Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
ica as of considerable geographical importance: it was a strategic advantage in that the U.S.
did not have to master the region, the way it had to master the Caribbean basin; but it was
a vulnerability in that the U.S. had no special geographical advantage in the event of the
region being threatened by an adversary from Europe. And the Southern Cone, from Rio
de Janeiro southward—what Spykman calls the “equidistant zone”—contained the contin-
ent's most productive agricultural regions, three-quarters of South America's population,
and the major cities of the two most important South American republics at the time, Brazil
and Argentina. Even allowing for its geographic insignificance compared to Eurasia, Spyk-
man worried about the Southern Cone becoming part of the encirclement strategy of a hos-
tile power. Just as the geography of the Americas allowed for the emergence of the Un-
ited States as a hemispheric hegemon, the breakup of the Americas into a free north and
an Axis-dominated south would have spelled the end of that preponderance. “Many of the
isolationists,” he writes, “accepted the policy of hemisphere defense because it seemed a
way of avoiding conflict with Germany, but they overlooked the fact that, even if the U.S.
could have avoided war with Germany over Europe, it could not have avoided a struggle
with Germany for hegemony over South America.”
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Even though the Axis powers were to be defeated, Spykman's warning still stands, after
a fashion. Europe, Japan, and China have made very deep inroads in trade with Spykman's
equidistant zone, and there is no guarantee that the United States will remain the dominant
outside power in a region in which under 20 percent of its trade is with the U.S., and the
flying time from New York to Buenos Aires is eleven hours, the same time it takes to fly
from the U.S. to the Middle East. Although his obsession was with winning the war, by
his single-minded focus on geography, Spykman is able to show us the world we currently
inhabit.
Spykman was a generation younger than Mackinder, deriving his frame of reference and
inspiration from the English geographer. Latin America constitutes a long tangent from
Spykman's central concern about Eurasia, which he shared with Mackinder. Mackinder's
work suggests the struggle of Heartland-dominated land power versus sea power, with
Heartland-based land power in the better position. Here is Spykman essentially acknow-
ledging the spiritual influence of Mackinder—even if they assessed differently the relative
importance of sea and land power:
For two hundred years, since the time of Peter the Great, Russia has attempted
to break through the encircling ring of border states and reach the ocean. Geo-
graphy and sea power have persistently thwarted her.
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