles are highly influential. On this, see Everett C. Dolman, Astropolitik: Classical Geopolitics in the Space Age (London: Frank Cass 2002), 8, 13, 39-43, 50, 68, 71.
160 Kennedy, ‘Mahan versus Mackinder’, 85.
161 On this, see Colin S. Gray, ‘The Continued Primacy of Geography’, Orbis 40/2 (1996), 247–59.
162 Halford J. Mackinder, ‘The Physical Basis of Political Geography’, Scottish Geographical Magazine 6/2 (1890), 84.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
R. Gerald Hughes
R. Gerald Hughes is Reader in Military History and Director of the Centre for Intelligence and International Security Studies at Aberystwyth University. He is the author of Britain, Germany and the Cold War: The Search for a European Détente, 1949–1967 (2007) and The Postwar Legacy of Appeasement: British Foreign Policy Since 1945 (2014). He is reviews editor of the journal Intelligence and National Security, the author of a number of articles (most recently in the Journal of Contemporary History and in Diplomatic History), and co-editor of Intelligence, Crises and Security: Prospects and Retrospects (2008); Exploring Intelligence Archives: Enquiries into the Secret State (2008); Intelligence and International Security: New Perspectives and Agendas (2011) and The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Critical Reappraisal (2015). R. Gerald Hughes is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
Jesse Heley
Jesse Heley is lecturer in Human Geography at Aberystwyth University, holding Undergraduate and Masters degrees from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. His PhD was awarded by the same institution, addressing the subject of ‘Rurality, Class, Aspiration and the Emergence of a New Squirearchy’. His research is situated in the broad fields of political geography and regional studies, with a particular emphasis on relational space and the performative aspects of region-building. Jesse Heley is Co-Investigator on a European Research Council (ERC) funded project on ‘The Global Countryside: Rural Change and Development in Globalization’, and also acts as a member of the ESRC-funded WISERD Civil Society Research Centre.