AS long as 1904, John Halford Mackinder, a knight, the first man to scale Mount Kenya on the equator, a former director of London School of Economics, a professor of geography, and well-versed in history and strategy, after examining and evaluating geographical configuration, the grouping and layout of lands and seas, distribution of population, resources and raw material, came out with his hypothesis of the ‘pivot area’ in history (The Geographical Pivot of History; Geographical Journal XXIII, 1904) that the inner area of Eurasia — the world’s greatest landmass — would emerge as the basis for globally dominated empire.
Recognizing the accelerated advance of modern technology in providing substitutes for scarce metals and other raw material, population increases, industrialization, and improvement in transportation, Mackinder modified his thesis in 1919 (Democratic Ideals and Reality) by presenting his view of the future in a daring dictum: “Who rules East Europe, commands the Heartland: Who rules the Heartland, commands the World-Island; Who rules the World-Island commands the World”. (The World-Island is the combined Eurasia and Africa.)
The ‘pivot-area’ had developed into a ‘heartland’ which, being inaccessible to sea-power, Mackinder considered as the greatest, natural and impregnable fortress on earth. The ‘heartland’ straddled across thousands of miles from the Baltic to the Caspian to Afghanistan, including Central and Northern Asia.
Contemptuously rebuffed and disdainfully ignored in his native land, Mackinder found fertile ground for his concept of ‘Heartland’ in a defeated-turned-Nazi Germany, where Maj-Gen Professor Doktor Karl Haushofer thoroughly explored it, and saw in ‘World-Island’ a framework for German hegemony over the world. (At least one chapter in Hitler’s Mein Kampf is thought to be pure Houshofer.) Eventually, Germany failed in its attempt to dominate Russia and the ‘Heartland’.
Though in an article, The Round World and the Winning of Peace (Foreign Affairs: July 1943), Mackinder, accepting and appreciating the emergence of air power, uninterrupted access to mineral fuel related resources, re-fashioned his prediction of 1919, he did not “consign it to ashes”. On the other hand, he asserted that his 1919 dictum was “more valid and useful today than it was twenty or forty years ago”.
In his 1943 formulation, he saw the states of West Europe and North America as constituting a natural defence community. The “Atlantic community” would balance the Eurasian power citadel of “heartland” in population, resources and strategic opportunities. (This was essentially the geographical basis of the NATO, formed in 1949.)
Moreover, the policy of ‘containment’ in the post-1945 era, with the US alliances with oversee countries, along the periphery of the Eurasian landmass to check the Soviet-controlled heartland’s domination of the ‘World-Island’ was, in a way, a vindication of Mackinder’s 1919 hypothesis. Across the Atlantic, Professor Nicholas John Spykman of Yale (American Strategy in World Politics; 1942, and The Geography of Peace; 1944) was worried about the danger of world domination by Germany. He was for American hegemony in Asia, Europe and the Americas. And, in order to do that, “she must continue the struggle until she has annihilated the power of Russia and China”, after defeating Germany and Japan! And that could only be done through an Anglo-American alliance! (Ultimately, Russia was ‘destroyed’ and ‘annihilated’ by an internal political implosion.)
Now, the southern ramparts of the fortress ‘heartland’ are no more impregnable, courtesy Osama bin Laden. Insofar as the merchants of death turned September 11 into a horrendous day of death, destruction and devastation, everyone’s heart went out to the families of those who perished in the Nostradamus’s “twin brothers”. (Remember another September 11? Of 1973? Washington triumphantly gloated over the destructive majesty of the flames leaping out of the palace of Chile’s President. A leading light of the then American administration gleefully remarked, “We do not accept a country going Marxist because of the irresponsibility of its people”.)
And, without going into the root of the causes of attacks, the western media, Washington and London, started pointing fingers of accusation, from day one, to Osama bin Laden, as a suspect. Within a couple of days (forget concrete evidence beyond a reasonable doubt), Osama became a prime suspect and was metamorphosed into Evil. The Anglo-American alliance, threatening rest of the world — “either you are with us or ...” — started indiscriminate and abhoringly savage pounding and pulverising of the 10-million-land-mined Afghanistan, without waiting for the UN Security Council’s approval.
The common perception in the Muslim world that unwarranted, obstinate, resolute and unwavering support for Israel by the US in the Middle East conflict was one of the causes of the attacks on New York and Washington, cannot be easily erased away.
From Joseph Chamberlain (an offer of the Sinai Peninsula for Jewish immigration and colonization, and then an offer of free grant of 5000 square miles to Jews in the Uasin Gishu plateau in Kenya) to the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement, 1916 (between Britain and France to share the Middle East pie) to the double-talk Balfour Declaration 1917 (“for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”, and the British government “to use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”) to San Remo Conference and the Treaty of Sevres 1920 (the Mandatory Power for Palestine went to Britain to render “advice and assistance” to the people of the mandatory territory “until such time as they were able to stand alone”) to the Lord Peel Royal Commission on Palestine 1937 (Palestine to be partitioned into a small Jewish state in the northern coastal plain and in the Galilee, and an Arab state in the remainder of the country, with an internationalized zone stretching from Jerusalem to Jaffa) to the British White Paper 1939 (it rejected the partition proposal, announcing that Palestine would be an independent state in 1949 with restricted Jewish immigration to ensure that Jews remained in a minority) to the League of Nations (it declared the British policy was not in line with the terms of the Mandate) to the UN Resolution of November 1947 (it called for the partition of Palestine, Jews with one-third of the country’s population were assigned 56% of Palestine’s land area) to the flight of the British High Commissioner from Palestine on 14 May 1948, and to Count Bernadotte partition plan, the tale of Palestine is full of intrigue, betrayal, chicanery, false promises and broken pledges.
The exponential increase in the number of Jews in Palestine from 50,000 in 1900 to about 0.76 million, when the British abandoned the Mandate, in 1948, was mainly due to smuggling by an illegal Jewish organization, Mossad Aliyah Bet. The British administration, in Palestine, more or less, connived at it.
Alarmed that unrestricted illegal immigration would precipitate a war with the Arabs, Field Marshal Montgomery, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, proposed in August 1946 a strict Palestine blockade. So did the First Lord of Admiralty. Montgomery wrote to Attlee: “I will ensure that at all times we keep one step ahead of the Haganah and other Jewish illegal armed forces ... The need for a decision is urgent.” The Janus-faced denizens of Whitehall looked at future with eyes on the other side of their faces. The proposals were not implemented.
Another Field Marshal, with only one eye, saw the Palestine issue clearly, especially in the context of British India. In 1945, Wavell wrote to London: “India contains some 90 million Muslims ... any solution, which is manifestly unacceptable to the Arabs, would cause a great resentment in Muslim India ... Palestine is ... an important factor in India’s internal politics ... I would like to get a decision in this while I am here.”
Wavell again warned, in July 1945, “The Governor of the Punjab left me in no doubt that any solution of the Palestine problem which could be interpreted as injurious to the interests of the Arabs and a breach of pledges given by His Majesty’s Government in the White Paper of 1939, would be likely to cause serious unrest in the Punjab ... The Governor of the NWFP reports that if the Arabs proclaim that they have been unjustly treated in Palestine there will immediately be excitement among the Frontier Muslims ... I have in addition to the above opinion, been made aware on many occasions, during the last four years, of the dangerous effects on India of action injurious to Arab interests in Palestine.
“Memorials from the governments of Bengal and Sind which have recently been forwarded to HM’s Government, and a representation by the Punjab Premier ... show the interest taken by Indian politicians in Arab grievances, of which Palestine is probably the chief ... Allowing further Jewish immigration without consulting the Arabs would be interpreted as bad faith on the part of HM’s Government and would be particularly unfortunate ... when it is essential to re-establish belief in good faith for the pledges of HM’s Government.”
His warning and counsel went unheeded. Perhaps unknown to the authorities in the UK, some of the British army and intelligence officers in Palestine worked by the day in their own offices, and were by the night engaged in training guerrilla forces, and advising such illegal Jewish organizations as Mossad Aliyah Bet, Palmach, Maccabees, and Haganah, on every Arab and British move in Palestine. The illegal smuggling of Jews was ignored and the British turned their backs at massive gun-running from European countries, especially Czechoslovakia.
Irgun-Zvei-Leum and its off-shoot Lehi (Stern Gang), headed by Menacham Begin, went for all sorts of terrorist activities. Six British embassies in the Mediterranean were attacked. Mosul pipeline was blown up. There were jail breaks. Haifa refinery was destroyed. Lydda airport was damaged. A senior British army officer was kidnapped and killed. A British judge was kidnapped. There were bank robberies. King David Hotel was bombed. There were ten major road ambushes and fifteen major raids on British installations.
All the inhabitants of a Palestinian village, Deir Yassin, were massacred. Begin claimed that “the Deir Yassin was indispensable to the establishment of an overwhelming Jewish majority in the parts of Palestine that were to become Israel”. Bernadotte was assassinated in Jerusalem in 1948. And, yet, Begin was not a terrorist. He was the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978!
And, today, the erstwhile “moral equivalents of America’s Founding Fathers” are terrorists. To eliminate Evil and wipe out the evildoers, Afghanistan has been made the target of indiscriminate bombing showers. Notwithstanding the claim of Gen Clark, a former Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, that this “war” is for the benefit of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and for the survival of Islam, as a religion of peace, the perception of a common Muslim, in the street, is that after fascism, nazism and communism, Islam has become an enemy, and that “the strike against terror” was a quick act of reprisal and immediate revenge.
Do not forget the words of Prof Spykman that there are countries to be “dominated” and their power annihilated. After all, to “command” the World, the Eurasian “heartland” and the “World-Island” have to be “commanded” and “ruled”.
Remember Madeleine Albright’s reply to a question whether the death of 600,000 Iraqi children was an acceptable price for achieving America’s objectives? She said, “We think it was.”
AS long as 1904, John Halford Mackinder, a knight, the first man to scale Mount Kenya on the equator, a former director of London School of Economics, a professor of geography, and well-versed in history and strategy, after examining and evaluating geographical configuration, the grouping and layout of lands and seas, distribution of population, resources and raw material, came out with his hypothesis of the ‘pivot area’ in history (The Geographical Pivot of History; Geographical Journal XXIII, 1904) that the inner area of Eurasia — the world’s greatest landmass — would emerge as the basis for globally dominated empire.
