"The Geographical Pivot of History" was an article submitted by Halford John Mackinder in 1904 to the Royal Geographical Society that advanced his Heartland Theory.[1] In this article, Mackinder extended the scope of geopolitical analysis to encompass the entire globe.
It is easy to regard Mackinder's theory as a kind of geographic determinism. But Mackinder emphasized that his theory was not so limited:
According to Mackinder, the Earth's land surface was divisible into:
The Heartland lay at the centre of the world island, stretching from the Volga to the Yangtze and from the Himalayas to the Arctic. Mackinder's Heartland was the area ruled by the Russian Empire and then by the Soviet Union, minus the area around Vladivostok.
Later, in 1919, Mackinder summarised his theory as:
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 had ruled most of the area from the Volga to Eastern Siberia for centuries. But throughout the nineteenth century:
Mackinder held that effective political domination of the Heartland by a single power had been unattainable in the past because:
He outlined the following ways in which the Heartland might become a springboard for global domination in the twentieth century (Sempa, 2000):
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).
Some influential Germans, such as Karl Haushofer both before and during the Third Reich, found this theory compatible with their desire to control Mitteleuropa and to take Ukraine. The intention to take the latter was indicated by the slogan Drang nach Osten, or "drive to the east".
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 and later on the United States. The nightmare was that if Germany 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.
Evidence of Mackinder’s Heartland Theory can be found in the works of geopolitician Dimitri Kitsikis, particularly in his model “Intermediate Region”. There is a significant geographical overlap between the Heartland or “Pivot Area” and the Intermediate Region, with the exception of Germany-Prussia and north-eastern China, which Kitsikis excludes from the Intermediate Region. Mackinder, on the other hand, excludes North Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle 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.
The Russo-Japanese War of 1905 did not confirm Mackinder's hypothesis, because:
Though the theory was first conceived before World War I, developments in that war did not disprove it and perhaps gave it some support:
The Russian Revolution of 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.
Germany annexed Austria in 1938, extorted control of large parts of Czechoslovakia in 1938, triggered World War II by invading Poland in 1939 and invaded the Soviet Union as far as Moscow in 1941.
But:
Japan occupied Manchuria in 1931, invaded China in 1937 and much of Southeast Asia during World War II.
But this did not constitute a real test of Mackinder's "Sino-Japanese empire" scenario:
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 than in World War I:
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, which was completely consistent with Mackinder's theory.
The Cold War period (late 1940s to late 1980s) was long enough to present a real test of Mackinder's theory, as the Soviet Union:
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. 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":
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.
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).
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 onwards suggests that successful strategic bombing 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.
The other main application of bombers is surgical strikes such as those by Israel 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 led to a military stand-off between the US and the Soviet Union in which the two sides competed via proxy wars 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.
When Mackinder was writing, China's military force was such that quite modest Western forces could defeat it (e.g. the Opium Wars) and even occupy its capital (e.g. during the Boxer Rebellion).
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.[2]
Mackinder regarded the Middle 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.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has often been described as the world's only superpower, 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.
In Mackinder's time the best-known examples of asymmetric warfare were the Boer War and the rather unsuccessful British campaigns in Afghanistan, 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:
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.