CounterStrikeMedia
  • Home
    • American Foreign Policy
    • Emerging Threat Assessment
    • Foreign Policy Challenges for 2022
    • FINAL BATTLE: FAITH, REASON & MILITANCY
    • The World's Most Pressing Foreign Policy Challenge
    • Geography, Strategy, Great Power Competition
    • Monetarism, SANCTIONS & TERROR FINANCING
    • Congressional Reform
    • Demography
    • Pentagon Acquisition Reform
    • Quadrennial Defense Review Posture
    • Post Bretton-Woods: Monetary & Exchange Rate Reform
    • Thought Leadership: International Political Economy, Foreign Affairs
  • Regional Policies
    • Monetary Regimes, Exchange Rates, Capital - Current Accounts, Crisis
    • Fiscal Policy
    • Macro Trends
    • China
    • Mexico/Central/South America
    • Israel
    • Iran
    • Iraq
    • Russia
    • India
    • Syria
    • Chechnya
    • Pakistan
    • Africa
    • North Korea
  • Media
    • TED Video & Talks
    • Radio
    • Television
    • Newspapers
    • Book Reviews
  • About
    • CAFE HAYEK
    • The Most Pressing Challenge Facing America
    • The Revolution in Military Affairs
  • U.S. Central Command CENTCOM: The Long War
  • State of the Nation
  • SOUNDCLOUD
  • International Relations Jobs: Global Ranking Think Tanks
  • Tribute: Fouad Ajami & Bernard Lewis
  • Women & International Affairs
  • William Holland Blog
  • Podcasts
  • Contact
    • Topical Newsletter
  • OIL - ENERGY MARKETS

geography & strategy 
global strike media

Iranian Power Is NOT Inevitable

2/27/2017

0 Comments

 
"Iranian Power Is Not Inevitable," or The Lessons of Mackinder. Ian Morris, Stratfor.com
"...In the last 10,000 years, the world's most developed societies have almost always been in the band of latitudes that Mackinder called Eurasia's "inner rim," running from the Mediterranean to China. Farming was invented in this area, with the Middle East leading the way around 9500 B.C. and the rest of the inner rim following its example over the next several thousand years. Along with farming came cities and governments, which most parts of the inner rim had developed by 500 B.C. Two hundred and fifty years later, the world's first multiethnic empires comprising tens of millions of subjects controlled most of the inner rim.


Because ancient empires could not project their power very far, at any one time the inner rim tended to have four or five regional hegemons, jostling with each other but rarely extending their power into what Mackinder called Eurasia's "outer rim," facing toward the oceans, or its "heartland," far from the seas. However, because Eurasia's inner rim held 75 percent of the world's population and 90 percent of its wealth, its imperial rivalries became the most significant issues in global geopolitics.


The planet's balance of power began to change around 1000 B.C., when pastoral nomads on the steppes — the arid, treeless grasslands running from Manchuria to Hungary — first bred horses able to carry riders for long distances. These horsemen in the Eurasian heartland, far more mobile than the armies of the inner rim empires, were able to plunder almost at will and then gallop away before the imperial infantry could respond.


For the next 2,500 years, Eurasian history was dominated by a struggle between predators from the heartland — Scythians, Huns, Turks and Mongols, to name just a few — and the empires of the inner rim. China and Iran, which had relatively open frontiers along the steppes, were the regions most exposed to devastation, and their ruling dynasties were regularly overthrown by invaders. India and Europe, shielded by mountains and forests, generally suffered less.


The contest between the inner rim and the heartland was eventually overtaken by a new strategic struggle, which pitted the inner rim against the outer, after A.D. 1500. Mackinder labeled this new situation, which still prevailed in his own day, "the Columbian epoch." The great shift was driven by two inventions, both of them pioneered in China but quickly adopted and adapted all along the inner rim. When the new inventions reached Europe, they merged to form a world-conquering package.


The first invention was the gun, which military men gradually improved upon until muskets could be fired fast enough to counter nomadic archers on horseback. In 1500, steppe cavalry could still normally defeat volleying infantry; in 1600, they could sometimes win the same victories. But by 1700, they hardly ever could. After that, riders from the heartland no longer seriously threatened the inner rim.


The second invention was the oceangoing ship, which could fairly reliably sail for thousands of miles. These ships transformed the balance between the inner and outer rims just as decisively as the gun had altered the dynamic between the inner rim and the heartland. Armed with the new ships and guns, outer rim states could now project power farther and strike harder than any civilization before. The Columbian epoch had arrived.


Thanks to their long coastlines, India and the western parts of the Ottoman Empire were the most exposed to outer rim sailors and their guns, while distance and difficulty of access made China and Iran less vulnerable. By 1600, Western Europeans had overrun much of the Americas, built dozens of fortresses around the shores of the Indian Ocean and penetrated the Pacific. This, however, was just the beginning. In the 1750s, they began conquering India, and by the 1850s, Western Europeans and their former colonists in North America directly or indirectly controlled almost all territory from Turkey to Japan. The outer rim had overwhelmed the inner rim, turning the 19th century into an age of catastrophe for these ancient lands. By 1900 British troops had even pushed right through the inner rim and were playing a "Great Game" against Russia for control of the heartland.


But during these very years, right around the time Mackinder was lecturing in London, the pendulum began swinging back. The outer rim's financial, military and technological advantages over the inner rim remained enormous, but not enormous enough to sustain 19th-century levels of inequality. As the 20th century went on, inner rim nations slowly caught up with the outer rim as they underwent their own industrial revolutions. In 1916, when he was leading Turkish troops to defend Iraq against a largely Indian army fighting for Britain, the German general Wilhelm Leopold Colmar von der Goltz (known to the Turks as Goltz Pasha) could already prophesy that "the hallmark of the 20th century must be the revolution of the colored races against the colonial imperialism of Europe."...
​

https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/iranian-power-not-inevitable
0 Comments
    reagan_future_risg-2019-essays.pdf
    File Size: 1500 kb
    File Type: pdf
    Download File

    GREAT POWER DOCUMENT.pdf
    File Size: 2346 kb
    File Type: pdf
    Download File

    Picture
    GREAT POWER COMPETITION EXAMINED

    Picture
    Dr. Colin S. Gray
    Summary of His Life's Work on Strategy.pdf
    File Size: 301 kb
    File Type: pdf
    Download File


    Picture
    GLOBAL GEOPOLITICS

    Picture
    ATLAS PRO YOUTUBE

    Picture

    Picture
    DOUGLAS BARRIE: SPACE DEFENSE

    Picture
    THOMAS BUSSING: RAYTHEON MISSILE DEFENSE, STRATEGIEST

    Picture
    JAMES ACTON: NUCLEAR MISSILE DEFENSE

    Picture
    DR. MICHAEL PILLSBURY

    Picture
    HENRY ROWEN
    File Size: 78 kb
    File Type: pdf
    Download File


    Picture
    CHARLES WOLF JR.
    File Size: 665 kb
    File Type: pdf
    Download File


    Picture
    tutorials-from-a-sphinx.pdf
    File Size: 247 kb
    File Type: pdf
    Download File

    ANDREW MASHALL 'YODA'
    File Size: 1471 kb
    File Type: pdf
    Download File


    Picture
    AMERICA NEEDS NEW ALLIANCES
    why_america_needs_new_alliances_-_wsj.pdf
    File Size: 158 kb
    File Type: pdf
    Download File


    Picture
    POLYBIUS & ANCIENT GRAND STRATEGY
    File Size: 2040 kb
    File Type: pdf
    Download File


    Picture
    CENTER FOR POLITICAL & MILITARY POWER

    Picture
    SUN TZU ISN'T WORKING FOR CHINA ANYMORE
    SUN TZU ISN'T WORKING FOR CHINA
    File Size: 285 kb
    File Type: pdf
    Download File


    Picture
    THE QURAN & MORAL STRATEGY FOR THE LONG WAR

    Picture
    WHEN WAR WITHOUT END, FINALLY ENDS
    WHEN WAR WITHOUT END, FINALLY ENDS
    File Size: 4995 kb
    File Type: pdf
    Download File

    Picture

    Picture
    THUCYDIDES & THE LONG WAR PROBLEM

    Picture
    HOW TO UNDERSTAND THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
    WHAT HAPPENED DURING PELOPONNESIAN WAR
    File Size: 547 kb
    File Type: pdf
    Download File


    Picture
    THUCYDIDES TRAP IS GREAT POWER COMPETITION
    THUCYDIDES TRAP = GREAT POWER COMPETITION
    File Size: 2228 kb
    File Type: pdf
    Download File

    WHAT THUCYDIDES TRAP GETS WRONG
    File Size: 156 kb
    File Type: pdf
    Download File


    Picture

    Picture
    CENTER STRATEGIC, BUDGETARY ASSESSMENTS: U.S. GRAND STRATEGY

    Picture


    Picture
    DAVID P. GOLDMAN COLUMN ASIA TIMES

    Picture
    HOW BEST TO UNDERSTAND U.S. - CHINA RELATIONS

    Picture
    STRATEGY BRIDGE

    Winning World War IV David P. Goldman.pdf
    File Size: 4315 kb
    File Type: pdf
    Download File


    Picture
    THE NEW ASIAN OBSERVER

    Tweets by WilliamHolland

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    January 2022
    October 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    September 2016
    February 2016
    June 2015

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed


What Our Clients Are Saying

"For topical research on items related to international political economy, unrivaled."

Contact Us

    Subscribe Today!

Submit