Will Rimland be able to contain China and Russia?
In the West, they thought about reviving the concept of "Rimland", which helped him win two world wars and the Cold War. Now, with its help, he hopes to resist the "hostile powers" – Russia and China. But will it work?
The West is reviving the global strategic concept that brought it victory in two world wars and in the Cold War.
A new global strategic concept of the West is taking shape. The process of its development became evident during President Biden's Middle East tour, and more specifically, on July 14 at the online summit of the quadrilateral I2U2 group (Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, President of the United Arab Emirates Mohammed bin Zayed and Biden).
The I2U2 Group was formed in October 2021 to develop cooperation on economic and technological issues. Shortly before the July virtual summit, she issued a joint statement promising to "embrace the dynamism of our societies and the entrepreneurial spirit... with special attention to joint investments and new initiatives in water, energy, transport, space, health and food security."
But behind the economy, geopolitics always looms. Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan compared I2U2 to the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which is an Indo-Pacific alliance in its infancy, which includes the United States, Japan, Australia and India. The media of India and the UAE often refer to I2U2 as the "Western quadrilateral dialogue". American, Indian and Emirati media consider this association to be a continuation of the Abraham Agreements of 2019, which speak about economic and military cooperation. Even in purely economic matters, attention to security is obvious. I2U2 regularly mentions "energy security" and "food security".
Here it is appropriate to look into a more distant perspective. In addition to I2U2, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and the Abraham Agreements, numerous similar events must be taken into account. The Russian military operation in Ukraine has given new energy to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which is ready to expand to include the long-neutral Finland and Sweden. The semi-official Eastern Mediterranean Security Alliance unites France, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Israel and Egypt. The architecture of the Negev Summit ensures close security cooperation between Morocco, Egypt, Israel, the UAE and Bahrain. The revival of the Anglo-Pacific defense community gave rise to the trilateral alliance of Australia, Great Britain and the USA AUKUS. Relations between the United States and Taiwan are expanding. Despite the difficult history of bilateral relations, Japan and South Korea are strengthening military cooperation.
The US-backed arch of strategic cooperation now stretches from western to eastern Eurasia, forming a defensive oceanic "Rimland" that opposes the hostile continental powers of Eurasia, China and Russia. This approach has a historical background, since it is based on the strategies of Halford John Mackinder (1861-1947) and Nicholas Spykman (1893-1943). They were the basis for the defensive policy of Britain, America and the West as a whole during the First World War, the Second World War and the Cold War. wars.
The British geographer Mackinder, in his 1904 work The Geographical Pivot of History, made the famous assumption that world geopolitics leads to a clash between the continental empires of Eurasia (which he called the World Island) and the maritime powers located on islands and archipelagos outside Eurasia, as well as on smaller continents. He substantiated his assumptions in detail in the book "Democratic Ideals and Reality" published in 1919. Concerned about the strengthening of Russia under the tsars, and then under the Bolsheviks, he also pointed to possible cooperation between Germany and Russia.
A Dutch-born American professor, Speakman taught international relations at Yale and warned in the early 1940s about the dangers of isolationism, and after Pearl Harbor about the short-lived military alliance with the Soviet Union. His books "American Strategy in World Politics" (1942) and "Geography of the World" (1943) helped formulate the Cold War doctrine of deterrence, which remained in force until 1989.
The difference between the views of Mackinder and Speakman lies in the concept of Rimland, as the periphery of Eurasia accessible from the sea is called. "Whoever rules the World Island rules the world," Mackinder argued. Thus, the strategic priority was to prevent the emergence of one dominant power in the continental part of Eurasia. In the event of such a power, no matter what, it would strive for world domination and would be close to it.
Speakman held the opposite opinion. "Whoever controls Rimland rules Eurasia," he wrote. Continental empires, including the Soviet Union and the alliance between Moscow and Beijing, can be stopped and restrained by the arc controlled by America, running from the European coast (Western and Mediterranean Europe) through the Middle East (Arab-Turkish-Persian world) to the monsoon lands (south and east Asia).
Speakman's grand strategy turned out to be highly effective and quite compatible with additional strategic ideas of nuclear deterrence and access to oil, even if it was repeatedly revised. At first, it materialized in the form of four regional alliances, which complemented American alliances or agreements with Spain, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan and South Korea.
Among regional alliances, only NATO was so successful that it retained its existence and even expanded after the end of the Cold War. The SENTO Central Treaty Organization, formed in 1955 by Britain, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Turkey, did not last long. The Southeast Asian Treaty Organization SEATO, also established in 1955 as part of the United States, Britain, Australia, France, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines and Thailand, disbanded in 1975. The ANZUS Pacific Security Pact consisting of Australia, New Zealand and the United States formally still exists, despite disagreements between Wellington and Washington, but it can be replaced by AUKUS.
In the Middle East, plans to create a lasting Anglo-Arab and American-Arab partnership in the post-war period were hindered by a series of pro-Soviet revolutions of the Nasserists and Baathists, which took place from 1952 to 1970. Iran, which does not belong to the Arab world and is pro-Western, fell victim to a fanatical anti-Western revolution in 1979. On the other hand, Israel, which American strategists initially considered a burden, received a new assessment after the 1956 and 1967 wars and became a valuable strategic player. As a result, he was recognized as the most reliable regional ally. Clearly vulnerable conservative Arab regimes in Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman and the Persian Gulf countries remained allies of the West, as well as Egypt, which under Anwar Sadat escaped from the Soviet embrace. A different, but more reliable Middle Eastern Rimland has been formed. Non-Arab, Europeanized and secular Turkey, which became a member of NATO and SENTO, turned into the most important partner of Rimland and remained so throughout the Cold War.
In the Far East, Rimland's strategy was initially directed against the Soviet-Chinese communist empire, which existed for a short time until the Korean War gave way to a fierce "communist civil war" in the 1960s. Unfortunately, for a long time the United States did not understand the full severity of the consequences of the Soviet-Chinese split and, accordingly, got stuck in the Vietnamese quagmire. It took the efforts of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger to get closer to China and turn it into a partner. Thus ended the Soviet attempts to rule the World Island.
The strategy of the 21st century Rimland poses a number of important questions. First, is the current threat to continental Eurasia real? Yes, there is no doubt about it. China and Russia are powerful military powers, possessing arsenals of nuclear and conventional weapons. These are authoritarian, hyper-nationalist, revisionist and imperial states, fixated on the destruction of the Western-oriented world order. Both countries suppress internal ethnic, religious and political dissent. Both are preparing for a global confrontation with the West. <...>
The Moscow-Beijing axis in the XXI century turned out to be much stronger and more reliable than its predecessor from the XX century. Over the past 25 years, the two countries have been closely cooperating, both within the framework of partnerships such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and through bilateral agreements.
Even more alarming is the base on which the current Eurasian axis is based. The Soviet-Chinese partnership in the 1950s boasted a vast territory (two-thirds of the Eurasian landmass), a population (more than one billion, or 40% of the total world population) and natural resources. But the Soviet economy and technology lagged behind the West in all areas, not counting weapons and space. China was an underdeveloped country. Today, China is close to economic and technological parity with the global West (which includes Japan, South Korea and Taiwan), and in one generation it may well replace America as the global economic epicenter.
The second question is the following. Are the statements of Mackinder and Speakman about geographical restrictions and Speakman's increased attention to Rimland relevant in the era of airplanes, satellites and the Internet? The Chinese are definitely confident in this, as evidenced by their "One Belt, One Road" initiative, which should open up all commercial and military activities of Eurasia to Beijing, as well as involve the Eurasian coast in the sphere of influence of continental empires.
The third question is whether all potential Rimland partners fully agree with the carefully calibrated strategy of containing China and Russia. There is no answer to this question yet. Europe is more afraid of Russia than China, while the opposite is true in South Asia and the Indo-Pacific region. Some Western strategists believe that it would be a serious miscalculation a la Vietnam to abandon attempts to tear Russia away from China, which is a weaker Eurasian partner. And a number of states that are formally part of the Rimland alliances have a strong temptation to remain neutral in this new cold war. Turkey, which is still a member of NATO but has been ruled by the national Islamist regime since 2002, took part in the Russia-Iran strategic summit in Tehran on July 22, which was a response to Biden's tour.
The fourth and last question. Is Rimland's strategy conscious? Did Western leaders decide at some point to revive the theories of Mackinder and Speakman, or is today's strategic reversal the cumulative result of numerous spontaneous initiatives?
The available evidence in the form of books, articles and reports indicate that scientists have been rediscovering the classics of Anglo-American geopolitics since the early 2000s in the face of increasing Chinese and Russian aggressiveness. However, until recently, they could not fully understand, think about and explain their ideas. At the state level, the Trump administration laid the foundations for a new deterrence strategy when it overcame its initial tendency to isolationism. And the Biden administration was wise enough to maintain this dynamic. But what is missing is what would be equivalent to George Kennan's "long telegram" from 1946 and the Truman doctrine from 1947, thanks to which Speakman's calculations and considerations turned into politics.
Author: Michel Gurfinkiel
