Between Mackinder and Spykman: geopolitics, containment, and after

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United Kingdom: Comparative Strategy, Vol. 10, pp. 347-364
This essay is about geopolitical frameworks for analysis in U.S. foreign policy. The geopolitical frameworks of Halford Mackinder and Nicholas Spykman have undergone a resurgence over the last decade and have evoked an equal measure of criticism as well. Both critics and supporters, however, share certain assumptions about Spykman that have become part of the conventional wisdom defining his relationship to Mackinder and U.S. containment policy. The first assumption sees Spykman as only modifying Mackinder's basic framework, while remaining compatible
with its basic logic. The second, which builds on the first, is that Spykman's geopolitics
(as understood) layed the foundations for U. S. containment policy through the writings of Kennan, containment documents, and later policymakers. Arguing from these assumptions, critics see the rimland concept as responsible for problems of containment. Supporters, upholding the same assumptions, see the rimland as a passive contact zone around the littorals of Eurasia within which seapowers and heartland struggle for control. This view is said to have informed containment by pointing to the seapower's ability to construct a system of alliances around the rimland and thus bar the heartland from access to the sea. Both views of Spykman are false because they are based on false assumptions. Mackinder and Spykman are actually quite different. In Mackinder there is one pattern of conflict in history—that between seapower and heartland. In Spykman, however, there are two—that between seapower and heartland, and that between an independent center of power in the rimland with both seapower and heartland allied against it. These patterns alternate around the shifting distribution of power within important regions of the rimland. It is this dualism in Spykman that is ignored.
Conventional views of Spykman see only the first pattern in his framework, which supports his link to Mackinder. Yet it was the second pattern that he saw as coinciding with major wars in modern times. The first is real, but is no longer the overriding theme that it is in Mackinder. With these differences established, the implications of each can be contrasted and their substantive differences clarified. And the wide differences between the traditional interpretations of Spykman and the actual implications of his framework can also be seen. Most notable is the issue of European unity. While containment policy supported European federation, Spykman warned against it whether it was by federation or conquest. While Mackinder said nothing on unity, his framework is not necessarilyinconsistent with it. The ideas behind containment were not geopolitical in the true sense of the term. They were only outwardly so. To the extent that they were, however, they reflected Mackinder and not Spykman. Reasoning from Mackinder's framework is consistent with key aspects of containment, while reasoning from Spykman's leads to very different conclusions. If these frameworks would lead to different implications for U.S.-Soviet conflict, they would also lead to different interpretations on the end of this conflict and what it means for U.S. foreign policy. From Mackinder's perspective, the current process of European unity can be seen as the fruition of U.S. containment policy and multilateral cooperation. U.S.-Soviet conflict, as seapower-heartland conflict, reflected the only historical pattern. The dissipation of this conflict suggests no replacement. But from Spykman's view, the decline in one pattern will simply be replaced by another in accordance with new centers of power in the world. Thus European unity is not the fruition of containment's success, but a development that will transform the basic pattern within
which the first pattern existed. While this first is real to Spykman, it is far less volatile than the second. An irony here is that while the flaring up of U.S.-Soviet conflict in the 1980s reassured Mackinder's relevance, the decline of this conflict may make Spykman more timely than ever.

Author(s): Gerace M.P.

Language: English
Commentary: 742298
Tags: Международные отношения;Геополитика