Joseph E. FALLON

Geopolitics examines the counter-intuitive nature of history. As the French writer, Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote in 1849, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”¹ In the dynamics of international politics, the one constant is “questions of influence and power over space and territory” on the foreign policy a state pursues. The questions led stronger states to impose “world orders” to maintain their ascendency – Pax Romana², Pax Mongolica³, Pax Ottomana⁴, Pax Britannica⁵, Pax Sovietica⁶, and Pax Americana.⁷ (Diagrams 1-5)

 Diagram 1⁸

 Diagram 2⁹

 Diagram 3¹⁰

 Diagram 4¹¹

Diagram 5¹²

By the 20^th Century, inventions of the Industrial Revolution had become a force multiplier on  “questions of influence and power over space and territory.”

To address this issue a new academic field emerged, geopolitics. It seeks

“to understand how the new industrial capabilities of transportation, communication, and destruction – most notably railroads, steamships, air-planes, telegraphy, and explosives – interacting with the largest-scale geo-graphic features of the Earth would shape the character, number, and location of viable security units in the emerging global international system.”¹³

In 1904, Halford John Mackinder presented a paper to the Royal Geographic Society in London entitled “The Geographical Pivot of History.”¹⁴ In it, he explained his “Heartland Theory” analyzing the centrality of the Pivot Area of Eurasia in the rise and fall of past empires and its importance in the emergence of new ones. (Map 1)

 Map 1.¹⁵ Mackinder’s Pivot Area in “Heartland Theory”

Fifteen years later, in his 1919 book, Democratic Ideals and Reality,¹⁶ he summarized his theory in three lines.

“Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland [Pivot Area]:

Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island [Eurasia-Africa]:

Who rules the World-Island commands the World.”¹⁷

  Map 2. The six natural regions of the World-Island

The World-Island is the prize. Home to most of the world’s population and “the holy grail of natural resources,”¹⁸ it is insular and self-contained. Mackinder divided it into six regions with the Mediterranean Sea, an inner sea of this supercontinent. (Map 2)

According to Mackinder,

“North America, South America, Britain, Japan, Australia, and lesser islands …are mere satellites of the World-Island.”¹⁹

His presentation “is often considered as a, if not the, founding moment of geopolitics as a field of study, although Mackinder did not use the term.”²⁰

The term “geopolitics” was first coined by his contemporary, Swedish political scientist, Rudolf Kjellén in 1899. “[I]ts use spread throughout Europe in the period between World Wars I and II (1918–39) and came into worldwide use during the latter.”²¹

Geopolitics has been defined as a theory in three parts.

“First, it is concerned with questions of influence and power over space and territory. Second, it uses geographical frames to make sense of world affairs. Third, geopolitics is future-oriented.”²²

It can be argued that geopolitics, in some form, is as old as the state. Whatever its size: small or large; whatever its structure: city-state, empire, republic or kingdom; whatever its form: unitary, federal, or confederal; whatever its nature: monarchy or tyranny, aristocracy or oligarchy, democracy or ochlocracy, geopolitics, “questions of influence and power over space and territory” has, to a significant degree, shaped the foreign policy a state chooses to pursue or is forced to adopt.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”²³ “Questions of influence and power over space and territory” framed the strategy of Sparta and Persia in the Persian Wars,²⁴ Sparta and Athens in the Peloponnesian War,²⁵ Rome and Carthage in the Punic Wars,²⁶ the United Kingdom and France in the Napoleonic Wars,²⁷ the United Kingdom and Russia in the “Great Game,”²⁸ the Allies and the Axis in World War II,²⁹ and the United States and the Soviet Union in the “Cold War.”³⁰

“Questions of influence and power over space and territory”

have a profound impact on peace after war. How victorious powers treat the borders of defeated powers has a direct bearing on the duration of peace.

After the Napoleonic Wars, the 1815 Congress of Vienna³¹ redrew the political borders of Europe based on a balance of power ensuring 100 years of relative peace in Europe.

After World War I, the 1919-1920 Paris Peace Conference³² redrew the political borders of Europe based on retribution, which helped to ignite World War II twenty years later.

After World War II, the Potsdam Agreement³³ and Paris Peace Treaties³⁴ of 1947 altered Europe’s borders reducing the size of former Axis states, as well as Poland, and enlarging the size of Allied states. But Europe was no longer home to great powers. The war had been an act of collective suicide. Power had shifted to Europe’s extremities – the United States and the Soviet Union, which divided Europe with an ideological border. As Winston Churchill observed “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”³⁵ The Cold War had commenced. Global in scope its principal theater was the World-Island.

From 1945 to 1991, the Cold War saw the Soviet Union adopt and adapt Mackinder’s “Heartland Theory” to its foreign policy of expansionism while the United States countered with a foreign policy based on the rival “Rimland Theory.” Summarized in two lines:

“Who controls the rimland rules Eurasia; who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the world.”³⁶

It had been proposed in 1942 by Nicholas John Spykman, a professor of international relations at Yale University, in The Geography of Peace.³⁷ (Map 3)

  Map 3.³⁸ Heartland versus Rimland

  Map 4.³⁹ Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU),
Free Trade Agreements, and Economic Cooperation Agreements

In the quest for global hegemony, the Soviet Union failed and imploded. While the United States emerged victorious from the Cold War, a “hyperpower” – “a country that is more powerful than every other country in every aspect. It is more powerful than a superpower”⁴⁰ – it, too, failed to achieve global hegemony. Washington has been blocked from expanding into the heartland of Eurasia by Moscow’s power projection into the rimland. (Map 4)

While things changed with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, things also remained the same. A new rivalry for global hegemony now emerged between China and the United States. Possessing the world’s second largest economy⁴¹ and third largest military⁴², China is challenging the United States, the world’s leading economic⁴³ and military power⁴⁴, seeking to replace “Pax Americana” the post-Cold War world order, with Beijing’s own “Pax Sinica.”

  Map 5.⁴⁵ China’s Belt-Road Initiative

  Map 6.⁴⁶ China’s Six Eurasia Land Corridors

As in the first Cold War, the contest centers on “influence and power” in the World-Island. With its Belt Road Initiative,⁴⁷ China’s strategy follows Soviet strategy of adapting Mackinder’s “Heartland Theory” to foreign policy. (Maps 5 and 6).

Washington responded by applying its Cold War policy to contain Soviet expansionism, the “Rimland Theory,” to China. “North America, South America, Britain, Japan, Australia, and lesser islands” form an anaconda snake constricting the World-Island able to interdict China’s maritime trade including energy imports. (Map 7)

Both strategies assumed global stability. The assumption was wrong. Global stability has been unsettled by the growing impact of the end of the Cold War — the emergence of a multitude of new, weak states, many with disputed borders.

As a result, political instability has been increasing throughout much of the World-Island with secessions, coups, emergence of non-state actors, and increased rivalry among states for regional hegemony – Iran and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, Morocco and Algeria in Northwest Africa, China and India in South Asia, China and Vietnam in the South China Sea, and NATO and Russia in Eastern Europe.

 Map 7.⁴⁸ U.S. Overseas Bases surrounding the Rimland of the World-Island

While Beijing aggressively pursues claims in the South and East China Seas, continues to threaten Taiwan, and has border disputes with India, China’s actions have not yet provoked instability in Asia. (Map 8)

  Map 8.⁴⁹ China’s Land and Maritime Disputes

That is not the case in Africa and Europe where the security of states and the integrity of borders are being successfully challenged by non-state actors — migrants, terrorists, and criminal cartels. (Map 9)

  Map 9⁵⁰

For Africa, the secession of Eritrea from Ethiopia in 1993⁵¹ opened a Pandora’s box. In 2011, South Sudan next seceded from Sudan⁵². According to Article III of the Charter of the Organization of African Unity “member States solemnly affirm the principle of respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of every State.’”⁵³ After the Cold War, the Organization of African Unity has been applying that principle selectively and with adverse results.

In acquiescing to these two secessions, but refusing to recognize the independence of Somaliland, which seceded from Somalia in 1991 and has been a de facto working state for thirty years⁵⁴, the Organization of African Unity has not bolstered the internal unity of either Ethiopia, Sudan, or Somalia. And separatist movements still contribute to political instability in Africa. (Map 10)

  Map 10.⁵⁵ New States and Secessionist Movements

As cohesion of states weakened, criminal cartels and Salafi-Jihadi movements became more aggressive. In many instances, non-state actors became “states” unto themselves exercising de facto control over specific territory. By 2022, “Violence and lawlessness further escalated across the Western Sahel and Lake Chad Basin, where radical Islamist groups (both domestic and transnational) expanded their operations and reach to coastal countries.”⁵⁶ (Map 11)

  Map 11⁵⁷

Map 12⁵⁸

Such political turmoil provoked military coups in the Sahel, which further destabilized the region. (Map 12)

While some borders in Africa changed, others remained intact but are porous. They are lines on a map delineating territory over which the central government exerts little effective control. Under such conditions crime and violence have prolife-rated. Interventions by European and Asian governments to reestablish political stability have failed. (Map 13)

  Map 13⁵⁹

A potential source of even greater instability in the World-Island is Europe and not just as a consequence of the Russian-Ukrainian War. For Europe, the problem began in 1991, when three Communist ruled states in Eastern Europe – Czecho-slovakia, Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia – splintered into 23 independent states. While “international recognition of Kosovo has been mixed, and the international community continues to be divided on the issue.”⁶⁰ (Map 14)

  Map 14. Changes in the borders of Eastern European States After the Cold War

Many new states are weak and corrupt, with disputed borders, and are, them-selves, likely to fragment. One result has been regional instability with on-again, off-again conflicts in Bosnia,⁶¹ Kosovo,⁶² Karabakh,⁶³ and South Ossetia.⁶⁴ In February 2022, the largest military conflict in Europe since World War II erupted between Russia and Ukraine over borders⁶⁵.

Another potential source of instability is “blowback,” a term coined by the CIA in the 1950s for “an unforeseen and unwanted effect, result, or set of repercussions”⁶⁶, from Western European governments support for the breakup of Eastern European states on grounds of promoting democracy and national self-determination. Now those same principles pose a threat to the integrity of Western European states. (Map 15)

  Map 15⁶⁷

While Western governments accepted the legitimacy of votes for indepen-dence by five republics from Yugoslavia and fourteen republics from the Soviet Union, they rejected votes for independence by Venice, Bavaria and Catalonia from Italy, Germany, and Spain.

But as these governments fail to curtail actions by non-state actors in Western Europe, support for secessionism may grow. And a Russian victory over Ukraine would enable Moscow to provide support to secessionist movements throughout Western Europe.

As the West championed nationalism to break up the Soviet Union, so Russia could now exploit nationalism to fragment Western European states. And a number of new states in Western Europe, potentially hostile to one another, would benefit the geostrategic position of Russia.

States that could be fragmented include NATO members – Norway, Sweden and Finland – where Russia could champion independence for the Sami people. (Map 16)

  Map 16.⁶⁸ Location of indigenous Sami people

  Map 17. Location of Norway’s Petroleum fields

For Norway, in particular, Sami secession would result in a significant loss not only of territory but in off-shore oil wealth, as well. (Map 17)

Politically, strategically, logistically, and financially, the secession of the Sami would be an even greater loss for NATO. Geopolitics is a game of political chess. NATO’s threat to Russia’s southwest through Ukraine could be checkmated by Russia’s threat to NATO’s northeast through an independent Sami state.

For China and the United States, the increasing instability in Africa and Eastern Europe, with potential to spread to Western Europe and Asia, is undermining their global positions. In trying to address instabilities while pursuing global strategies, Beijing and Washington are overreaching; endangering their financial solvency and their own political stability.

Hegemony is attempting to remain atop a slippery pole. As Sparta supplanted Athens, as Rome supplanted Greece, as German tribes supplanted Rome…as the United States supplanted the Soviet Union, so to, as the power of China and the United States wane, other states will supplant them as hegemons. Then one day, those states will, themselves, be supplanted by new aspiring powers pursuing “questions of influence and power over space and territory.” In this, history is cyclical.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”⁶⁹