POL114H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Halford Mackinder, Mikhail Gorbachev, Warsaw Pact
Document Summary
Beginnings: from alliance to adversaries: u. s. v. ussr. Germany and the 3 d"s (denazification, demilitarization, democratization) > collective guilt. 3x # of engineering graduates in ussr than us. Geopolitical dimension: halford mackinder v. alfred theyer mahan. The heartland and the ussr: ideally situated to spread influence outward. The rim-land and sea power: ussr surrounded on all sides, ports, sea power british, french, portuguese, belgian, dutch empires . Arms race > mad > us and ussr both had over 30,000 nuclear weapons, enough to destroy every major city on the planet 10 times. Of rotten apples and dominoes: proxi wars korea, cuba, vietnam, Beginning the roll back: poland, afghanistan east germany. Ideology: china, cuba, vietnam, venezuela and the continuing appeal of socialism. Geopolitics: nato expansion, russian responses (georgia, syria, iran . Strategic: u. s. and russian nuclear arsenals; spread of wmd"s. No autonomous economic realm; political power and economic power overlapped.
