Old theories offer new insight into global rivalry

The heart of geopolitics. When thinking about global political and economic rivalries, it sometimes helps to dust off old theories. A hypothesis dating back to before World War One posited that future geopolitical strife would revolve around control of the vast island of Eurasia. One way to understand the current war in Ukraine, conflict in the Middle East and superpower rivalry between the United States and China is through this prism.

The model, which British geographer Halford Mackinder proposed in 1904, splits Eurasia into a core and a periphery. The core, or “heartland”, is what is now eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia. The periphery is western Europe, the Middle East, India, China and so forth. Offshore are islands such as Britain and Japan - and further afield the much larger “islands” of the Americas and Australia.

Mackinder argued that what mattered was domination of Eurasia’s heartland, with its huge mineral wealth. A power that achieved that could then control the periphery. Almost four decades after Mackinder published his idea, Germany came close to doing so early in World War Two with its allies Japan and Italy, and its non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union.

The theory has sparked much discussion and dissent over the years. Nicholas Spykman, a rival American-Dutch political scientist, accepted that Eurasia was the focus of geopolitics. But writing in the period between the two World Wars he argued that what mattered most was control of the periphery, with its huge populations and access to the seas, which he called the “rimland”.

One way to view the allies’ subsequent victory in World War Two is that the peripheral islands led by the United States and Britain retook part of the rimland (Italy and France) before moving on to Germany. Of course, the rupture in the heartland between Germany and Russia was also an essential part of the story.

Spykman’s version of how to manage this great Eurasian contest was influential in the Cold War. Foreign policymakers in the United States believed they needed to control the rimland to contain the Soviet Union. This helps explain U.S. economic support for western Europe after World War Two via the Marshall Plan, the creation of NATO, and its willingness to fight wars in Korea and Vietnam.

Axis of upheaval

This analysis may seem helplessly out of date when trying to understand the power struggles shaping the modern world. Yet the framework is still valid, says Hal Brands, professor of global affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

There is an emerging network of pacts between China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. The first three are nuclear powers, and the latter has an advanced nuclear programme. Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Richard Fontaine at the Center for a New American Security have called this group the “Axis of Upheaval”.

What unites the four countries is a deep dislike of American hegemony, their autocratic systems, and a desire to break out of their territories. Russia wants to reinforce the fragmented heartland by gobbling up Ukraine, while China aims to strengthen its rimland by incorporating Taiwan into its territory and dominating the South China Sea.

The Ukraine war has accelerated their cooperation - with North Korea and Iran supplying arms to Russia, and China supporting President Vladimir Putin’s war machine, according to Kendall-Taylor and Fontaine. In return, the Kremlin is giving its partners military assistance.

Viewed from Washington, this axis looks like a bloc that controls a big chunk of Eurasia. Its members can trade with one another across their land borders - or, in the case of Iran and Russia, over the land-locked Caspian Sea. China’s export prowess and its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which improves connectivity between the heartland, rimland and the peripheral islands, make the axis seem especially threatening.

The United States has been building up its own network of alliances and partnerships in Europe, east Asia and elsewhere. Seen from Beijing and the other axis capitals, this looks like a policy of encirclement by controlling Eurasia’s rim and offshore islands.

This helps explain why the war in Ukraine is so vital for both blocs. If Russia prevails, the axis will have momentum. If Ukraine manages to hold the line, the U.S.-led alliance may have the wind in its sails.

Bloc dynamics

The logic of this dynamic of mutual fear is to divide the world in two. This damages prosperity, requires countries to invest more in less productive defence, and makes it harder to tackle global problems such as climate change. It also increases the risks that current conflicts turn into a broader conflagration.

In theory, one way to change the dynamic would be to separate China from the rest of the axis. A breakthrough in the middle of the Cold War came when the People’s Republic fell out with the Soviet Union and moved closer to the United States.

China’s dependence on global trade and its creaking economy might give it an incentive to reach some sort of accommodation with the United States. But Washington will not be able to repeat what it achieved in the Cold War because Chinese President Xi Jinping is determined to take Taiwan, says Robert Kaplan, the Robert Strausz-Hupé chair in geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Meanwhile, the United States will not risk applying the sort of economic sanctions that might get Beijing to change its mind because they would also hurt American consumers, says Philip Reeker, a former senior U.S. diplomat.

Fontaine says a more tantalising prospect is to pry Iran away from the axis when its 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei finally goes. But the Islamic Republic might equally fall under a military dictatorship.

Waiting for the axis to fracture could take decades. In the meantime, the United States’ best bet is to salvage what it can of the international rules-based order and put it on a firmer footing. Beefing up its defences and persuading its allies to do the same is part of the answer. But Washington would also benefit from acting less as a hegemon, avoiding the double standards it has been accused of displaying in Gaza, and providing rimland states a more attractive green alternative to China’s BRI. Whether it does so, however, depends less on old theories and more on whether American voters choose the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris or her Republican rival Donald Trump in next month’s presidential election.