On Geographic Explanations of the Cold War
The end of the Second World War saw The United States and the Soviet Union in direct competition for the supremacy of the world. The spirit of the time for those living in the 20th century was often expressed as a civilization struggle for the end of history – that is, the victor would decide the fate of our world. Both powers possessed and utilized a vast array of means to overcome their adversary – nuclear weapons, conventional and unconventional forces, propaganda, economic warfare, and espionage, to name but a few. This unique era saw societies around the world in uneasy anticipation of total nuclear annihilation, a very real and daunting prospect that had never, and has not since, felt as imminent and credible as it was following the Second World War.
Although violence, mass atrocities, economic starvation, and the like, were common features of the Cold War as they have been throughout history, the conflict was different because the two superpowers never came into direct military conflict. Following the defeat of Germany and Japan in the Second World War, both the Soviet Union and the United States sought to fill the vacuum left by the crippled Axis powers. US and Soviet policymakers saw the expansion of their power as a necessity to counter the aggressive expansion of the other, establishing an overlap of ambitions for the two superpowers which escalated a fierce geopolitical rivalry into the Cold War. We can assume, as prominent nuclear theorists on both sides did at the time, that if this rivalry between nuclear-armed superpowers were to escalate into a ‘hot’ war, the consequences would mean the thermonuclear annihilation of humanity. With two distinct systems at odds, – Capitalism vs. Communism, pluralism vs. totalitarianism – the profound realities of this conflict trickled down to influence the beliefs and identities of ordinary people across the globe. Yet approaching the conflict as a purely ideological or systemic struggle fails to capture the underlying strategic logic which guided the actions of both superpowers during the Cold War. This article will briefly note three geostrategic theorists and their profound influence on US and Soviet policymaking: Alfred Thayer Mahan, Halford Mackinder, and Nicholas Spykman.
Mahan, a US naval officer who wrote extensively on global politics, believed that whichever power controlled the world’s oceans would come to dominate the global political landscape due to the civilizational density prevalent at coastal regions. The central point he makes is that a powerful navy allows one to project power by sea onto any seaborne commercial routes, a principle which resonates to this day. The work of Mahan has influenced many key US foreign policy decisions from the purchase of Alaska, to the annexation of Hawaii, to the build-up of US naval power in anticipation of a conflict with the Spanish Empire. His seminal work, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, became mandatory reading in the French and German naval schools of the time, and has even influenced Chinese 21st century naval doctrine. As such, it is no surprise that Mahan has been considered as one of the most influential strategic thinkers in history.
Conversely, British geographer Halford Mackinder argued that the potential for global power lies not in ruling the high seas, but rather with the ownership of the “heartland” of the world. His work would prove momentous in influencing policymakers and theorists alike and is today considered the foundation for approaching geopolitics as a distinct field of study. In a 1904 paper titled The Geographical Pivot of History, Halford Mackinder suggested that effective control of the world would require possession of the heartland, as it is the most populous and resource-rich landmass on the globe. To Mackinder, the globe was divided into two parts, an ascendant Eurasian “World-Island” and a subordinate set of “maritime lands.” Within this World-Island lies the heartland stretching from the Volga to the Yangtze rivers, and from the Arctic to the Himalayas, forming the core domain of the Eurasian landmass. Mackinder recognised the geographic barriers surrounding the heartland and noted the significance of Eastern Europe to the domination of the heartland area by any single power. He surmised this notion as such:
Who rules east Europe commands the Heartland, who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island controls the world.
Halford Mackinder
Mackinder examined and explained the role of the maritime powers as they attempt to conquer, or prevent the rise of an adversary, in the heartland. British efforts to stymie Russian and Napoleonic expansion in the 19th century, as well as German and Soviet expansionism of the 20th century, illustrate their geo-strategic inclination to bolster their security as a maritime power adjacent to the World-Island. Furthermore, Mackinder’s ideas were in some part also embraced by Nazi strategists in formulating the policies of Lebensraum. Altogether, while Mackinder’s work served as a warning to European powers of the potential rise of a dominant Eurasian threat, it also served as the bedrock for Soviet and Nazi conceptions of manifest destiny in their broader strategic ambitions.
While the theories of Mahan and Mackinder were seminal to the geostrategic considerations of policymakers, it was political scientist Nicholas Spykman who would build upon on and refine the work of Mahan and Mackinder to provide the basis for the US strategy of Soviet containment. Spykman’s work took abreast land- and sea-based geostrategic assumptions and included the unity of the global airspace in line with the ascendance of air power in military doctrines across the globe. By restructuring Mackinder’s “inner crescent” to what he deemed the “Rimland,” Spykman argued that the effective prevention of an ascendant heartland power would involve the projection of sea- and air-based power on the rimland, thereby containing the threat posed by any power which seeks to dominate the World-Island. It should come as no surprise that Spykman’s Rimland Theory was a central foundation to the US strategy of Soviet containment, which, throughout the Cold War, was seen by policymakers as a valid approach to limiting Soviet expansion and dominance of the Eurasian landmass.
It should be noted that the geopolitical theories outlined herein must be approached through the lens of the historical context from which they arose, and no single theory can account for the events of the Cold War. What they do have in common is the assertion that geography plays a critical role in strategy formulation and policymaking. Theories of sea- and land-power came to a clash in both World Wars, and together with Spykman’s refined Rimland Theory, even came to critically influence the strategic considerations of the United States and the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War. During a conflict spanning across the globe, the world was the arena in which these theories were tested, pitting the global naval power against the heartland power in an unprecedented game of chess. As the United States sought to contain the growth of Soviet influence in the Rimland, the Soviet Union fought bitterly to extend its influence and break the containment. While we typically approach this bitter rivalry as a predominantly ideological struggle, we should not ignore the significance of geostrategic calculations of the belligerents in our understanding of history and its complexities.
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