THE POLITICS OF USING MACKINDER’S GEOPOLITICS: THE EXAMPLE OF UZBEKISTAN
Abstract
As both recent scholarly publications, and colloquia in London, Glasgow and Tashkent demonstrate, there remains considerable interest in the thinking of Halford Mackinder. Two major streams of scholarship can be identified—the study of the application of his theories to international relations, and the investigation of their intellectual provenance. This paper will focus on the second of these concerns, making use in particular of a body of scholarship on Mackinder known as “critical geopolitics,” especially the work of Gearóid Ó Tuathail (Gerard Toal). It will consider what new insights can be gained from the application of this approach to studies of contemporary Central Asia that themselves use Mackinder’s ideas. It asks not, “what does Mackinder’s theory reveal about the world and Central Asia’s place in it?” but “what does Mackinder’s theory reveal about Mackinder” and, crucially, “how have citations of Mackinder’s theory been used to construct contemporary geopolitical narratives about Central Asia?”
The first approach to Mackinder takes his Pivot/Heartland theory as a model with predictive capacities that can be tested against the “course of events,” and from which policy recommendations can be derived. Such a method was used principally to analyze the Cold War and was particularly popular with international relations theorists. It has almost entirely relied on limited readings of three of Mackinder’s works, his 1904, 1919, and 1943 iterations of the Heartland thesis.1 It does not connect these to the wider corpus of Mackinder’s writings and attaches minimal importance to his biography. A typical example of this approach is the work of Colin Gray, who argues that Mac-kinder correctly recognized the Heartland as “an enduring geostrategic reality of the first importance,” and that his theory proved accurate in the twentieth century and may well prove so in the twenty-first.2
The second approach, developed by geographers, contextualizes the Heartland thesis in two ways.
On the one hand, it locates the three famous “geopolitical” texts in the context of Mackinder’s wider thought and political and professional activities, and was built upon biographies published in the 1980s.3 On the other, it situates Mackinder’s thought in wider contemporary social and political circumstances, such as international diplomacy,4 and debates on British engagement with Central Asia,5 imperial defense policy,6 and military reform.7 Kearns has developed an innovative variation on this technique, contrasting Mackinder’s approach to topics as diverse as imperial economic reform,8 exploration,9 and the purpose of geography,10 with those of close contemporaries. Whilst some of these writers have been hostile to the Mackinder legacy, and others have celebrated it, all have agreed that his three most famous texts cannot be detached from the time and place of their production and the biography and guiding vision of their author.
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References
See: H. Mackinder, “The Geographical Pivot of History,” The Geographical Journal, Vol. XXIII, No. 4, April 1904;H. Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality: A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction, Constable and Company, London,1919; H. Mackinder, “The Round World and the Winning of the Peace,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 21, No. 4, 1943.
C.S. Gray, “In Defence of the Heartland: Sir Halford Mackinder and His Critics a Hundred Years On,” in: Global Geostrategy: Mackinder and the Defence of the West, ed. by B. Blouet, Frank Cass, London, 2005.
See: W.H. Parker, Mackinder: Geography as an Aid to Statecraft, Clarendon, Oxford, 1982; B. Blouet, Halford Mackinder: A Biography, Texas A&M University Press, College Station, 1987; G. Kearns, “Halford John Mackinder: 1861-1947,” in: Geographers Bibliographical Studies, 9, ed. by T. W. Freeman Mansell, London, 1985.
See: P. Venier, “The Diplomatic Context: Britain and International Relations in 1904,” in: Global Geostrategy:
ackinder and the Defence of the West.
See: S. O’Hara, M. Heffernan, G. Endfield, “Halford Mackinder, the ‘Geographical Pivot,’ and British Perceptions of Central Asia,” in: Global Geostrategy: Mackinder and the Defence of the West.
See: R. Butlin, “The Pivot and Imperial Defence Policy,” in: Global Geostrategy: Mackinder and the Defence of the West.
See: D. Stoddart, “Geography and War: The ‘New Geography’ and the ‘New Army’ in England, 1899-1914,” Po-litical Geography, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1992.
See: G. Kearns, “Prologue: Fin de siècle Geopolitics: Mackinder, Hobson, and Theories of Global Closure,” in:
olitical Geography of the Twentieth Century: A Global Analysis, ed. by P. J. Taylor Bellhaven, London, 1993.
See: G. Kearns, “The Imperial Subject: Geography and Travel in the Work of Mary Kingsley and Halford Mack-inder,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 22, 1997.
See: G. Kearns, “The Political Pivot of Geography,” Geographical Journal, Vol. 170, No. 4, 2004.
See: N. Megoran, “Revisiting the ‘Pivot’: The Influence of Halford Mackinder on Analysis of Uzbekistan’s Inter-national Relations,” Geographical Journal, Vol. 170, No. 4, 2004.
H. Mackinder, “The Music of the Spheres,” Proceedings of the Royal Philosophical Society 63 (1936-1937), 1937,
See: H. Mackinder, “The Human Habitat,” The Scottish Geographical Magazine, Vol. 47, No. 6, 1931, p. 327.
Ibid., p. 326.
H. Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality: A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction, pp. 2-3.
H. Mackinder, “Man-power as a Measure of National and Imperial Strength,” The National Review, Vol. 45,No. 265, 1905, pp. 140-141.
H. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas, Clarendon, Oxford, 1907 (1902), p. 343.
H. Mackinder, “The Round World and the Winning of the Peace,” p. 605.
H. Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality: A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction, p. 203.
H. Mackinder, “Man-power as a Measure of National and Imperial Strength,” p. 143.
Ibid., p. 40.
Glasgow Herald quoted from: B. Blouet, op. cit., p. 147.
H. Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality: A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction, p. 20.
Ibid., pp. 226-227.
H. Mackinder, “The Teaching of Geography from an Imperial Point of View, and the Use Which Could and Should Be Made of Visual Instruction,” The Geographical Teacher, No. 6, 1911, p. 84.
See: G. Ó Tuathail, “Understanding Critical Geopolitics: Geopolitics and Risk Society,” Journal of Strategic Stud-ies, Vol. 22, No. 2/3, 1999, pp. 107-124.
See: G. Ó Tuathail, Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space, Routledge, London, 1996.
See: G. Ó Tuathail, “Putting Mackinder in His Place: Material Transformations and Myth,” Political Geography,Vol. 11, No. 2, 1992, p. 102.
G. Ó Tuathail, Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space, p. 53.
See: Ibid., pp. 53-54.
See: Ibid., p. 22.
See: Ibid., pp. 109-110.
See: G. Ó Tuathail, “Putting Mackinder in His Place: Material Transformations and Myth,” p. 115.
See: M. Polelle, Raising Cartographic Consciousness: The Social and Foreign Policy Vision of Geopolitics in the Twentieth Century, Lexington, Oxford, 1999, p. 12.
See: G. Ó Tuathail, “Putting Mackinder in His Place: Material Transformations and Myth,” p. 101.
G. Ó Tuathail, “Understanding Critical Geopolitics: Geopolitics and Risk Society,” p. 113.
Ibid., p. 108.
G. Ó Tuathail, “Imperialist Geopolitics: Introduction,” in: The Geopolitics Reader, ed. by G. Ó Tuathail, S. Dal-by, P. Routledge, Routledge, London (forthcoming).
This example is expanded from an earlier article (see: N. Megoran, op. cit.) and reworked here with the permis-sion of Blackwell Publishing.
See: O. Zotov, “Outlooks of the Bishkek Treaty in the Light of Timur’s Geopolitics and Political Development Trends of Late XX-Beginning of XXI Century,” Central Asia, 8 December, 2000: available at [http://greatgame.no.sapo.pt/
sia_central.htm, 2000]; idem, “Pro-American Military and Political Blocs around the Caspian Basin Livening Up”: avail-able at [http://greatgame.no.sapo.pt/acopiniao/pro_american_military_and_political_blocs.htm, 2001].
See: J. Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, Pluto, London, 2002.
See: Uzbekistan actually withdrew from GUUAM in 2005, what was widely interpreted as cooling of relations with the West and a movement toward Russia.
See: O. Zotov, “Pro-American Military and Political Blocs around the Caspian Basin Livening Up.”
See: B.F. Manz, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989; T.W. Lentz,G. Lowry, Princely Vision: Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth Century, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washing-ton, 1989.
See: Mustaqillik: Izoxli Ilmiy-Ommabop Lug’at, ed. by A. Jalolov, X. Qo’chqor, Sharq, Tashkent, 2000;G. Khidoyatov, “The Builder of a New Maverannahr,” Labyrinth: Central Asia Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 4, 1996, pp. 42-45;
Thaulow, “Timur Lenk før og nu- et spørgsmål om image,” Jordens Folk, Vol. 36, No. 1, 2001, pp. 13-18.
O. Zotov, “Outlooks of the Bishkek Treaty in the Light of Timur’s Geopolitics and Political Development Trends of Late XX-Beginning of XXI Century.”
See: N. Megoran, op. cit.
As well as currently writing a dissertation about U.S. foreign policy toward Uzbekistan, he is President of the Insti-tute for Global Engagement, a Washington-based think-tank that develops policy on religious freedom and state engagement.
See: C. Seiple, Heartland Geopolitics and the Case of Uzbekistan, Foreign Policy Research Institute, 1 June, 2005:
vailable at [http://www.fpri.org].
See: C. Seiple, “Uzbekistan: Civil Society in the Heartland,” Orbis, Spring 2005.
Ibid., p. 246.
C. Seiple, “Heartland Geopolitics and the Case of Uzbekistan.”
See: C. Seiple, “Uzbekistan: Civil Society in the Heartland,” pp. 247-254.
Ibid., p. 259.
Zb. Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, Basic Books, New York, 1997. Incidentally, Brzezinski inadvertently revealed his own superficial engagement with the geopolitical tradition in misnaming Halford Mackinder “Harold” Mackinder (p. 38)!
K. Dodds, J. Sidaway, “Halford Mackinder and the ‘Geographical Pivot of History’: A Centennial Retrospective,”Geographical Journal, Vol. 170, No. 4, 2004, pp. 294.
See: S. Dalby discusses similar concerns in “Geopolitics, the Bush Doctrine, and War on Iraq,” The Arab World Geographer, Vol. 6, No. 1, 2003.
See: C. Seiple, “Seeing Uzbekistan: From Cliché to Clarity”; “‘Clean Leader’ from Somewhere Else,” 8 January,2002: available at [http://www.globalengagement.org/issues/2002/01/cseiple-clarity.htm].
See: “Ousted Ambassador Makes Uzbekistan Key Election Issue in Britain,” Eurasianet, 11 April, 2005: availa-ble at [http://www.eurasianet.org].
G. Ó Tuathail, “Understanding Critical Geopolitics: Geopolitics and Risk Society,” p. 109.
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