Rimland Resource Wars
Geopolitical commentator Peter Zeihan has predicted that as US influence around the world wanes, resource wars will develop in Eurasia. The area he outlined, but did not name was what Nicholas J. Spykman called the Rimland. This conflict I have dubbed the Rimland Resource Wars, or colloquially World War 3. Quite a few terms and concepts need to be explained and defined before we go further. Geopolitics is the study of how geography impacts global political action. One of the key founders of the modern study of Geopolitics is Halford John Mackinder. He stated that as the twentieth century dawned, all future military and economic conflicts would be political. By this he meant that in the age of nation-states and global empires, there was no “unclaimed” land anymore. No more scattered tribes of non-state actors to fight. Any conflict anywhere in the world would be political in the sense that two or more nation-states and/or empires would be in conflict. He then viewed the world in three major geopolitical regions: (1) the World Island; (2) The Offshore Islands and (3) The Outlying Islands. The World Island is Europe, Asia and Africa; the Offshore Islands include the British Isles and Japanese Home Islands; the Outlying Islands include the New World Continents of North and South America as well as Oceania. The key feature of the World Island was what he called the heartland, a region totally inaccessible to sea power (the strength of the UK, US and Japan). This could lead to a great power consolidating economic power along with advances in transportation technology to build an impregnable fortress to resist the sea powers. This region extended from the Volga to the Yangtze on an east-west axis and from the arctic sea to the Himalayas on a north-south axis. This region is currently controlled by the Russia-China axis. The goal of Western strategists has been to keep this region politically divided. Mackinder famously stated “Who rules Eastern Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island commands the world.1” Hence the importance of Ukraine to both NATO and Russia. Using this dictum by expanding NATO eastward, the US is trying to rule Eastern Europe and from thence the world Island. The Russia-China axis seeks to stop this.
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