Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
perately to ingratiate themselves with those in power. Soon after Germany's defeat and an
Allied investigation of him for war crimes, both Haushofer and his wife committed suicide.
Strausz-Hupé's work is not merely designed to discredit Haushofer and rescue the reputa-
tion of Mackinder, but to implore Americans to take geopolitics seriously, because if they
don't, others of ill intent will, and in the process vanquish the United States. As he writes
at the end of his topic:
The Nazi war machine is the
instrument
of conquest;
Geopolitik
is the
master
plan
designed to tell those who wield the instrument what to conquer and how. It
is late, but not too late to profit by the lessons of
Geopolitik
.
8
For Strausz-Hupé is every inch a realist. Exposing some of the intellectual underpinnings
of a totalitarian state's program of conquest is not enough for him, and in addition is much
too easy. He knows the uncomfortable truth that just as Mackinder's reasoning is flawed in
crucial ways, Haushofer's reasoning, though perverted, does have a basis in reality. There-
fore, Strausz-Hupé's aim is to imbue Americans—who live in splendid isolation by virtue
of being bounded by two oceans—with a greater appreciation of the geographical discip-
line, so that the United States can assume its postwar role as a stabilizer and preserver of
the Eurasian balance of power, which the Nazis, helped by Haushofer, attempted to over-
turn.
As for the Heartland thesis itself, Strausz-Hupé, who is extremely skeptical of it to
begin with, says that air power—both commercial and military—may render it meaning-
less. Nevertheless, he does believe that Industrial Age technology provided the advantage
to big states: large factories, railway lines, and tanks and aircraft carriers are best taken ad-
vantage of by states with depth of distance and territory. “The history of our times appears
to reflect, with malignant fatality, the trend toward empires and super-states predicted by
phasis on smallness—microchips, mobile phones, plastic explosives—has empowered not
only large states but individuals and stateless groups, too, adding only a deeper complexity
and tension to geopolitics. But Strausz-Hupé intuits some of this in his discussion of fron-
tiers, which he takes up on account of Haushofer's misuse of Curzon in this matter.
Despite Haushofer's nihilism, Strausz-Hupé will not be intimidated into debunking him
outright. For the very fact of frontiers shows a world beset by political and military divi-
sions. “The sovereign state is, at least by its origins, organized force. Its history begins in
war. Hence its frontiers—be they 'good' or 'bad'—are strategic frontiers,” Strausz-Hupé
writes. He tellingly selects a quotation from Curzon in which the latter notes that frontier
wars will increase in number and intensity as “the habitable globe shrinks,” at which time
