Geographical Pivot Of History Research Articles

The Center Cannot Hold: A Comparison of the FDI Screening Regimes of the United States and European Union in Addressing the West's China Problem

Whether or not current U.S.-China strategic competition may be properly named a new Cold War, it is useful to compare the regimes of the United States and the European Union to better understand how domestic FDI screening mechanisms are growing in importance as a foreign policy tool (e.g. national defense strategies). Section II provides a contextual background weighing China’s own restrictive FDI policies against its increased technology and market access acquisitions in the U.S. and Europe. Section III outlines the U.S. FDI screening review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) with particular focus the broadening of its review powers by the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of 2019 (FIRRMA). Section IV outlines the European Union’s Regulation 2019/452 which provides both a framework for FDI screening by Member States on the grounds of “security or public order” and a cooperation mechanism between Member States, as well as Member States and the Commission. Section V considers whether the increased use of FDI screening as a foreign policy tool potentially (1) undermines other multilateral efforts, in areas such as international trade, to address concerns related to the influence of Chinese state-owned enterprises, and (2) is ineffective given the difficulties faced by national authorities to fully appreciate organizational structures related to foreign government-supported investment. Looking to the “geographical pivot of history,” this paper concludes that “multilateralism still matters” and calls for renewed efforts to realize an International Convention on Foreign Investment.

China’s Eurasia: the Belt and Road Initiative and the Creation of a New Eurasian Power

Abstract The Belt and Road Initiative alongside the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation are the latest phase of China’s return to the Eurasian landmass after the collapse of the Soviet Union. China has reshaped Eurasia in several ways, which includes the common definition of this concept, which had largely been perceived as a chiefly Russian entity. This is rooted in Halford Mackinder’s The Geographical Pivot of History, which depicted the Eurasian landmass as a threat to Britain’s maritime hegemony with the advent of rail. While the traditional focus had been on Eurasia as the Russian empire, Mackinder also alluded to a Eurasian empire created by ‘Chinese organised by Japanese’ as a result of the latter’s development during the Meiji Restoration. While this did not come to pass, it has become an imperative to consider the notion of an Asian power in Eurasia due to China’s rise. The purpose of this paper is to argue that China is as much a Eurasian power in the vein of Mackinder’s theories as Russia is, with the BRI providing a potential opportunity to further integrate with Eurasia. In addition, the initiative is also symbolic of China’s bid to create an alternative order both in Eurasia and the wider world as part of its global role to challenge the dominance of the United States, which raises the spectre of Mackinder’s warning over a challenger emerging from the Eurasian Heartland.

Worlding Comparative Literature: Beyond Postcolonialism

I will focus on Edward Said’s handling of the work of the British geographer Halford Mackinder...in Culture and Imperialism.... In 1904, Mackinder published an influential paper in The Geographical Journal...in which he labelled all of European and Asian Russia and much of Central Asia, then also under Russian rule, as 'The Geographical Pivot of History.' Mackinder’s views represented what we would now, following Heidegger’s coining of the term, and especially the use Said himself and Gayatri Spivak have made of it, call a 'worlding' of the world according to the dictates of colonialism and imperialism prevalent at the time. My argument will be that Said’s reading of Mackinder likewise amounts to a specific worlding for a specific moment in time, and that perhaps now we should move on from there.

Re-interpretation of the classical geopolitical theories in a critical geopolitical perspective

Struggling for supremacy between great powers and the rise or fall and regime change of great powers are all subject to the Geopolitical Law. Geographers should keep in step with the times, accurately grasp the national interests, and seize the opportunity to contribute to the great rejuvenation of our nation. However, due to lack of criticism on the history and philosophy of geopolitics, we can neither accurately understand the geopolitical theory, nor effectively put the geopolitical theory into practice. This paper introduces the development of critical geopolitics, summarizes the three characteristics of critical geopolitics, and interprets the four classical geopolitical theories accordingly. In order to simplify the interpretation process, this paper firstly presents an analytical framework for interpretation of four classical geopolitical theories; secondly, focuses on interpretation of “The Geographical Pivot of History” put forward by Mackinder according to the analytical framework; finally, critically summarizes the four classical geopolitical theories. Through the critical interpretation, this paper draws a conclusion that there are the scientific, hypothetical and conceptual classical geopolitical theories. The construction of classical geopolitical theories is based on the international geopolitical structure, spatial distribution of national interests and inter-state spatial conflict, in order to show the identity of theoretical constructor, so as to reflect the historicality, sociality, situationality and geographical knowledge–power structure of geopolitical theories.

Anticipations of the Accident: Modernist Fiction and Systemic Risk

In the summer and early autumn of 2008, as the global ‘credit crunch’ intensified, resulting in the collapse, part-nationalization, or forced merger of numerous venerable financial institutions, a ...

Global Geostrategy: Mackinder and the Defence of the West (review)

Reviewed by: Global Geostrategy: Mackinder and the Defence of the West Kenneth J. Hagan Global Geostrategy: Mackinder and the Defence of the West. Edited by Brian W. Blouet. New York: Frank Cass, 2005. ISBN 0-7146-5700-X. Maps. Illustrations. Figures. Notes. Select bibliography. Index. Pp. x, 177. $65.00. A century ago, on 25 January 1904, Halford J. Mackinder delivered a paper entitled "The Geographical Pivot of History" to an audience of the Royal Geographic Society. The distinguished English geographer contended that the age of sea power was ending and land power was about to become the key element of global strategic dominance. The new pivot in Mackinder's system of geographical determinism consisted of "the closed heartland of Euro-Asia" (p. 8), that is, Russia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. He believed that if Russia were to ally with Germany they would form the strongest empire in the world. Britain, the United States, and Japan—the world's most powerful sea powers—would be at a fatal strategic disadvantage and powerless to contest with the heartland powers for control over the economic, military, and political future of the world. Mackinder had the bad fortune to deliver his prescient paper at precisely the moment when each of the three major sea powers was making its [End Page 521] distinctive bid to demonstrate the controlling power of navies. Japan was challenging Russia in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5) and demonstrating that a relatively small nation with a major navy and shrewd naval strategy could resoundingly defeat Mackinder's potentially all-powerful land power. The United States, under the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, was building almost two battleships per year and had just commenced construction of the Panama Canal. This combination would enable the U.S. Navy to exert Mahanian command of the seas in both the western Atlantic and throughout much of the Pacific Ocean. England was about to launch the super battleship Dreadnought, which would render all other major naval combatants hopelessly inferior and obsolescent—much as would be the case with the American super carriers of the Cold War era. The great influence of these three sea powers on the outcome of World War I seemingly destroyed the validity of Mackinder's thesis. However, as this valuable small book points out, in two important respects World War I demonstrated the limits of sea power. First, the failure of Admiral Jellicoe to win a victory of annihilation at the battle of Jutland in May-June 1916 meant that England could not carry the war into the Baltic and North Sea. The survival of the German High Seas Fleet, in other words, meant at least the temporary regional survival of Germany, which since 1871 had been the greatest land power in the purely European heartland. Second, the disaster in Britain's littoral warfare at Gallipoli in 1915 showed the potential difficulty of projecting sea power directly against Russia, which was Mackinder's principal heartland power. Mackinder in 1943 realized that the U.S.S.R. would emerge from World War II "as the greatest landpower on the globe" with the "strategically strongest defensive position" and in control of the Heartland, "the greatest natural fortress on earth" (p. 6). He advocated a policy that George Kennan would articulate as "Containment" in 1946 and 1947. This book points out that the Mackinder-Kennan concepts became fixed and resolute American political-military policy with the formation of N.A.T.O. in 1949. Buttressed by massive sea power and even more potent air power, the policy of Containment achieved its goal of helping to induce the implosion of the U.S.S.R. in 1991. As the European component of Mackinder's "heartland" again fell into disarray, the United States applied its massive sea power—with its associated arsenals of awesome air power—to assert its domination over the Middle Eastern component of Mackinder's heartland. The brief and overwhelming victory in the Gulf War of 1991 seemed at first definitively to answer whether land power or sea power was the greater strategic force. Then came 9/11 and after it the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving the resolution of...

From Geo-Strategy to Geo-Economics: The ‘Heartland’ and British Imperialism Before and After MacKinder

In this paper we examine the changing perception of Central Asia and the Caucasus to Imperial Britain from the mid nineteenth to the mid twentieth centuries and consider the importance of Mackinder's 1904 paper ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’ to this process. In it we argue that Central Asia and the Caucasus are seen first as an important buffer zone essential to keeping the Russia aggressors at bay and ensuring Britain's continued dominance of India. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, the region had emerged as a major source of raw materials, particularly oil, and as such was no longer seen as merely a buffer zone, but a considerable prize in itself. Mackinder's paper, which emerged at a critical point in this transition, served as an important synthesis of these long-standing and widely shared British concerns about the region and provided a clear and concise assessment of the region's geo-strategic and geo-economic importance and as such its global significance.

Halford Mackinder and the ‘geographical pivot of history’: a centennial retrospective

The Geographical JournalVolume 170, Issue 4 p. 292-297 Halford Mackinder and the ‘geographical pivot of history’: a centennial retrospective KLAUS DODDS, KLAUS DODDS Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX E-mail: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorJAMES D SIDAWAY, JAMES D SIDAWAY Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117570 E-mail: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author KLAUS DODDS, KLAUS DODDS Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX E-mail: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorJAMES D SIDAWAY, JAMES D SIDAWAY Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117570 E-mail: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author First published: 17 December 2004 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0016-7398.2004.00131.xCitations: 12Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Citing Literature Volume170, Issue4December 2004Pages 292-297 RelatedInformation

Beyond the ‘Outer Crescent’: the Mackinder century in New Zealand geopolitics

This paper proposes that, although Mackinder never mentions New Zealand in his influential 1904 paper and despite the absence of a formal Kiwi geopolitical tradition, ‘The geographical pivot of history’ provides a useful framework with which to approach New Zealand geopolitics. The argument uses two Mackinderian ideas to suggest three phases in New Zealand's security relationships during the Mackinder century. First, New Zealand's commitment to Mackinder's ‘pivot area’ notion of ‘imperial defence’ and ‘collective security’ characterized its dependent security phase. Between 1973 and 1990/91 there was a transitional security phase towards Mackinder's second ‘global interconnectedness’ idea. Third, this shift led to a current interdependent security phase which is characterized by the recognition that New Zealand's security relationships, despite its geographic isolation, are mutually dependent on political, economic, and military events around the world. The impact of 11 September 2001 and the consequent ‘war on terror’ are also considered. The paper concludes by suggesting that New Zealand's post‐conflict reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq point to the continuing relevance of Mackinder's ‘The geographical pivot of history’ to New Zealand geopolitics.

South American heartland: the Charcas, Latin American geopolitics and global strategies

Mackinder's 1904‘geographical pivot of history’ concept, subsequently developed into his famous ‘Eurasian heartland thesis’, marginalizes South America, yet his ideas have attracted considerable interest there, including interpretations (and fantasies) of a ‘South American heartland’. This paper examines the reception of Mackinder's ideas in Latin American geopolitics and how his heartland thesis was adapted for the South American context. It traces the roots of this adaptation in earlier South American geopolitical writing, and examines these ideas of counter‐insurgency policies and global geopolitical strategies, analysing their relationship to military and anticommunist perspectives.

Revisiting the ‘pivot’: the influence of Halford Mackinder on analysis of Uzbekistan's international relations

Since the end of the Soviet Union, many foreign policy intellectuals have peculiarly identified the Republic of Uzbekistan as the locus of Mackinder's 1904‘pivot’ designation. A century on from his original ‘Geographical pivot of history’ lecture, this paper examines the work of a Russian, an Uzbek, and an American who use Mackinder to understand contemporary Uzbekistani geopolitical orientations, in particular with reference to the USA. Drawing on critical work on the history of geopolitics, it highlights that whilst these texts claim objectivity, they betray political and subjective foreign policy choices. It suggests that whilst the revival of interest in Mackinder testifies to the continued attraction of his ideas, this has, with rare exceptions, been based upon a superficial reading of both his work and the body of secondary literature, and that this raises both disciplinary and ethical concerns.

Editorial

Editorial

The Dynamics of Centre-Periphery Relations: The Need for a New Geography of Resource Development

The centre-periphery model of the relations between developed and underdeveloped countries is based on the idea of the 'domination' of the latter by the former. The major instrument of this domination in recent times has been the multinational corporation. This paper calls attention to a number of countervailing strategies emerging in undeveloped countries to minimize some of the deleterious effect of this domination. These strategies include greater emphasis on national ownership of resources, insistence on real transfer of technology and stronger moves towards regional economic co-operation. For geography, these developments in centre-periphery relations have implications both for the understanding of the new competitive basis for global resource development and for greater research attention to the quaternary sector of global economic activities. THE CONCEPT OF CENTRE-PERIPHERY IN GLOBAL GEOGRAPHY IT will be useful to begin by considering the concept of a centre and a periphery in global geography. In this connection, it is perhaps appropriate to recall the pioneering contribution of Sir Halford Mackinder. In his seminal paper presented to the Royal Geographical Society in 1904 on 'The geographical pivot of history', Mackinder was at pains to make two points. The first was that with modern improvement in steam navigation by the end of the nineteenth century, the world had become a single political system where, according to him, 'every explosion of social forces, instead of being dissipated in a surrounding circuit of unknown space and barbaric chaos, will be sharply re-echoed from the far side of the globe, and weak elements in the political and economic organism of the world will be shattered in consequence'.' He contended that it was probably some half-consciousness of this fact that was at last diverting much of the attention of statesmen in all parts of the world from territorial expansion to the struggle for relative efficiency. The second point that he made was that within this system of close interrelationships, it was possible to identify two broad regions-a pivotal, continental heartland with vast resources and a broad marginal zone surrounding it, the two being linked together by the oceans. Figure i is from Mackinder's article and clearly depicts these two regions. For Mackinder, the state occupying the continental heartland would be virtually invulnerable to attack, except from the west, and would be able to utilize its resources for the development of a strong, agriculturalindustrial power. With this development would come also the opportunity to strike out against the marginal zone and eventually to gain control over the whole world. In terms of his representation, it is important to bear in mind that at the time the paper was presented, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was still an unformed chimera in the mist of time and for Mackinder, the state occupying the heartland was thought of as a possible combination of Germany and Tsarist Russia. Such a combination, he argued, could conquer the marginal zone comprising most of Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India and the Orient and with time Australia and the Western Hemisphere.

The Scope and Methods of Geography and the Geographical Pivot of History

The Scope and Methods of Geography and the Geographical Pivot of History