THE INFLUENCE OF MACKINDER’S THEORY ON CURRENT U.S. DEPLOYMENT IN EURASIA: PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES
Abstract
Mackinder’s basic ideas about the Eurasian Heartland remain the most pertinent vision to understand the strategic changes which have occurred over post-Soviet space, as well as the current U.S. military deployment inside it. In fact, the 1904 “Pivot” theory1 (and its successive revisions as the “Heartland” theory2) suggested a range of concepts that were destined to enter the standard lexicon of international relations during and, to an even greater extent, after the end of the Cold War.
The starting point of this analysis is that the end of bipolar world has created an international situation which, from the point of view of a U.S. power resolute in maintaining world hegemony, closely resembles the British situation at the beginning of the twentieth century. In order to understand this, we have first to assess the similar structure of these two powers, which we can call “Atlantic” for the sake of simplification. These are chiefly maritime commercial powers, based on the imposition of a precise economic constitution characterized by the application of free trade principles to the world economy. These principles correspond to certain advantages, such as financial and technical skills, that they possess over all other actors. Nevertheless, these powers are funda-mentally fragile, and the description remains more theoretical than practical. The U.S. share of world economy is today shrinking as was the British vis-à-vis Germany. To compensate for this, military force thus remains crucial to maintaining the hegemonic position of the maritime world power. Another central feature of this kind of power is its effort to impose a universal liberal economic constitution that goes parallel with a pretension to the moral superiority of its cultural and social structure.3 A consequence of this combination of escalating force and sense of moral superiority is the legitimization of interventions in the political affairs or territory of other powers that resist the extension of the hegemon’s strategic enterprise, even when the Atlantic power undertakes behavior violating the basic norms of humanitarian law and ethics, as did the British in South Africa at the time of Mackinder’s first elaboration of his thought, or U.S. waging its “war on terror” to-day.
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References
See: H. Mackinder, “The Geographical Pivot of History,” The Geographical Journal, Vol. XXIII, No. 4,April 1904, pp. 421-437.
See: H. Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Real-ity, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1969 (originally published 1919); idem, “The Round World and the Win-ning of the Peace,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 21, No. 4, 1943,pp. 595-605.
On British roots of current U.S. tendency to “hu-manitarian imperialism,” see: N. Ferguson, Empire. The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, Basic Books, New York, 2003.
H. Mackinder, “On the Scope and Methods of Ge-ography,” Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society,Vol. 9, No. 3, 1887, pp. 141-174.
See: P.A. Dossena, Hitler & Churchill. Mackinder e la sua scuola, Terziaria, Milan, 2002.
See: H. Mackinder, “General Report, with Appendices, on Situation in South Russia; Recommendations for Future Policy,” Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939, First Series, Vol. III, London, 1949, pp. 777-784.
See: V.I. Maksimenko, “Rossia i Azia, ili anti-Brzezinski (Îcherk geopolitiki 2000 goda),” Vostok, No. 5, 2000.
H. Mackinder, General Report…, p. 786.
H. Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality.
“If the World-Island be inevitably the principal seat of humanity on this globe and if Arabia, as the passage-land from Europe to Indies and from the Northern to the Southern Heartland, be central for the World-Island, then the hill cita-del of Jerusalem has a strategical position with reference to the world realities not differing essentially from the ideal posi-tion in the perspective of the Middle Ages or its strategical position between ancient Babylon and Egypt” (H. Mackinder,Democratic Ideals and Reality, p. 89).
See: P.A. Dossena, op. cit.
This linkage is also admitted by W.H. Parker in his Mackinder Geography as an Aid to Statecraft, Oxford, 1982,p. 245.
See : K.Haushofer, De la geopolitique, Fayard, Paris, 1986.
See: C. Jean, Geopolitica, Laterza, Bari, 1996.
Cf.: M. Antonsich, “Dalla Geopolitik alla Geopolitics. Conversione ideologica di una dottrina di potenza,” Quaderni del dottorato di ricerca in Geografia politica, Università di Napoli, No. 4, 1994, p. 51.
Ibidem.
See: D. Hooson, “The Heartland—Then and Now,” in: Global Geostrategy: Mackinder and the Defence of the West,ed. by B. Blouet, Frank Cass, London, 2005.
Cf.: O. Sevaistre, “Un géant de la géopolitique: Nicholas John Spykman,” Stratégique, No. 3, 1988, pp. 115-132.
In this sense: K.E. Mayer, The Dust of Empire, 2003 (tr. it., La polvere dell’Impero. Il “grande gioco” in Asia centrale, Corbaccio, 2004); N. Ferguson, op. cit.
See: I. Torbakov, Reexamining Old Concepts about the Caucasus and Central Asia: available at [http://
ww.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav020404a.shtml], 4 February, 2004.
Definition used in “The Round World and the Winning of the Peace” (tr. it., “Il mondo intero e come vincere la pace,” Limes, No. 1, 1994, pp. 171-182).
See: G.E. Fuller, Central Asia. The New Geopolitics, RAND, Santa Monica, 1992, p. 77.
See: S. Blank, “Every Shark East of Suez: Great Power Interests, Policies and Tactics in the Transcaspian Energy Wars,” Central Asian Survey, Vol. XVIII, No. 3, 1999, pp. 373-383.
See: R. Legvold, Thinking Strategically: The Major Powers, Kazakhstan and Central Asian Nexus, MA, MIT Press,Cambridge, 2003.
See: A. Lieven, “G.U.U.A.M: What Is It, and What Is It For?” Eurasia Insight, 18 December, 2000: available at [www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight].
C. Fairbanks, C.R. Nelson, S.F. Starr, K. Weisbrode, Strategic Assessment of Central Eurasia, Central Asian-Cau-casus Institute, Atlantic Council, Washington D.C., January 2001, pp. 7, 95: available at [www.acus.org/Publications/
efault.htm].
See: M. Amineh, M. Parvizi, H. Houweling, Central Eurasia in Global Politics: Conflict, Security and Develop-ment, Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden & Boston, 2004.
Rumsfeld’s Speech, Germany, 11 July, 2003: available at [http://http://defense-link.mil/releases/2003/nr20030612-0095.html].
As analyzed by E. Todd in After the Empire. The Breakdown of the American Order, Columbia University Press,New York, 2003, and I. Wallerstein in “The Eagle has Crash Landed,” Foreign Policy, July-August 2002.
See: F. Vielmini, “Implications of U.S. Military Presence in Central Asia Security System: Evolution, Current Situation, and Future Perspectives,” in: Dynamics of Transformation in Central Asia—Perspectives from the Field, Inter-national Conference, Rome, 5-6 November, 2004 (forthcoming publication).
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