Who is more useful for understanding contemporary Geopolitics: Mackinder or Mahan?

Geopolitics uses components of human geography to examine the use and implications of power. Contesting the nature of places and their relationship to the rest of the world is a power struggle between different agents and structures. (Flint 2006) Mahans categorization of power was based upon the size of a country, the racial character of its population, as well as its economic and military capacity. (Flint 2006) The core of his thesis focused on the political control of the sea, looking to it as a highway for commerce and also for hostile attacks upon countries bordering on it.(Greg 2006). Mackinders perspective held whoever controlled the geographical pivot area he termed the Heartland(in his own context, Eurasia), controlled the rest of the world, because of the concentration of population, resources and industrial potential contained in it. He believed that sea power was no basis for power or territorial conquest, since warships cannot navigate mountains.(H. J. Mackinder 1919) However, he did advocate the idea of amphibiosity later in his writings, which in essence encapsulated notion that sea power in the final resort must be able to project power ashore to balance the threat from land power. (Geoffrey 1999) Due to the advances in aerial military technology and unprecedented globalisation, naval power does not provide sufficient buffer to states today. This combined with the need to control oil rich south central Eurasia, todays central pivot area and the local conflicts that accompany it, as well as the collective need to control rogue and failed states to ensure world security means Mackinders thesis has greater relevance than that of Mahans in contemporary geopolitics. Contemporary geopolitics has been adjusted to see Mackinders Heartland theory as dynamic(Megoran 2010), such that it is able to move, not only geographically but also conceptually from being a descriptive to a technical term: 'the Heartland provides a sufficient physical basis for strategic thinking. (Geoffrey 1999) The modern day heartland comprises the south central region of Eurasia, encompassing the Persian Gulf, which possesses two thirds of the worlds oil and the Caspian Sea, which has most of what is left.(Klare 2003) Parallel to this Mackinder also contended that states would have to achieve relative efficiency as there would be no new territories to acquire in the post-Columbian era. The war against Iraq was intended to provide the US with a prevailing position in the Persian Gulf region, and to serve as a military base for further conquests and assertions of power in the heartland. (Klare 2003) If the US is able to control this region (at least in the informal neo-imperialistic sense) and hence also control the oil in the region, which is not only a source of fuel, but also a source demographic potential and of economic

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Janin Bredehoeft

superiority, it will be able to control the world economy. Although economic power alone does not translate into geopolitical influence, it is a necessary condition for what can be described as great power status. This is evident in recent German and Japanese state behaviour.(Krauthammer 1990-1992) Economic power will also allow maintenance of US military technology advantage through increased funding on research and technology, and hence help keep control of the region, and contain any competing powers attempting to rise against it. Although the geographical environment does not necessarily define the choices of policy makers today, it nonetheless provides an important, if not crucial, conditioning influence. (Geoffrey 1999) Mackinders central claim was that geography could aid statecraft and he believed that the environment shaped identity in ways that produce a world that is a mutually hostile such that international relations are primarily based upon force, which may bear realist and offensive connotations, but could also be used by a state, as a defensive tool to spread freedom and democracy abroad in the face of the selfish aggression towards others(as rogue or failed states do).(Gerry 2010)The emergence of a new strategic environment, marked by the rise of small aggressive states armed with weapons of mass destruction (also called Weapon States) is possibly the greatest danger to current world security. In the case of the United States and many other states, the seas around them are not a sufficiently powerful buffer anymore, given the aerial threats posed by long-range missiles and combat aircraft. Sea power alone is also not sufficient, and military presence is necessary to partake interventions that enable the containment and control of rogue or failed states, as well as weapon states such as Iraq. This is directly contradictory with Mahans concepts. Therefore, the causes of current conception of the American hegemon may be explained as a paradoxical pursuit of domestic peace through foreign intervention: the demand for absolute, undefiled security at home leads one to conquer the world. (Kaplan 2005) American preeminence is also based on the fact that it is the only country with the military, diplomatic, political and economic power to be decisive in any world conflict.(Krauthammer 1990-1992) Hence, as the current world hegemon, the United States needs to be prepared to act unilaterally and pre-emptively to reconfigure the global order, as the alternative to unipolarity only points to chaos, given the various security threats in the form of destabilised rogue and failed states either with or without weapons of mass destruction.(Krauthammer 1990-1992, Dodds 2007) Consequently, it is evident that Mackinders theory is more useful in contemporary geopolitics, as it provides a basis for the categorization of power through the control, whether formal or informal, of the modern day heartland of south central Eurasia, which possesses 70% of the worlds petroleum reserves today (Klare 2003). Along with the economic and territorial advantages, his thesis allows us to take into into

Assignment 1

Janin Bredehoeft

account the advances in aerial and military technology, which deem focus on sea power less useful. The rise of rogue and weapon states requires intervention and an assertion of power, which is only possible through military presence on land, hence further reinforcing Mackinders conceptions. (983 words) Parth Gulati

Bibliography
Dodds, K. (2007). Maps and Geopolitics. Geopolitics: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Flint, C. (2006). Introduction to Geopolitics, Oxford: Routledge. Geoffrey, S. (1999). "Sir Halford J. Mackinder: The Heartland theory then and now." Journal of Strategic Studies 22. Gerry, K. (2010). "Geography, geopolitics and Empire." Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 35. Greg, R. (2006). "Alfred Thayer Mahan and American Geopolitics: The Conservatism and Realism of an Imperialist." Geopolitics 11. H. J. Mackinder, S. V. M. (1919). Democratic ideals and Reality: A study in the Politics of Reconstruction, DIANE Publishing. Kaplan, R. D. (2005). Imperial grunts: the American military on the ground. New York, Random House. Klare, M. (2003). "The New Geopolitics." The Monthly Review Volume 55(No.3): 5156. Krauthammer, C. (1990-1992). "The Unipolar Moment." Foreign Policy 70(No.23). Megoran, N. (2010). "Neoclassical geopolitics." Political Geography 29.

Assignment 1

Janin Bredehoeft