Franke
By Mark Franke
Guest columnist
Approximately one-half of Americans alive today were born after the Cold War ended. Most of the rest, including baby boomers like me, were born after World War II. We have never lived in an age when the United States was not the predominant, if not the only, superpower in the world.
During the 20th century America seemed to go from one success to another, whether victory in the three major wars of the century (World War I, World War II and the Cold War) or in world economic leadership. The few setbacks such as the Vietnam War were exceptions that proved the rule, to use logically nonsensical but commonly understood phraseology. The 1900s were even called “The American Century” in a popular book by journalist Harold Evans.
Hal Brands begs to differ. Brands, a professor at John Hopkins and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, reads the 20th century, and by extension the 21st century, as belonging to the European and Asian land mass.
“The Eurasian Century: Hot Wars, Cold Wars, and the Making of the Modern World” (2025 W. W. Norton & Company, 246 pages plus notes, $18 hardcover at Amazon) argues this land mass is the geopolitical center of the world with America as a peripheral albeit significant contributor to the ideological struggle between authoritarianism and democracy. He describes this as a battle between liberal versus illiberal governmental systems. The fight for Eurasia is the fight for freedom, Brands asserts.
Brands begins by introducing us to a British strategic thinker named Halford Mackinder, whose analysis of a super continental struggle influenced others who in turn influenced military and political leadership in the competing nations. This influence developed despite his views being ignored or contested in many of the halls of government.
Mackinder’s thinking was introduced in a 1904 speech before the Royal Geographic Society. He predicted attempts by autocracies to rule the continental core. The three wars, World Wars I and II and the Cold War, were exactly that. Brands provides three long chapters devoted to these wars in support of Mackinder’s prescience.
The problem is that winning all three wars gave the liberal nations a false feeling of security through success. What was not foreseen by the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1990 was the rise of a new set of illiberal nations with hegemonic designs. The sense of security proved ephemeral.
The first decades of the current century proved Mackinder’s thesis as Russia and China have put past differences aside for a common goal of political, military and economic domination. One is reminded of the Hitler-Stalin pact in 1940 as an historical precedent for this unholy alliance.
Brands even throws Iran into the mix but as a second-stringer. He calls Iran a “project in disorder” through the “weaponization of misery.” What he could not know, but perhaps anticipate, is Iran’s promotion to the first team by its sponsorship of terrorism in the Middle East and its fixation on a nuclear capability extensible across Eurasia and beyond. As I write this on June 22, Iran’s threat to the liberal states of Eurasia has provoked a response from the only two nations willing and able to act militarily. To continue the sports analogy, Iran has won the coin toss and has elected to receive.
It is not always easy to follow Brands’ defense of his thesis. This isn’t because he fails to support it but he provides almost too much in support. Perhaps one needs to clearly understand his differentiation between the inner and outer crescents of Eurasia. This helps in recognizing the shift in focus from western and central Europe to central and east Asia. To Brands, though, the fight is still over the same landmass.
Maybe Brand’s thesis is best supported by a review of the great empires of the past. All those I can recall centered in the Eurasian landmass and attempted to control outward from there. Think Persia, Macedon, Rome and Mongolia. The British 19th century colonial empire, that one on which the sun never sets, was an anomaly but the control was very much in Europe but with India as the jewel in the crown. Same landmass.
I wondered if Brand is predicting the return of early modern age mercantilism, in which the imperial center used outlying subjected peoples as contributors to its financial wealth accumulation without allowing full participation in the benefits of the empire. Is that the direction China is pursuing with its Belt and Road initiative or Russia with the reconquest of its Near Abroad?
Brands has a way with words. In addition to his pithy comment about Iran cited above, he calls China a “bitter brooding revanchist” motivated by an “atavistic nationalism” and directed by a “personalized tyranny.” It is not much of a leap to see this as a reflection of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.
The book concludes with five lessons from the 20th century to be learned by the democratic leaders of the 21st.
First, ideology is inseparable from geopolitics. It’s all about the illiberal totalitarian states’ need to release pent up energy outward, being driven by deep historical grudges.
Second, even a Eurasian century needs committed American involvement. All three 20th century world wars needed American financial and military leadership for the liberal states to achieve victory. This is essential for a nation that once again is flirting with a desire for international retrenchment. It may be President Donald Trump who ordered the bunker-busting bombs to be dropped but he is facing increasing pushback within his own party and among his national conservative followers.
Third, history can instruct us on how to prioritize when multiple challenges present themselves. The Allied Germany First strategy in World War II kept the Atlantic alliance intact without losing the war in the Pacific. Unfortunately, it is the United States which must do most of the prioritization due to its dominant economy and being on the periphery of both ends of the Eurasian landmass. America’s current strategy of a “one war” military is clearly a non-starter if the Eurasian century is also to be an American century.
Fourth, the history of modern Eurasia is one of coalition-building. The Illiberal coalitions (the Central Powers, the Axis and the Warsaw Pact) were insufficient to overcome the liberal alliances. The 21st century totalitarians use terror, energy economics, political interference and favorable trade relations to drive wedges in the liberal coalitions. This is complicated by America’s shift of emphasis from Western Europe to East Asia. India’s central position could be the fulcrum for a geopolitical lever.
Finally, Brands reminds us “there is no such thing as destiny.” Any of three world wars could have ended with defeat of the good guys. His concluding comment is that “geography shapes but strategy decides.” We can’t control the geography so it is imperative for the free world that we get the strategy right.
Mark Franke, M.B.A., an adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review and its book reviewer, is formerly an associate vice-chancellor at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne. Send comments to editorial@therepublic.com.
