Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
ism and dogmatic posturing by states.” 17 In other words, the world will be both duller and
more dangerous than ever before.
But before the dullness completely sets in, there will upheavals and power shifts and nat-
ural geopolitical evolutions that can usefully be described by reference to the relief map.
It is now time to explore in depth various regions of the globe, with a particular emphasis
on the super-continent of Eurasia, bearing in mind all that we have learned from these his-
torians, geopoliticians, and other thinkers. For in the chapters that follow, I will try to ad-
here to their sensibilities as well as to their theories. I will write about Europe, which lies
adjacent to Mackinder's Heartland and is so influenced by it; about Russia, Mackinder's
Heartland itself; China, which may in future decades come to dominate part of the Heart-
land and part of Spykman's Rimland; the Indian Subcontinent, which forms the core region
of the Rimland; Iran, where the Heartland and Rimland actually meet; the Turkish and Arab
Middle East, which approximates Hodgson's Oikoumene; and finally North America, the
largest of Mackinder's continental satellites to challenge Eurasia and the World-Island. I
will try not to make predictions, but rather to describe geography as it affects history, so as
to get some idea of what the future might hold.
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