Mackinder's Dread Realized

 Susan Nevens

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Mackinder's Dread Realized

The rail and pipelines now connecting Iran, Russia, and China do not REPLACE the ancient maritime routes, they REINFORCE them. They are interior lines of supply that enable the Eurasian entente to bring power to bear all along the maritime perimeter.

For those who are not familiar with Mackinder,

Halford John Mackinder was a British geographer, academic and politician, who is regarded as one of the founding fathers of both geopolitics and geostrategy back in the 1900s.

Mackinder is often credited with introducing two new terms into the English language: "manpower" and "heartland".

The Heartland Theory and more generally classical geopolitics and geostrategy were extremely influential in the making of US strategic policy during the period of the Cold War and arguably it continued afterwards.

The theory has seen a revival in application to China's Belt and Road Initiative. On China, Mackinder predicted in 1904 that it may become the greatest threat "to the world's freedom" because of it "would add an oceanic frontage to the resources of the great continent."