WHITHER “HEARTLAND”? CENTRAL ASIA, GEOGRAPHY AND GLOBALIZATION

Levent HEKIMOGLU

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Levent Hekimoglu, Researcher, York Center for International and Security Studies (Toronto, Canada)

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I. Introduction

This article attempts a double task. First, it looks at the main premises of Halford J. Mackinder’s analysis in his renowned 1904 address to the Royal Geographical Society, The Geographical Pivot of History, and discusses some of the problems. It observes that these problems have actually rendered the whole Heartland thesis a fallacy from its very inception, and argues that this resilient fallacy continues to distort perceptions and policies in/on Central Asia. Second, it draws attention to the severe geographical predicament of Central Asia in an era of rapid globalization, and points out how a host of myths led by the ghost of Mackinder’s Heartland, in conjunction with the biases and flaws of neoliberal dogma, serve to impede the development of strategies for dealing with that predicament.

The landlocked interior of the Eurasian continent was called the “Heart-land” and “the Pivot area” in Mackinder’s 1904 address, not because he attributed some metaphysical intrinsic strategic quality to the region, but because he believed that the region possessed vast natural resources, including a huge agricultural potential. He was convinced that thanks to the revolution in land transportation recently brought about by railroad technology, Inner/Central Asia was destined to provide its contemporary political master with……………..

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