The below geostrategists were instrumental in founding and developing the major geostrategic
doctrines in the discipline's history. While there have been many other geostrategists, these have been the most influential in shaping and developing the field as a whole.
Alfred Thayer Mahan Alfred Thayer Mahan was a
U.S. Navy officer and president of the
Naval War College. He is best known for his
Influence of Sea Power upon History series of books, which argued that naval supremacy was the deciding factor in
great power warfare. In 1900, Mahan's book
The Problem of Asia was published. In this volume he laid out the first geostrategy of the modern era. The
Problem of Asia divides the continent of Asia into 3 zones: • A northern zone, located above the
40th parallel north, characterized by its cold climate, and dominated by land power; • The "Debatable and Debated" zone, located between the 40th and
30th parallels, characterized by a temperate climate; and, • A southern zone, located below the 30th parallel north, characterized by its hot climate, and dominated by sea power. The Debated and Debatable zone, Mahan observed, contained two
peninsulas on either end (
Anatolia and the
Korea), the
Isthmus of Suez,
Palestine,
Syria,
Mesopotamia, two countries marked by their mountain ranges (
Persia and
Afghanistan), the
Pamir Mountains, the
Tibetan Himalayas, the
Yangtze Valley, and
Japan.
Mackinder's work paved the way for the establishment of geography as a distinct discipline in the United Kingdom. His role in fostering the teaching of geography is probably greater than that of any other single British geographer. Whilst Oxford did not appoint a professor of Geography until 1934, both the
University of Liverpool and
University of Wales, Aberystwyth established professorial chairs in Geography in 1917. Mackinder himself became a full professor in geography in the University of London (
London School of Economics) in 1923. Mackinder is often credited with introducing two new terms into the English language: "manpower" and "heartland". The
Heartland Theory was enthusiastically taken up by the German school of
Geopolitik, in particular by its main proponent
Karl Haushofer. Geopolitik was later embraced by the
German Nazi regime in the 1930s. The German interpretation of the Heartland Theory is referred to explicitly (without mentioning the connection to Mackinder) in
The Nazis Strike, the second of
Frank Capra's "
Why We Fight" series of
American World War II propaganda films. The Heartland Theory and more generally classical geopolitics and geostrategy were extremely influential in the making of US strategic policy during the period of the Cold War. Evidence of Mackinder's Heartland Theory can be found in the works of geopolitician
Dimitri Kitsikis, particularly in his geopolitical model "
Intermediate Region".
Friedrich Ratzel . Influenced by the works of Alfred Thayer Mahan, as well as the German geographers
Carl Ritter and
Alexander von Humboldt,
Friedrich Ratzel would lay the foundations for
geopolitik,
Germany's unique strain of
geopolitics. Ratzel wrote on the natural division between land powers and
sea powers, agreeing with Mahan that sea power was self-sustaining, as the profit from
trade would support the development of a
merchant marine. However, his key contribution were the development of the concepts of
raum and the
organic theory of the state. He theorized that states were
organic and growing, and that
borders were only temporary, representing pauses in their natural movement. Ratzel's ideas would influence the works of his student Rudolf Kjellén, as well as those of General Karl Haushofer. Allying with
Italy and
Japan would further augment German strategic control of Eurasia, with those states becoming the naval arms protecting Germany's insular position. Spykman does not see the heartland as a region which will be unified by powerful
transport or
communication infrastructure in the near future. As such, it won't be in a position to compete with the United States'
sea power, despite its uniquely defensive position. which would become the guiding idea for U.S.
grand strategy over the next forty years, although the term would come to mean something significantly different from Kennan's original formulation. Kennan advocated what was called "strongpoint containment." In his view, the United States and its allies needed to protect the productive industrial areas of the world from Soviet domination. He noted that of the five centers of industrial strength in the world—the United States, Britain, Japan, Germany, and Russia—the only contested area was that of Germany. Kennan was concerned about maintaining the
balance of power between the U.S. and the
USSR, and in his view, only these few industrialized areas mattered. Here Kennan differed from
Paul Nitze, whose seminal Cold War document,
NSC 68, called for "undifferentiated or global containment," along with a massive military buildup. Kennan saw the Soviet Union as an
ideological and political challenger rather than a true military threat. There was no reason to fight the Soviets throughout
Eurasia, because those regions were not productive, and the Soviet Union was already exhausted from
World War II, limiting its ability to project power abroad. Therefore, Kennan disapproved of U.S. involvement in
Vietnam, and later spoke out critically against
Reagan's military buildup.
Henry Kissinger .
Henry Kissinger implemented two geostrategic objectives when in office: the deliberate move to shift the
polarity of the international system from bipolar to tripolar; and, the designation of regional stabilizing states in connection with the
Nixon Doctrine. In Chapter 28 of his long work,
Diplomacy, Kissinger discusses the "
opening of China" as a deliberate strategy to change the
balance of power in the international system, taking advantage of the
split within the Sino-Soviet bloc. The regional stabilizers were pro-American states which would receive significant U.S. aid in exchange for assuming responsibility for regional stability. Among the regional stabilizers designated by Kissinger were
Zaire,
Iran, and
Indonesia.
Zbigniew Brzezinski Zbigniew Brzezinski laid out his most significant contribution to post-
Cold War geostrategy in his 1997 book
The Grand Chessboard. He defined four regions of
Eurasia, and in which ways the United States ought to design its policy toward each region in order to maintain its global primacy. The four regions (echoing Mackinder and Spykman) are: • Europe, the Democratic Bridgehead • Russia, the Black Hole • The Middle East, the Eurasian Balkans • Asia, the Far Eastern Anchor In his subsequent book,
The Choice, Brzezinski updates his geostrategy in light of
globalization,
9/11 and the intervening six years between the two books. In his journal called ''America's New Geostrategy'', he discusses the need of shift in America's geostrategy to avoid its massive collapse like many scholars predict. He points out that: • the United States needs to shift away from its long-standing preoccupation with the threat of a nuclear war between the
superpowers or a massive Soviet conventional attack in central Europe. • a doctrine and a force posture are needed that will enable the United States to respond more selectively to a large number of possible security threats to enhance deterrence in the current and foreseeable conditions. • the United States should rely to a greater extent on a more flexible mix of nuclear and even non-nuclear strategic forces capable of executing more selective military mission ==Other notable geostrategists==