{"id":23207,"date":"2025-03-06T21:29:14","date_gmt":"2025-03-06T19:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=23207"},"modified":"2025-03-06T21:29:14","modified_gmt":"2025-03-06T19:29:14","slug":"the-fall-of-ukraine-marks-the-death-of-the-heartland-theory-atlanticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=23207","title":{"rendered":"The fall of Ukraine marks the Death of “The Heartland Theory” & Atlanticism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With Trump\u2019s call to end the war in Ukraine, marking a dramatic shift in US policy, Europe is now trapped in a geopolitical vacuum: it has alienated China, severed economic ties with Russia, and failed to anticipate Trump\u2019s strategic shift. Worse, it has nullified its role as a credible interlocutor, after EU leaders publicly admitted that the Minsk negotiations were used to buy time to strengthen the Ukrainian military. Within a few years, Europe has managed to isolate itself on the international stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oblivion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Henry Kissinger once said that the US has no permanent friends, only permanent interests. The war in Ukraine is a prime example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About 30 years ago, most European countries, influenced by the US neoliberal current, elected a series of political leaders who agreed with Washington’s Atlantic policies. Successive US administrations \u2013 including Bush, Clinton and Obama \u2013 supported the expansion of NATO. The pretext was the spread of democracy and freedom, but this hid deeper geopolitical and economic reasons dating back to the colonial era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Heartland Theory, developed by British geographer Halford Mackinder in the early 20th century, argued that Western hegemony was based on a divided Eurasian continent. Mackinder described the conflict as a struggle between rising naval powers (mainly Western Europe) and continental powers (Russia, China, India).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The development of railways threatened the dominance of the West, which was based on sea power. In the 1980s, American geopolitical strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski also adopted the Heartland Theory and identified Ukraine as a key nation in the struggle for dominance of Eurasia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NATO expansion from the 1990s onwards was orchestrated by Brzezinski\u2019s proteges and promoted by successive US administrations. The logic was simple: by keeping the Eurasian continent divided, Western naval power could remain hegemonic on a global scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

China\u2019s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which stretches across Eurasia, was a major cause for concern for the Atlanticists. In the same vein, the war in Ukraine fulfilled its mission: to cut Europe off from the Eurasian continent. The blowing up of the Nord Stream pipeline, which connected Russia to Europe, was part of this plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the Atlanticists could not have predicted that Trump would change the strategic chessboard so drastically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The old adage \u201cFollow the money\u201d still holds true. The US faces a growing and unsustainable national debt, a persistent budget deficit, and ever-widening trade deficits. These triple deficits can only be sustained as long as the dollar remains the world\u2019s reserve currency. The US earns trillions of dollars as the \u201ctoll station\u201d of the global financial system based on the dollar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the US government has already borrowed $36 trillion to cover its budget deficits. Interest payments on the national debt already exceed the US defense budget \u2013 and are rising. On the current path, they are headed for bankruptcy or hyperinflation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s priority is to fix the US budget and keep the dollar as the world\u2019s reserve currency. This explains both his ruthless policy of cuts and his threats of sanctions against countries that try to de-dollarize their economies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deep denial<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The West never managed to convince Russia that NATO expansion to Russia\u2019s borders was not a threat. Ignoring the potential Russian backlash, it presented NATO expansion as an exercise in democracy and freedom. Ideology trumped pragmatism. But the retreat will be painful. At the start of the war, Western media portrayed Russia as weak and corrupt, with a faltering economy and an ineffective military. Overconfident or historically naive, the West relied on three pillars that collapsed one after the other:<\/p>\n\n\n\n