Former president Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew
Brzezinski defined geopolitics as “a combination of geographic and political
factors emphasizing the impact of geography on politics”, the word strategic,
he believes, refers to “the comprehensive and planned application of measures
to achieve a central goal or to vital assets of military significance” and therefore
‘Geostrategy’, he has written, “merges strategic consideration with
geopolitical ones”. In other words, Geostrategy is the geographic direction of
a state’s foreign policy.
Sir Halford John Mackinder was an early pioneer of
geostrategic thought who proposed the Heartland Theory, also known as the ‘pivot
of history’, in 1904. Mackinder believed
that whoever could control the ‘world island’, which was comprised of the
interlinked continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa, would control the world.
Mackinder
summarised his theory as: "Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;
who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island
commands the world." Mackinder’s objective in publishing his theories was
to warn Britain that its traditional reliance on sea power would become a
weakness as improved land transport opened up the Heartland for both industrialization
and invasion.
At that time, however, based on Britain’s commanding
position offshore of Europe, the western edge of the world island, and her
ability to apply pressure at all other points including the Pacific theatre
using Sea Power, plus the relative lack of infrastructure and industry in the
‘Heartland’, Mackinder’s theory appeared to explain the pre-eminence of British
power and her position as the world’s leading super power.
After the Second World War this position was
inherited by the United States. With its pivotal influence over Europe, through
financial and military institutions, along with its decisive power projection
capabilities in the western Pacific it now controlled the “World Island” and
that control brought dominance.
Those conditions are subject to change. Although the
United States is still the world’s major power its power is in relative
decline. The very success American policies of free trade, stable markets, and
(comparatively) liberal institutions have increased the world’s gross domestic
product at a rate greater than that of the U.S. average. In other words, the
U.S. is not necessarily getting poorer so much as the rest of the world is
getting richer. The U.S. no longer commands a dominant part of the world’s
economy.
China is one of the countries that have benefited
the most from this world economic growth. With greater national wealth has come
greater ambition. This ambition can be see most clearly in the gigantic
infrastructure program known as the Belt and Road Initiative. This plan seeks
to develop and construct a vast network of railroads, pipelines and shipping
lanes between China and 65 other countries in Asia, North Africa, the Middle
East and Europe. The result, it is believed, will mean enhanced trade routes
and investment links between China and participating nations.
From a geostrategic view it also means that China could
dominate Mackinder’s ‘World Island’ and, at least in theory, the whole world.
These trends are not a secret. The rise of China and their attempts to expand
sovereignty and control over parts of the Pacific Ocean that they consider to
be contiguous are well known. Perhaps less well known are American responses to
them.
Even though the U.S. dominated media obsessed about
Barak Obama’s African heritage he was in fact a person of the Pacific. Born in
Hawaii, having spent some of his youth in Indonesia and with a mother whose
academic focus was in Asia, Obama was far more in tune with Asia and the
Pacific then the Atlanticists who traditionally dominate Washington discourse.
Obama tried to contain China, and reinforce U.S. dominance, through a
combination of a shift in security and defense policy, the “pivot to Asia”, and
trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Obama made little secret of the fact that these
maneuvers were designed to “allow America — and not countries like China — to
write the rules of the road in the 21st century.” He was prepared to accept the consequences of
market arrangements like the T-PP on U.S. industry and domestic policies in
return for the ability to “write the rules”. Many were not. The rise of
nationalist voices, like that of Donald Trump, in opposition to these policies was
in some ways entirely predictable.
It is difficult to judge whether the ‘policies’ of
the Trump administration have hastened an inevitable decline in U.S. power or
simply reflect it. What seems likely is that with the abandoning of the T-PP,
to be replace by the Chinese dominated trade agreements and the Belt and Road
Initiative, in concert with what appears to be a loosening of ties with Europe,
positioned as it is on the western edge of Mackinder’s “World Island”, there is
little to stop the relative decline of the United States and the possible
ascendency of China as the world’s greatest power.
Needless to say, this outcome is not inevitable.
Edward N. Luttwak, for one, believes that any attempt by China to strengthen
its position in relation to its neighbours, especially if accompanied by
belligerence, will bring about reciprocal actions by those neighbours, in the
form of trade and security arrangements, designed to contain China’s
ambitions. However even Luttwak concedes
that there is a possibility of less
restrained conflict saying; “Because nuclear weapons cannot reliably inhibit any
and all armed conflict between nuclear-armed powers, incidents could take place
and they could escalate into localized combat, military strength retains its
importance between nuclear powers.”
What does this mean for Canada? Even if one does not
commit fully to the Geostrategic ‘inevitabilities’ of Mackinder it seems
obvious that a conflict between China and the U.S. is going to be conditioned
by the size and nature of the Pacific Ocean and American power projection experience. It will
resemble the traditional struggle between a land power and a thalassocracy,
i.e. a state which is primarily a maritime power. In other words conflict,
whether cold or hot, will involve naval power.
Canada’s response to a belligerent or aggressive
China in an environment which includes a relatively weaker U.S. must be
multi-faceted. It means spending more money for and putting more emphasis on
foreign affairs, particularly in areas that strengthen multi-lateral
institutions and support democratic values, especially in the Pacific arena. Future
‘coalitions of the willing’ with which Canada becomes involved will be more
effective if they consist mainly of countries who espouse values that Canadians
can identify with.
It will also mean getting serious about prioritizing
defence spending. No matter what illusory percentage of the GDP is picked to
represent a defence budget choices about how that money will be spent will have
to be made. Canada may have to put a greater percentage of that budget into
areas which support naval warfare. Other conflict domains; air, land, space and
cyber, will have to consider how their resources can best support maritime
operations and fund capabilities accordingly.
Geostrategic trends move slowly, until they don’t.
The same can not be said of naval procurement programs. Equipment choices made
now will reverberate for decades, into a world we can only dimly observe. Even if we start immediately, re-aligning the
Royal Canadian Navy for the future is a process that will take time, if we have
it.
