Submission by Frank Brun first published in 2014

It is not by coincidence that for the first time in history, the Great Powers of China, India, Russia, the US and the EU are all present in Eurasia.  With so many geopolitical agendas agitating in the same region, over what are centuries-old geopolitical contradictions, the potential for a mishap affecting the peace of the entire globe is a real risk. This essay will investigate the growing tension in Eurasia. It will seek its historic pedigree through the geopolitical theories of the great British geographer Sir Halford Mackinder.  These great power conflicts still exist today as more contemporary, energy source derived competitions.  Alongside the political manoeuvring of these powers, rides a rhetorical discourse that gained intensity during the Cold War years of 1947 to 1991.  So embedded in the evolution of this eternal competition by the land powers of Eurasia, and the sea powers of the “inner and outer crescents” (Sempa 2002: 12) is this rhetorical discourse, that through the works of rhetoricians such as Charteris-Black, Chomsky, Medhurst and Wander, this essay devotes a substantial room to its practical delivery by the major political protagonists.  Of importance to understand, and pursued also by this essay, is the real necessity by the powers on both sides to seek popular support for their positioning and jostling on the Eurasian stage.  Perhaps because in the final essence, lie huge nuclear arsenals that could be deployed in a final unimaginable madness.  The combination of rhetoric and policy decisions occurring in Mackinder’s Heartland (Scott and Alcenat 2008: 2) fuel the geopolitical tensions around Ukraine and elsewhere in Central Asia, and are shaping up as a potential conflict of the Great Powers, reminiscent of the Great Game of the 19^th century, and the Cold War of the 20^th century.

The British Geographer Halford John Mackinder born in Gainsborough, England in 1861 fully understood that the world’s geography, because of its consistency throughout the ages, was a major determinant of world history (Sempa 2002: 9).  Populations may increase and migrate seeking new resources, political systems will come and go, empires rise and fall wars are fought and geopolitical intrigue pursues its own purposes, but continents, oceans, river systems, resources, landmasses and islands remain fixed.  Mackinder was fully aware of the significance of location in world geography, and as Sempa (2002: 9) says, ‘[t]hat is why great nations neglect the study of geography at their peril’.  In his 1904 paper ‘The geographical Pivot of history’, Mackinder theorised that with the world’s industrialisation, and the building of transcontinental railways, whichever state-controlled the vast natural resources of the Central Asian region, which he referred to as “the Geographical Pivot of History”, had the potential to become the global empire (Scott and Alcenat 2008: 2).   

Figure 1.

Figure 1 shows Mackinder’s Pivot Area.  It consists of Russia, the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) and is marked by the Caspian basin (Scott & Alcenat 2008: 2). Immediately surrounding it he placed the states of Germany, Austria, Turkey, India, and China, and he called these lands the “Inner Crescent”.  The insular nations of Britain, South Africa, Australia, the United States, Canada, and Japan he referred to as an “Outer Crescent” (Sempa 2002: 12).  Mackinder argued that if a hegemonic state controlled the vast resources of the ‘Heartland’ (as he termed the Pivot in his subsequent 1919 book ‘Democratic Ideals and Reality’), and managed to gain access to a sea frontage through an agreement with another country, such as China, it would create ‘the geopolitical conditions necessary for producing a great power that was supreme both on land and at sea’ (Sempa 2002:12).

 Mackinder’s geopolitical vision was the basis of great power realignments in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.  Throughout the 19^th century, Britain as the global hegemon of the time was obsessed with the spread southward by the Russian empire (Fromkin 1980: np).  Britain expended her greatest energies in ensuring that Russia did not create an empire that coveted the heartland of Mackinder.  Whereas the British colonies of Australia, the United States and Canada were able to build nations covering their entire continents, Russia was singled out and her march south towards the Indian Ocean and east towards Afghanistan were interrupted at all costs (Fromkin 1980:np).  Russia and Britain, in the end, avoided a direct war and the epoch became one ‘of intrigue, of bluff and counter-bluff, known as the ‘Great Game’ or as one historian has astutely termed it, the “Victorian Cold War”’ (Taylor 1994:404).  However, the efforts to stop anyone state from dominating Mackinder’s heartland was carried forward into the 20^th century, and the struggles of the First and Second World Wars were wars fought by the west arresting Germany from gaining mastery over Eastern Europe, and from there the heartland of Eurasia.  After World War Two, and until today, the efforts have been in stopping initially the Soviet Union and then, and now, Russia from doing the same (Sempa 2002: 21).  Figure 2 is a map of the world, inverted for visual effect, showing the importance of the heartland and helps to explain why as Brzezinski (1997: 30) writes, ‘[f]or America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia’.

 Figure 2.

Source Brzezinski 1997: 32.

With the onset of the Cold War at the end of World War Two, the heartland theory was revived as the ‘geostrategic basis of nuclear deterrence theory’ (Taylor 1994: 405), and it was the justification for the west’s nuclear arsenal in that it compensated for the ‘U.S.S.R.‘s ‘natural’ strategic advantage as the heartland power’ (Taylor 1994: 405).  Brzezinski tells us in Figure 2 that, like Mackinder’s heartland theory, any country that manages to gain control of Eurasia, would as a matter of course be able to gain control of Africa, and thus the entire ‘world island’ depicted by Mackinder and ‘rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world’s central continent’ (Brzezinski 1997: 31).  As Britain did when it invaded Afghanistan in the 19^th century, the United States has made inroads into the Eurasian heartland to spoil any attempts by a local hegemonic power to gain entire control of the landmass.  As a consequence, for the first time in history, a non-Eurasian power, the United States, ‘is preeminent in Eurasia—and America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained’ (Brzezinski 1997: 30).  Figure 3 shows the approaches to the Eurasian heartland via Eastern Europe and the geostrategic importance to the west of Poland and Ukraine.  The significance of this is highlighted by, as Sempa (2002: 17) quotes Mackinder, ‘“Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland: Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island: Who rules the World-Island commands the World.”’ 

Figure 3

Source Brzezinski 1997: 85.

 Figure 4 shows the ‘underbelly’ of the heartland as being the ‘Global Zone of Percolating Violence’ (Brzezinski 1997: 53).  The U.S. led incursions into Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, and its operations out of Pakistan, are agitating the Arab world and generating great geostrategic volatility on the southern borders of Eurasia.  The strategic importance of Iran is obvious, standing between Afghanistan and Iraq.  To the north of Eurasia lies Russia and to the east lies China.

  Figure 4

Source Brzezinski 1997: 53.

To understand the machinations of states as they circle the wagons around the resource-rich Eurasian landmass, it is important to understand the realist nature of foreign policy decisions by nation-states.  According to Rehman (2014: 3) ‘[f]oreign policy is rational processing and harmonious decision-making in statecraft ‘.  Rehman writes that nation-states need to utilize the wisdom and be impartial in the determination of their self-interests.  To this end, symbols may be utilized to illustrate intentions, but it is in the actual deployment of power ‘a mixture of military might, diplomacy, strategy, deception and economics’ (Rehman (2014: 3), that nation states’ real intentions are made known.  The political rhetoric created by western democracies to carry the people with them through the art of persuasion is seen as necessary by the foreign policy setters within the political system (Wander 1984: 339).  Through the use of a ‘body of stock phrases or standardized code of expression,’ the rhetoric of foreign policy is used to divert people’s attention from the actual events taking place.  Claims such as ‘” Defending the Free World”, “protecting our National Security”, ‘weighing our National Interest”, “countering the communist menace”’ (Wander 1984: 339), are all familiar language.  Yet they have over the last eighty years been used to mask what at times have been horrendous acts in the name of a realist foreign policy.

 A seminal document in the rhetorical battle of the Cold War was a National Security Council report commissioned by President Harry S Truman in 1950.  This report known as NSC 68 sets the basic groundwork for the Soviet efforts to be seen as evil and the American efforts to be seen as fighters for the free world.  The geostrategic battle of the heartland was by now taking on a geoeconomic structure and the contradiction was being seen as one of capitalism versus communism. For example, NSC 68 depicts the Soviets as being ‘animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical to our own, and seeks to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world’ (NSC 68 1950: 4).  Further, the report states how the people of the world would prefer ‘relief from the anxiety arising from the risk of atomic war’ (NSC 68 1950: 4), but as already mentioned, the strategic advantage the Soviets had through their geographical positioning, provided no alternative to the west if the Soviets sought further expansion into Eurasia.  This was a sharp reversal to take on what had recently been an ally against the Germans in World War Two.  However since the early stages of the war, Truman had a view that if the Germans were winning they should help the Russians, but if the Russians were winning, they should help the Germans (Chomsky 2006: 122).  This fear of the Russians was equalled by England’s war Prime Minister Winston Churchill who, as the war was ending in Germany, ordered war plans to be drawn up for ‘“Operation Unthinkable”’ (Chomsky 2006: 123).  These plans fell nothing short of the elimination of Russia as a power.

 In promoting the foreign policy agenda of a nation-state, especially within a democracy, the political administration through its leaders needs to be able to persuade the public through the use of deliberative rhetoric, and the only way they can do that is if they establish that they are right (Charteris-Black 2011: 14).  In order to establish the ethos of the administration, the leader needs to demonstrate that they have the right intentions; in this instance, the rhetoric becomes more epideictic.  They also need to show the logic, or logos, of their argument and reach out to the emotional side (pathos) of the audience.  Figure 5 from Charteris-Black (2011: 14) demonstrates this schematically.

Figure 5

Medhurst expands on Charteris-Black through a deep analysis of the ‘Atoms for Peace’ campaign launched by President Eisenhower in 1953.  The Americans had come to the conclusion that nothing short of a massive nuclear build-up would satisfy their insecurity towards the Russians.   However, in order to divert attention at home from the massive destructive power of the growing nuclear arsenal, Medhurst describes how discourse was promoted within the public realm about the ‘peaceful atom’ (Medhurst 1997: 576).  ‘This discourse took the form of articles, speeches, films, cartoons, displays, conferences, pamphlets, television documentaries, radio commentaries, and a constant stream of newspaper and news magazine reports’ (Medhurst 1997: 576).  As fears of the power shown by the nuclear tests grew both domestically and internationally, a strategy was manufactured to make weapons testing a routine event, and that the reporting on them be put in the context of the advance of nuclear science and applications in all fields’ (Medhurst 1997: 578).  As Medhurst (1997: 578) adds, the aim was one of ‘impression management, in order to provide a cover for the U.S. to build its nuclear arsenal, which was the only way they believed, they could counter the massive forces of the Soviet Union.

After the eventual collapse of the U.S.S.R., what can be termed as the first experiment for the creation of an economic system in contradiction to capitalism failed (Taylor 1994: 410).  The attempted hegemony of Russia over Mackinder’s heartland was defeated.  But whereas the Cold War of the second half of the 20^th century was fought around the basis of ideology – the blue jeans and Coca-Cola of the free capitalist societies versus the bleak communist harshness of the Soviet block, this time around the basis of the renewed struggle in the Eurasian landmass is the contest for the vast energy resources around the Caspian Sea basin.  The ongoing conflict over Mackinder’s Heartland is confirmed through observations such as from Brzezinski (1997) for example, where we get the clear message of the importance of the Eurasian landmass to American foreign policy or put another way, the importance that no one power has hegemony over the Eurasian landmass.  Also from the Russian President, Vladimir Putin we get a clear understanding that from their point of view, the Soviet Union’s collapse is seen ‘as one of the greatest geopolitical catastrophes of the twentieth century’ (Weitz 2006: 156).  The encroachment by the west through NATO, into the Eurasian area through the attempts at westernizing the Ukraine, is a big move by the Western powers.  This has pushed Russia and China into close cooperation over economic and energy resources.  The symbolism shown in Figure 6 cannot be understated.  As a piece of visual rhetoric, the starkness of the outstretched hands signifies a willingness to unite against external actors in their backyards.  Mackinder’s fear of a global conflagration over the most important piece of geography on the planet may yet be played out.

Figure 6

Russian President Dmitry Medvedevwith President of China Hu Jintao at the ceremony marking the completion of the Russia-China oil pipeline. 27 September 2010

Bibliography:

Brzezinski, Z. 1997. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives: Basic Books, Washington.

Charteris-Black, J 2011, Politicians and Rhetoric The Persuasive Power of Metaphor, Palgrave Macmillan, Hampshire, U.K.

Chomsky, N 2006, Failed States: the Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy, Metropolitan Books, N.Y. 

Fromkin, D 1980, ‘The Great Game in Asia’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 58, no. 4, pp. 936-951.

Medhurst, M 1997, ‘Atoms for peace and nuclear hegemony: The rhetorical structure of a Cold War campaign’, Armed Forces and Society, vol. 23, no. 4, pp. 571-593.

NSC 68, 1950, National Security Council, United States Objectives and Programs for National Security, viewed 3 June 2014,

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/coldwar/documents/pdf/10-1.pdf

Rehman, K 2014, ‘The New Great Game: A Strategic Analysis’, The Dialogue, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 1-26.

Scott M, Alcenat W 2008, ‘Revisiting the Pivot: The Influence of Heartland Theory in Great Power Politics’, Macalester College Online, viewed 1 June 2014, http://www.creighton.edu/fileadmin/user/CCAS/departments/PoliticalScience/MVJ/docs/The_Pivot_-_Alcenat_and_Scott.pdf

Sempa, F 2002, Geopolitics: From the Cold War to the 21st Century, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, N.J.

Taylor, P 1994, ‘From Heartland to Hegemony: Changing the World in Political Geography’, Geoforum, vol. 25, no. 4. pp. 403-41 I

Wander, P 1984, ‘The Rhetoric of American Foreign Policy’, The Quarterly Journal of Speech, vol. 70, no. 4, pp. 339-361.

Weitz, R 2006, ‘Averting a new great game in central Asia’, The Washington Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 155-167.