A Special Edition of the Mackinder Forum: "The Geopolitics of the 21st Century"
On Friday, June 30, 2023, 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 pm. (Eastern U.S. Time) a Special Edition of the Mackinder Forum was held in-person in the EEOB of the White House Complex and online. The in-person group included representatives from the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff, the Intelligence Community, the NSC staff, and the UN.
Five panel presentations were delivered. The names of the panelists, the titles of their papers and a brief abstract, and their biographical information follows. Before the panelists delivered their talks, Professor Geoff Sloan discussed the history of the founding of the Mackinder Forum and Dr. Leonard Hochberg provided an introduction to the overall topic.
Name: Geoff Sloan
Topic: Introduction to the Mackinder Forum
Abstract: A brief history of founding and activities of the Mackinder Forum. (For further information on the history of the Mackinder Forum, please see the essay by Geoff Sloan, here: https://mackinderforum.org/the-origins-of-the-mackinder-forum/.
Biography: See Panelist #1, below.
Name: Leonard Hochberg (Co-organizer)
Topic: Introduction to “The Geopolitical Perspective of the 21st Century”
Abstract: (1) Classical geopolitics emphasizes the strategic interactions among security communities, such as states or empires, through time and across space. As a field of study, it is an interdisciplinary approach that mobilizes the study of history and geography from past strategic interactions to draw relevant lessons for policy makers. As such, geopolitics tracks how states transform their environments, at multiple scales of analysis and diverse time horizons, to facilitate the projection of power in all its forms—cultural, economic, and military—against adversaries, realized or potential. It recognizes that wars may be fought by other means, such as the geographic positioning of military assets. Hochberg will then introduce each speaker and his thesis.
(2) Co-author with Robert Aguirre, Panelist #5, of "Where Classic Geopolitical Theories Meet Data”
Autobiography: Leonard Hochberg is currently the U.S. Coordinator of the Mackinder Forum and a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is a retired university professor who taught at Stanford University (among other institutions), co-founded Strategic Forecasting (STRATFOR), and was a fellow at the Hoover Institution. Recent coauthored publications/postings on geopolitics (regarding Communist China and the Ukraine War), geopolitical theory (on Sir Halford J. Mackinder’s thought), grand strategy (pertaining to international business), and technology (e.g., the semiconductor ecosystem) have appeared on Orbis, Real Clear Defense, Asia Times, and other sites.
Co-organizer and panelist (#1):
Name: Geoffrey Sloan
Title: “Geopolitics as an Aid to Statecraft”
Abstract: Too often geopolitics is reduced to a synonym for international relations and conflict. By contrast classical geopolitics has a practical focus; specifically, it can be used as a tool for strategic analysis. The work of Sir Halford John Mackinder is one of the earliest and most compelling examples of classical geopolitical analysis. He advanced several significant concepts, such as manpower, social momentum, geostrategic “points of view” or outlooks, and the “heartland”—some of which inform our understanding of the expansionist policies of autocratic regimes that have attempted repeatedly to extend their control over the maritime periphery of Eurasia. By attending to the logic of Mackinder’s strategic analysis of the interaction of maritime versus territorial powers, certain principles of geopolitical analysis can be adduced that have a continued utility for the geopolitics of the 21stcentury.
Autobiography: Geoff Sloan is Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom and the UK Coordinator of the Mackinder Forum. Previously he was Head of the Strategic Studies and International Affairs at Britannia Royal Navel College. He has also been a Defense Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford. He founded the Mackinder Forum at Oxford University in 2000 with the help of the late Professor Robert O’Neill, then the Professor of the History of War at All Souls College, Oxford. He has written three monographs on geopolitics and numerous articles, some of which have appeared on Orbis and the Naval War College Review. His most recent book is titled, Geopolitics, Geography and Strategic History and in 2017, the year it appeared in print, it was awarded the Stratfor Book Award for Geopolitical Analysis.
Panelist (#2)
Name: Rodger Baker
Title: “Beyond Thucydides: U.S.-PRC Competition and the Return of Multipolarity”
Abstract: There are more fundamental (and challenging) dynamics underlying U.S.-China strategic competition than emerging versus established powers or democracies versus autocracies. Understanding both the objective global geopolitical patterns and the current perceptive geopolitics provides a more complex but more robust framework to explore elements of the relationship and its future trajectory. Comparing the U.S.-PRC balance to the Cold War misses both fundamental differences in the origins of the two competitive relationships, and the implications of multipolarity in shaping allied and aligned responses.
Autobiography: Rodger Baker is the Executive Director of the Stratfor Center for Applied Geopolitics at RANE. Mr. Baker has spent the last 25 years applying geopolitical intelligence and analysis for internationally engaged organizations, training individuals and teams in geopolitical and strategic analysis, and working to improve and codify methodologies for applied geopolitics.
Panelist (#3)
Name: Jeffrey A. Mankoff
Title: “Imperial Legacies and Russia's War in Ukraine”
Abstract: Russia’s war against Ukraine is often described as a war of imperial conquest—though many Russians see it as something else entirely. The lands of modern Ukraine have been objects of contestation between indigenous actors and outside powers for centuries. Though Kyiv was the center of the medieval East Slavic world, the collapse of Kyivan Rus in the 13th century resulted in cultural, political, and institutional divergence between what would eventually become Russia and Ukraine. After Muscovy took control of the major Ukrainian lands in the mid-17th century, Russian officials and publicists began redefining the region’s history through the prism of the Russian ‘gathering the lands,’ asserting a historical, religious, and ethnocultural claim to legitimate sovereignty over Ukraine. While many inhabitants of the Ukrainian lands saw incorporation into the Russian Empire as an imperial conquest, Russian officials saw it as the reunification of Russia’s historic patrimony. Efforts to claim a distinct Ukrainian identity were consequently blamed on foreign interference and suppressed. This association of Ukrainian national identity with foreign interference endured through both world wars and remains potent among Russian elites today—Vladimir Putin has spoken of the West seeking to make Ukraine into an “anti-Russia.” Cultural proximity and ambiguous identities encouraged Putin and others to believe that many (or most) Ukrainians would support incorporation into modern Russia, misunderstanding the durability of Ukrainian identity and the significance of Ukraine’s three decades of post-Soviet independence in consolidating a sense of civic patriotism transcending ethnic and linguistic divides.
Autobiography: Dr. Jeffrey Mankoff is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the U.S. National Defense University's Institute for National Strategic Studies and a Non-Resident Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). His research focuses on Russian foreign policy, Eurasian geopolitics, and the role of history and memory in international relations. Dr. Mankoff was previously a senior fellow with the Russia and Eurasia Program at CSIS and served as an adviser on U.S.-Russia relations at the U.S. Department of State. From 2008 to 2010, he was associate director of International Security Studies at Yale University and an adjunct fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Recent publications include Empires of Eurasia: How Imperial Legacies Shape International Security (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2022); "The War in Ukraine and Eurasia's New Imperial Moment," The Washington Quarterly, 2022, 45(2): pp. 127-147; and "Russia’s War in Ukraine: Identity, History, and Conflict," CSIS, Apr 2022, https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-war-ukraine-identity-history-and-conflict
Panelist #4
Name: David P. Goldman
Title: “China’s Plan to Win the Fourth Industrial Revolution”
Abstract: The following points will be made during this presentation: (1) China sees its competitive position vs. the United States as comparable to the US vs. the UK in the late 19th century; (2) China is making an all-country commitment to Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies (AI/5G applications to manufacturing and logistics, and has a commanding lead over the US in most applications; (3) As of March, China for the first time exported more to the Global South than to all developed markets. Digital and physical infrastructure lead China’s exports, with the aim of assimilating large parts of the Global South into an economic sphere of influence; (4) China has deepened the dependence of Global South exporters on its supply chains, including India, Vietnam, and Mexico. Friend-shoring still depends on Chinese components and infrastructure; (5) US semiconductor sanctions impose substantial costs on China but do not appear to hinder its rollout of AI/5G applications, which run on mature chips; and (6) The US requires targeted investments and clear policy guidance to prevent China from winning the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Autobiography: Asia Times Deputy Editor David P. Goldman was global head of debt research at Bank of America and head of credit strategies at Credit Suisse. He was a consultant to the Office of Net Assessment and the National Security Council. His most recent book is You Will Be Assimilated: China’s Plan to Sino-Form the World (2020).
Panelist #5
Name: Robert Aguirre (co-author, Leonard Hochberg)
Title: "Where Classic Geopolitical Theories Meet Data”
Abstract: When we think of classical or even revolutionary theories about geopolitics, and Sir Halford Mackinder’s heartland thesis certainly qualifies, we can always point to a brilliant pattern recognition insight with a unique geographic and historical frame of reference no one had ever considered before. Many security assessments feature a single, easily grasped, spatial unit of analysis over a short time span. We believe that one of the most overlooked skills in strategic logic is the ability to imagine a security situation unfolding against a geographic and historical system of reference with more than one scale of analysis. We present a brief with maps illustrating an example of how to craft a problem statement about incidents of violent extremism in northeastern Nigeria based on an open data source called the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) using expert pattern recognition insights distilled from several theorists at multiple scales.
Autobiography: Robert Aguirre is a geographer and GIS analyst with professional experience across the geospatial industry from local and federal government (i.e., NOAA) to higher education (i.e., The University of Washington). He has published articles on GIS for group decision making as well as geopolitics. His book The Panama Canal (2010) on U.S. foreign relations with two rival Panamanian societies was unique in its use of multiple spatial and temporal scales of analysis.