Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison in March said that Beijing and Moscow are forming an “arc of autocracy,” and that a peaceful world order would be threatened by an alliance between China and Russia.
It was the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February that a Western leader has urged the world to take action from a geopolitical perspective in the face of the threat posed by the “Eurasian bloc” of Russia and China.
At the beginning of the past century, Halford Mackinder proposed the geopolitical concept of a “World Island” consisting of the European, Asian and African continents.
Mackinder said that a power that ruled Eurasia would threaten world peace.
After that, when a “continental power” is unchallenged on land and has sufficient resources to build a fleet, it would be able to defeat a “maritime power,” he said.
Lastly, Mackinder said that if a maritime power wants to suppress a continental power and prevent its rise, it would be necessary for the former to block the latter’s access to its sea gates on the coasts on each end of the Afro-Eurasia World Island.
Based on Mackinder’s World Island theory, if Western maritime powers, led by the US, want to curb China and Russia, they need to lure India into their domain of influence. India’s geopolitical advantage would make it a key partner in determining whether the world is heading toward peace or war.
China and Russia are continental powers whose sea gates are easily controlled by other countries, while India sits on the Eurasian continent and is surrounded by the sea on three sides, including the wide Indian Ocean that the Western bloc has paid little attention to.
If India were to join the China-Russia alliance, the Eurasian bloc would not only gain access to the sea gate, it would also expand the arc of autocracy. As the three countries combined contain nearly one-third of the world’s population and land mass, the Western bloc would not be able to compete with this alliance.
Among the four nations in Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) — Australia, India, Japan and the US — India is the only one of those countries that has both land and sea power.
Given that the Indian Ocean is an important body of water linking the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean, once New Delhi joins the Western bloc, the combination of QUAD and NATO is likely to have a compound effect.
In that case, Western maritime powers would be able to seal China and Russia on the World Island.
The late US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski once said that the US must avoid a partnership between China, Russia and Iran if Washington is to maintain its exclusive dominance.
However, in the face of the Russia-Ukraine war and China’s Belt and Road Initiative, I believe Brzezinski’s geopolitical theory needs to be revised as follows: To prevent a China-Russia alliance from dominating the world one day, the Western bloc must recruit India as an ally, or at least not let it become an enemy.
Paul Liu is a member of the California Bar Association.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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