The Foundations of US Foreign Policy and Strategy

Abstract

It can be argued that the foundations of Western and US strategic thinking were established in the late 1940s, and that they derived from both Mackinder’s heartland and Spykman’s rimland theory. The notion that, geopolitically, Russia was potentially the strongest nation in the north heartland underlay American ideas of nuclear deterrence and the policy of containment. More specifically, the Mackinder thesis led to the formulation of the deterrence policy, while Spykman’s thesis determined the direction of the American policy of containment. The heartland and rimland theories became an essential part of the global outlook of the USA and Europe, with military strategy adapting to fit this concept. As Cohen has concluded: Most western strategists continue to view the world as initially described by Mackinder. American foreign policy of containment in the postwar era, with overseas alliances peripheral to the Eurasian land mass, in an attempt to head off Soviet controlled Heartland’s dominion over the world island.’