Editing Geopolitics (section)

== United Kingdom ==

=== Emil Reich ===
The Austro-Hungarian historian [[Emil Reich]] (1854–1910) is considered to be the first having coined the term in English<ref>{{Cite journal|last=GoGwilt|first=Christopher Lloyd|date=1998|title=The Geopolitical Image: Imperialism, Anarchism, and the Hypothesis of Culture in the Formation of Geopolitics|journal=Modernism/Modernity|language=en|volume=5|issue=3|pages=49–70|doi=10.1353/mod.1998.0058|s2cid=144340839|issn=1080-6601}}</ref><ref name=":4" /> as early as 1902 and later published in England in 1904 in his book ''Foundations of Modern Europe''.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Reich, Emil|title=Foundations of modern europe.|date=2010|publisher=Nabu Press|isbn=978-1-171-68627-9|location=[Place of publication not identified]|oclc=944201019}}</ref>

=== Mackinder and the Heartland Theory ===
[[File:Pivot area.png|thumb|upright=2.05|Sir Halford Mackinder's Heartland concept showing the situation of the "pivot area" established in the [[Theory of the Heartland]]. He later revised it to mark Northern Eurasia as a pivot while keeping area marked above as Heartland.]]

[[Sir Halford Mackinder]]'s [[The Geographical Pivot of History|Heartland Theory]] initially received little attention outside the world of geography, but some thinkers have claimed that it subsequently influenced the [[foreign policy|foreign policies]] of world powers.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Sloan|first=Geoffrey|date=1999|title=Sir Halford J. Mackinder: The Heartland theory then and now|journal=Journal of Strategic Studies|language=en|volume=22|issue=2–3|pages=15–38|doi=10.1080/01402399908437752|issn=0140-2390}}</ref> Those scholars who look to MacKinder through critical lenses accept him as an organic strategist who tried to build a foreign policy vision for Britain with his Eurocentric analysis of historical geography. His formulation of the Heartland Theory was set out in his article entitled "[[The Geographical Pivot of History]]", published in [[England]] in 1904. Mackinder's doctrine of geopolitics involved concepts diametrically opposed to the notion of Alfred Thayer Mahan about the significance of navies (he coined the term ''sea power'') in world conflict. He saw navy as a basis of Colombian era empire (roughly from 1492 to the 19th century), and predicted the 20th century to be domain of land power. The Heartland theory hypothesized a huge empire being brought into existence in the Heartland—which would not need to use coastal or transoceanic transport to remain coherent. The basic notions of Mackinder's doctrine involve considering the geography of the Earth as being divided into two sections: the [[Afro-Eurasia|World Island]] or Core, comprising [[Eurasia]] and [[Africa]]; and the Peripheral "islands", including the [[Americas]], [[Australia]], [[Japan]], the [[British Isles]], and [[Oceania]]. Not only was the Periphery noticeably smaller than the World Island, it necessarily required much sea transport to function at the technological level of the World Island—which contained sufficient natural resources for a developed economy.

Mackinder posited that the industrial centers of the Periphery were necessarily located in widely separated locations. The World Island could send its navy to destroy each one of them in turn, and could locate its own industries in a region further inland than the Periphery (so they would have a longer struggle reaching them, and would face a well-stocked industrial bastion). Mackinder called this region the ''Heartland''. It essentially comprised [[Central and Eastern Europe]]: [[Ukraine]], Western [[Russia]], and [[Mitteleuropa]].<ref>See map in Polelle, [https://books.google.com/books?id=hp1-oyQjqTgC&pg=PA57 Raising Cartographic Consciousness], p. 57.</ref> The Heartland contained the grain reserves of Ukraine, and many other natural resources. Mackinder's notion of geopolitics was summed up when he said:

{{blockquote|Who rules Central and Eastern Europe commands the Heartland. Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island. Who rules the World-Island commands the World.}}

[[Nicholas J. Spykman]] was both a follower and critic of geostrategists Alfred Mahan, and [[Halford Mackinder]]. His work was based on assumptions similar to Mackinder's, including the unity of world politics and the world sea. He extends this to include the unity of the air. Spykman adopts Mackinder's divisions of the world, renaming some:
#The [[Theory of the Heartland|Heartland]];
#The [[Rimland]] (analogous to Mackinder's "inner or marginal crescent" also an intermediate region, lying between the Heartland and the marginal sea powers); and
#The Offshore Islands & Continents (Mackinder's "outer or insular crescent").<ref>See map in Polelle, [https://books.google.com/books?id=hp1-oyQjqTgC&pg=PA118 Raising Cartographic Consciousness], p. 118.</ref>

Under Spykman's theory, a Rimland separates the Heartland from ports that are usable throughout the year (that is, not frozen up during winter). Spykman suggested this required that attempts by Heartland nations (particularly [[Russia]]) to conquer ports in the Rimland must be prevented. Spykman modified Mackinder's formula on the relationship between the Heartland and the Rimland (or the inner crescent), claiming that "Who controls the rimland rules Eurasia. Who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the world." This theory can be traced in the origins of [[containment]], a U.S. policy on preventing the spread of Soviet influence after World War II (see also [[Truman Doctrine]]).{{Citation needed|date=September 2023}}

Another follower of Mackinder was [[Karl Haushofer]] who called Mackinder's [[Geographical Pivot of History]] a "genius' scientific tractate."<ref name=":3">[[Karl Haushofer]], ''Pan-Ideas in Geopolitics'', 1931, (tr. Usachev I. G., Mysl', Moscow, 2004, p 312).</ref> He commented on it: "Never have I seen anything greater than those few pages of geopolitical masterwork."<ref>{{Cite book|last=Heffernan|first=Michael J|title=The meaning of Europe: geography and geopolitics|date=1998|publisher=Arnold|isbn=978-0-340-58018-9|location=London|pages=134|language=en|oclc=925343797}}</ref> Mackinder located his Pivot, in the words of Haushofer, on "one of the first solid, geopolitically and geographically irreproachable maps, presented to one of the earliest scientific forums of the planet – the Royal Geographic Society in London"<ref name=":3" /> Haushofer adopted both Mackinder's Heartland thesis and his view of the Russian-German alliance – powers that Mackinder saw as the major contenders for control of Eurasia in the twentieth century. Following Mackinder he suggested an alliance with the Soviet Union and, advancing a step beyond Mackinder, added Japan to his design of the ''Eurasian Bloc.''<ref>Karl Haushofer, "The Continental Bloc: Mittel Europa – Eurasia – Japan," 1941, (tr.
Usachev I. G., Mysl', Moscow, 2004).</ref>

In 2004, at the centenary of The Geographical Pivot of History, Historian [[Paul Kennedy]] wrote: "Right now with hundreds of thousands of US troops in the Eurasian rimlands and with administration constantly explaining why it has to stay the course, it looks as if Washington is taking seriously Mackinder's injunction to ensure control of the geographical pivot of history."<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Dodds|first1=Klaus|last2=Sidaway|first2=James D|date=December 2004|title=Halford Mackinder and the 'geographical pivot of history': a centennial retrospective|journal=The Geographical Journal|language=en|volume=170|issue=4|pages=292–297|doi=10.1111/j.0016-7398.2004.00131.x|bibcode=2004GeogJ.170..292D |s2cid=140660906 |issn=0016-7398}}</ref>[[File:Панрегионална доктрина-Хаусхофер.jpg|thumb|upright=1.35|Division of the world according to Haushofer's [[pan-region]]s doctrine]]