Sir Halford Mackinder’s famous Heartland Theory was first formulated in the early 20th century, but it holds renewed relevance and importance today, especially when analyzed though a critical lens of the current geopolitical system, one that emphasizes individual freedom, limited government intervention, and skepticism of centralized power. Mackinder’s theory posits that control over the “Heartland” — roughly the region of Eastern Europe and Central Asia — grants substantial power over global politics and commerce due to its geographic centrality, strategic importance and resource abundance. This seemingly simple, but potent, core idea, highlights both the dangers and opportunities posed by state power struggles and emphasizes the need for decentralized and voluntary approaches to international relations and global geopolitical power balances.
Mackinder argued that whoever controls the Heartland, also referred to as “the pivot area” in his 1904 analysis “The Geographical Pivot of History”, could eventually control the world’s very trajectory. Historically, command over this central position has allowed a nation or an alliance of nations to exert immense influence over global affairs. Clearly, for liberty-loving individuals and independent thinkers, this level of dominance raises serious concerns due to the concentrated power it affords a central authority, potentially undermining individual freedoms and self-determination.
It also raises very legitimate fears over the potential for coercive policies that threaten individual autonomy both domestically and internationally. What’s more, the fierce competition over the Heartland not only encourages interventionist policies, but also indirect hostile actions or even outright aggression, usually ending up in “unholy” alliances and in devastating and costly wars.
We’re seeing this all play out in real time in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. As opposed to what the mainstream media propaganda and Western political leaders would have the public believe, Russia didn’t invade Ukraine out of nothing or because President Putin is some kind of comic-book madman like he is so often portrayed. Without wishing to defend any sort of aggression, especially of a military nature, and without being a Moscow apologist (for it is crystal clear that the Russian government is very far from benign and freedom-loving), there is a solid case to be made against the Western allies too, for their part in instigating this war NATO’s eastward expansion and increasing U.S. presence in Eastern Europe indicate a renewed geopolitical interest in countering Russia and China in the Heartland area and reinforcing its influence in a clearly threatening way.
The West’s actions prior to and after the Ukraine invasion raise questions about interventionism’s costs and its potential for unintended consequences, as well as about the political and strategic lines that nations are willing to cross in order to expand their power and control. It goes beyond the very obvious and catastrophic impact of this war in terms of human losses (lest we forget about the more that 500,000 souls that perished after being forcibly conscripted by the Ukrainian government, many of them teenagers, civilians with little to no prior military training, or even mentally disabled individuals) and the infrastructural and economic destruction of the two warring parties. There has also been a very high price paid indirectly by the citizens of the allied nations, who never voted for or in any way consented to participating this conflict. They all just got dragged into yet another prolonged war that has already drained resources, increased national debt, and curtailed freedoms through increased surveillance, freedom of speech restrictions, military spending and direct encroachments on individual financial sovereignty. In a world that is brutally dividing itself between East and West – the Ukraine war will likely be remembered in history books as a key catalyst.
Naturally, the desire to control the Heartland is not some bizarre obsession unique to the West, as Russia also fully recognizes and appreciates the power that comes with it. Moscow’s hold over Ukraine would allow the nation to secure critical land access points, obtain influence over transit routes for natural resources, and project power over Europe. Ukraine’s geographic position bridges Europe with the resource-rich lands of Central Asia, and it provides access to the Black Sea, making it a key strategic asset in Mackinder’s Heartland framework. A Russia with control over Ukraine and, by extension, control over more of the Heartland, would destabilize Europe and make the continent more dependent on Russian resources, thereby reducing Western influence and relevance on the global power balance.
This is especially relevant and quite clear to see when it comes to the all-important energy market. Mackinder’s theory emphasizes the strategic value of resources in the Heartland, and indeed, today, Russia uses its energy exports as a geopolitical tool, while the West uses its sanctions as a counter-offensive weapon. With control over the substantial oil and gas reserves and key pipeline routes, Russia can exert leverage over European nations that depend on its resources, especially since so many of them have for so long adopted catastrophic energy policies (premature transition to “green” initiatives) that have all but guaranteed this near-absolute dependence.
This current dynamic demonstrably confirms Mackinder’s prediction that control over the Heartland could allow a power to dominate through resource control. Europe’s reliance on Russian gas, for instance, has exposed significant energy security vulnerabilities, particularly as Russia has intermittently restricted exports in response to sanctions and military aid from the West to Ukraine.
The Heartland Theory implicitly assumes a globalist system, where powerful states vie for control and seek to influence others through centralized strategies, which clearly contradicts libertarian values, which prioritize the sovereignty and self-determination of communities and especially of the individual, the smallest minority of all. This is particularly relevant in a world where centralized, global institutions, such as the United Nations or the World Economic Forum, are forcing upon us another Cultural Revolution, and as they are increasingly involved in geopolitics, often coercing smaller nations into decisions that go against the interests of their own people, jeopardizing their security, their prosperity and regrettably, even their very existence.
Of course, none of this new or even surprising to the observant students of history. Countless lives have been lost since time immemorial due to this endless and largely vain competition between nation states and alliances to gain control over the Heartland. The last time we saw a serious escalation was, of course, WWII, and we all know how that ended… Or do we?
“The virtuous Allies crushed the evil Nazis and saved the world from fascism.” That’s pretty much the summary of every history book taught in schools all over the world, of every mainstream documentary ever produced on that period and of every political speech that seeks to criticize opposing views and rivals by accusing them of being “literally Hitler”. We see this political messaging strategy at work today, in real time, too: Victor Urban in Hungary, the AFD party in Germany, Nigel Farage in the UK, Marine LePen in France, and last but certainly not least, President Elect Trump in the US, all of them have been decided as “literal Nazis” – though the irony of the true meaning of the term, namely “National Socialist” is most of the time totally lost on the name-callers. What is also entirely lost on them are the circumstances that led to WWII and the rise of Hitler himself, namely the Heartland-theory-underpinned WWI (an effort to prevent a Russo-German alliance) , which ended with the callous humiliation of the Germans and the Treaty of Versailles that clearly sowed the seeds for the next World War.
However, unfortunately for those of us seeking to understand history, the truth is always more nuanced than a children’s bedtime story. Or as comedian Norm MacDonald concisely put it: “It says here in this history book that, luckily, the good guys have won every single time. What are the odds?”
Take Winston Churchill for example. There has hardly ever been a more revered, nearly deified human in modern history, to the extent that one couldn’t be blamed for forgetting that he was in fact, human. We do need to remember this though, that he was just that, human, in order to provide a balanced view, one that scrutinizes actions often overlooked or sanitized in popular narratives. For instance, for all his widely celebrated strategic genius, Churchill’s leadership was also tainted by several decisions that led to catastrophic failures, resulting in unnecessary loss of life and resources, including the Gallipoli Campaign and the The Norway Campaign.
Most shamefully, Churchill’s approval of area bombing campaigns is also often brushed aside in many historical accounts, even though they cost the lives of around 600,000 civilians and left around 800,000 seriously injured. The most (in)famous example of these is, of course, the firebombing of Dresden. Its barbarity, even though it was not the first of its kind nor the last, shook Churchill’s moral core – as he put it, immediately after the attack: “Are we beasts? Are we taking this too far?…. It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land. We shall not, for instance, be able to get housing materials out of Germany for our own needs because some temporary provision would have to be made for the Germans themselves. The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing. I am of the opinion that military objectives must henceforward be more strictly studied in our own interests rather than that of the enemy.”
These raids targeted civilian populations and caused massive destruction, with questionable strategic value. One can easily argue that such actions blurred the moral distinction between the Allies and Axis powers.
Of course, the consequences of twisting or “spinning” history to match a certain narrative go far beyond the obvious, namely creating generation after generation of ill-informed, biased and naive citizens. It also shapes the policy direction of the future. As Ralph Raico explained in an analysis for the Mises Institute: “In more recent decades, the Churchill legend has been adopted by an internationalist establishment for which it furnishes the perfect symbol and an inexhaustible vein of high-toned blather. Churchill has become, in Christopher Hitchens’s phrase, a “totem” of the American establishment, not only the scions of the New Deal, but the neo-conservative apparatus as well—politicians like Newt Gingrich and Dan Quayle, corporate “knights” and other denizens of the Reagan and Bush Cabinets, the editors and writers of the Wall Street Journal, and a legion of “conservative” columnists led by William Safire and William Buckley. Churchill was, as Hitchens writes, “the human bridge across which the transition was made” between a noninterventionist and a globalist America. In the next century, it is not impossible that his bulldog likeness will feature in the logo of the New World Order.”
It is vital to keep this in mind today, as we are going through an extremely important, tectonic shift in the global geopolitical order. We need to look at history through a critical lens, to question every “received wisdom” and to ask as many questions as possible, even if (or perhaps, especially if) they are uncomfortable.
Mackinder’s Heartland Theory remains highly relevant as it highlights the ongoing struggle for control over the region and all that it implies for the world at large. For freedom-loving individuals, the theory serves as a stern warning against the dangers of centralization and interventionism.
In today’s global climate, where large states aim to leverage geographic influence, military might and economic warfare, rational and decent individuals must resist convenient and simplistic narratives that paint humanity as entirely good or entirely evil, and must instead stand for non-aggression, non-intervention, decentralized cooperation, and free-market-led initiatives, as the only ways to promote stability and prosperity without the need for coercive control over any strategic “Heartland.”
Claudio Grass, Hünenberg See, Switzerland. www.claudiograss.ch
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