The Mackinder Strategic ‘Bible’ Reconsidered
Alastair Crooke
September 11, 2023
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2023/ ... onsidered/
In 1997, Zbig Brzezinski, the original ‘driver’ behind the making of Afghanistan as a quagmire of ‘mud’ into which Russia was to be dragged, wrote his celebrated book, The Grand Chessboard. It was a work that ‘forever’ embedded the Mackinder doctrine of ‘he who controls the Asian heartland controls the world’ into the U.S. zeitgeist.
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Brzezinski further ordained that this ‘Grand Game of Chess’ was to be one of pure U.S. primacy: “No, no one else plays”, he insisted; it is a game purely for one. Once a chess piece is moved; ‘we’ (the U.S.) simply turn the board the other way around – and move the other side’s chess pieces (for ‘them’). There is ‘no other’ in this game”, Brzezinski warned.
This is today’s dilemma – It is so long since Brzezinski originally formulated the Mackinder notion, that classical diplomacy has become etiolated.
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Well … the U.S. and the EU are amidst a new twist to the Mackinder geo-strategic ‘story’ of how to prevent a unified heartland from emerging: It is a variant blueprint on the ‘cutting down to size’ Japanese tech prowess: Clearly the ‘Plaza Accord’ tool (1985) of rigging of interest rates against a ‘defeated’ and compliant Japan won’t work for China.
Rather, China is being subjected to a technology siege accompanied by a stigma campaign, in which its leader is being trashed, whilst China’s economy is squeezed with evermore tech that is forbidden for export, or co-operation. Every day, the western MSM celebrates the resultant economic difficulties facing China:
“Its [China’s] meteoric growth has slowed, a brief post-pandemic surge petered out, and analysts point to profound structural issues undermining China’s future prospects. Xi and the ruling clique (sic) are struggling to address the new challenges posed by China’s maturing economy…China’s economy once seemed the new engine of the world [as Japan once did] … but a sense of stagnation is creeping in”.
It is true. The American extended attrition of the Chinese economy has hobbled growth. Chinese exports to both the U.S. and Europe are falling, and youth unemployment indeed is an active concern for the Chinese leadership.
But China well understands that this is war: ‘Strategic Mackinder War’. On a recent trip to Beijing, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo warned that the prevailing uncertainty, stoked also by the tough actions taken by the Chinese government against foreign businesses, is making China “uninvestable” in the eyes of U.S. investors.
