by Christopher J. Fettweis
Ó Tuathail has described this phenomenon, and his remarks are worth quoting at some length: "To understand the appeal of formal geopolitics to certain intellectuals, institutions, and would-be strategists, one has to appreciate the mythic qualities of geopolitics. Geopolitics is mythic because it promises uncanny
clarity and insight in a complex world. It actively closes down an openness to the geographical diversity of the world and represses questioning and difference. The plurality of the world is reduced to certain "transcendent truths" about strategy. Geopolitics is a narrow instrumental form of reason that is also a form of faith, a belief that there is a secret substratum and/or a permanent set of conflicts and interests that accounts for the course of world politics. It is fetishistically concerned with "insight," and "prophecy." Formal geopolitics appeals to those who yearn for the apparent certitude of "timeless truths." Historically, it is produced by and appeals to right-wing countermoderns because it imposes a constructed certitude upon the unruly complexity of world politics, uncovering transcendent struggles between seemingly permanent opposites ("landpower"
versus "seapower," "oceanic" versus "continental," "East" versus "West") and folding geographical difference into depluralized geopolitical categories like "heartland," "rimland," shatterbelt," and the like. Foreign policy complexity becomes simple(minded) strategic gaming. [Ó Tuathail makes reference to Brzezinski here] Such formal geopolitical reasoning is . . . a
flawed foundation upon which to construct a foreign policy that needs to be sensitive to the particularity and diversity of the world's states, and to global processes and challenges that transcend state-centric reasoning."[25]
As unsettling as it may be, there are no "timeless truths" in world politics. The international system changes as fast as we can understand its functions, and often much faster. It seems to be natural for the human mind to use analogies and slogans to comprehend situations that are difficult to grasp. If policymakers indeed simplify the world into frameworks to make it
comprehensible, then they must beware not to base those frameworks on outdated and intellectually sloppy assumptions of geopolitics.
Analogies and Policy
Policy is driven by analogy, both historical and theoretical. One common, and dangerous, analogy that drives US Eurasian policy is "the game." Brzezinski speaks of chess; Central Asian policy is the "new great game"; Kissinger and Nixon used game analogies throughout their reign and in their writings afterward.[26] Impenetrably complex problems are simplified to games, which was problematic enough during the Cold War but is acutely poisonous today. Take Brzezinski's chess analogy. Chess has two players, and one opponent; it is zero-sum, and to the finish; there is a winner and a loser, with no middle ground. The opponent of the United States to Brzezinski is, and has always been, Russia. If we approach Eurasia as if it were a chessboard, then we will be met by opponents, and cooperation and mutual benefit would be
removed from our calculations. If the leaders of the most powerful nation on earth were to conceptualize foreign policy as a chess game, it would virtually ensure that other nations would as well. A Eurasian alliance to counteract growing US influence would be virtually inevitable. Mackinder's Heartland theory is a another example of inappropriately applied analogy. Sir Halford took Britain's traditional fear of the dominance of the resources of continental Europe by one power and extended it to encompass
the entire world. To many geopoliticians, the United States is an island power, peripheral to the crucial and decisive land of Eurasia. The only way America can be safe is if the continent does not unify against her. England's fear of a united European continent in the 19th century was understandable, because only a continental power unconcerned with land enemies would be able to concentrate its resources to challenge the Royal Navy. The analogy with the World Island and the United States falls apart,
for no nation that dominates that continent would ever be able to threaten our hemisphere. Even if it were conceivable that one power could dominate Eurasia (which of course it is not), such an imbalance would not necessarily threaten American interests, and the dominant power presumably would not be able to project power over the oceans. Any imaginable alliance of Eurasian powers would be too unwieldy and disparate to operate effectively. Some fear
that a Eurasian alliance would be capable of shutting off trade with the United States, ruining our economy and standard of living. While this may have had some relevance when there was the potential for the rest of the world to be dominated by the communists, as long as the great powers of the World Island continue to be wedded to the free market (and do not perceive
US power to be threatening), then there is little danger of their
voluntarily shutting their doors to the American market and investment structure. Paradoxically, our attempts to prevent a Eurasian anti-American alliance may make that outcome more likely. As Steven Walt has persuasively shown, imbalances of threat, not imbalances of power, drive alliances together.[27]
Our attempts to project power into the Heartland, if done clumsily, can heighten threat perceptions in its capitals, making such counterproductive alliances more attractive. British uneasiness with the European Union is reflective of this fear of
continental alliances. But is there really any threat of a state marshaling forces against the British Isles? Analogies, and their accompanying "eternal interests," tend to persist long after their useful life is over. Sometimes we fail to perceive the end of that intellectual shelf life. Frameworks for Grand Strategies
The Clinton Administration has been criticized from the beginning for running a foreign policy that is at best reactive and at worst rudderless and confused. While this characterization may not be entirely accurate or even fair, it is apparent that running a foreign policy without the framework provided by a global rival can appear to be unfocused and ad hoc. Without a vision of what the next century ought to look like, no policies
can be formulated to bring it about. During the Cold War, foreign policy decisions were never easy, but at least the Soviet Union provided an enemy to be opposed. Conventional wisdom recommended countering every Soviet move, no matter how trivial. Today the
United States is at a unipolar position in every possible sense - militarily, economically, culturally, politically, and on and on. The world looked to the United States at the end of the Cold War to lead a new century, to redefine the rules by which the system operates. As Fareed Zakaria has noted, after the last two world wars, "America wanted to change the world, and the world was reluctant. But in 1999, the world is eager to change--along the lines being defined by America--but now America is reluctant."[28] American policymakers have continuously underestimated the impact that a hegemon can have on the "rules of the game" because they are wedded to the archaic realist and geopolitical notion that those rules do not change. Yet as disconcerting as it may seem, the rules evolve as quickly as "the game" itself, and policymakers must have the vision to anticipate that evolution and adjust accordingly. The end of the Cold War has provided the United States an unprecedented opportunity to shape the nature of the system. In order to do so it is necessary to jettison antiquated and baseless concepts like geopolitics once and for all.
Conclusion
"Eternal" geopolitical realities and national interests are mirages. The idea that a Heartland power has any advantages due to its position on the map cannot be historically or theoretically justified; the notion that an imbalance of power in Eurasia (even if it were conceivable) would somehow threaten the interests of the United States is not tenable; and the idea that geographic "realities" of power can operate outside of the context of ideology, nationalism, and culture is pure fantasy. Worse than mirages, these ideas can cripple the way we run our foreign policy in the new century. Debunking the fundamental assumptions of geopolitics is an important task when one considers how policy is made. Policymakers operate with a set of
assumptions and frameworks through which they interpret international events. As Richard Neustadt and Ernest May have persuasively argued, historical (and often wildly inappropriate) analogies, banal slogans, and outdated theories often become the driving forces in policymaking.[29] One of these outdated theories that persists in our intellectual memory is Sir Halford Mackinder's geopolitics. Policymakers in the United States vastly underestimate the hegemon's potential to shape the nature of the international system. Intellectuals wedded to old ideas about the unchanging nature of power have so far failed to lead the world in the new directions that it expected. The unparalleled unipolar position that the United States found itself in when the Cold War
abruptly ended is being wasted by politicians with no vision for shaping the future. The debate that occasionally resurfaces over the "isolationist" nature of the United States misses a key dimension: if nothing else, America has certainly been intellectually isolationist in the post-Cold War era, hiding behind walls and refusing to lead the world in new directions that its unprecedented power has made possible. The rules that govern international relations evolve. No so-called permanent interests, or eternal geographical realities, exist. The only way that the next century can be better than the one we are leaving is with a reevaluation of the assumptions and attitudes that underlie our actions. A prolonged investigation into the utility of all geopolitical theory would be a good place to start.
NOTES
1. Halford Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality (New York: W. W. Norton, 1962 [original publication 1919]), p 150.
2. Charles Clover, "Dreams of the Eurasian Heartland," Foreign Affairs, 78 (March/April 1999), 9.
3. From Jean Gottman, "The Background of Geopolitics," Military Affairs, 6 (Winter 1942), 197.
4. Gearoid Ó Tuathail, "Problematizing Geopolitics: Survey, Statesmanship and Strategy," Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 19 (1994), 261.
5. Ibid., p. 263.
6. Ibid., p. 267.
7. For more on this, see Alfred Vagts, "Geography in War and Geopolitics," Military Affairs, 7 (Summer 1943), 85-86.
8. Ibid., p. 87.
9. For this perspective, and summation of Haushofer's writings, see Hans W. Weigert, Generals and Geopolitics (Oxford, Eng.: Oxford Univ. Press, 1942).
10. Vagts, p. 87.
11. J. Thorndike, "Geopolitics: The Lurid Career of a scientific System which a Briton Invented, the Germans Used, and the Americans Need to Study," Life, 21 December 1942.
12. Nicholas J. Spykman, The Geography of Peace (New York: Harcourt & Brace, 1944), p. 43.
13. For more on Spykman, and his links to Mackinder and Kennan, see Michael P. Gerace, "Between Mackinder and Spykman: Geopolitics, Containment, and After," Comparative Strategy, 10 (October-December 1991), 347-64.
14. Simon Dalby, "American Security Discourse: the Persistence of Geopolitics," Political Geography Quarterly, 9 (April 1990), 171.
15. John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (Oxford, Eng.: Oxford Univ. Press, 1982), p. 57.
16. Colin S. Gray, "The Continued Primacy of Geography," Orbis, 40 (Spring 1996), 258.
17. See, for instance, Brzezinski's Cold War writings like Game Plan: A Geostrategic Framework for the Conduct of the U.S.-Soviet Contest (Boston: the Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986) and The Grand Chessboard (New York: Basic Books, 1997) from after it was over.
18. For an analysis of the effect of geopolitics, Mackinder, and the Heartland on US Cold War foreign policy, see G. R. Sloan, Geopolitics in United States Strategic Policy, 1890-1987 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988), esp. pp. 127-239; and Colin S. Gray, The Geopolitics of Superpower (Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1988).
19. See, in addition to those works already cited, reviews of the current literature in Colin S. Gray, "Geography and Grand Strategy," Comparative Strategy, 10 (October-December 1991) 311-29; David Hansen, "The Immutable Importance of Geography," Parameters, 27 (Spring 1997), 55-64; John Hillen and Michael P. Noonan, "The Geopolitics of NATO Enlargement," Parameters, 28
(Autumn 1998), 21-34; and Gerald Robbins, "The Post-Soviet Heartland: Reconsidering Mackinder," Global Affairs, 8 (Fall 1993), 95-108.
20. Charles Clover, "Dreams of the Eurasian Heartland," Foreign Affairs, 78 (March/April 1999), 9.
21. Halford J. Mackinder, "The Round World and the Winning of the Peace," Foreign Affairs, 21 (July 1943), 603.
22. Ralph Turner, "Technology and Geopolitics," Military Affairs, 7 (Spring 1943), 14.
23. Colin S. Gray, "The Continued Primacy of Geography," Orbis, 40 (Spring 1996), 251.
24. Carl Goldstein, "Final Frontier," Far Eastern Economic Review, 10 June 1993, p. 54.
25. Geraoid Ó Tauthail, "Understanding Critical Geopolitics: Geopolitics and Risk Society," Internet, http://www.majbill.vt.edu/geog/faculty/toal/papers/stratstud.html
26. Ó Tuathail documents Kissinger's usage of the game metaphor in "Problematizing Geopolitics," pp. 266-67.
27. See Steven M. Walt, The Origin of Alliances (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1987).
28. Quoted in Thomas Freidman, "The War Over Peace," The New York Times, 17 October 1999, op-ed.
29. Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers (New York: Free Press, 1986).
Christopher J. Fettweis is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park. His fields are international relations and comparative politics, and his dissertation addresses US foreign policy toward Central Asia and the Caspian Sea.