The Geographical Pivot of History
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The Geographical Pivot of History was an article submitted by Halford John Mackinder in 1902 to the Royal Geographical Society that advanced his Heartland Theory. In this article, Mackinder extended the scope of geopolitical analysis to encompass the entire globe. The earth, according to Mackinder, was divisible into two regions. The world island, comprising the interlinked continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa, was the largest, most populous, and richest of all possible land combinations. Along its periphery were the large insular groups of the Americas, Australia, Japan, and the British Isles. At the center of this world island lay the heartland, stretching from the Volga to the Yangtze and from the Himalayas to the Arctic. Protected from sea power by ice to the north and mountains and deserts to the south, the island's vast land area was threatened only by land invasion on its western border from Western Europe to Russia. According to Mackinder, effective political domination of this space by a single power had been unattainable in the past because of a lack of proper transportation. Previous invasions from east to west and vice versa were unsuccessful because of the inability to assure a continual supply of men and supplies.
Mackinder believed that the introduction of the railroad as a means of transportation had removed the island's invulnerability to domination by a single power. As Eurasia began to be covered by an extensive network of railroads, there was an excellent chance that a powerful continental nation could extend its political control over the Eastern European gateway to the Eurasian landmass. This would be a prelude to that nation's bid for mastery first of the Eurasian land mass and then the entire globe:
- ::"Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;
- ::who rules the Heartland commands the world-island;
- ::who rules the world-island controls the world."
Though the theory was first imagined before World War I, developments in that war did not disprove it. Vast systems of trenches were not envisaged as part of the antagonism, but their appearance, as well as the demonstration that submarines could destroy convoys, made geopolitics appear even more frightening. The development of mechanized military transport needing petroleum fit right into the theory, for Russia's major oil reserves were located on the western shore of the Caspian Sea. Also, it was imagined before the industrial development of Russia herself. Thus it was as much a "thought experiment" as Schlieffen's plan to conquer France.
Some influential Germans, such as Karl Haushofer both before and during the Third Reich, found this theory compatible with their desire to control Mitteleuropa and to take Ukraine. The intention to take the latter was indicated by the slogan Drang nach Osten, or "drive to the east".
Although the fascists took much of Ukraine in World War II, nonetheless they were defeated. Another point which Mackinder missed was that the Soviets could actually move their factories out of the Heartland. For a time it seemed as though the theory was defunct, at first because conventional air force had been falsely touted as capable of destroying industries thousands of miles from the seacoast, and shortly afterward with the appearance of nuclear weapons. But with the coming of the Cold War, Mackinder's theory regained some plausibility when instead of war, influence upon other nations was considered. This would be projection of power in other terms.
The Soviet Union accomplished the domination of both Ukraine and Mitteleuropa. It was industrial, technically competent, and militarily able. Some anti-communists in the West who had heard of Mackinder gained additional fear of them from of his theory. What reduced the plausibility of this form of geopolitics drastically was the rise of Japan, a country without natural resources, yet which could surpass the Soviet Union without dealing with anything military at all. The Balance of terror, which enforced a state of relative peace during that period, also extends beyond the predictions of the original theory.
References
- William R. Keylor, The Twentieth-Century World and Beyond: An International History Since 1900, 2006. ISBN 0195168437
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