Imran Malik
Halford Mackinder divided the world into three distinct regions. He described Afro-Eurasia as the World Island, comprising the interlinked continents of Africa, Europe, and Asia. Further, he described its Heartland (also known as the Pivot) as the region stretching from east of the Volga, south of the Arctic, west of the Yangtze, and north of the Himalayas. The British Isles, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, the Malay Archipelago, Hainan, Taiwan, and the Japanese Archipelago were termed the Offshore Islands. The conjoined continents of North and South America, as well as Oceania, were named the Outlying Islands. Mackinder summarized his theory: “He who rules East Europe commands the Heartland. He who rules the Heartland commands the World Island, and he who rules the World Island commands the world”
Although it is generally felt that Mackinder’s theory has not stood the test of time, the current upheaval in the world order suggests otherwise. The US’ pre-eminence as the world’s sole geopolitical, economic, and military power is now under serious threat. Its hour of unipolar supremacy is long over. Multipolarity is rapidly becoming the new normal. A meteorically rising China and a resurgent, defiant Russia are combining to challenge the geopolitical status quo. New centers of power like BRICS and SCO have now emerged on the global scene and portend a severe two-pronged challenge to the US and its unchecked hegemony of the world.
The ever-expanding BRICS is a broad-based organization that challenges US dominance as the pre-eminent economic power of the world. It has started a move of “de-dollarization,” encouraging member states and others to start conducting international trade, especially oil, in currencies other than the USD, directly threatening its unique status as the globe’s preferred reserve currency.
The SCO, on the other hand, comprises ten states at the moment: Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, China, India, Pakistan, and Iran. Thus, it forms a single contiguous bloc in Eurasia, covering the bulk of Mackinder’s Heartland and much more. Currently, its western extreme is defined by Belarus and Russia bordering NATO’s East European frontier of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine. It touches the Arctic in the north, while its western boundaries hug the Pacific Ocean. Its southern borders lie in the Indian Ocean-Arabian Sea-Persian Gulf region. By virtue of its extremely strategic location, this bloc enjoys tremendous geopolitical, geostrategic, and geoeconomic advantages. It has enormous resources in manpower, economics, fossil fuels, minerals, technology, science, agriculture, industry, military-industrial, military-nuclear-missile, water, and other sectors. It has the potential to emerge as the alternate pole to the US-led West.
The BRI is creating a vast regional-global network of infrastructure that is now weaving its way through Mackinder’s Heartland, his World Island, and beyond. It is creating a grid of regional interconnectivity, economic interdependence, and mutual support. Could this evolving, harmonious environment and emerging common interests lead to other more dynamic, collective objectives for the SCO later on? Is the SCO intrinsically designed to dominate the Heartland, and is the BRI the vehicle on which this will be achieved? Will the BRI similarly help dominate the World Island too?
Mackinder’s theory appears increasingly relevant now. Under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, the US, UK, and Russia pledged to protect Ukraine from all external aggression if it were to give up the nuclear warheads it had inherited from the erstwhile USSR. Ukraine naively agreed. Furthermore, Russia was assured by the US and UK that NATO would not expand eastwards—not even by one inch! However, the US and UK reneged on their word. NATO moved eastwards aggressively, enlisted the traditionally neutral states of Sweden and Finland, and made a move to enroll Ukraine too. That would have culminated in NATO unilaterally absorbing East Europe, the center of gravity of Mackinder’s Heartland, into its fold. Portentously, that would have brought NATO, in all its imperial power, might, and glory, onto Russia’s borders. This would have seriously violated Russia’s unimpeachable security threshold. The Ukraine war was Russia’s response to this audacious, strategic maneuver by the US-led West and NATO. Ominously, Ukraine’s immediate accession to NATO would have allowed it to invoke Article 5 (collective defense) of the NATO Charter, sucked NATO into a war with Russia, and potentially precipitated a World War!
Critically, the US-led West now wants NATO to have global ambitions and set its sights on the Indo-Pacific too. Germany, France, Italy, even India, are already taking part in military exercises in the Indo-Pacific, and some even plan to station forces there. With the US in full support, even the Europeans (and India) are acquiring a strategic reach that goes beyond their rather limited geopolitical spheres of influence and actual military muscle, capability, and capacity to project power. It appears that after Europe (Ukraine) and the Middle East (Gaza), NATO, along with QUAD, AUKUS, regional coalitions, etc., are being mustered to the Indo-Pacific to potentially tackle the Taiwan issue. As per known US strategies (Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, and even Ukraine), it might prefer to forge and mobilize an alliance and/or a coalition yet again to confront one isolated state only!
Regardless, the SCO must now acquire a more dynamic purpose than hitherto. That purpose must be directly relevant to the evolving, critical geopolitical scenario, especially in the Indo-Pacific. It is time for it to expand exponentially and transform itself into a potent, formal alliance with undisguised geopolitical, economic, and defense/security parameters. To that end, it will need to expand its sphere of influence and acquire global strategic reach. The SCO can thus help crystallize multipolarity, restore balance in the horribly skewed geopolitical and geostrategic environments, and potentially preempt war.
The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan Army. He can be reached at im.k846@gmail.com and tweets @K846Im.
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