Mahan, MacKinder held that the domination of the Asian landmass was essential
to geopolitical strategy, not sea power.
Germany’s defeat in World War I spurred a reexamination among German
scholars of power and policy issues. Central to this effort was a desire to explain
why Germany had lost the war, and how the country could regain status as a “great
power.” Karl Haushofer, a professor and former military officer, emerged as the
chief figure behind a resurgence of Germaninterest in geopolitics. Haushofer
founded the Institut fur Geopolitik [Institute for Geopolitics] at the University of
Munich, established a journal devoted to the subject, and attracted a number of
students, one of whom was Rudolf Hess, a close associate of Adolf Hitler. In his
work Haushofer drew heavily on the organic theories of Ratzel and Kjellen and
was familiar with the writings of both Mahan and MacKinder. Unfortunately the
Munich School of geopolitics, as it came to be called, effectively became a
propaganda outlet for German nationalism and aggression. Haushofer attempted
to rationalize German expansion as “natural” and “scientific,” and it is likely Hitler
took some of his ideology from Haushofer’s publications, especially the necessity
oflebensraumas a requirement for Germany’s advancement as a power. Hitler’s
articulation of lebensraum inMein Kampf, his twisted philosophical treatise,
closely parallels that promulgated by Haushofer. The apparent connections
between the Munich School and Nazism damaged the reputation of geopolitics
as an academic field of inquiry, but the aftermath of World War II and the threat
of Soviet aggression once again forced both policymakers and scholars to confront
the world in geopolitical terms.
Writing during the last years of the Second World War, the American scholar
Nicholas Spykman reformulated MacKinder’s heartland theory into theRimland
theory. Spykman agreed with MacKinder’s basic concept of the need to control
strategic territory, but argued that it was not the heartland that was vital, but rather
what MacKinder had called the “inner crescent,” and what Spykman labeled as the
“Rimland,” a region that surrounded the heartland. At the end of the war, the Rim-
land corresponded closely to the zone immediately adjacent to the USSR on the
Eurasian landmass. Spykman suggested that holding this region was the key to
limiting the power of a state occupying the heartland. This concept was most elo-
quently and forcefully put forth by George Kennan, a diplomat working in the U.S.
State Department, in the journalForeign Affairsin 1947. Although Kennan does
not refer to Spykman in his article, his suggested policy of “containment” reflected
the fundamentals of the Rimland theory and laid the groundwork for the Truman
Doctrine and subsequent American foreign policy during the Cold War. The
“domino theory,” which motivated American policy in Southeast Asia in the
1960s, also may be partially traced to the Rimland theory and Spykman’s writings.
Spykman’s concepts on securing a “balance of power” and forming alliances
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