Spykman.
As Spykman looks out from the vantage point of 1942 beyond World War II, we
see the anxious foresight of which the geographical discipline is capable. Even
as the Allies are losing and the utter destruction of Hitler’s war machine is a
priority, Spykman worries aloud about the implications of leaving Germany
demilitarized. “A Russian state from the Urals to the North Sea,”
he explains,
“can be no great improvement over a German state from the North Sea to the
Urals.” Russian airfields on the English Channel would be as dangerous as
German airfields to the security of Great Britain. Therefore, a powerful Germany
will be necessary following Hitler. Likewise, even as the United States has
another three years of vicious island fighting with the Japanese military ahead of
it, Spykman is recommending a postwar alliance with Japan against the
continental powers of Russia and particularly a rising China.
Japan is a net
importer of food, and inadequate in oil and coal production, but with a great
naval tradition, making it both vulnerable and useful. A large, offshore island
nation of East Asia, it could serve the same function for the United States in the
Far East as Britain serves in Europe. Spykman underscores the necessity of a
Japanese ally against a powerful China, even as in the early 1940s China is weak
and reeling under Japanese military devastation:
A modern, vitalized, and militarized China …
is going to be a threat
not only to Japan, but also to the position of the Western Powers in the
Asiatic Mediterranean. China will be a continental power of huge
dimensions in control of a large section of the littoral of that middle
sea. Her geographic position will be similar to that of the United States
in regard to the American Mediterranean. When China becomes
strong, her present economic penetration in that region will
undoubtedly take on political overtones. It is quite possible to envisage
the day when this body of water will be controlled not by British,
American, or Japanese sea power but by Chinese air power.
14
Perhaps Spykman’s most telling observation concerns Europe. Just as he is
opposed to both German and Russian domination of Europe, he is also opposed
to a united Europe under any circumstances. He
prefers a balance of power
among states within Europe as more advantageous to American interests than a
European federation, even were it to come about peacefully and democratically.
“A federal Europe,” he writes, “would constitute an agglomeration of force that
would completely alter our significance as an Atlantic power and greatly weaken
our position in the Western Hemisphere.” Because the European Union is still in
an intermediate phase of development, with strong national leaders pursuing
coordinated, yet ultimately independent, foreign policies, despite the creation of
a single currency zone, it is too soon to pass judgment on Spykman’s prediction.
Yet already one can see that the more united Europe becomes, the greater its
tensions with the United States. A true European super-state with armed forces
and a single foreign policy at its command would be both a staunch competitor
of the U.S., and possibly the dominant outside power in the equidistant zone of
southern South America.
15
(Of course, Europe’s current
financial crisis make
this prospect doubtful.)
Here is where Spykman differs markedly from Mackinder and Cold War
containment policy.
16
Containment policy, which encouraged a united Europe as
a bulwark against Soviet communism, was rooted in the liberal ideals of a free
society as well as in geopolitics. George Kennan, when he wrote the Long
Telegram, put his faith in the Western way of life, which he believed would
outlast the totalitarian strictures of Soviet communism. It followed, therefore,
that like-minded democratic European states were
to be encouraged in their
efforts toward a common political and economic union. Spykman, though, is
even more cold-blooded than Kennan—himself a hardcore realist. Spykman will
simply not let any elements outside of geographical ones enter into his analysis.
Unlike Haushofer, it is not that he doesn’t believe in democracy and a free
society: rather, it is that he does not feel the existence of it has much of a role in
geopolitical analysis. Spykman sees his job not as improving the world, but in
saying what he thinks is going on in it. It is this very ice-in-his-veins sensibility
that permits him to see beyond Kennan and the Cold War. Thus, in 1942 he can
still write about today:
Only statesmen who can do their political and strategic thinking in
terms of a round earth and a three-dimensional warfare can save their
countries from being outmaneuvered on distant flanks. With air power
supplementing sea power and mobility
again the essence of warfare,
no region of the globe is too distant to be without strategic
significance, too remote to be neglected in the calculations of power
politics.
17
In other words, because of air power and the expeditionary ability of, in
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