Ioannis P. SOTIROPOULOS, PhD^

1. INTRODUCTION

At the threshold of the second quarter of the 21^st century, everything runs faster, and so does history. Science, technology, electronics, telecommunications, cybernetics and transportation are moving at unprecedented speed. However, no matter how advanced science has been, the basic human scope remains substantially the same. Indeed, as many new applications have been utilized in international relations, and geostrategy, the geopolitical model in analysis and the geostrategic model in sovereign states’ synthesis and action remain basically the same. It is what Anglo-Saxon geopolitical thought established, which essentially founded the current systems of theoretical thinking, strategic planning and tactical practicing, shaping, to an extremely large extent, the foreign policy of sovereign states. This is demon-strated daily in the political-military crises and wars, with prominent ones, the crisis between Russia vs Western Community and the Russo-Ukrainian war, causing a geopolitical déjà vu from our recent history of the Cold War.

2. THE ANGLO-SAXON GEOPOLITICAL THOUGHT
   AND ITS FUNDAMENTAL IMPLEMENTATION

There is no doubt that the western strategic thinking has been greatly influenced by the fundamental analyses of the geopolitical aspect in world politics of the approaches of British Professor Sir Halford Mackinder and American analyst Nicholas Spykman, which drastically affected, if not shaped, the architecture and NATO’s policies in the post war era.

According to Mackinder,¹ basic terms in world geography that directly influence the geopolitics of power are: ‘Heartland’ (an updated version of the ‘Pivot Area’ of 1904) which covered the continental mass of Central Eurasia around which exists a ‘coastal

inner marginal crescent’ consisting of coastal countries of Europe and Asia;² with an ‘insular or outer crescent’ comprised of Oceania, Africa and American Continent.³ More specifically according to Spykman “Mackinder first realized the importance of the ‘Pivot Area’ by understanding the value of a central location with interior lines of communication, strengthened and consolidated by the development of land transportation to the point where it could begin to compete with sea communications. He also predicted the transformation of the steppe from an area of low to an area of high economic potential.”.⁴ Furthermore, he argues that any organised state with internal cohesion dominating the Heartland (Continental Power) could easily, under certain circumstances, accumulate and increase to the maximum the traditional forms of power, the continental and naval, dominating the ‘World Island’ (the total of the continental mass off the planet, excluding Oceania) and eventually the World.

…“Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland:

Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island:

Who rules the World-Island commands the World.”⁵

As it appears Mackinder believed that the continental terrestrial masses of Central Eurasia were of great geopolitical significance. This opinion was derived from the fact that they had a high degree of self-sufficiency in natural resources; their inland was extremely vast in relation to human needs and activities, allowing for military maneuver whenever necessary. Moreover, the geographical area of the geostrategic upgraded Eastern Europe, the potential source of world control, is perimetrically protected by a series of mountain chains (Urals, Caucasus, Transylvanic Alps, Alps), large rivers and lakes (Volga, Danube, Caspian Sea, Aral Sea), and arctic territory.

However, this also posed a geostrategic disadvantage as it did not provide a safe, operative and strategically located port (centrally in the World Island), in order to utilise the inexhaustible resources of the continent and build a predominant fleet to wipe out the naval powers. Indeed, after the Mongolian Empire, the Russian Empire, and subsequently the Soviet Union, had no port that was not frozen during the winter or with unobstructed exit, since the northern ports and those of the Okhotsk Sea are blocked by ice in the winter, while those of the Baltic, Black Sea and Murmansk as well as the Vladivostok port exits are controlled by other states.⁶ Baltic Sea ports are controlled by West Germany, a member of NATO; Black Sea ports are controlled by Turkey and Greece, both members of NATO; Murmansk controlled by Norway a member of NATO; and Vladivostok controlled by Japan and South Korea, pure allies of the US in the region of the Far East. Historically, the rulers of the area in their effort to overcome the problem and insofar as human natural drive is the drive for expansion, were pushing to move further south in order to reach the ‘warm waters’ of the Indian and Pacific Oceans and the Mediterranean Sea, inevitably attai-ning, in the event of success, world domination.

In order to prevent this, and since the raison d’ etat commands the constant competition for accumulation of power among states, the naval and commercial powers, with main representative the British Empire and after the war US, ought to, in one hand keep the eurasian continental powers divided politically⁷, and on the other to keep them blocked as far away possible from the “warm waters”. In order to achieve the latter, the British Empire had created an extensive chain of friendly states or colonies (or at least hostile to the Russian Empire, as in the cases of Germany and Japan) that constituted the perimetric crescent of Eurasia (Inner Marginal Crescent for Mackinder), from Western Europe to Japan. As it is well perceived, Mackinder’s theoretical model is the modern source of the theory of the Policy of Containment. More specifically, Spykman,⁸ expanding Mackinder’s theoretical analysis, gave a new perception to the whole issue. According to him “Who controls the Rimland controls Eurasia, who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the world”.⁹ Indeed, during the Cold War the United States, successor to the British Empire, struggled to maintain control over the periphery of Eurasia, (Rimland for Spykman), blocking the descent of the Soviet Union which dominated the area of the ‘Heartland’.¹⁰

Hence, the interventions in Korea, Vietnam, the Marshall and Colombo plans, the post war support to Japan and the founding of CENTO¹¹, SEATO¹² and even that of NATO¹³, made the US’s foreign policy of containment obvious. Even more, the case of Afghanistan identified by many analysts and scholars of the time, as Moscow’s greatest attempt in the post war era to break the asphyxiating encirclement of the Western powers, through the Inner Marginal Crescent for Mackinder or Rimland for Spykman, initially with peaceful means until 1979 and eventually militarily in December of the same year.¹⁴

3. THE CONTINENTAL POWER AND THE ‘NEAR ABROAD’

With the collapse / self-dissolution of the USSR in 1991, the question was rightly raised whether the geopolitical framework in which the international relations con-ducted and the two superpowers operated after WWII would still be valid, or whether rising globalization and Pax-Americana would prevail, radically changing the key variables of the international modus vivendi. The answer was given by the US and NATO themselves, which, utilizing the power of the winner of the Cold War, expanded further east on the European continent, since the collapse of the totalitarian communist regimes gave way to pluralistic democracy and a liberal economy. Thus, in addition to the European Union’s enlargement eastwards, at the beginning of the millennium the map of NATO had also expanded much further towards the east. The NATO members that entered the alliance in the first decade of 2000 are the following: 1999 – Poland, Czechia, Hungary, 2004 – Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bul-garia, 2009 – Croatia, Albania.¹⁵ Indeed, for the first time after at least 55 years, Eastern Europe tasted national emancipation and state autonomy within the current inter-national system of sovereign states. But it is not only the Western Community, US, NATO and the EU that has continued to operate in Mackinder’s and Spykman’s realistic geopo–litical framework. After the neglect of the first decade, Russia also, came back to the fore claiming a share of influence in the geographical area of Eastern Europe and beyond.

Despite the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the immediate establishment of 14 independent states¹⁶ in the geopolitically sensitive region at the perimeter of Russia, Moscow still enjoys the lion share in the political, economic and military control in much of the region. Since 1994, it has introduced in its foreign policy the principle of the ‘Near Abroad’ [ближнее зарубежье]. According to this, Russia asserts the right for itself to exert major influence, in all aspects of power, (strategic, political, military, economic, energy, cultural), within the geographical space and the decision making procedure of the successor independent states, which emerged following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in 1991. In other words, Kremlin deems the new republics within its sphere of influence¹⁷ and acts on preferential terms in its areas of interest. As an absolute indication of Russia’s intentions for the unwavering implementation of the theoretical principle of ‘Near Abroad’, the Russian foreign policy shows hypersensitive reflexes, acting directly and vigorously in the area of the former Soviet Socialist Republics, as evidenced in vivo by the interventions in Georgia, in 2008, in Ukraine in 2013 and 2022, the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and the integration effort of Belarus, which is in progress.¹⁸ The Western Community, with the exception of Russo-Ukrainian crisis and war, has reacted hypotonically to Russian actions, reaffirming Russia’s superiority in its de facto privileged ‘Near Abroad’ region. Consequently, it would be extremely negative for Kremlin’s and country’s status as well as the application of its entire foreign policy, for a change in the degree of control over ‘Near Abroad’ to be effected, having also, immeasurable consequences and chain reactions internationally.

The updated codification of the ‘Near Abroad’ is intergraded in the official ‘The Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation’¹⁹, which has been released on 31 March of 2023: “The most important for the security, stability, territorial integrity and social and economic development of Russia, strengthening its position as one of the influential sovereign centres of world development and civilization is to ensure sustainable long-term good-neighbourly relations and to combine the strengths in various fields with the CIS member states, which are connected with Russia by centuries-old traditions of joint statehood, deep interdependence in various fields, a common language and close cultures. With the purpose of further transformation of the Near Abroad into a zone of peace, good neighbourliness, sustainable development and prosperity…”,²⁰ and the 1^rst of the 9 paragraphs states: “the Russian Federation intends to give priority to: preventing and resolving armed conflicts, improving inter-state relations, and ensuring stability in the Near Abroad, including preventing the instigation of ‘colour revolutions’ and other attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of Russia’s allies and partners;”.²¹

It is obvious that the concept of ‘Near Abroad’ serves Moscow’s attempt to ‘salvage’ what it can from the collapse / self-dissolution of the erstwhile Soviet Empire, maintaining and if necessary creating its own sphere of political, economic and cultural influence around it. But more importantly for Kremlin is that the geographical space of the ‘Near Abroad’ coincides with much of the space of the privileged geographical area of Mackinder’s Heartland. A comparison of the relevant maps proves this to be true. The Kremlin’s influence in the given region gives it an extra supra value strategic leverage in the perpetual competition between naval/maritime and continental powers.

4. THE CASE OF UKRAINE

4.1. Ukraine’s geopolitical identity as linchpin state

It seems that historically, Ukraine was always of a significant geopolitical value for Moscow. Zbigniew Brzezinski famously argued that “without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire”²². But what did he mean by that? In the midst of the Cold War, back in 1986, Brzezinski had formulated in his book Game Plan, How To Conduct The U.S. Soviet Contest, the notion of the linchpin state. In the current geopolitical architecture of the Cold War there were three basic theater of antagonism / war between NATO and Warsaw Pact; the european theater, the far east theater and the west Asia theater in the soft underbelly of the Soviet Union.²³ And according to him, “The political outcome of the contests on each of the three central strategic fronts is likely to be determined largely by who gains or retains control over several key countries that have become the geopolitical linchpin in their respective regions. A linchpin state is one that is intrisingly important and in some sense “up for grabs”. The importance of a linchpin state might stem from its geopolitical position radiating regional political and/or economic influence or geostrategic location that makes it militarily significant. Its vulnerability raises the possibility that it might be susceptible to other seduction or take over, the latter in turn affecting its current external affiliations. Other states may be equally or even more important but their firm anchorage in one or the other system indicates that they are fixed points, not catalytic linchpins.”.²⁴ According to Brzezinski, during the Cold War these states are the following: “These linchpin states are Poland and Germany on the far western front; South Korea and the Philippines on the far eastern front; and either Iran or the combination of Afghanistan and Pakistan on the southwestern front [the soft underbelly].”²⁵

It is remarkable, that in post-Cold War era, the state that meets all the geopo-litical criteria of a linchpin state is by far Ukraine. Indeed, in a projection of Brzezinski’s logic about linchpin states, the current crisis comes to reminds and confirms their importance in the modern world. Maybe for someone, it starts the ‘New Cold War’ between the Naval Powers vs the Continental Power of the globe.²⁶ Similarly, to Poland’s role during the Cold War, the control of Ukraine, would help the Continental Power to reinforce its position in Europe, exerting pressure on Poland, but also influencing the states of Eastern and Central Europe, while a political linkage with Germany would result the transformation of the european political balance in favor of Moscow. Being part of Mackinder’s ‘Inner Crescent’ and Spykman’s ‘Rimland’, the control over Ukraine would increase the dynamics and the number of the geostrategic alternatives for Kremlin, by ensuring adequate berthing for the Russian Fleet in the Black Sea and by supporting catalytically in the ultimate projection of the Russian power via the Ukrainian territory in the Warms Waters of the Mediterranean Sea. Indeed, the annexation of Crimea to Russia in March of 2014 and the recent occupation of South-East Ukraine, has, greatly, re-surfaced the international interest on the issue of the geopolitical importance of the Straits of Bosporus and Dardanelles, exit points of the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea and the ‘outside world’, which even though are governed by special agreements of the international law, consist sovereign part of the Turkish state, a NATO member. More specifically, in the first place, the Lausanne Treaty legally entrenched Turkish authority to the Straits, at the same time clearly granting permanent permission for all foreign battle ships to pass through undisturbed. Nevertheless, in 1936, with the Treaty of Montreux, Turkey was given the right to limit the time of passage through and stay within the Straits to vessels from non-costal to the Black Sea states, such as for example, the US, Greece or the United Kingdom. Now, in the ‘New Cold War’ sense of things, amidst the crisis, a potential misunderstanding, or even worse an intentional artful instigation by the Western Community and NATO, (i.e. Turkey), aiming at the revision of the existing legal regime or common practice naval conditions concerning the passage and stay of Russian trade, but predomi-nantly warships, could escalate the crisis, where Turkey would be the main political and natural ‘terrain’ of dispute and/or actual confrontation.

4.2. The Russo-Ukrainian war and the trends of the so-called ‘‘New Cold War’’.
Similar Geopolitical Trends yes, ‘New Cold War’ no

As early as in 2014, the envoy of Time Magazine in the area, Simon Shuster, has criticized President Putin on all matters, saying that he is advancing in an effort to further break up Europe, destroy the NATO umbrella and impose the Russian influence in the entire world.²⁷ In addition, he comments that Putin has a great talent for creating problems that only he can resolve and for this reason he pursues crises that the westerns are trying to avoid, giving the Syrian crisis as an example. As the voice of American great fear, Shuster concludes that Putin aims to shrink the American influence and wants a Europe from Portugal to the Russian coasts of the Pacific with Moscow as its epicenter, in a real subtle reference to the Eurasian dreams²⁸ of leaders such as Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. However, the Moscow’s ambitions for a Eurasian prevalence with spearhead the geopolitical factor of energy, has been repeatedly stated by certain poles of western analysts and think-tanks, in an attempt to project the future of Eurasia.

As far as the Ukrainian issue, in geopolitical terms, an ‘unbroken’ Ukraine with the industrially developed, as well as rich in energy reserves eastern part remaining in the country, enables Kremlin to control Kiev’s economic prosperity, at least for the next few decades. In addition, it empowers it, to co-shape the variables of the triangular geopolitical sub-system that is created from the interaction of the Zone of Visegrad, (Visegrádská or Visegrádi or Vyšehradská or Wyszehradzka), the northern Balkans and the pro-west Kiev, at any time. Indeed, by exploiting the long arm of the eastern, pro-Russian regions, Kremlin exerts political influence throughout the country, to its western end in the Carpathian Ruthenia Mountains and Bessarabia, achieving to a large extent the alignment of Kiev with its foreign policy callings. Furthermore, the precedent of the annexation of Crimea in 2014, has opened new political and diplomatic ‘fronts’ for Moscow, (i.e. see the autonomous region of Transnistria), which expect similar actions and with which Moscow cannot cope on a political level and will be ‘a headache’ in the future. It becomes apparent that Kremlin is not primarily annoyed by Kiev’s low-medium level relations with the western community; it is rather afraid of Kiev’s integration of NATO and European Union, and it is also strongly interested for the adherence to the fundamental principles of the Russian Policy of ‘Near Abroad’ (ближнее зарубежье), (blizhneye zarubezhiye), according to which it perceives the geographical area surrounding Russia, which coincides with the former Soviet Republics, as its privileged geostrategic terrain and rightful sphere of post-Soviet influence. For this reason, any discussion of Ukraine’s accession to NATO is perceived by Moscow, as a severe aggression against its red lines.

It becomes apparent that the current relations between the Western Community, and particularly the US, with Russia, which is expressed with political suspiciousness and distrust, statements of recrimination, a war of propaganda and a programme of extraordinary military and aero-nautical exercises on both sides of the Russian-Eastern Europe-Baltic Sea, Black Sea, as well as the threat of an extra series of escalating economic and diplomatic sanctions’ programme on Moscow, reminds of the Cold War era and practices. Moreover, no state of the said area is in a position to act autono-mously, pursuing its own national interests amidst the current crisis. The majority of the states, being either members of the EU or NATO, or both, owe to promote their national interests via the mechanisms of the institution they belong to, committing to follow a clear foreign policy that stems from very specific international conventions and binding agreements they have signed with Brussels (EU, NATO). The same applies even to those states that do not belong to the aforementioned supra–national political–economic union and collective defence organisation, since they are either candidate members or aspiring ones such as Sweden. Accordingly, they need to weigh carefully their proposed and implemented foreign policy on a daily basis, given that any move they make could be perceived by the power centers, (international poles of influence), of NATO and the EU as erroneous, creating problems in their accession course. For example, on a bilateral level, many of the South-east Europe states are heavily de-pendent on international poles of power, such as the EU, US, Russia and Germany and inevitably opt to follow the safe route of political and economic alignment with their patrons. This ‘releases and diffuses’ the tendency for reorientation of the inter-national security system into a form of a so-called ‘‘New Cold War’’, where phenomena similar to those in the period of the classic Cold War occurred, namely, the align-ment of the liberal states behind and by the Naval Power of the USA vs the Continental Power of Russia. However, the real Cold War has inherently different characteristics from the current international system. First of all, the main driving force was the ideological competition of two diametrically different socio-economic systems. On the one hand there was liberal capitalism with liberal democracy and the free economy, in all its versions, and on the other Marxism-Leninism with the dictatorship of the proletariat and the centrally planned economy. With bipolarity triumphant, the vast majority of states aligned themselves with the one or the other superpower and implemented its ideological and political dictates, social and economic practices. At the present stage, despite the rallying of the Western Community, there is no such bipolarity. In the current international system, there is no zero sum game, nor is China squeezed into its corner, in Southeast Asia. The bipolarity of the Cold War has now been replaced by a multipolar world. USA, Russia, China, India, Brazil and EU are, at least, the international actors that interact in a complex way, within a capitalist eco-nomic environment that they all accept.²⁹ China in particular has the most dynamic growth in power, rapidly closing the gap with the US. Besides, the political master-mind behind the Policy of Containment, George Kennan, “sought to establish American hegemony in the ‘Rimland’ by turning it into a secure containment ring, impervious to the spread of communist ideas”³⁰. In other words, the prominent american diplomat gave ideology the primary role in the Cold War conflict between the US and the USSR, which in the case of the so-called by many “New Cold War” has not been proposed as the tip of the spear in the international arena. If a “New Cold War” is going to happen, if it wasn’t a hot one, it would logically be between the US and China.

Thus, in this new form of war, the ideological confrontation is not in the first rank of the agendas of the actors, since the differences are focused primarily on the individual, and matters such as tolerance and diversity, LGBT issues, but also the establishment of the democratic ideas, the freedom of speech and the ways of political confrontation, with Moscow retaining the conservative position for itself. Without a doubt, on the ideological and cultural agenda there are indeed huge differences between the US / Western Community and Russia. For example, in Russia a law was passed that prohibits gender reassignment operations,³¹ and by order of President Putin, a psychiatric institute is under creation to study the behavior of LGBT people,³² while on the antipode, in Germany a law was passed that deprives parents of their parental rights if they disagree with their child’s decision to change gender.³³ Also, a prominent liberal priest faces expulsion from the Russian Orthodox Church for refusing to read a prayer asking God to guide Russia to victory over Ukraine.³⁴ Something similar would be unthinkable in the vast majority of states of the Western Community. Consequently, while there are serious differences at the ideological and cultural level, they remain as they are, without being raised as points of international confrontation, yet.

The Russo-Ukrainian war has not begun by a subjective opportunistic political feeling or by a dysfunctional process in the foreign policy of the actors’ states. President Putin has not been driven by a great deal of nostalgia, but of great deal of geopolitical realism. The historical course of the Russo-Ukrainian relations,³⁵ amidst upsides and depression reveals crisis’ of geopolitical nature. The historical triangular pattern of the Imperial Berlin – Tsarist Saint Petersburg – Kiev is repeated as Washing-ton / Brussels / Berlin – Moscow – Kiev with the added value of the european effort for energy security, which elevates the significance of options to the zenith. Nonetheless, the current war is not an energy related one. It is the flourish of the history of the geopolitical truth that was buried for quite some 30 years. Ukraine is the modern linchpin state for the Continental Power of Russia, in its geostrategic dispute with the Western Community, the Naval Powers. It becomes apparent that the Russo-Ukrainian crisis and subsequent war, generated a NATO – Russia crisis that is to affect the world in the long-run as well. In the emerging geopolitical framework, the so-called ‘‘New Cold War’’ for many analysts, the Western Community maintains and use at their discretion their technological supremacy as well as their financial insti-tutions global network advantage, when Russia attempts to maximize the advantage of its supremacy in conventional weaponry in the wider geographic area of Eurasia and every cubic centimeter of natural gas that can export to Europe. The new con-frontation has a series of vital and tangible causes of ideological and cultural nature for the Western Community, namely the containment of an expanding Russia, via the esta-blishment of democratic values, the ideas of tolerance and diversity in society, freedom of speech and political pluralism, worldwide. On the other hand, Moscow, has its own agenda in this antagonistic process, namely to secure the ‘Near Abroad’ Russian policy, by controlling the linchpin state of Ukraine and protecting the nearly 8 million of Russians, Ukrainian citizens, in the country. Finally, it seems that the current situation has been erroneously characterised as a ‘‘New Cold War’’, since their few common characteristics are that the geographical field of competition is located between open seas and Pivot Area / Heartland within the Inner Crescent / Rimland and the European Strategic Front,³⁶ the alignment of the Naval and most liberal states vs the Continental Power and that the principal military and political actors are the same, (USA / Western Community, Russia). Despite the similarities, the present international system, technically, cannot be accepted as ‘New Cold War’.

5. CONCLUSION

There is no doubt that the Russian-Ukrainian war and the crisis between the Western Community and Russia created new trends in the international system and their consequences will decisively affect its future.

The Western Community following the secure and certain steps of the Anglo-Saxon geopolitical theories of Mackinder and Spykman in its attempt to maintain the geopolitical acquisitions that followed the end of the Cold War, reflecting on its expansion eastwards across the border with Russia, from the Baltic Sea, Eastern Europe to the Balkans. On the antipode, Moscow tries to maintain its physical presence and its undeniable influence in the ‘Near Abroad’, which coincides geographically, on the one hand with a large part of the Western expansion between 1991-2010, and on the other with a large part of the ‘Inner Crescent’/’Rimland’ of the geopolitical theories that determined the strategy of the West during the Cold War.

There is no doubt that the prevailing geopolitical pattern in the crisis between the Western Community and Russia, i.e. the Naval, commercial, liberal powers vs the Continental Power, derives, having much in common with that of the Cold War. Nevertheless, the current international situation does not constitute a so-called ‘‘New Cold War’’, because apart from few similarities with the real Cold War, there is, inter alia, no bipolar status but a tendency towards multipolar status, in the current international system, the burden of competition is not ideological, and the economic systems of the adversaries’ function under the rules of the free market and capitalism.

The specific phase that the international system is going through currently, could be, grosso modo, a preparatory stage for the Western Community to mobilize at all levels to the highest degree in order to face the rising China. It appears to be an early manifestation, a prelude towards the climax of the US-China rivalry across the planet in the near future.

Bibliography

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1. Capital.gr, 13 January, 2024. Ρωσία: Αποβάλλεται ιεράς που δεν προσευχήθηκε για νίκη επί της Ουκρανίας (capital.gr)

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APPENDIX

 Map no 1: Mackinder’s geopolitical view of the world in 1904

Source: Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection, University of Texas at Austin

  Map no 2: Mackinder’s geopolitical view of the world in 1919

Source: Mackinder, Halford John, Democratic Ideals and Reality. A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction, Henry Holt and Company Inc, New York, 1919

Map no 3: Spykman’s geopolitical view of the world in 1943

Source: Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection, University of Texas at Austin

Map no 4: Spykman’s geopolitical view of the world in 1943

Source: euro-synergies.hautetfort.com

  Map no 5: The three strategic fronts of the Cold War.
Mackinder’s analytical prediction and Spykman’s strategic influence are remarkable

Source: CA & CC Publishing House, https://www.ca-c.org/journal/2005/journal_eng/cac-04/02.megeng.shtml

   Map no 6: CENTO/ Bagdad Pact, (1955-1979)

Source: Writer’s artwork

  Map no 10: The ‘Near Abroad’

Source: Arsenal Research, A Beginner’s Guide to the Post-Soviet ‘Near Abroad’

  Map no 11: The three theatres of the Cold War

Source: Infognomon Publications, Infognomon Politics – Infognomon Politics