MACKINDER’S LEGACY: WAS IT A PROPHESY?

Sayragul MATIKEEVA

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Sayragul Matikeeva, Ph.D. (Political Science), senior lecturer, International Relations Department, International University of Kyrgyzstan (Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan)

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Today the planet seems to be brimming with surprises—it is too changeable and too unpredictable. The man in the street, as well as people well-versed in the world order theory cannot help wondering whether there is a system in the world able to regulate the relations among all entities.

This is not a novel feature of our times: in the past, too, thinkers pondered over questions of world order and relations between the key members of the world community and the members of secondary importance. Halford Mackinder, who is well known to the world as one of the founders of geopolitics, was among these thinkers. I am not going to discuss his numerous merits in the field of political geography—I am going to discuss his heritage and use his major “geographical pivot of history” theory as applied to the present foreign policy realities of Kyrgyzstan, which cannot, and should not, be divorced from its Central Asian neighbors, the CIS countries, China, and the United States.

It should be said that one of the key ideas of a man born nearly 150 years ago has found a new lease on life in the 21st century in light of the new relations between the “key and secondary” actors. This happened not because he dotted all the “i’s” in the world politics of his time. On the contrary, after describing the process that led to the present intertwining of…………..

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