Do you have any geopolitical theories you believe in that you feel help explain history in some way? Not necessarily ones that are 100% accurate, just interesting and helpful ways to understand how power is shapedMackinders Heartland Theory sounds convincing, and depending how you look at it either it wws proved wrong by the Soviets losing, or they only lost because the west prevented their outright domination of the areas required to make them unstoppable.>"Who rules Eastern Europe commands the Heartland;>Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;>Who rules the World-Island commands the World."Also worth noting it’s always important to keep in mind WHEN these theories were invented and by WHOM. The Heartland theory was made in 1904 by a British man, a time where Russia in particular was beginning its transition from a colossal agrarian backwater to industrialisation. With the ride of rail changing the face of economics and warfare by no longer making sea travel the prerequisite for such things across vast areas.Likewise the British fear of an alliance between Germany and Russia would have created the so called Heartland that would have been unstoppable from Mackinders POV. And this isn’t something that seemed unlikely to happen.
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>>18534716The complete opposite is true. Controlling seas = controlling world trade.
>>18534716During the indian partition the original high castes were massacred by shudras and dalits and they forged lineages to replace them. These low castes came from rural areas far inland and have very little to do with the medieval indian civilizations, which were run by the now extinct original indian race. This is why modern indians resemble abbos while older real indians looked more like iranians and arabs in photographs.
Sea Power Theory is a geopolitical theory developed by Alfred Thayer Mahan in the late 19th century. It argued that nations become great powers by controlling the seas, rather than by controlling vast land territories.Mahan's central idea was: Whoever controls the sea lanes controls global trade, and whoever controls global trade gains wealth, influence, and military power.In Mahan's view, national power depended on:>A strong navy capable of defeating rival fleets.Merchant shipping to carry trade around the world.>Overseas naval bases and coaling stations.Strategic control of key maritime chokepoints.>A large volume of international commerce.He studied the rise of United Kingdom and its empire and concluded that its global dominance came largely from naval supremacy rather than from the size of its army.Mahan saw the oceans as the world's highways. While Mackinder argued that railways were making the Eurasian interior more important than the oceans.These theories and ideas are fairly influential, for example Theodore Roosevelt admired Mahan's work and supported building a powerful U.S. Navy as a result. Germany's naval expansion before World War I was also partly inspired by Mahan's ideas. As well as the Japanese empire focusing hard on emulating a British style naval dominion.In truth neither theory captures the whole truth but they do help explain the strengths and weaknesses of certain nations and the overall direction of history
>>18534731This is partly true but past a certain point you need major land power to have said globally perrr projecting navy now.
Rimland Theory was developed by Nicholas J. Spykman in the 1940s as a critique of Mackinder's Heartland Theory.Spykman agreed that Eurasia was the key strategic region of the world, but he disagreed about which part mattered most.Mackinder vs. SpykmanMackinder said:>"Who rules Eastern Europe commands the Heartland;>Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island."Spykman responded that the Heartland itself was not enough. The real prize was the Rimland—the densely populated coastal belt surrounding the Eurasian interior.The Rimland included:Western EuropeThe Middle EastSouth AsiaEast AsiaIn modern terms, it stretches roughly from Europe through the Persian Gulf, India, Southeast Asia, and China.Spykman's famous formulation was:>"Who controls the Rimland rules Eurasia;>Who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the world."Why did Spykman think the Rimland mattered?The Rimland possessed:Most of Eurasia's population.Most of its industry and wealth.Access to both land and sea routes.The ability to contain powers from either the Heartland or the oceans.His argument was that a Heartland power such as the Soviet Union could not dominate the world unless it also controlled the surrounding coastal regions.Historical significanceRimland Theory became highly influential during the Cold War.Many historians see the U.S. policy of containment as essentially a Rimland strategy. The goal was to prevent Soviet expansion into key Rimland regions.Examples include:North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Europe.U.S. alliances with Turkey and Iran (before 1979).Security partnerships with Japan, South Korea, and other Asian states.Viewed through Spykman's lens, the United States was trying to maintain influence along the entire Eurasian perimeter.
>>18534761Many contemporary analysts argue that Spykman's theory has proven especially resilient because much of today's geopolitical competition occurs in Rimland regions:Eastern EuropeThe Middle EastThe South China SeaThe Taiwan StraitThe Indian OceanThese are precisely the kinds of strategic coastal zones that Spykman believed would determine the balance of power in Eurasia.It’s notable how in all these aforementioned theories the US and Americas in general are more peripheral. Rather than a core driver of global power.I’d expect a more modern theory would need to account for the heavy weight that is the USA along with the other smaller American economies
>>18534716"Heartland Theory" is especially retarded because at no point has Eastern Europe ever controlled the world or even been the foremost in a multipolar system. The closest they ever came was under the Soviets during which they were still only second place before outright losing and being dismantled.>>18534745Sea Power has a little more logic to it given that there actually have been many world powers (most especially England) that derived their strength from naval forces. The problem is that this has never been an absolute, there have been great powers like China that were not based upon naval power projection, and the theory is also heavily dependent on contexts of time/technological development. Nothing like the British Empire could have existed before the invention of the transoceanic sailing ship for instance.>>18534761Rimland Theory is something of an example of "truth through broadness". Like of course such an area controls global politics, when the area you defined encompasses almost 80% of the habitable land on the entire planet. He basically just highlighted the Temperate Zone. It's so broad a qualification as to be more or less useless.
>>18534868I feel like China isn’t nearly the great power it’s known as historically. Mainly because it lacked the ability for interventions outside of its own dominion. It struggled to conquer Korea. It couldn’t keep control of Vietnam. Japan remained out of its reach. The Mongolians managed to conquer it.A lot of it just seems like cope “oh we have all we need so no need to expand or invade anyone, we totally own Korea and Japan because they send up a present every ten years”, putting their lack of successful interventions as them not wanting to do them rather than being incapable.If a power is only capable of projecting said power within itself its never really a great power IMO
>>18534917You are unironically falling for the nationalist Chinese meme that "China" before modern times was some cohesive entity and that the borders of the Qing Empire were somehow eternal and stable. Like how do you think those Chinese Empires got so large if not by "interventions outside of its own dominion."? Everywhere is "outside it's dominion" when an Empire is new. The truth is that there have been tons of East Asian empires throughout history which in their various expansions conquered swaths of overlapping territory that was in no way "Chinese" any more than "England" is "Roman" because at one point subject to Roman occupation. These Chinese Empires were extremely expansionist and only became "Isolationist" when they reached the point where they could no longer sustain further expansion, it would be like calling Hadrian "Isolationist" because he tried to stop expanding and secure Romes borders. "Chinese" being a national rather than imperial identity was something invented by revolutionaries in the 1910's and didn't really become a fact until the Communist era. It's application before then is retroactive.
>>18534761It depends on technology.If technology favors land warfare then the heartland wins.If technology favors air and sea then the rimland wins.Certainly in Mackinder's time when everyone was gearing up for mass conscription and millions in the trenches the heartland theory held. Unlikely of course, but if events led to Germany expanding to the river and canal network essential to Russia's economy they would attain a position unassailable to the west and ~25 years before nuclear weapons, ICBMs and jet aircraft. Ample time to exert their colossal influence on China and the middle east then seize Britain and France's colonies, bear in mind the Ottomans may well throw in their lot with a German led federation and assist in governing the Muslim areas.Even if Japan and Italy joined the allies to try and contain the monstrous polity emerging across Eurasia they simply would not have the manpower to do so. Any war would involve holding out until someone develops the atom bomb, which may well first be the heartland rather than papa America.
Of all the pathetic Russian copes I have seen this is certainly top 3 material.
>>18534716The iron madness theory. Divalent iron pretty much doesn't exist in nature, because free oxygen turns it trivalent. But many proteins still descend from ancient proteins that used it when Earth was still free of oxygen. Divalent iron poisons them. This results in insanity in people any time iron gets produced in significant amounts, and the affected people destroy their society in an attempt to save it from what they perceive as irrational thinking of the actually sane people of its past.
>>18534716The heartland theory crucially gets wrong which heartland actually matters for controlling the world.
>>18534716>Mackinders Heartland Theory sounds convincingIt was never real thoNeither steppe nomads, Rus, Poles or Russians really mean a lot. It always was some backward lands. Brief moment of power under Stalin and they crumbled fast after.
>>18535301Well said
Core: Scandinavia
>>18534917But at times it literally was "China didn't want to invade other countries" like when the Ming dynasty retreated from Vietnam because they considered the Yongle Emperor as having violated the ancestral command of the founding Hongwu Emperor to not invade Vietnam and they literally never returned afterwards. The Hongwu Emperor also ordered his descendants to not invade many other countries too.
There are 4 cores, US, Europe, India and China. There are also 7 minor cores, the Pampas, Nigeria, Lake Victoria, Java, the Philippines and Kazakhstan. New cores arose due to the green revolution, but as the earth warms cores will shift north.Though we are in the age of nukes, ICBMS, AI and murderdrones, it is here that the lifestuff that sustains billions is grown and their fates decided.
The capitalist peace theory was devised before WW1 but it only really applies to today. You see, Norman Angell's vision was primarily motivated by one of mutual self interest. Countries depend on one another for global trade and are literally incapable of functioning without it, so any war between these countries would be incredibly illogical as it would stand to destroy the wealth of the elites. During WW1 this was disproven for obvious reasons, but the economy wasn't really globalized back then, the German central european economy was partially seperate from the British-backed global one, which is how even with the British blockade they managed to keep their war machine running for several years. As for WW2, fascist regimes were necessarily autarkic by their very nature, so they weren't connected to the global economy to begin with. The Soviets had their own seperate economic bloc which could have potentially led to conflict with the US. Now though? There is one single globalized market that practically every country participates in (even sanctioned ones through shadow fleets and third countries). China relies on US consumers to keep its economy afloat and the US relies on China for all the raw materials we need for things as simple as weapons systems. A third world war between a US-led bloc and a China-led bloc is a pure fantasy because there simply isn't a way to power a war machine nowadays since there's effectively no isolationism in the world.
>>18535607>China relies on US consumers to keep its economy afloat and the US relies on China for all the raw materials we need for things as simple as weapons systems.The US needs China but why does China need the US?
>>18534745Controlling trade routes is precarious, as in the core you parasitize at the exact conditions that occur at the time, and such spcieties were vulnerable to a spectacular failure once those conditions change even in a minor way. What made the British Empire successful was its population size that made it viable to specialize in inventing machines. You couldn't possibly have somebody like Brunel in a country of ten million.
>>18535607The economy was extremely globalized before WW1, as the muslim world was allied with Europe, and most currencies were pegged to each other through gold. It simply never recovered. The problem with the current artificial division is that it's artifical, and uneconomical to all parties involved. China essentially pays for the right to export to the west, which produces essentially nothing on its own, and everybody is poor in the end. So it's in everybody's interest to end the dependence.
>>18535589How did Africa come to have such a large population when their land can sustain only a fraction of it
>>18535803A) massive food aid and donations from other countries (often in exchange for mineral rights)B) the invention of artificial fertilisers and farm equipment eventually made its way to Africa through colonialism and made it much easier to farm crops than it was in the past
>>18535607I mean, you could still have a world war, it’d just be unofficial and undeclared and mostly fought through proxy battles in Africa, Middle East, South America, etcYou’d even get US/Western soldiers directly getting into skirmishes with Chinese/Chinese allied troops and it wouldn’t officially escalate, because like you dust both sides have too much to lose by doing so
>>18535780Britain had a population of fourteen or so million people when Brunel built the great Eastern Railway.
>>18535842It was for England alone, the entire empire had hundreds of million at that point.
>>18535842It was a ship, not a railway btw.
