DETERMINISM VERSUS FRICTION: A CRITIQUE OF MACKINDER

Bahodirjon ERGASHEV

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Bahodirjon Ergashev, Masters student, Junior Fellow at the Department of Political Science, University of World Economy and Diplomacy (Tashkent, Uzbekistan)

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Introduction

“Mackinder was not a determinist,” declared Colin S. Gray, arguably the most celebrated contemporary scholar of geopolitics. He has further proclaimed that Mackinder’s classic geopolitical theory “has outlasted the criticisms.” An ardent advocate of Mackinder, and of geopolitics as an enduring and “overwhelmingly relevant” field of study, Gray defends it vociferously: “Unfortunately, proclamation of the demise of geopolitics is at best premature, and much more likely is simply wrong-headed.” On the other hand, Christopher J. Fettweis is confident that “geopolitical analysis is already as obsolete as major war itself.”

Whilst geopolitics as a field of academic study has slowly descended into relative insignificance in the West, especially after the end of the Cold War, it has thrived throughout the former Soviet Union. Zbigniew Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard has few competitors in ex-Soviet republics in terms of popularity among students majoring in International Relations. The “rose revolution” in Georgia of November 2003, the Ukrainian “orange revolution” of early 2005, the so-called “tulip revolution” in Kyrgyzstan of March 2005, and the ongoing endeavor to “spread democratic values” throughout the former Soviet Union by Western nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), might all be seen as suggestive of the continuing relevance of Halford Mackinder’s “Heartland” concept if one accepts the popular view that it is the United States government who is behind all these transformations.

This paper seeks to contribute to the debate as to whether Mackinder’s theories, after one hundred years, are to be taken seriously, or to be regarded with sober reservations. To do so, it would be………………..

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