Geopolitical perceptions of the world today

Abstract

This article is based on the author's study of geopolitical perceptions of the power of nations made during the last decade.

He describes the thinking of scholars, especially Mackinder, Mahan, and Spykman, as they have related geopolitics to international affairs.

He cites the Soviet domination of Afghanistan as one of the primary current examples of a classical geopolitical objective of the USSR to obtain access to territory opening the way eventually to the Indian Ocean.

He points out that the Soviet Union, dominating much of the landmass of Eurasia, the Mackinder “Heartland,” has polarized world politics and military security alignments because of its totalitarian political system and its expansion into other crucial areas of the world.

For fifty years, the author explains, the United States has been forced to take defensive measures against totalitarian states, in recent times principally the USSR, to prevent their domination of the economic resources and peoples of the world.

The author proposes that the United States, destined geopol‐itically to be a sea power, must have sufficient military strength to develop and protect global maritime and trading links with other seafaring nations on the periphery of Eurasia and in the Southern Hemisphere. The U.S. forces would constitute a peacetime constabulary of the sea to insure the security and prosperity not only of Americans but of their friends and allies.