The Geographical Pivot of History - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

"The Geographical Pivot of History" was an article submitted by Halford John Mackinder

Halford John Mackinder

Sir Halford John Mackinder PC was an English geographer and is considered one of the founding fathers of both geopolitics and geostrategy.-Early life and education:...

in 1904 to the Royal Geographical Society

Royal Geographical Society

The Royal Geographical Society is a British learned society founded in 1830 for the advancement of geographical sciences...

that advanced his Heartland Theory. In this article, Mackinder extended the scope of geopolitical

Geopolitics

Geopolitics, from Greek Γη and Πολιτική in broad terms, is a theory that describes the relation between politics and territory whether on local or international scale....

analysis to encompass the entire globe.

Importance of non-geographic factors

It is easy to regard Mackinder's theory as a kind of geographic determinism

Geographic determinism

Geographic determinism is the theory that the human habits and characteristics of a particular culture are shaped by geographic conditions. Coined by Ellsworth Huntington, the theory looked at the rise and fall of the Roman Empire from 400-500. Much of the fall of the empire had to do with a...

. But Mackinder emphasized that his theory was not so limited:

"The actual balance of political power at any given time is… the product, on the one hand, of geographical conditions, both economic and strategic, and, on the other hand, of the relative number, virility, equipment and organization of the competing peoples."

(quoted in Sempa 2000)

The World-Island and the Heartland

According to Mackinder, the Earth's land surface was divisible into:

The World-Island, comprising the interlinked continents of Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

, and Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

. This was the largest, most populous, and richest of all possible land combinations.
The offshore islands, including the British Isles
British Isles
The British Isles are a group of islands off the northwest coast of continental Europe that include the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and over six thousand smaller isles. There are two sovereign states located on the islands: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and...

and the islands of Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

.
The outlying islands, including the continents of North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

, South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...

, and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

.

The Heartland lay at the centre of the world island, stretching from the Volga to the Yangtze and from the Himalayas

Himalayas

The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...

to the Arctic

Arctic

The Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...

. Mackinder's Heartland was the area ruled by the Russian Empire

Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

and then by the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, minus the area around Vladivostok

Vladivostok

The city is located in the southern extremity of Muravyov-Amursky Peninsula, which is about 30 km long and approximately 12 km wide.The highest point is Mount Kholodilnik, the height of which is 257 m...

Strategic importance of Eastern Europe

Later, in 1919, Mackinder summarised his theory as:

"Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;

who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;

who rules the World-Island controls the world."

Any power which controlled the World-Island would control well over 50% of the world's resources. The Heartland's size and central position made it the key to controlling the World-Island.

The vital question was how to secure control of the Heartland. This question may seem pointless, since in 1904 the Russian Empire

Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

had ruled most of the area from the Volga to Eastern Siberia for centuries. But throughout the nineteenth century:

The West European powers had combined, usually successfully, in the Great Game to prevent Russian expansion.
The Russian Empire was huge but socially, politically and technologically backward - i.e inferior in "virility, equipment and organization".

Mackinder held that effective political domination of the Heartland by a single power had been unattainable in the past because:

The Heartland was protected from sea power by ice to the north and mountains and deserts to the south.
Previous land invasions from east to west and vice versa were unsuccessful because lack of efficient transportation made it impossible to assure a continual stream of men and supplies.

He outlined the following ways in which the Heartland might become a springboard for global domination in the twentieth century (Sempa, 2000):

Successful invasion of Russia by a West European nation (most probably Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

). Mackinder believed that the introduction of the railroad had removed the Heartland's invulnerability to land invasion. As Eurasia
Eurasia
Eurasia is a continent or supercontinent comprising the traditional continents of Europe and Asia ; covering about 52,990,000 km2 or about 10.6% of the Earth's surface located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres...

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 Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

an gateway to the Eurasian landmass. In Mackinder's words, "Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland."
A Russo-German alliance. Before 1917 both countries were ruled by autocrats (the Tsar
Tsar
Tsar is a title used to designate certain European Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, or Tsarism...

and the Kaiser
Kaiser
Kaiser is the German title meaning "Emperor", with Kaiserin being the female equivalent, "Empress". Like the Russian Czar it is directly derived from the Latin Emperors' title of Caesar, which in turn is derived from the personal name of a branch of the gens Julia, to which Gaius Julius Caesar,...

), and both could have been attracted to an alliance against the democratic powers of Western Europe (the US was isolationist regarding European affairs, until it became a participant of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

in 1917). Germany would have contributed to such an alliance its formidable army and its large and growing sea power.
Conquest of Russia by a Sino-Japanese empire (see below).

The combined empire's large East Asian coastline would also provide the potential for it to become a major sea power. Mackinder's "Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland ..." does not cover this scenario, probably because the previous 2 scenarios were seen as the major risks of the nineteenth century and the early 1900s.

One of Mackinder's personal objectives was to warn Britain that its traditional reliance on sea power would become a weakness as improved land transport opened up the Heartland for invasion and / or industrialisation (Sempa, 2000).

In Germany up to 1945

Some influential Germans, such as Karl Haushofer

Karl Haushofer

Karl Ernst Haushofer was a German general, geographer and geopolitician. Through his student Rudolf Hess, Haushofer's ideas may have influenced the development of Adolf Hitler's expansionist strategies, although Haushofer denied direct influence on the Nazi regime.-Biography:Haushofer belonged to...

both before and during the Third Reich, found this theory compatible with their desire to control Mitteleuropa

Mitteleuropa

Mitteleuropa is the German term equal to Central Europe. The word has political, geographic and cultural meaning. While it describes a geographical location, it also is the word denoting a political concept of a German-dominated and exploited Central European union that was put into motion during...

and to take Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

. The intention to take the latter was indicated by the slogan Drang nach Osten
Drang nach Osten
Drang nach Osten was a term coined in the 19th century to designate German expansion into Slavic lands. The term became a motto of the German nationalist movement in the late nineteenth century...

, or "drive to the east".

In the Western powers

Mackinder identified the geopolitical nightmare that was to haunt the world's two sea powers during the first half of the twentieth century — Great Britain

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

and later on the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. The nightmare was that if Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

or Russia were allowed to control East Europe then this could lead to the domination of the Eurasian land mass by one of these two powers as a prelude to mastery of the world.

Influence of the theory on other geopolitical models

Evidence of Mackinder’s Heartland Theory can be found in the works of geopolitician Dimitri Kitsikis

Dimitri Kitsikis

Dimitri Kitsikis is a Greek Turkologist, Professor of International Relations and Geopolitics. He has also published poetry in French and Greek.-Life:D...

, particularly in his model “Intermediate Region

Intermediate Region

An established geopolitical model set forth in the 1970s by the Greek historian Dimitri Kitsikis, professor at the University of Ottawa, Canada. According to this model, the Eurasian continent is composed of not only two civilisational regions, that is, Western and Eastern , but also a third...

”. There is a significant geographical overlap between the Heartland or “Pivot Area” and the Intermediate Region, with the exception of Germany

Germany

-Prussia

Prussia

Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...

and north-eastern China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

, which Kitsikis excludes from the Intermediate Region. Mackinder, on the other hand, excludes North Africa

North Africa

North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...

, Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

and the Middle East

Middle East

The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...

from the Heartland. The reason being is that whereas Mackinder’s model is primarily geo-strategic, Kitsikis’s model is geo-civilizational. However, the roles of both the Intermediate Region and the Heartland are regarded by their respective authors as being pivotal in the shaping of world history.

Russo-Japanese War

The Russo-Japanese War

Russo-Japanese War

The Russo-Japanese War was "the first great war of the 20th century." It grew out of rival imperial ambitions of the Russian Empire and Japanese Empire over Manchuria and Korea...

of 1905 did not confirm Mackinder's hypothesis, because:

Japan's most decisive successes were at sea, and the Heartland theory regards land power as more important than sea power.
Japan's limited land successes incurred very high casualties and were in Korea and in parts of Russia which were outside Mackinder's definition of the Heartland (see map at top of page).

World War I

Though the theory was first conceived before World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, developments in that war did not disprove it and perhaps gave it some support:

The war was fought almost entirely on land, although Mackinder had not envisaged the vast systems of trenches
Trench warfare
Trench warfare is a form of occupied fighting lines, consisting largely of trenches, in which troops are largely immune to the enemy's small arms fire and are substantially sheltered from artillery...

in Europe.
For the first time in 2 centuries sea-power was almost irrelevant - submarines could destroy convoys and were a serious threat to warships, and the war's greatest sea-borne invasion, at Gallipoli
Gallipoli
The Gallipoli peninsula is located in Turkish Thrace , the European part of Turkey, with the Aegean Sea to the west and the Dardanelles straits to the east. Gallipoli derives its name from the Greek "Καλλίπολις" , meaning "Beautiful City"...

, was a disaster.
The development of mechanized military transport and tanks, both needing petroleum, was unforeseen by Mackinder but fitted easily into the theory, as Russia's major oil reserves were located on the western shore of the Caspian Sea.

Russian Revolution

The Russian Revolution of 1917

Russian Revolution of 1917

The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...

made the Heartland itself a threat to the global balance of power for the first time since the mid-nineteenth century, since the Heartland's new government took industrialisation (including modern transport) very seriously, had an ideology which aspired to world domination, and apparently commanded far greater popular support and enthusiasm than the Tsars had ever done.

See "The Cold War" below for analysis of the outcome.

German invasions of East Europe and Russia

Germany annexed

Anschluss

The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

in 1938, extorted control of large parts of Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...

in 1938, triggered World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

by invading Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

in 1939 and invaded the Soviet Union as far as Moscow in 1941.

But:

Germany's control of Eastern Europe was too short-lived to be a real test of the Heartland theory.
The Soviet Union's transport infrastructure was still poor in 1941, so one of Mackinder's preconditions was not fulfilled.
Germany had also invaded a large part of Western Europe, and the need to garrison its conquests limited the resources it could devote to war with the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union limited the impact of its own territorial losses and Germany's territorial gains by relocating many of its factories east of the Urals. Mackinder had not considered this possibility and it could be regarded as a weakness in his theory.

Japanese control of East Asia

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

occupied Manchuria

Manchuria

Manchuria is a historical name given to a large geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria usually falls entirely within the People's Republic of China, or is sometimes divided between China and Russia. The region is commonly referred to as Northeast...

in 1931, invaded China

China

in 1937 and much of Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...

during World War II

World War II

.

But this did not constitute a real test of Mackinder's "Sino-Japanese empire" scenario:

Japan's control of these territories was too short-lived to increase Japan's economic and military resources.
China in particular was resentful and rebellious rather than the willing partner that Mackinder had imagined.

Sea power in World War II

Mackinder's theory implies that modern land transport makes sea power less important than land power. But sea power played a much larger part in World War II

World War II

than in World War I

World War I

The Battle of the Atlantic (1939-1945), in which Germany tried to prevent the US from sending supplies to Britain (and Russia from 1941), and later to prevent a build-up of Allied forces in Britain as a prelude to the Allied invasion of Europe.
The Battle of Normandy
Operation Overlord
Operation Overlord was the code name for the Battle of Normandy, the operation that launched the invasion of German-occupied western Europe during World War II by Allied forces. The operation commenced on 6 June 1944 with the Normandy landings...

was the largest seaborne invasion in history.
The Pacific War
Pacific War
The Pacific War, also sometimes called the Asia-Pacific War refers broadly to the parts of World War II that took place in the Pacific Ocean, its islands, and in East Asia, then called the Far East...

, which was decided by major US naval victories, particularly the Battle of the Coral Sea
Battle of the Coral Sea
The Battle of the Coral Sea, fought from 4–8 May 1942, was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II between the Imperial Japanese Navy and Allied naval and air forces from the United States and Australia. The battle was the first fleet action in which aircraft carriers engaged...

and the Battle of Midway
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway is widely regarded as the most important naval battle of the Pacific Campaign of World War II. Between 4 and 7 June 1942, approximately one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea and six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy decisively defeated...

- but perhaps one should regard these as air battles which were fought over the sea rather than over land. (In fact, during Coral Sea, the opposing navies never saw, much less directly fired upon, one another.)

But in terms of Mackinder's theory (especially as he developed it in the 1920s) World War II was 2 "Outer / Insular Crescent" powers (US and Britain) plus the Heartland versus 2 "Inner / Marginal Crescent" powers (Germany and Japan) - see the image at the top of this page. And the bloodiest part of the whole war was Germany's attempt to invade Russia

Eastern Front (World War II)

The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of World War II between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland, and some other Allies which encompassed Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945...

, which was completely consistent with Mackinder's theory.

The Cold War

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

period (late 1940s to late 1980s) was long enough to present a real test of Mackinder's theory, as the Soviet Union:

controlled Eastern Europe and the Caucasus
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...

throughout this period and was therefore in a position to threaten or extend its influence into Western Europe and the oil-rich Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...

.
was apparently at a similar economic and technological level to the major Western powers (principally the US
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

).

As a result the Western powers' main objective during the Cold War was to limit the Soviet Union's expansion and influence by any means which would not lead to a nuclear war

Nuclear warfare

Nuclear warfare, or atomic warfare, is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weaponry is detonated on an opponent. Compared to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare can be vastly more destructive in range and extent of damage...

. Some Western pundits doubted whether the West could survive in the long term (centuries), and hardly anybody seriously considered attempting to reduce the Soviet Union's territory or influence.

But Mackinder had pointed out that "The actual balance of political power at any given time is… the product, on the one hand, of geographical conditions, both economic and strategic, and, on the other hand, of the relative number, virility, equipment and organization of the competing peoples."

And there was increasing evidence that the Soviet Union lacked "virility, equipment and organization":

Despite alarm in 1957-1960 about the "missile gap
Missile gap
The missile gap was the term used in the United States for the perceived disparity between the number and power of the weapons in the U.S.S.R. and U.S. ballistic missile arsenals during the Cold War. The gap only existed in exaggerated estimates made by the Gaither Committee in 1957 and United...

", in 1961 the US realised that its nuclear weapons exceeded the Soviet Union's in both number and quality.
By the mid 1970s it became apparent that the Soviet Union's economy was experiencing difficulties. The most visible symptom was that it was actually producing less food than in Tsarist times and had to import grain from the US from the early 1960s onwards.
The Soviet war in Afghanistan
Soviet war in Afghanistan
The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a nine-year conflict involving the Soviet Union, supporting the Marxist-Leninist government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan against the Afghan Mujahideen and foreign "Arab–Afghan" volunteers...

showed severe weaknesses in the Soviet army's training, morale and equipment which were symptoms of economic and social decay (Odom 1998).

United States' foreign affairs and the Heartland

Arguably, the United States has also been using the Heartland Theory in their guidelines in foreign affairs. The US has military bases all over the world and has kept good allies with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait which keep a United States influence in the Middle East, close to the Pivot Area. Having military presences in Afghanistan and the Iraq War gave the United States even more power in an area that is dire to having control of the Heartland.

Is Mackinder's theory obsolete?

Several developments since 1945 and especially since about 1970 could be regarded as making Mackinder's theory obsolete, or at least in need of upgrade to a more general theory. Mackinder's own formulations are evidently based on the situation of the early 1900s and his interpretation of history (mainly of the nineteenth century).

Bombers and missiles

Mackinder conceived his theory when launching an attack on another country took weeks or months and required efficient transport by sea (requires a strong navy) or land (requires good land transport). Now bombers can strike in hours and missiles in minutes, without the need for naval support or land transport infrastructure.

Experience from World War II

World War II

onwards suggests that successful strategic bombing

Strategic bombing

Strategic bombing is a military strategy used in a total war with the goal of defeating an enemy nation-state by destroying its economic ability and public will to wage war rather than destroying its land or naval forces...

requires control of the target country's airspace. Such air superiority requires a strong economy with "virility, equipment and organization" - and a sufficiently strong economy requires a rather large land area (e.g. that of China).

More recently strategic bombing has sometimes proved ineffective - notably in the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

.

The other main application of bombers is surgical strikes such as those by Israel

Operation Opera

Operation Babylon was a surprise Israeli air strike carried out on June 7, 1981, that destroyed a nuclear reactor under construction 17 kilometers southeast of Baghdad, Iraq....

against Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor or by (mainly) the US against Libya in 1986. But these raids were against opposition that was weaker than the attackers in every way, and therefore neither prove nor disprove any part of Mackinder's theory.

Missiles raise more complex issues, because most debate focusses on nuclear missiles. The theory of Mutual assured destruction

Mutual assured destruction

Mutual Assured Destruction, or mutually assured destruction , is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy in which a full-scale use of high-yield weapons of mass destruction by two opposing sides would effectively result in the complete, utter and irrevocable annihilation of...

led to a military stand-off between the US and the Soviet Union in which the two sides competed via proxy war

Proxy war

A proxy war or proxy warfare is a war that results when opposing powers use third parties as substitutes for fighting each other directly. While powers have sometimes used governments as proxies, violent non-state actors, mercenaries, or other third parties are more often employed...

s and economic attrition. This was ultimately a contest between the size of the Heartland and the "virility, equipment and organization" of the US economy and neither proves nor disproves any part of Mackinder's theory.

The rise of China to great power status

When Mackinder was writing, China's military force was such that quite modest Western forces could defeat it (e.g. the Opium Wars

Opium Wars

The Opium Wars, also known as the Anglo-Chinese Wars, divided into the First Opium War from 1839 to 1842 and the Second Opium War from 1856 to 1860, were the climax of disputes over trade and diplomatic relations between China under the Qing Dynasty and the British Empire...

) and even occupy its capital (e.g. during the Boxer Rebellion

Boxer Rebellion

The Boxer Rebellion, also called the Boxer Uprising by some historians or the Righteous Harmony Society Movement in northern China, was a proto-nationalist movement by the "Righteous Harmony Society" , or "Righteous Fists of Harmony" or "Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists" , in China between...

).

Mackinder did not foresee the rapid economic and technological progress China has made since about 1960, but his "Sino-Japanese empire" scenario showed that he was aware of China's potential - although he assumed that Japan would power China's modernisation.

Today the "far east" in general has been called the "industrial heartland of the global economy", because of the way China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan dominate industrial production.

The Middle East

Mackinder regarded the Middle East

Middle East

The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...

as part of the World-Island, but there is no evidence that he anticipated how oil would make some Middle Eastern states geopolitically important in their own right.

Technology and the Superpower US

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has often been described as the world's only superpower

Superpower

A superpower is a state with a dominant position in the international system which has the ability to influence events and its own interests and project power on a worldwide scale to protect those interests...

, mainly because its technological superiority in both economic and military fields outweighs the greater size of Russia and China.

The pace of modern technological progress and its consequences are a major exception to Mackinder's theory, which was formulated at a time when visible change took at least one generation.

Asymmetric warfare

In Mackinder's time the best-known examples of asymmetric warfare

Asymmetric warfare

Asymmetric warfare is war between belligerents whose relative military power differs significantly, or whose strategy or tactics differ significantly....

were the Boer War

Boer War

The Boer Wars were two wars fought between the British Empire and the two independent Boer republics, the Oranje Vrijstaat and the Republiek van Transvaal ....

and the rather unsuccessful British campaigns in Afghanistan

European influence in Afghanistan

The European influence in Afghanistan refers to political, social, and sometimes imperialistic influence several European nations have had on this historical development of Afghanistan.-Rise of Dost Mohammad Khan:...

, and neither example changed the global balance of power.

Asymmetric warfare is now widely regarded as the main threat to the US's dominance as the sole superpower. The main elements of this threat are:

The use of some modern technologies which appear to favour the "underdog". Some are used mainly for propaganda, e.g. cheap video cameras and the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

. Others can be used for the planning and control of unconventional attacks, e.g. disposable mobile phones and encrypted
Encryption
In cryptography, encryption is the process of transforming information using an algorithm to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information...

email
Email
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...

.
Willingness to use tactics which the opposition regard as illegal
Laws of war
The law of war is a body of law concerning acceptable justifications to engage in war and the limits to acceptable wartime conduct...

or even atrocious.
Giving a high priority to manipulating public opinion in the opposing country, in the country where war is being fought and in neutral countries; and particularly to exploiting any asymmetries in public reaction, e.g. to apparent atrocities by the "stronger" and "weaker" sides (a significant feature of the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

).

Asymmetric warfare is probably the most important exception to Mackinder's theory, which is fundamentally an economic theory of global political power and has nothing to say about the crucial psychological aspects of asymmetric warfare.

External links

The Geographical Pivot of History in The Geographical Journal, April 1904.
Democratic Ideals and Reality, Washington, DC: National Defence University Press, 1996, pp. 175–194]

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