Do we need revision of the key geopolitical paradigms?

Abstract

The foundation of and justification for the revision of an very important conceptual paradigm that, for decades past, have had a reputation for being the basic premise in the history of geopolitics as a (sub)discipline of (political) geographyare explored in the paper. It is classical Mackinder-Spykman?s dichotomy of the Eurasian mainland into the heartland and the rimland. Since humankind is a witness to undisputed climatic changes and global warming, which also manifests very intensively through the process of the melting of Arctic ice, the author of the paper explores whether the current retreating of ice from the Arctic annuls or at least relativizes the foundation of Halford John Mackinder?s concept of the heartland as a Eurasian ?strategic fortress? of its own kind, which inter alia owes the status it has to the existence of the white barrier (eternal ice) in the extreme north of the planet Earth. This dilemma gives rise to the next that is related to the familiar thesis of the American geopolitician Nicholas John Spykman of the crucial importance of the Eurasian rimland in the global competition of the great powers. If the Arctic Ocean stays without ice for the largest part of the yearone day, should in that case the northern mainland of the Russian Federation also be perceived as the rimland in the meaning as devised by Spykman? The author explores what the scope, content and meaning of the notions of heartland and rimland could be at all if the global warming trends present so far continued. So, the paper questions and critically perceives the two maybe most important (hypo)theses in the history of geopolitics, whose authors were Mackinder and Spykman, in the context of far-reaching climatic changes. Apart from this, the author of the paper proves/refutes the justification for the (hypo)thesis of the division of geopolitics into the so-called classical (i.e. ice) and post-ice (i.e. that which becomes relevant after a partial or maybe even full retreat of ice from the Arctic). At the very end of the paper, again in the context of the mentioned changes, the author points to the ever-increasing significance that is being assigned to the ?population? factor in geopolitics. Namely, even if climatic changes and the warming process were developing according to the scenario which is the best for man, we may yet pose a question of the possibility of the exploitation of all the potentials of the Arctic Basin in a situation when, with some rare exceptions, the northern hemisphere?s population does not increase, i.e. when it stagnates or even falls in numbers.