Latest / Diplomacy and International Relations / Geopolitics: Heartland and Rimland in Global Rivalry

Transcript

Geopolitics: Heartland and Rimland in Global Rivalry · Diplomacy and International Relations

• 0:00
  Welcome to Diplomacy and International Relations by
• 0:02
  Bastian Freiborg. If you're here to get past the
• 0:05
  headlines and understand the deep historical currents shaping
• 0:08
  today's global conflicts, you are definitely in the right
• 0:12
  place. Before we dive in, a quick
• 0:14
  reminder to please follow and subscribe.
• 0:16
  And if you want to support the show and get extra episodes, you
• 0:18
  can do that for a small monthly fee on Spotify or Apple Podcast.
• 0:22
  The links right there in the description.
• 0:23
  It really does help us keep this going.
• 0:25
  It does. OK.
• 0:26
  So our mission today, we're doing a deep dive into the
• 0:30
  classic geopolitical theories that have for over a century
• 0:33
  shaped US foreign policy in Eurasia.
• 0:36
  And we're asking a really critical question.
• 0:38
  Yeah. How has this new consolidated
• 0:41
  heartland alliance between powers like Russia and China
• 0:45
  created what looks like a real strategic deadlock for the West?
• 0:48
  It's a huge question and you really can't understand it
• 0:51
  without looking back. Geopolitics, at its heart, it
• 0:54
  was never just an academic exercise.
• 0:56
  It was designed as an aid to statecraft, you know.
• 0:59
  A practical tool. Exactly.
• 1:01
  And these theories, some from over 100 years ago, they give us
• 1:04
  this incredible structural frame for why today's conflicts are
• 1:08
  happening where they are. OK, let's unpack this then,
• 1:11
  starting with the original nightmare scenario.
• 1:14
  This goes all the way back to what, 1904 Sir Halford Mckinder?
• 1:18
  That's the one. Mckinder, a British geographer,
• 1:21
  basically laid out the entire game board.
• 1:23
  He called Eurasia the World Island.
• 1:26
  The world island, right? And at the core of that world
• 1:28
  island was what he called the heartland Thinkru, Central Asia,
• 1:32
  Eastern Europe and the vast interior of Russia.
• 1:35
  It was the ultimate geopolitical fortress.
• 1:38
  And he wasn't just drawing on a map.
• 1:39
  He was thinking about power, about who could control that
• 1:42
  space. What was the threat he saw
• 1:44
  coming from there? The threat was consolidation.
• 1:47
  He looked at the map and saw that if a single powerful entity
• 1:50
  or a tight alliance could control the heartland, well,
• 1:54
  that would be an existential threat to maritime powers.
• 1:56
  Like the British Empire then and the US later.
• 1:59
  Precisely his specific fear. The real nightmare was a
• 2:03
  combination of Germany's industrial and financial might,
• 2:07
  with Russia's sheer size, its resources, its manpower.
• 2:11
  So that combination would be unbeatable.
• 2:13
  He believed it could neutralize sea power completely.
• 2:16
  If you control that central landmass, you could eventually
• 2:19
  command the entire world island, and from there the world.
• 2:23
  Which is what led to his very famous Maxim.
• 2:26
  It's a perfect bit of strategic logic.
• 2:28
  Who rules East Europe commands the heartland.
• 2:31
  Who rules the heartland commands the world island, Who rules the
• 2:34
  world island commands the world. It's so clear East Europe is the
• 2:38
  pivot. And we should be clear, this
• 2:40
  wasn't the only idea floating around at the time.
• 2:42
  Over in the US, you had Alfred Thayer Mahan pushing a very
• 2:45
  different theory. A completely different
• 2:47
  perspective. Yeah.
• 2:48
  Mahan was all about thalasocracy, rule by the sea.
• 2:51
  For him, Greatness was about naval fleets controlling trade
• 2:54
  routes and locking down strategic choke points around
• 2:57
  the globe. A sea power view.
• 2:59
  Totally. But what's really fascinating is
• 3:01
  that even Mahan, this champion of the oceans, was deeply
• 3:04
  worried about Russia's land expansion towards Central Asia.
• 3:08
  He saw it as something that Anglo Sax and sea powers had to
• 3:11
  actively block. So even the competing theory saw
• 3:14
  the heartland as a threat. OK, so if Mckinder drew this map
• 3:18
  of fear, how did that become actual US strategy after World
• 3:22
  War 2? It became the blueprint.
• 3:24
  The entire doctrine of containment from the Truman
• 3:26
  Doctrine onwards was pure Mckinder.
• 3:28
  You'd see the direct. Line it's explicit.
• 3:30
  The fear was that if the resources and people of Eurasia
• 3:33
  were united under a single hostile power, the survival of
• 3:36
  the United States as you know a free nation would be at risk.
• 3:40
  And George Cannon's famous 1947 strategy called for that.
• 3:44
  I think the phrase was long term patient but firm and vigilant
• 3:47
  containment of Russian expansive tendencies.
• 3:49
  That's it. But crucially, Kenan wasn't
• 3:51
  saying fight them everywhere. His focus was very specific.
• 3:55
  Defend the world's major industrial centers.
• 3:57
  So Western Europe, Japan. Western Europe, Japan, North
• 4:00
  America. The goal was to keep the Soviets
• 4:03
  boxed into the heartland and out of what they called the Rimland,
• 4:06
  that critical coastal periphery. Which brings us neatly into the
• 4:09
  post Soviet world and his big new Brazinski.
• 4:13
  His 1997 book The Grand Chess Board really updated all of this
• 4:18
  for the modern era, didn't it? It really did.
• 4:21
  Brzezinski basically took Mckinder's logic and applied it
• 4:24
  to a world with only one superpower.
• 4:26
  For him, Russia was still this geopolitical black hole that had
• 4:31
  to be kept isolated. And he saw Western Europe as the
• 4:33
  key piece for the US. The essential democratic
• 4:36
  bridgehead, as he called it, to project influence into Eurasia.
• 4:40
  And of course, Brzezinski's probably most famous for
• 4:42
  spelling out exactly what Ukraine's role was in all this.
• 4:45
  Oh, absolutely. Who was incredibly blunt about
• 4:47
  it. He said that if Russia ever
• 4:49
  wanted to be an empire again, it needed Ukraine.
• 4:52
  Period. So for the West, Ukraine's
• 4:54
  independence was vital. Vital.
• 4:56
  And for Moscow, he said a neutral Ukraine was simply non
• 4:59
  negotiable. He laid out the collision course
• 5:01
  right there. But his most important point,
• 5:03
  and this is really the key to the deadlock we're in now, was
• 5:07
  his warning, right, about how to handle Russia.
• 5:09
  Yes. This was his ultimate piece of
• 5:12
  advice. He warned that America's grand
• 5:15
  strategy must avoid pushing Moscow away from what he called
• 5:18
  its best geopolitical choice, which was a rapprochement with
• 5:22
  the West. Integration, democratization,
• 5:25
  joining the Western market system.
• 5:27
  If Russia chose that path, the whole Macandarian nightmare
• 5:31
  would just dissolve. So here's where it gets really
• 5:34
  interesting, because the sources we're looking at argue that US
• 5:36
  strategy failed at that exact point.
• 5:39
  Instead of pulling Russia W post 90s policy ended up pushing it
• 5:42
  towards its greatest geopolitical rival.
• 5:45
  Towards China. Towards China, creating the very
• 5:47
  thing Mckinder feared most. That failure, for whatever
• 5:50
  reason, whether it was NATO expansion or a failure to
• 5:52
  properly integrate Russia, it caused Moscow to just abandon
• 5:56
  those attempts at rapprochement. They turned east.
• 5:58
  And they started actively building alliances to counter
• 6:01
  American influence. That's what leads us to the
• 6:03
  modern Heartland block. You see it in formal
• 6:05
  organizations like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the
• 6:08
  SCO. Starting in 2001.
• 6:10
  And then you have the expansion of bricks.
• 6:12
  It started small in 2009, now it's got 9 members and a whole
• 6:15
  line of other countries wanting to join.
• 6:17
  But the real core of it, the strategic centerpiece, is that
• 6:20
  deep Sino Russian alignment. Sealed with that limitless
• 6:25
  friendship declaration right before the 2022 invasion of
• 6:28
  Ukraine. Exactly.
• 6:30
  And when you look at what this new block represents, it just
• 6:33
  dwarfs Mckinder's original fear of a German Russian axis.
• 6:37
  I mean the scale is just completely different.
• 6:39
  It's massive. You're talking about a strategic
• 6:41
  space that includes 3 nuclear powers, maybe a fourth on the
• 6:44
  way. It controls vast energy and
• 6:47
  natural resources. Oil, gas, critical rare earth
• 6:49
  minerals in Central Asia. Plus the population, the growing
• 6:52
  tech sector. It is without exaggeration a
• 6:55
  full scale counter hegemonic alignment, a genuine challenge.
• 6:58
  So while the US was focusing its containment strategy on Ukraine
• 7:02
  as the pivot in Europe, Russia was busy building other pivots
• 7:05
  all across Asia. And that is the deadlock.
• 7:08
  The war in Ukraine is where you see this clash playing out.
• 7:11
  It's classic geopolitics, but it's mixed with modern ideology
• 7:15
  and hybrid warfare. Tell me more about the ideology
• 7:19
  part. Russia is using this idea of the
• 7:22
  rusty mirror. The Russian world, What is that?
• 7:25
  So this idea was really institutionalized around 2007.
• 7:29
  It's essentially the ideological justification for their
• 7:32
  expansionist policies. It has sort of three layers, OK.
• 7:35
  First, it's about connecting with the Russian speaking
• 7:38
  diaspora globally. Second, it's a claim to a
• 7:41
  geopolitical sphere of influence over the old Soviet space.
• 7:44
  And 3rd, it's an ideological appeal to conservative right
• 7:47
  wing forces everywhere to try and undermine liberal democracy
• 7:51
  from within. And on the ground, that plays
• 7:52
  out as hybrid warfare. Precisely.
• 7:54
  It's not just tanks and soldiers.
• 7:56
  It's a multidimensional strategy.
• 7:57
  You combine military force with cyber attacks with massive
• 8:01
  disinformation campaigns on state media like RT and Sputnik.
• 8:05
  Aimed at splitting public opinion in the West.
• 8:07
  Exactly. Economic pressure, supporting
• 8:09
  separatist groups. The goal isn't just to win on
• 8:12
  the battlefield, it's to win in the psychological, social and
• 8:16
  political arenas too. And since a lot of our listeners
• 8:18
  are here in Europe and in Denmark, it's worth pointing out
• 8:21
  that NATO itself is a product of this thinking.
• 8:24
  It is. NATO was conceived as the
• 8:27
  ultimate Midland Ocean Alliance, Mckinder's term for the North
• 8:31
  Atlantic powers uniting to contain the heartland.
• 8:34
  That framework is still so relevant.
• 8:37
  And you can see how those geopolitical instincts still
• 8:39
  play out differently even within the alliance.
• 8:42
  Oh, for sure. I mean, look at the split over
• 8:44
  the Iraq war in 2003. Germany was strongly against it,
• 8:47
  partly for domestic reasons, but also because it was pushing for
• 8:50
  a more independent European security role, right?
• 8:53
  Whereas the UK went all in with the US prioritizing that classic
• 8:56
  Atlantic Midland Ocean relationship.
• 8:59
  It just goes to show you that these deep geopolitical factors
• 9:02
  are always there shaping decisions.
• 9:04
  The gravity is it's constant. OK, so if the heartland is
• 9:06
  consolidating like this, what's the counter move?
• 9:09
  This brings us to the other big theory from Nicholas Spikeman,
• 9:12
  the Rimland. Right.
• 9:14
  Spikeman came after Mckinder and basically said you're looking at
• 9:17
  the wrong piece of the board. He argued the real power wasn't
• 9:20
  in the heartland, but in the coastal fringe surrounding it,
• 9:24
  the rimland. So Western Europe, the Middle
• 9:26
  East, India, coastal China. Exactly, he said.
• 9:30
  That's where most of the world's population, wealth and,
• 9:32
  crucially, access to the sea is. Spikeman's idea was who controls
• 9:37
  the Rimland rules Eurasia? Who rules Eurasia controls the
• 9:41
  destinies of the world. So the strategy is to control
• 9:44
  the periphery to contain the center.
• 9:46
  Correct. And that is exactly what we're
• 9:48
  seeing today. The huge gravitational shift in
• 9:51
  US foreign policy is away from the Atlantic and towards the
• 9:54
  Indo Pacific, right. The sources we've looked at
• 9:56
  suggest the US is now focused on two big things.
• 9:59
  One try to break up that Sino Russian chemistry and to regain
• 10:04
  some control over what it sees as a disintegrating global
• 10:06
  order. And in that big picture, where
• 10:08
  does Ukraine fit? Well, this is the hard part.
• 10:11
  Support for Ukraine is seen as essential for credibility,
• 10:13
  especially to you, to allies in Europe.
• 10:16
  But in the grand strategic calculus in Washington, it's
• 10:19
  increasingly viewed as a burden. A drain on resources that are
• 10:23
  needed for the main event in Asia.
• 10:25
  That seems to be the thinking. The long term competition is
• 10:28
  with the Sino Russian bloc and that's centered in the Indo
• 10:31
  Pacific. So what this all means is we are
• 10:33
  literally watching a century old geopolitical debate play out in
• 10:37
  real time with new alliances. We are.
• 10:39
  It's Spikeman's playbook in action.
• 10:41
  You look at things like the Quad, the US, Australia, India,
• 10:44
  Japan or security packs like Ayu.
• 10:47
  Rwandan outer island states. Collaborating specifically to
• 10:50
  prevent a single power from dominating Eurasia, and at the
• 10:54
  exact same time you see China's Belt and Rd.
• 10:57
  Initiative pushing deep into Central Asia, the heartland
• 11:01
  trying to build the continental power base to challenge that
• 11:03
  US-led maritime order. It's just fascinating.
• 11:06
  Our deep dive really confirms it.
• 11:08
  These classic geopolitical theories, they're not history.
• 11:11
  They are the essential operating system for understanding the
• 11:14
  great power rivalry we're living through.
• 11:16
  They absolutely are, and I think even with all this focus on the
• 11:20
  Indo Pacific the sources keep coming back to one point.
• 11:23
  True global dominance still depends on continental power, on
• 11:28
  who controls or influences Central Asia.
• 11:31
  Which leaves us with a pretty provocative final thought.
• 11:33
  I think so. As Europe is forced to shoulder
• 11:36
  more and more of the military and financial burden for
• 11:39
  Ukraine, you have to ask how does that change the
• 11:42
  transatlantic balance in the long run?
• 11:44
  Especially Germany's role in all of.
• 11:46
  This, exactly. How does it change Germany's
• 11:48
  role in that classic Heartland versus Midland Ocean dynamic?
• 11:52
  That's a question that will define European security for
• 11:54
  decades. A critical question for all of
• 11:56
  us here in Europe to think about.
• 11:58
  Well, that's all the time we have.
• 12:00
  Thank you for joining us for this deep dive into the
• 12:02
  historical forces that are shaping our world right now.
• 12:05
  My pleasure. If you found this useful, please
• 12:07
  do follow the podcast and help us reach more people by giving
• 12:10
  this deep dive a 5 star rating. We will be back very soon with
• 12:13
  more insights into global affairs.
• 12:15
  Until next time.