HALFORD MACKINDER’S IDEAS TODAY

Abstract

There have always been politicians who considered the cornerstone of their foreign policy efforts to be Halford Mackinder’s imperative about the need to control the Pivot area (or the Heartland) At one time, Mackinder postulated that the maritime nations and the people of the marginal regions [which Nicholas J. Spykman later called Eurasia’s “Rimland”] should do their best to contain those living in the Heartland. This perfectly suited the realities of the bipolar world and largely pro-moted the ideology of NATO and other postwar blocs (SENTO, ASEAN).

Today, however, it seems that these geopolitical postulations can no longer serve as a sound theoretical basis for explaining the current trends obvious in world politics. It might have seemed that after splitting the continental monolith and turning the fragments into friendly states, the maritime nations had defused the British geopolitician’s key theoretical propositions about the Heartland’s invulnerability and eternal opposition between the sea and land powers.

However, the very fact that the sea powers have moved into the heart of the Eurasian continent shows that they find it extremely important. The Atlantic powers are out to spread their control to the most distant (from them) corners of the world, such as Afghanistan and Central Asia. In other words, West European politicians are fully aware that, according to Mackinder, in order to rule the world, they should gain control over the Pivot area. In 1997, Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote: “For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia.”1 According to him, the importance of Eurasia is created by the fact that it is home to 75 percent of the world’s population and that upon and beneath it lies the larger part of the world’s physical wealth. This vast territory in accounts for about 60 percent of the world’s GNP and controls about 75 percent of the world’s proven energy resources.

In the 20th century, an interest in Mackinder’s geopolitical conceptions was rekindled regularly. Judging by the persistence with which NATO is pushing into Eastern Europe and Central Asia, one of these bouts of interest occurred in the post-Soviet era. The NATO leaders, at least, are acting in full conformity with what the British geopolitician said at one time: “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; ... who rules the Heartland commands the world.”

Nicholas J. Spykman tried to disprove the theory by saying that even if the Heartland were a geographical reality, first, it has lost its unassailability to strategic aviation and other state-of-the-art weapons, and second, contrary to what Mackinder asserted, this vast territory failed to become one of the world’s economically most developed regions. He insisted that the outcome of both world wars was decided not in the Heartland zone or in the struggle for it, but along the coasts and in the Rimland. Spykman, therefore, concluded that world hegemony does not depend on control over Eastern Europe, but, contrary to Mackinder, maintained that he “who rules the Rimland commands the World.”