Four Fronts, One War

At this point, the Russo-Ukraine war, Hamas’ attack on Israel and the Israeli response, the Houthis’ war against international shipping, and the 100 or more Iranian proxy attacks on American outposts in the Middle East would all suggest that a multifront war has been launched. Was this multi-front war coordinated, sequenced, or merely the result of opportunism? 

Historians may one day be able to make a definitive determination. For purposes of figuring out what to do next, this is a distinction without a difference: The perception among the enemies of the West is that the present moment is one in which they have an opportunity to exploit Western distraction and weakness. What is known now is this: Russia, Iran, and China have signed a series of bilateral economic agreements rendering their economies, including weapons acquisitions, more interdependent (here, here, here, here, and here). Such economic understandings often undergird emerging alliances. 

For further evidence that the prediction of four fronts is in fact one war, consider the following mutually reinforcing consequences. The shipments of Ukrainian exports through the Suez Canal have fallen off since the Houthis compromised transport that passes through the Bab al Mandab. Ukraine’s financial ability to prosecute its war against Russia is thus being impaired. Russian and Chinese freighters have reportedly been given a free pass through the Red Sea by the Houthis (here), a preferential policy conferring a time and distance advantage over competitors who, to avoid the war zone, transport their cargoes round the Cape of Good Hope to European markets. Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry has reportedly announced a soon-to-be-signed, anti-American, and pro-multipolar pact with Iran. Meanwhile, the delivery of U.S. military hardware to Ukraine and Israel reduces available equipment for Taiwan.

Will Xi Jinping take advantage of America’s lack of preparedness for a multifront war across the Eurasian rimland? For our prediction of a four-front war to be fully realized, Communist China would have to blockade or attack Taiwan even as these other conflicts take place, or in their immediate aftermath – once it becomes apparent that the United States lacks the will and/or the capability to respond effectively to yet another threat to the existing order. At some point, these separate fronts may be perceived as a single worldwide war, though not, as the Israeli Foreign Minister claimed, a world war between the West and radical Islam. Instead, this worldwide four-front war should be perceived as Eurasian land-power autocracies attacking maritime democracies and their allies, led by the United States. 

Geopolitical Theory of the Heartland

Beyond an intuition born of having read strategic history, what theory informs our understanding of strategic history and the relevant geography? We rely on geopolitical theory, most notably Halford Mackinder’s theory of the Heartland, to assess the trajectory of events across Eurasia. Despite differences across Mackinder’s three geopolitical statements (1904, 1919, and 1943), the essential feature of his geopolitical theory is this: With the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, the economic isolation imposed on interior Eurasian settlements by virtue of the cost of overland transportation had come to an end. Until that moment, a vast stretch of territory reaching from the Arctic in the north to the Iranian plateau in the south, from the Lena, Indigirka, and Kolyma River basins in the east and beyond Moscow to the west, was characterized by a shared geographic feature: the rivers in this area flowed north to the frozen Arctic Ocean or south to land-locked seas such as the Caspian Sea. As a result of this landlocked situation, naval power, exercised by Great Britain or other seafaring nations, had little if any military impact on the course of events in the region Mackinder labeled ‘the Heartland.’ But with the completion of the Railway, Tsarist Russia – and later the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – alone or in an alliance with European or Asian powers, might profoundly influence the course of global events due to access to new sources of minerals, the presence of virgin soil, and demographic expansion. Ultimately, interior lines of transport and communication for the movement of armies overland across the expanse of the Heartland would enable whichever power occupied the Heartland to project power westward to the European Coastlands, southwestward to Arabia, and south and eastward into the Monsoon Coastland – three of the six natural regions of Eurasia (here and here).

Even more critical was Mackinder’s recognition that World War I led to a potential reshaping of the Heartland as one of these natural regions. Mackinder posited that the region he labeled the “Strategic Heartland” included contested seas and river basins, as well as land routes suitable for invasion. Hence, the Strategic Heartland encompassed the natural Heartland, and in Europe, it extended to the Danube Basin, the Black Sea littoral, the eastern stretches of the Northern European Plain, and the Baltic Sea littoral. For Mackinder, the maritime outposts of naval power, the Black and Baltic Seas, might be turned into “lakes,” should the power occupying the Heartland capture a sea’s littoral through the successful domination by land power. 

Learning From Geopolitical Theory

We learned three lessons from Mackinder’s geopolitical theory. First, Mackinder’s argument pertaining to the Baltic and Black Seas revealed that threatening or capturing the maritime chokepoints near the Bosporus and Dardanelles or the Kattegat and Skagerrak – the straits north of Denmark connecting the Baltic to the North Sea – was essential to controlling these seas. By way of a geographic analogy, Mackinder’s theory enables the observer of geopolitics to appreciate how control over the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab compromises freedom of the seas in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea approach to the Suez Canal and may eventually lead to control over the relevant coastlines. However, modern missile technology requires only proximity to a strategic strait or narrow body of water for sea denial to be effective against commercial shipping (here).

Second, Mackinder’s 1920 Report on the situation in South Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution revealed the strategic importance of Ukraine’s territory. A major invasion into the Russian cultural and demographic core around Moscow was launched north from Ukraine by the White Russian forces. In addition, one glance at a “strategic map” of Europe, viewed from high above the Urals, reveals not only the importance of the Northern European plain as an invasion route into Russia but also the southern invasion route from Crimea. Before the recent outbreak of war, the United States allegedly began modernizing a Ukrainian naval base located east of Odesa to accommodate larger warships. Russian geostrategic planners must consider threats from both directions, particularly if the Baltics and Ukraine are aligned with what they consider to be an adversary. For restoring the Russian empire and reestablishing Russian status as a great power, the conquest and incorporation of Ukraine is perceived as critical. Russia seeks to dominate Ukraine for its manpower, its on-shore mineral and off-shore hydrocarbon deposits, its industrial base, its agricultural productivity, and its strategic location. In geo-economic terms, the ongoing division of the world economy into a sphere of maritime and land-based Eurasian territorial powers puts Ukraine in the cross hairs.

Third, America, as the recent holder of the baton of thalassocracy, failed to forestall the formation of a proto-alliance of the Heartland Power, Russia, with two powers that straddle the Heartland and the maritime rim, Iran, and China. In Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919), Mackinder warned of the danger of the Heartland Power gaining control over the Baltic and Black seas and then, at some future date, securing power over Eurasia and Africa:

What if the Great Continent, the whole World-Island [i.e., Eurasia and Africa] or a large part of it, were at some future time to become a single and united base of sea power? Would not the other insular bases be outbuilt as regards ships and outmanned as regards seamen? Their fleets would no doubt fight with all the heroism begotten of their histories, but the end would be fated.

Mackinder feared that the Heartland Power, alone or in alliance with powers controlling portions of the maritime rim of Eurasia, might go to sea, and become an amphibious power. 

Currently, in Ukraine, Russia seeks to reassert control over the northern Black Sea littoral, from Crimea to Moldova, thereby gaining control over the offshore hydrocarbons (here). China and Iran, with their long coastlines, have decided to become amphibious powers while developing and deploying drones and land-based anti-ship missiles for sea control and denial. Iran makes modern weapons systems for their Houthi proxies. China threatens to reintegrate Taiwan, by force, if necessary, perhaps by blockade, even as it asserts exclusive control over the passage of shipping and offshore hydrocarbon deposits in the South China Sea.

NOW WHAT?

What of the near future? Will there be any further challenges to the United States? Venezuela placed a referendum in front of its citizenry questioning whether contested territory currently held by Guyana should be reincorporated into Venezuelan territory. The response was in favor of reincorporation, with Venezuela reportedly mobilizing contingents of its military. Guyana and Brazil have responded. A nuclear armed North Korea continues to issue threats in response to alleged American and South Korean provocations. The Russian regime has imperial ambitions beyond Ukraine. Should Putin or his successor believe that the conquest of the Baltic States is achievable, it will certainly be attempted. And there is a final point grounded in a comparative geopolitical speculation: In addition to compromising passage through Bab al-Mandab and the Strait of Hormuz, and the threat to shipping via the Strait of Gibraltar, Iran or another power may mobilize a proxy near another maritime choke point – the Strait of Malacca. Certainly, the autocracies of the world are engaged in gray-zone warfare aimed at undermining Western support for Israel and Ukraine and aimed at mobilizing political extremists of all stripes. With the very large number of Muslim immigrants in Western Europe, any instability in the Middle East can easily produce crippling riots and insurgent or terrorist activity, especially with financial and logistical support from Iran and other regional powers. Western leaders are beginning to recognize that weakness in dealing with the threats that are already on the table will prompt new challenges in new locations (here and here).