Russia's War on Ukraine: the Turkish's Geopolitical Awakening on Hearthland of World Island
Further dissecting the world island is Eastern Europe Mackinder’s theory argues that the home territory of the hearthland power sits in Eastern Europe. Therefore any power seeking global supremacy would emerge from the eastern half of the European Continent.
Russia's War on Ukraine: the Turkish's Geopolitical Awakening on Hearthland of World Island Ukraine and Black Sea geopolitics was a cornerstone of the Soviet Union which was arch enemy to the the United States during the Cold War. Ukraine was coming up as the second[1]most-populous and -powerful of the fifteen Soviet republics, housing and hosting union’s agricultural production, defense industries, and military, including the Black Sea Fleet and particularly some of the nuclear arsenal. Since its three decades of independence, Ukraine has sought to find its own unique path as a sovereign state while looking to align more closely with European and transatlantic institutions, particularly with NATO. However, Kyiv struggled to balance its foreign relations as establishing deep internal divisions. With regard to demography aspect , Ukrainian-speaking population in western parts of the country populated with catholic belief tendency generally supported greater integration with Europe, while a mostly Russian speaking community in the east populated with orthodox belief tendency favored closer ties with Russia.
Ukraine came to the World Agenda with the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014 with Moscow irredentist activities in the Donbas region in the country’s southeast. Crimean occupation was the first time since World War II that a European state annexed the territory of another. More than fourteen thousand people died in the fighting in the Donbas until 2022 which was the bloodiest conflict in Europe since the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. According to many analyst observing that the hostilities marked a clear change in the global security architecture from a unipolar period of U.S. dominance to renewed competition between great Powers. Finally when it is come to February 2022, Russia started huge scale invasion of Ukraine with the aim of overthrowing the Western- oriented government of Volodymyr Zelenskyy Why is this happening ? What could possibly justify invading a sovereign independent state like Ukraine ? The only way to answer this by looking at things from a russian perpective because in spite of the raging fight on the ground the war is not really about Ukraine, it is about Russia and its pursuit of geopolitics. It is about Kremlin and its relations with White House.
One of Russia’s initial demads for de-escalation just before the war erupted was for NATO to roll back from Eastern Europe and that is what it ultimately come downs to in many ways the Ukranian conflict echoes the soviet collapse. There is certainly an element of nation building, culture and history that draws Russia and Ukraine to eachother but from geopolitical aspect the war is bigger than Ukraine and it was the Russia attmepting to restore Russian Empire on the basis of multipolar global order. In this concept, Russia will holds on eastern and southern Ukraine, then the current security order in Europe become much less secure. The situation will be reduce influence of NATO that will pave the way for Putin increases his hold on power in Russia In that case, China will be emboldened to conquer Taiwan. If Russia holds on to Crimea and the Donbas region, then NATO and the West will be less effective on slavonic nations.
Thirty years ago, the Soviet Union dissolved as the result of internal political, economic, and ethnic disintegration within the USSR following General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's effort to reform the Soviet political and economic system. In an attempt to end the 'Era of Stagnation', Gorbachev launched 'perestroika', a political movement for reformation within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union designed to boost the economy. At first, the programme visibly revitalised the dwindling USSR in 1985, but the struggling superpower was still gripped by an arms race and years of mismanagement. The unity of 15 Soviet Republics, what had made the force of the communist regime and was applauded by its propaganda, was quickly disintegrating, with the Caucasus region rebelling against Moscow first, joined shortly after by the Baltic countries. In 1988, Estonia was the first Soviet republic to declare state sovereignty from Moscow. On December 8, 1991, in a move to recognise each other's independence, the leaders of three of the Union's founding and largest republics (the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, and the Byelorussian SSR) declared that the Soviet Union no longer existed, and signed the Commonwealth of Independent States. Main body however the newly established Russian Federation had lost centuries of geopolitical strife.
Russia had been thrown back to its 18 th century territorial boundaries. All the sacrificies the Russian imperial army and Soviet red army made were nullified on December 1991 when the Soviet flag was lowered from kremlin and replaced with flag of Russia that was a hard pill to swallow and that still haunts Russian foreign policy to this day with fall of Soviet Union came broken promises plummeting healthcare, industrial decay while kinship was replaced with hostility and all those glorious technological marvels and infrastructure projects were left to rot and tens of millions of lives were lost with nothing to show for it. The death of Soviet Union was the end of communism as a global force but it also marked the end of Russia as superpower.
Russia invaded to Ukraine in the concept of the hearthland theory. This conceptions formulated by Halford Mackinder in the early 20th century. Mackinder interpreted the world historical processes based on the idea that the world was inherently divided into isolated areas each of which had a special function to perform. He asserted that the European civilization was the product of outside pressure. His account of Europe and European history, regarding it as the result of many centuries of struggle against invasions from Asia, proceeded from the same idea. He believed that Europe’s advance and expansion was stimulated by the need to respond to the pressure coming from the center of Asia. Accordingly, it was the Heartland (where the continental masses of Eurasia were concentrated) that served as the pivot of all the geopolitical transformations of historical dimensions within the World Island. The hearthland theory divides the world in three bodies. The first body is world island which consist of Europe, Asia and Africa.
The Second body refers to the offshore islands like British isles and Japanise archipelago. Nicolas Spykman modified Mackinder’s formulations by pointing to the existence of what he called an amphibious Rimland located in between the Heartland and its great offshore islands and stretching from Western Europe around the Middle East, across India, ending in coastal China. Spykman pointed out that most of the world’s productive potential was in the Rimland, not within the Heartland. Control of the Rimland therefore meant control of the world precisely what was at stake during both world wars and this would be determined by struggles between mixed alliances, rather than by simply lining up sea powers versus land powers straightforwardly.
The third body points to the Americas and Australia as outlying islands. North America provides the only suitable fit for Mackinder’s thesis. It more than fulfills all of the original heartland descriptions: an isolated and distant continental center with an area united internally, blessed with resources for a vibrant economy, and poised for a hegemonic leadership beyond America onto most areas of Eurasia and its periphery. Thus, two strategic regions, the North American heartland plus the entire Eurasian World Island, are together pertinent to global stability and prosperity. This revised structure clarifies Mackinder’s first design by continuing to recognize the strategic importance of Eurasia while also showing the significance of the United States as a Great Power player equal to the Great Powers of Eurasia but from a distant location in isolation and in the role of balancer among the strategic powers on Eurasia.
Within this these parameters there is special emphasis on the world islands because it is most populous and resources rich landmass one can imagine if a super state controlled policy making from France to China to Saudi Arabaia to South Africa that power would have the technological prowess of Europe the resources of Africa and workforce of Asia. However within the world island there is hearthland region which extends from Vulgar River to the Yangtze and from the Arctic to the Caspian Sea. This hearthland region is the domain from which a single power could dominate the rest of world island provided that the power enjoys stability at home. Russia is the power that sits at the center of this theory which is why it resonates with Russian foreign policy.
In this concept Heartland was in the most advantageous geopolitical location. Aware of the relative nature of the conception is “central location,” Mackinder pointed out that in the context of the global geopolitical processes, the Eurasian Continent is found in the center of the world with the Heartland occupying the center of the Eurasian Continent. His doctrine suggested that the geopolitical subject (actor) that dominated the Heartland would possess the necessary geopolitical and economic potential to ultimately control the world island and the planet. Further dissecting the world island is Eastern Europe Mackinder’s theory argues that the home territory of the hearthland power sits in Eastern Europe. Therefore any power seeking global supremacy would emerge from the eastern half of the European Continent.
Mackinder’s world island theory become important guidance for Russian political elites and Dr. Alexander Dugin who is Vladimir Putin’s political advisor he affirming the Russian Federation and the establishment of Russian hegemony in the Eastern sphere (Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Iran ), as a “world-island” in the sense of a Eurasian Land Empire. Indeed, it is with his Eurasian Party that Dugin wishes to design a natural transcontinental alliance with an axis through the European capitals of Moscow, Berlin and Paris. With her added affiliates in the Middle East, primarily Iran, Russia has an essentialist conception of entering into a pact with Europe as a whole, to form a front against the Anglo-Saxon seapower of America.
Dr. Alexander Dugin further characterizes the modern dominant western civilisation as being culturally/ethnically Anglo-Saxon, geographically Atlantic, religiously Protestant and capitalist[1]materialist in psyche. In this point one can find the planetary pole of tellurocratic Russia, the Third Rome, defender of the Eurasian sphere, idealism, traditional values and spirituality (Orthodox Christianity, Hinduism, Islam.). It’s a landpower imbued with a socialist spirit and formed by both Slavonic and Muslim influences. In addition to that Russia must allegedly seek to form a Turkic-Slavonic alliance, an idea which catched on in certain Turkish intellectual groups. The Russophone sphere is symbolically destined to ascend, as evidenced by the rising sun of the East. Admittedly it seems strange to use a century old geopolitical theory as a template in foreign policy but one thing that keeps the hearhtland theory relevant is the constituency of geography the earth has domain over humankind.
Most of Russia’s population and its major industries are located west of the Ural Mountains on the Russian Plain it is known as Russia’s geographic core, this includes the Moscow region, the Volga region, and the Ural Mountain region. Moscow, Russia’s capital city, anchors a central industrial area that is home to more than fifty million people. Moscow alone has more than ten million residents, with about thirteen million in its metropolitan area, making it slightly smaller than the Los Angeles, California, metro area but 80 percent of the Russian population lives in this area and much of the decision making by the kremlin is based on needs and interest of its core.
Russian core terrain itself is flat and part of the European Plain and as it has been seen on the map , the open green plain widens as it stretches eastward by the time the European Plain reaches the borders of the Russian Federation its width eclipses 2000 kilometers. No amount of weaponry can fully defend such a vast flat landscape.
For the Kremlin point of view, efforts at bridging the gap between cooperative initiatives and militarization programs should not be dismissed as merely bureaucratic maneuvering. It could be analytically productive to distinguish three patterns (or policy modes) in the Kremlin’s policy. The first one is based on the premise that military power is the main means of advancing Russia’s interests can be defined as “realist/militaristic.” The second policy mode aims at developing Russia’s ties with neighbors, and is aptly described as “cooperative/institutional.” The third policy mode is the most fluid, combining building power capabilities with attempts at preserving sphere of influence. On the other hand Russia needs to reduce its exposure along the European Plain to do that however Russian policy makers argue that Russian State needs to anchor by the Baltic Sea and Carpathian Mountains.
An important Russian goal in the post-1991 era in the Baltic Sea region has been to secure a strong economic relationship with Germany. This priority predicates a harmonious relationship with not only Germany but other EU and NATO countries. A countervailing factor is to keep other countries as far as possible in a security gray zone: either out of NATO altogether, or with weak ties to the United States, or in NATO but without the corresponding plans, deployments, and bases that could present a serious military obstacle to Russian power. In particular, Russia dislikes the presence of outside NATO forces in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and in Poland. It regards this as a breach of undertakings given during the expansion of NATO, and previously during the unification of Germany. Russian decision-makers have an extensive arsenal of military and nonmilitary measures to deploy against the countries of the Baltic Sea region, with varying degrees of associated cost and risk. The spectrum has developed in size and sophistication since 1991. It ranges from the threatened and actual use of nuclear weapons in a military conflict at one extreme, through to the offer of beneficial energy, trade, transit, and investment relationships to favored countries at the other. Individually the Baltic nations lack the strength to threaten Russia but the region as whole acts as conduit for great power to exert pressure on the Russian Core. From the Swedish incursion in the 18th century to the German invasions in the 20th century plenty of European Powers have tried to subduing Russian by going through the baltics.
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia the Baltic countries located in north-eastern Europe are now members of the EU and NATO. However, in June 1940 they were invaded and occupied by the Soviet Union and after World War II were a part of the USSR until its collapse in 1991 when they regained their independence. Many analysts perceive Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as an attempt to rebuild Russia’s lost Soviet empire, the destruction of which Putin once described as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.” Even though the Baltic states have been a part of NATO and the EU since 2004, with all three using the euro as their currency, their geographic location makes them vulnerable. As it was like Ukraine, they all share a border with Russia. Latvia and Lithuania also share a border with Russia’s ally Belarus, which is widely believed to be supporting Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. It may geopolitics dictates that Russia take over the Baltics should the opportunity ever present itself doing so would allow the Russians to connect the Kaliningrad region to the Russian mainland. Control of the Baltics would also strenghthen Russian’s presence and hold over the Baltic Sea at large.
Carpathians present an auspicious foothold for the Russians a buffer against marching armies. The Ark that is the Carpathian range is not impenetrable but it does offer strategic depth to the occupying force. If the European plain represent a highway for invading armies, The Carpathians is a speed bump in the middle of that high way. At this point geopolitical importance of Turkey and Montreux Conventions is coming up to agenda for NATO, European Union and Russia because of Carpathian geopolitical stalemate. The political geography where we are living in is directly related to the courses of global geopolitics on the Rimland Theory with regard to energy policies together with security of Israel as well. It should be noted that the Truman Doctrine included Turkey in the Atlantic axis in 1947 precisely due to the geopolitics of the Rimland (containment) and the security of Israel. Turkey had been very powerfull in demography, economically, and militarily back in those years. Turkey is not like Germany, France, Japan or Italy. These countries were either occupied or liberated by the United States during or after World War II. Turkey has the power and the traditions to make its own decisions and carve its own path in the 21st century. From the Geopolitical point of view, because of the fact that Carpathian geopolitical stalemate pave the way for State of Israel achieved to make Abraham Accord with Gulf Arab State and joining Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum together with Greece, France and Egypt to create two different pole inside Rimland geopolitics in order to take control of hearthland of the world island in which Turkey is emerging of central power of hearthland by relegating Carpathian Mountains stalemate.
The crisis between Ukraine and Russia, it was actually conflict between USA and European Union besides Russian and NATO rivalry. On the other hand it was crisis between Atlanticist structure of NATO (United Kingdom ) and Europanist structure of France. Since 1856 Crimean War, those two important schools fighting inside continent to dominate European geopolitics. Given the fact that economic crisis looming in Turkey then Turkish Goverment taken decision to rapproachement with State of Israel in order to establish pipeline from Leviathan gas field to Ceyahan Sea Port in excahange of giving freehand to State of Israel on Cybrus issue which is representing western axis of rimland in concept of Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum that Israel must protect its balance and benefit through dialog with Greece, Egypt and France.
Even though United Kingdom involved sanctions against Russia together with European Union but indeed British Goverment must have shown itself on that way politically. United Kingdom managed process through Turkey with executing Montreux Regime by blocking any European and American Warship to enter Black Sea. It was actually green light to Russia in order to relegate Carpathian Mountain Barrier on Rimland Geopolitics therefore Germany taken decision to do investment on armament. It was interesting that since World War II Germany for the first time taken decision for armament race. After Germany decision for military investment, French dream of so called United European Army project died together with Eastmed Project because of the fact that militarised Germany will never share its power with France. One can see this results inside French President Macron’s last speech that '"NATO's souther flank must be strengthened" Once upon time what france argued that " NATO is brain dead because of Turkish military operation to Northern Syria however nowadays France starting to say that “NATO’s Southern flank must be strengtehend.” With help of United Kingdom and Israel, thanks to both countries; Turkey achieved what United Nations can not protect for European security architecture by bringing fighting parties namely Ukraine and Russia to talk in Istanbul Dolmabahce Palace and Turkey achieved success with Antalya Diplomacy Form of what Munich Security Conferances could not do so. Last but not least, Ukraine and Russian conflict emerged on Hearthland geopolitcs will give leverage Turkey to activate Turkish Stream Project together with Israel will sell Leviathan Gas to Europea through using Turkish land therefore Turkey will become world power as dominating on hearltland together with rimland and as dominating to world island.
Note: This strategic analysis was originally published in English on the Foreign Policy Institute website on April 19, 2022. The link is below.
