system,” thanks
to communications technology, of which air power is related.
Nevertheless, the planet is too big a system to be dominated by one hegemon, so,
as Spykman writes, there will a “regional decentralization of power,” with each
big area affecting the other. He intuits a world of multiple hegemons: similar to
the multipolarity that we now all talk about, and which exists already in an
economic and political sense, but not quite yet in a military one, because of the
great distance still separating the United States from other national militaries.
But an emerging world of regional behemoths: the United States, the European
Union, China, India, and Russia—with middle powers such as Turkey, Iran,
Indonesia, Vietnam, Brazil—would bear out his observations.
18
What will be the dynamics of such a world? Spykman practices futurology in
the best way possible, by staring at maps from different angles. His most
arresting insights come from a northern polar map. “Two
significant features
clearly stand out: the concentration of the land masses in the Northern
Hemisphere, and their starfishlike dispersion from the North Pole as a center
toward Africa and the Cape of Good Hope, South America and Cape Horn, and
Australia.” Looking at this projection, land is nearly everywhere; whereas if you
stare at a southern polar projection, it is water that is nearly everywhere. The
northern polar map shows how the northern continents are relatively close to one
another, and the southern continents are far apart. Of course,
in this projection
the distance between the southern continents is exaggerated, yet the map is still
symbolic of how far away Australia is from South America, and South America
from Africa. Thus, the geographically close relationship between North America
and Eurasia is dynamic and constitutes “the base lines of world politics,” while
those between the southern continents are much less important. Again, he is not
saying that South America and Africa are insignificant in and of themselves,
only that their relationships with each other are. South America and Africa
achieve significance in geopolitics only in their relationships with the northern
continents. But the real message about this polar map is the organic relationship
between North America and Eurasia. We think of the vast Pacific as separating
the west coast of North America from East Asia. But the polar route indicates
that it is just a matter of flying north to Alaska and then south, down across the
Russian Far East, to the temperate zone of Japan, Korea, and China. The Arctic,
especially
if it warms, will give new meaning to sea power and especially air
power in future decades. Supersonic transport may cut the distance between the
west coast of the United States and cities in Asia by two-thirds. The increased
use of polar routes will lock the United States, Russia, and China in an ever
tighter embrace.
Geography, because it will be more accessible, will,
counterintuitively, become more crucial.
19
Globalization, understood as the
breaking down of walls, results in an increase in the number and intensity of
contacts, which holds out the greater likelihood of
both political conflict and
cooperation.
Mackinder argues that once the world becomes “a closed political system, the
ultimate geographical reality would make itself felt.”
20
By that he means the
recognition of the World-Island as a single unit in geopolitics, with North
America as the most significant of the continental satellites in the surrounding
seas. It is the Northern Hemisphere that Mackinder is talking about here, as all of
mainland Eurasia and much of Africa—the components of the World-Island—
fall inside it. Spykman’s Rimland thesis
fits neatly with this scenario, with the
marginal zones of Europe, the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent, and the Far
East together dominating the seaboard continuum around Eurasia in the Indian
and Pacific oceans, buttressed by their substantial populations,
economic
development, and hydrocarbon resources: together, they check the Heartland
power of Russia, even as Russia gains the warming waters of its northern Arctic
seaboard.
21
Just as the Arctic will be a hub of planes and ships connecting North
America with the northern reaches of the World-Island, the Greater Indian Ocean
will form the maritime interstate of the World-Island’s commercial and military
traffic, connecting Africa and the Middle East with East Asia.
Still, the Eurasian Rimland will not be united in any strictly political sense. In
a world of multiple regional hegemons, the danger with which both Mackinder
and Spykman were concerned, that of a single land power dominating Eurasia,
or a single sea power dominating the Eurasian Rimland, appears nowhere on the
horizon. Not even the Chinese, with their rising sea power, appear capable of this
achievement, checked as
they will be by the American, Indian, Japanese,
Australian, and other navies. Nevertheless, as we shall see, a world of subtle
power arrangements, where trade and economics will erode sheer military might,
will still be one of geopolitics governed by geography, especially in the world’s
oceans, which will be more crowded than ever. To see this maritime world better,
we will next turn to another thinker from the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries.
