Abstract
The aim of this article is to test the hypothesis that Halford Mackinder and Nicholas Spykman’s geopolitical theories, which sustained the grand strategy of the United States with the implementation of 1946 Truman Doctrine, are still relevant today after their termination. The results indicate that the intellectual matrixes were found in documents of the grand strategy of the United States in two moments. First, in 1992, in the George Herbert Walker Bush’s government’s Defense Planning Guidance document, formulated by the Pentagon, in February 1992. Second, they were found replicated 10 years after in the first term of President George Walker Bush, inaugurated in 2001. In the latter, the theoretical formulations repercussions were depicted in the official documents Quadrennial Defense Review (2001) and the National Security Strategy (2002). The article concluded that the authors’ ideas remain valid to explain and interpret the actions of the United States’ grand strategy in the international scenario.
Highlights
The aim of this article is to test the hypothesis that the ideas from geographers Halford Mackinder and Nicholas Spykman, which sustained Truman Doctrine’s development in 1946, which inaugurated the so-called Cold War period, remain relevant after their termination
I verified that the intellectual matrixes from these two authors are found in the Defense Planning Guidance document, formulated by a group of strategists, in February 1992, at the Pentagon,at the time chaired -Secretary of Defense Richard “Dick” Cheney, serving under George H.W.Bush administration.After the whole of 1990s, the discussions of that defense strategy were replicated in the two documents published during the president George Walker Bush’s first term, after the September 11 terrorist attacks, namely: “Quadrennial Defense Review”, from September 2001, and “The National Security Strategy”, from September 2002
One of the characteristics of this new strategy was the adoption of a unilateralist posture based on the ideas present in “1992 Defense Planning Guidance”, which stated that the US was committed to keeping an unpolarized world, which meant the interest of having no competitor of the same level, that is, without the USA, no major powers coalition would be able to reach a hegemonic position.In other words, the United States would not seek security by a realistic strategy, nor would it act in a global system power balance, neither it sought a liberal strategy in which the institutions, democracy, and integrated markets would end up reducing the importance of the power’s policies
Summary
The aim of this article is to test the hypothesis that the ideas from geographers Halford Mackinder and Nicholas Spykman, which sustained Truman Doctrine’s development in 1946, which inaugurated the so-called Cold War period, remain relevant after their termination. Those documents outlined the grand strategy of the United States at the time within the expansion and containment dialectic:The soviet’s land power expansion coming from Mackinder’s Heartland and the naval power’s containment under Spykman’s Rimland control, implemented by the United States Based on those documents, I verified that the intellectual matrixes from these two authors are found in the Defense Planning Guidance document, formulated by a group of strategists, in February 1992, at the Pentagon,at the time chaired -Secretary of Defense Richard “Dick” Cheney, serving under George H.W.Bush administration.After the whole of 1990s, the discussions of that defense strategy were replicated in the two documents published during the president George Walker Bush’s first term, after the September 11 terrorist attacks, namely: “Quadrennial Defense Review”, from September 2001, and “The National Security Strategy”, from September 2002.
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