F. William Engdahl — Mackinder Reincarnates–Now Hungary Joins Silk Road

Geopolitics in the 20th and 21st centuries.

New Eastern Outlook
Mackinder Reincarnates–Now Hungary Joins Silk Road

F. William Engdahl

Alfred W. McCoy — Washington's Great Game and Why It's Failing

For even the greatest of empires, geography is often destiny. You wouldn’t know it in Washington, though. America’s political, national security, and foreign policy elites continue to ignore the basics of geopolitics that have shaped the fate of world empires for the past 500 years. Consequently, they have missed the significance of the rapid global changes in Eurasia that are in the process of undermining the grand strategy for world dominion that Washington has pursued these past seven decades.

This is a summary of things I have posted in the past at MNE about geopolitics and geostrategy.

However, I don't like the term "decline." The post is not so much about America's supposed decline as about failure to understand and act on basics of geopolitics and geostrategy that are grounded in geography.

America's geographical situation as an "island" continent is a plus for defense but a minus for dominating world events from the geographical core. Russia and China are well placed for that, being situated at "the geographical pivot of history." With Russia having too much land and too may resources to employ itself and China with too many people and too few resources, their eventual cooperation is ordained by geographically position at the core.

There is no way that the US can permanently dominate them individually or prevent them from combining resources. The only thing possible is a delaying game, and that comes with risks, e.g., the overreach that has ended empires previously. America is already stretching itself in the attempt to project power globally and cover all the bases with bases, for example.

The present strategy of containment and destabilization is creating what Pepe Escobar calls "the Empire of Chaos." That is not a strategy as much as a recipe for disaster.

Moreover, trying to impose liberalism is illiberal. The US is therefore caught in a policy contradiction that is obvious.

Tom Dispatch
Tomgram: Alfred McCoy, Washington's Great Game and Why It's Failing

Alfred W. McCoy | J.R.W. Smail Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Francis P. Sempa — The Geopolitical Vision of Alfred Thayer Mahan

One hundred years later, the insights of the American strategist continue to have extraordinary relevance today.

The Diplomat
The Geopolitical Vision of Alfred Thayer Mahan
Francis P. Sempa

see also

James R. Holmes, Taiwan's New Stealth Corvettes: Just What the Doctor Ordered?

Getting practical.