00序言：歐亞世紀
引言：歐亞大陸的危機時刻
1917年1月：德意志帝國的崛起與威脅
1941年12月：軸心國的全球攻勢
1947年3月：蘇聯帝國的擴張
2022年2月：新威權軸心的崛起
歐亞大陸：世界的戰略中心
歐亞大陸的地理與戰略意義
百年不變的核心：歐亞大陸仍是世界中心
從麥金德到今日：歐亞概念的演變
歐亞世紀的獨特性
思想與人物：塑造歐亞世紀的關鍵力量
哈爾福德·麥金德：地緣政治的先知
地緣政治思想的群像
暴君與民主領袖的對決
本書的目標與意義
重述歐亞世紀的故事
第一：歐亞大陸決定世界命運
第二：歷史教訓決定當代命運
介紹
1917年1月，力量平衡正在被打破。一場始於薩拉熱窩大公遇刺的戰爭已經蔓延至全球，並將很快席捲各大洲。德國即將擊敗東線的俄國，這將使其得以掠奪這個垂死帝國的資源，並成為從北海到烏克蘭的歐洲霸主。德國軍隊在西線正令法國疲於奔命；其潛艇則試圖透過圍困迫使英國投降。如果德國潛艇未能給予倫敦及其資助的盟國致命一擊，那麼破產或許會成為致命一擊：戰爭的巨額開支正在耗盡大英帝國的資源。
德國正朝著主宰舊世界的方向發展，這將使其擁有一個大陸基地，從而能夠將力量投射到大洋彼岸乃至全球。 「如果德國獲勝，它將改變我們文明的進程，」美國總統伍德羅·威爾遜曾這樣評論道；一個由日益崛起的專制政權領導的世界，即使是遙遠的民主國家也無法安然無恙。
1941年12月，人類正滑向深淵。希特勒已統治了從布列斯特到巴爾幹半島的整個歐洲；德軍坦克已兵臨莫斯科城下，他自認為即將擊敗蘇聯，並摧毀大西洋和烏拉山脈之間的一切抵抗力量。在遠東，日本帝國正在完成其極權主義鉗形攻勢。多年來，東京一直以暴力手段將其帝國版圖擴張至亞洲大陸。在偷襲珍珠港之後，日軍發動了一場驚天動地的進攻，其目標將從印度邊境到國際日期變更線，從滿洲到澳大利亞北部沿海地區，囊括其全部領土。
柏林和東京正以法西斯國家慣用的殘暴手段統治他們的征服地。他們與義大利一道，誓言要摧毀現有的國際體系，並在其廢墟之上建立一個反烏托邦式的「新秩序」。日本外相宣稱：「民主時代已經結束。極權主義…將統治世界。」²在華盛頓，美國決策者們憂心忡忡，擔心軸心國會通過印度洋和中東聯合起來，從而控制歐亞大陸及其周邊海域。傑出的戰略家尼古拉斯·斯皮克曼寫道，如果這種情況發生，西半球將面臨“全麵包圍”，“我們將無法維護自身的獨立和安全” 。 ³
1947年3月，世界再次陷入動盪。第二次世界大戰摧毀了兩個殘暴的帝國，卻也造就了另一個帝國。蘇聯軍隊佔領了歐洲腹地；史達林及其盟友正從斯堪的納維亞半島和希臘到伊朗和朝鮮半島，四處擴張勢力。一場血腥的內戰即將把世界上人口最多的國家——中國——納入史達林的陣營；飢餓和激進主義為共產主義勢力的擴張創造了理想的條件。
如果蘇聯週邊國家的希望、繁榮和安全不能很快恢復，那麼莫斯科——或其共產主義代理人——可能會奪取政權。哈里·杜魯門總統的顧問警告說，如果這種情況發生，那麼一個與希特勒一樣殘暴的暴君將掌握兩大洲的資源；自由世界的生存前景將十分渺茫。 4
2022年2月，人類即將再次感受到歷史的車輪滾滾向前。弗拉基米爾·普丁正準備在烏克蘭發動一場準種族滅絕式的征服戰爭。烏克蘭在過去一個多世紀裡一直是各國博弈的核心。普丁的計畫令人不寒而慄地迴響著二戰期間俄羅斯犯下的暴行和擴張政策。這也是俄羅斯長達一代人的努力的最終成果，目標是透過恢復俄羅斯在中亞至東歐地區的霸權，使俄羅斯再次偉大。
同時，另一位志在終身稱帝的習近平正在國內鎮壓一切反對派，並動員中國社會向海外擴張。他的政權正在進行二戰以來規模最大的海軍建設，企圖征服台灣，將西太平洋變成中國的內湖。習近平同時試圖利用經濟和技術影響力——以及傳統的軍事力量——建立一個深入中國腹地乃至更遠地區的勢力範圍。習近平宣稱，任何阻擋中國道路的人，「都將在鋼鐵長城上被血肉模糊地撞死」。
幾十年前還極度貧困的國家，如今卻尋求在陸地和海洋上建立混合霸權。習近平和普丁甚至締結了一個新的威權主義軸心——一個雄心勃勃的戰略夥伴關係，伊朗是第三個成員，其目標是建立一個以非自由主義亞洲為核心的、徹底改變國際秩序的體系。
對歐亞大陸及其周邊水域的爭奪是現代全球政治的本質特徵，也是當代世界形成的關鍵所在。而這場爭奪，如今再次愈演愈烈。
我們通常認為現代是美國強權的時代。但實際上，我們生活在一個漫長而動盪的歐亞大陸世紀。自20世紀初以來，歐亞大陸一直是全球競爭的中心。考慮到它的幅員遼闊和價值連城，這並不令人意外。
顧名思義，歐亞大陸由北半球兩大舊大陸——歐洲和亞洲——的總和所構成。它包括這兩大大陸的離島，這些島嶼透過歐亞大陸的邊緣海與大陸緊密相連；也包括北非，北非透過地中海與歐洲緊密相連，同時又被撒哈拉沙漠與非洲其他地區隔絕。因此，歐亞大陸東起亞洲沿海地區，西至伊比利半島和不列顛群島，北臨北冰洋，南至印度洋。正如地理學家哈爾福德·麥金德所稱，這片「世界島嶼」是一個獨一無二的空間。
歐亞大陸涵蓋草原、山脈、平原、沙漠、叢林以及幾乎所有其他地形，佔地球陸地面積的三分之一以上。它擁有世界約70%的人口，以及世界大部分的工業實力和軍事潛力。它是人類五大宗教的發源地，也是許多塑造世界文明的搖籃。從地中海到南海，歐亞大陸的內海是商業的傳送帶；它也與所有承載著貨物、艦隊和軍隊的全球各大洋相連。簡言之，歐亞大陸是無可比擬的寶地，也是世界的戰略中心。
誠然，歐亞大陸的格局從未一成不變。在近代的大部分時期，歐亞大陸的經濟中心是西歐——直到二戰後日本的復甦、中國的驚人崛起以及亞洲的發展，才將全球經濟重心東移。當「歐亞大陸」的概念出現時，各國政治家才剛開始意識到石油和空中力量的戰略意義；到了2020年代，歐亞大陸乃至整個世界正步入一個漫長而混亂的能源轉型期，並面臨著數字領域衝突的可能性。歐亞大陸曾經的海上熱點是北海，德國和英國曾在此對峙；如今，最具影響力的航道是台灣海峽、南海以及其他中美勢力交匯的地區。
在所有這些演變和變革中，唯一不變的是歐亞大陸仍然是世界中心：世界上絕大多數人口居住於此，經濟活動也集中於此；除美國外，全球最強大的國家都坐落於此；其關鍵區域和海域也是地緣政治格局最為激烈、最具決定性意義的競爭的發生地。正因如此，圍繞著歐亞大陸及其周邊水域的致命衝突，世界格局才會一次又一次地被攪得天翻地覆、面目全非，甚至幾乎毀滅。
從德意志帝國到蘇聯，野心勃勃的專制政權都曾試圖透過攫取世界戰略核心的製高點來攫取霸權。而離岸民主國家，先是英國，後是美國，則與本土盟友結盟，透過分裂歐亞大陸來維護一個自由得以繁榮的世界。二十世紀規模最大的熱戰、冷戰和代理人戰爭，都是這模式的體現。美國與一批新的挑戰者——其中以中國最為重要——之間的競爭，標誌著這場地緣政治博弈的下一輪開始。
誠然， 「歐亞大陸」這個詞對美國人來說可能比較陌生。但這只是因為在後冷戰時代的特殊和平時期，他們有幸將其遺忘。這個詞本身可以追溯到19世紀末，當時地理學家和戰略家開始將相鄰的兩大洲視為一個統一的整體。隨著20世紀圍繞這一巨型區域的對抗不斷升級，這個詞也逐漸在知識分子、政治領袖和軍事策劃者中廣為流傳。
在二戰爆發前夕，從美國總統到納粹知識分子，形形色色的人物都將歐亞大陸視為蘊藏著無與倫比的資源和力量的源頭。冷戰初期，美國最高機密的計畫文件充斥著對歐亞大陸的提及——華盛頓絕不允許任何競爭對手統治這片至關重要的區域。這個概念甚至滲透到了二十世紀最著名的政治文學作品。在喬治‧歐威爾1949年出版的經典小說《1984》中，歐亞大陸被描繪成一個深陷永無休止戰爭的極權主義龐然大物，這一意象幾乎無需贅述。
幾個世代以來，凡是熟悉全球事務的人都知道，歐亞大陸是帝國碰撞的碎片地帶。如今，隨著歐亞大陸再次成為競爭和衝突的中心，這種概念正在捲土重來。
然而，歐亞世紀與其他時代究竟有何不同？地球的自然特徵並非在1900年突然改變。歐亞大陸也並非首次成為激烈爭奪的對象。正如歷史學家約翰·達爾文所強調的，像阿提拉、成吉思汗和帖木兒這樣的人物，早在很久以前就試圖將歐亞大陸的大片領土納入自己的統治之下。8即使與近代史相比，戰爭和敵對也並非新鮮事。在歐洲，1900年之前的幾個世紀裡，充斥著可怕的衝突，例如三十年戰爭和法國大革命後的戰爭。與當代中國宣傳相反，亞洲的歷史也絕非平靜。
然而，大約1900年後的時期則截然不同；這段時期的特徵是衝突的頻繁、殘酷和範圍之廣。第一次世界大戰和第二次世界大戰是真正的全球衝突，戰火從歐亞大陸的一端蔓延到另一端，並擴散到遙遠的陸地和海洋。它們是歷史上最致命的兩場國家間戰爭（或許是歷史上最致命的兩場國家間戰爭，這取決於統計方式），並在歷史學家馬修·懷特恰如其分地稱之為“血腥浩劫”（hemoclysm ）的時期中扮演了重要角色，這場浩劫是20世紀的特徵，是一場空前的血腥洪流。 9冷戰的暴力程度較低，至少對超級大國而言是如此。但在發展中地區，冷戰同樣慘烈，數百萬人在那些堪比另一場世界大戰的「小規模」戰爭中喪生。 10而且，冷戰的全球範圍絲毫不遜於先前的熱戰；從柏林到西奈半島，從安哥拉到朝鮮半島，從東南亞到中美洲，都發生了重大戰役。
這些衝突的起因極為重大。它們是政治學家所說的霸權爭奪，決定國際體系的主導權，並塑造人類的未來。更重要的是，從歷史角度來看，這些衝突發生得異常迅速：短短三十餘年間，就爆發了兩次世界大戰，並開啟了持續數代人的冷戰。二十世紀見證了為爭奪全球霸權而進行的殊死搏鬥——這些鬥爭往往激烈得令人震驚，波及全球，意義重大，而歐亞大陸則是所有鬥爭的中心。
的確，歐亞世紀的特徵是劃時代的變革和駭人的極端事件。 <sup> 11</sup>這是一個大國戰爭和敵對勢力失控擴張的時代，如同熊熊烈火般吞噬著一切。這是一個新型的、可怕的暴政在國內外犯下前所未有的罪行的時代。這是一個從鐵路到核武等技術突破顛覆全球政治格局的時代。這是一個由美國崛起為全球超級大國而塑造的世紀，而美國的崛起很大程度上是對歐亞大陸安全危機反覆出現的回應。最重要的是，這是一個前所未有的浩劫最終——看似矛盾地——催生出一個比人類以往所知的任何制度都更加和平、繁榮和民主的現代體系的時期。歐亞世紀的獨特之處在於它所播下的破壞和它所激發的創造。
在許多方面，歐亞大陸的鬥爭塑造了我們現代的世界。要理解個中緣由——為什麼某個特定地區會在某個特定時刻成為歷史的引擎——我們就需要了解那位畢生致力於推動這一非凡時代進程的人物。
哈爾福德·麥金德爵士並非家喻戶曉的人物。這位1861年至1947年間生活的英國博學者，在研究國際關係的學者眼中，雖然並非總是充滿敬意，但仍被人們所銘記。而幾乎所有人都已經將他遺忘。儘管麥金德對大英帝國忠心耿耿，但他從未真正躋身於其決策菁英之列。第一次世界大戰後，他曾擔任英國駐南俄高級專員，試圖涉足高層政治，但最終以失敗告終，並蒙受了不少恥辱。晚年，他擔任了一些雖不顯眼但意義重大的職務，例如帝國航運委員會主席。
然而，影響力以多種形式存在，而麥金德的影響力遠遠超過許多政治家、外交官和將軍。他是他那個時代最有趣的人物之一——曾是登山家和探險家，也曾是國會議員和著名學府的教授。他著作頗豐，涉獵廣泛，其研究領域之廣，遠超當今大多數知識分子所能企及。麥金德絕非泛泛之輩；他奠定了地理學作為一門正規學科的基礎。他也被認為是地理學姊妹學科——地緣政治學的奠基人，地緣政治學研究地球的自然特徵如何與權力和影響力的爭奪相互作用。早在1904年，麥金德就在倫敦皇家地理學會發表了一場演講，他對下一個世紀的走向做出了極具預見性的警告。
麥金德的演講題為《歷史的地理樞紐》，是一部振聾發聵的分析之作。 <sup> 13</sup>麥金德闡述了科技進步，尤其是鐵路的修建，如何縮小了歐亞大陸的版圖，並有可能使一個強權控制這片至關重要的土地。 19世紀殖民擴張帶來的戰略安全閥的關閉，如今正使20世紀列強彼此敵對。政治和地緣政治以爆炸性的方式相互作用；麥金德最初的演講中雖未明確提及，但後來卻愈發凸顯的一個主題是：非自由政權如今擁有了現代工業經濟，這無疑會助長新的鎮壓和征服計劃。 <sup> 14</sup>
麥金德預言，這一切將引發驚天動地的衝突。一個國家或聯盟若能集結足以控制歐亞大陸的陸上力量，將成為全球威脅，因為它將掌握建立海上力量所需的資源，而無人能及。因此，世界政治格局將呈現這樣的態勢：強勢的大陸國家力圖在歐亞大陸乃至全球佔據主導地位，而它們的敵人——既包括位於歐亞大陸沿岸的海上強國，也包括位於大陸邊緣的脆弱國家——則竭力將它們包圍起來。
麥金德的許多觀點都存在著錯誤，這也是他在接下來的四十年中不斷修正理論的原因。但他對20世紀初期的重大主題掌握得非常準確。他的思想成為那些試圖顛覆歐亞平衡的領導人以及那些試圖維護歐亞平衡的領導人的試金石——即便這些領導人從未聽說過麥金德，更遑論讀過他的著作。 20世紀一些最重要的外交官和戰略家，例如長期擔任英國外交部官員、曾警告即將與德意志帝國發生衝突的艾爾·克羅，以及撰寫美國冷戰戰略的美國外交官喬治·凱南，都深受麥金德思想的影響。我們能夠透過他當時所寫的分析文章來追溯歐亞世紀的歷史，足以證明麥金德的影響力歷久不衰。
當然，麥金德並非孤軍奮戰。歐亞世紀湧現一批國際地緣政治思想家，他們透過解讀新興時代，在思想界掀起了波瀾。 19世紀90年代和1920世紀初，美國海軍軍官阿爾弗雷德·塞耶·馬漢（Alfred Thayer Mahan）筆耕不輟學，探討海權在日益激烈的全球競爭中所扮演的角色。他的觀點是，海洋不再是保護美國的護城河，而是連結美國與動盪世界的通道。耶魯大學的荷蘭裔美國社會學家、後轉型為戰略家的尼古拉斯·斯皮克曼（Nicholas Spykman）在二戰期間挑戰並改造了麥金德的理論。兩次世界大戰之間最傑出的德國地緣政治學家卡爾·豪斯霍費爾（Karl Haushofer）幫助納粹黨將麥金德的思想用於邪惡的目的——而與克里姆林宮關係密切的俄羅斯知識分子近年來又重蹈覆轍。他們是威權主義地緣政治學派的典型代表，該學派既借鑒了民主地緣政治的理論，也對其目標構成了威脅。透過重新審視這些偉大（以及不太偉大）的知識分子之間的辯論，我們可以更好地理解動盪的二十世紀發生了什麼以及今天正在發生的事情。
然而，理念並不會自行轉化為行動；歐亞大陸的世紀進程是由一些後世最著名、最臭名昭著的領導人所譜寫的。一方面，這些領導人是臭名昭著的暴君，他們發動破壞性的權力攫取。德皇威廉二世、阿道夫·希特勒、東條英機及其日本軍國主義同夥、約瑟夫·史達林在國內實行鎮壓，在國外實行侵略；習近平和弗拉基米爾·普丁是他們當今最引人注目的繼承者。另一方面，與他們對抗的是民主政治家，他們團結各方力量，共同抵禦這些威權主義的挑戰：其中包括兩次世界大戰期間的伍德羅·威爾遜、溫斯頓·邱吉爾和富蘭克林·羅斯福，以及冷戰期間的哈里·杜魯門、迪安·艾奇遜及其跨大西洋同僚。
世界政治錯綜複雜，這些類別之間的界線有時難以界定。史達林曾幫助希特勒發動第二次世界大戰，之後又幫助擊敗希特勒，隨後在冷戰中再次與西方對抗。中國曾幫助自由世界贏得冷戰，之後又成為當今自由世界最強大的對手。歐亞世紀之所以引人入勝，不僅在於它催生了不斷變化的聯盟，更在於它展現了歷史是如何在結構性力量、宏大理念和領導人關鍵抉擇的交匯點上被塑造的。
本書講述了歐亞世紀的故事。它以眾多曾參與歐亞大陸早期衝突的國家的文獻和檔案資料為基礎，並藉鑑了我本人從日本到印度、從澳洲到英國等各國的實地考察。本書運用這些資料，探討了歐亞大陸成為二十世紀地緣政治中心的一系列重大變革──包括科技和戰爭的革命、極權政權的崛起和征服意識形態的毒害等等。本書重述了歐亞世紀的史詩級戰役，並揭示了二十世紀的艱苦卓絕的鬥爭最終如何孕育出一個如今正面臨威脅的繁榮自由秩序。重溫這段歷史的理由很多，其中最重要的兩點特別突出。
首先，爭奪歐亞大陸霸權的鬥爭，其實關乎世界命運和人類自由未來的鬥爭。這種說法或許聽起來有些誇張，但並非如此。
歐亞大陸是世界秩序的支點：一個國家或國家集團若能主導其關鍵區域，便將擁有無與倫比的資源、財富和全球影響力。如果一個咄咄逼人的專制政權或專制政權聯盟在歐亞大陸佔據主導地位，它便能從根本上重塑世界秩序，並脅迫其全球對手。即便這個霸權國家無法在武力上征服倖存的海外民主國家，它也能迫使這些國家陷入持續不斷的、令人窒息的不安全感之中，以至於它們可能難以同時維護自身安全和自由。
這正是二十世紀偉大民主領袖們的惡夢。如果今天一個專制的中國，或者一個專制的軸心國，在這片大陸及其鄰近海域佔據主導地位，同樣的幽靈也將縈繞在民主世界。本世紀的走向，如同上個世紀一樣，將取決於歐亞大陸競爭的最終結果。歐亞大陸挑戰的手段和方法或許會隨著時間而改變，但其利害關係卻始終如一。
其次，美國和其他民主國家在第二個歐亞世紀的命運如何，取決於它們能否牢牢掌握第一個世紀的教訓。人們很容易從這段歷史中得出地理決定論的結論。畢竟，所有試圖稱霸歐亞大陸的國家最終都以失敗告終，因為它們的野心最終敗給了強大的敵對聯盟。日本帝國、德國（兩次）和蘇聯都遭遇了同樣的命運。如今，這些專制盟友正再次面臨同樣的危險。這就是歐亞列強面臨的困境：它們在變得足夠強大以壓制鄰國的同時，也變得足夠強大以招致全世界的敵意。
然而，二十世紀的鬥爭本不必如此。正如歷史學家理查德·奧弗里所指出的，決定性戰役的結果可能取決於少數飛行員在關鍵時刻投下幾枚炸彈的精準度。 <sup> 15</sup>如果關鍵領導人在重要節點採取不同的策略，兩次世界大戰和冷戰的結局或許會有所不同。同樣，當今競爭的結果將取決於領導人的素質和他們所做的選擇——以及他們能否充分利用過去120年的經驗教訓。研究歐亞世紀的一個重要原因在於，沒有比這更好的方法來為我們應對即將到來的劇變做好準備。
Introduction
It is January 1917, and the balance of power is breaking. A war that started with the assassination of an archduke in Sarajevo has gone global and will soon pull in nations from every inhabited continent. Germany is on the verge of defeating Russia in the east, which will allow it to plunder that dying empire’s resources and make itself the master of Europe from the North Sea to Ukraine. Germany’s armies are exhausting France on the western front; its submarines seek to starve Britain into surrender. If the U-boats don’t deal London and the allies it subsidizes a death-blow, bankruptcy might: The costs of war are bleeding the British Empire dry.
Germany is on course to dominate the Old World, which would give it a continental base to project power across the oceans and around the globe. “If Germany won it would change the course of our civilization,” the American president, Woodrow Wilson, has remarked; a world led by an ascendant autocracy is not one in which even distant democracies will be secure.1
It is December 1941, and humanity is slipping into an abyss. Hitler already rules Europe from Brest to the Balkans; with German tanks just outside Moscow, he believes he is close to defeating the Soviet Union and crushing all resistance between the Atlantic and the Urals. In the Far East, imperial Japan is completing the totalitarian pincer movement. For years, Tokyo has been violently expanding its own empire into mainland Asia. In the wake of its attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese military is now embarked on a breathtaking advance that will give it control of territories from the Indian frontier to the International Date Line, from Manchuria to Australia’s northern approaches.
Berlin and Tokyo are ruling their conquests with the homicidal cruelty one would expect from fascist states. Along with Italy, they have pledged to destroy the existing international system and build a dystopian “new order” atop its ruins. “The era of democracy is finished,” Japan’s foreign minister has declared. “Totalitarianism . . . will control the world.”2 In Washington, U.S. policymakers are terrified that the Axis powers will link up through the Indian Ocean and the Middle East, giving them command of the Eurasian landmass and the oceans around it. Should this occur, writes the brilliant strategist Nicholas Spykman, the Western Hemisphere will face “complete encirclement.” It will be “impossible for us to preserve our independence and security.”3
It is March 1947, and the world again hangs in the balance. World War II has destroyed two ruthless empires but empowered another. Soviet troops occupy territory deep within a prostrate Europe; Stalin and his allies are probing for advantage from Scandinavia and Greece to Iran and Korea. A bloody civil war will soon deliver the world’s most populous country, China, into Stalin’s camp; hunger and radicalism are creating ideal conditions for the spread of communist influence.
If hope, prosperity, and security cannot soon be restored in countries around the Soviet periphery, then Moscow—or its communist proxies—may sweep to power. If this happens, warn President Harry Truman’s advisers, then a tyrant no less murderous than Hitler will have the resources of two continents at his disposal; the free world’s prospects for survival will be slight.4
It is February 2022, and humanity is about to get a reminder that history rolls on. Vladimir Putin is preparing a quasi-genocidal war of conquest in Ukraine, a country that has figured centrally in every great-power contest for over a century. Putin’s plan is a haunting echo of the programs of atrocity and aggrandizement perpetrated during World War II. It is also the culmination of a generation-long effort to make Russia great again, by restoring its primacy over a space from Central Asia to Eastern Europe.
Meanwhile, another aspiring emperor-for-life, Xi Jinping, is crushing all opposition at home and mobilizing Chinese society for expansion abroad. His regime is conducting the largest naval buildup since World War II in hopes of subduing Taiwan and making the western Pacific a Chinese lake. Xi is simultaneously trying to use economic and technological influence—as well as old-fashioned military muscle—to build a sphere of influence reaching deep into China’s continental hinterland and beyond. Those who stand in China’s path, Xi has declared, “will have their heads bashed bloody against a Great Wall of steel.”5
A country that was, only decades ago, desperately poor is now seeking a hybrid hegemony on land and at sea. Xi and Putin have even sealed a new axis of authoritarians—an ambitious strategic partnership, with Iran as a third member, that aims to create a radically revised international order with an illiberal Asia at its core.
The struggle over the Eurasian landmass and the waters around it is the defining feature of global politics in the modern era. It is the crucible in which the contemporary world was forged. And that contest is raging, once again, today.
We often think of the modern era as the age of American power. In reality, we’re living in a long, violent Eurasian century. Since the early 1900s, Eurasia has been the cockpit of global rivalry. That isn’t surprising, given how vast and valuable it is.
As the name implies, Eurasia consists of the combined expanse of those two Old World continents of the Northern Hemisphere, Europe and Asia. It includes the outlying islands of those continents, which are closely connected to them by Eurasia’s marginal seas, as well as North Africa, which is as thoroughly linked to Europe by the Mediterranean as it is blocked from the rest of Africa by the Sahara. Eurasia thus runs from littoral Asia in the east to the Iberian Peninsula and the British Isles in the west, from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Indian Ocean in the south.6 This “world island,” as geographer Halford Mackinder called it, is a space unlike any other.7
Comprising steppes, mountains, plains, deserts, jungles, and nearly every other topography, Eurasia accounts for more than one-third of the land on Earth. It possesses some 70 percent of the world’s population as well as the bulk of its industrial might and military potential. It is the birthplace of all five of humanity’s major religions and the cradle of many of the civilizations that shaped the world. Its inner seas, from the Mediterranean to the South China Sea, are conveyor belts for commerce; Eurasia also touches all of the great oceans that carry goods, fleets, and armies around the globe. In short, Eurasia represents a prize without equal; it is the strategic center of the world.
To be sure, the Eurasian landscape has never been static. For much of the modern era, Eurasia’s powerhouse was Western Europe—until the post–World War II recovery of Japan, the breathtaking rise of China, and the development of Asia pulled the globe’s economic center of gravity to the east. When the concept of Eurasia emerged, statesmen were just starting to grasp the strategic implications of oil and air power; by the 2020s, Eurasia and the world were entering a long, messy transition to a new energy regime and confronting the possibility of conflict in the digital domain. Eurasia’s great maritime hot spot was once the North Sea, where Germany and Britain faced off; today, the most portentous waterways are the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, and other places where Chinese and U.S. power meet.
What hasn’t changed, amid all this evolution and revolution, is that Eurasia is where the action is: where the bulk of the world’s population lives and its economic activity occurs; where the globe’s most powerful countries, America excepted, are found; and whose key regions and seas are home to the most intense, geopolitically defining rivalries. This is why the world has been repeatedly roiled, reshaped, and nearly destroyed by fateful clashes over the Eurasian supercontinent and its watery approaches.
Ambitious autocracies, from imperial Germany to the Soviet Union, have reached for dominance by seizing a commanding position in the world’s strategic core. Offshore democracies, first the United Kingdom and later America, have partnered with onshore allies to preserve a world where freedom can flourish by keeping Eurasia divided. The greatest hot wars, cold wars, and proxy wars of the twentieth century were all part of this pattern. America’s rivalries with a new set of challengers—China chief among them—are the next round in this geopolitical game.
Admittedly, the word “Eurasia” may sound unfamiliar to Americans. But that’s only because they’ve had the luxury of forgetting about it in an anomalous age of post–Cold War peace. The term itself dates back to the late nineteenth century, when geographers and strategists began to think of the two neighboring continents as a single, unified theater. As the twentieth century came to be defined by confrontations over that mega-region, the phrase became commonplace among intellectuals, political leaders, and military planners alike.
During the run-up to World War II, figures as varied as an American president and Nazi intellectuals fixated on Eurasia as a fount of unparalleled resources and power. At the outset of the Cold War, top-secret U.S. planning documents were littered with references to the Eurasian landmass—the critical area Washington could not allow any rival to rule. The concept even pervaded the most famous political literature of the twentieth century. In 1984, the classic novel George Orwell published in 1949, Eurasia was a totalitarian behemoth engaged in perpetual war, a reference that hardly had to be explained at all.
For generations, everyone familiar with global affairs knew that Eurasia was the shatter-zone where empires collided. That concept is making a comeback, as Eurasia becomes the epicenter of competition and conflict anew.
What, though, distinguishes the Eurasian century from any other era? The physical features of the Earth didn’t change suddenly in 1900. The twentieth century was hardly the first time Eurasia was an object of vicious dispute. As historian John Darwin emphasizes, the likes of Attila, Genghis Khan, and Tamerlane sought, long ago, to bring huge chunks of Eurasia under their sway.8 Even compared to more recent history, war and rivalry are nothing new. In Europe, the centuries prior to 1900 saw terrible conflicts, such as the Thirty Years’ War and the wars that followed the French Revolution. Contrary to contemporary Chinese propaganda, the history of Asia was scarcely more placid.
Yet the period following roughly 1900 was different; it was distinguished by the frequency, ferocity, and scope of its struggles. World War I and World War II were truly global conflicts, which featured combat from one end of Eurasia to the other and spread into lands and seas far beyond. They were two of the deadliest interstate wars in history (perhaps the two deadliest interstate wars in history, depending on how one counts) and played a starring role in what historian Matthew White has aptly called the hemoclysm, the unmatched torrent of bloodshed that characterized the twentieth century.9 The Cold War was less violent, at least for the superpowers. But it was plenty gruesome in the developing regions, where millions died in the “small” wars that stood in for another world war.10 And it was no less globally encompassing than the hot wars that preceded it; key battles occurred from Berlin to Sinai, from Angola to the Korean peninsula, from Southeast Asia to Central America.
These conflicts were fought for the highest stakes. They were what political scientists call hegemonic struggles, which determine who rules the international system and shapes the future of humanity. Not least, these clashes occurred rapid-fire, in historical terms: two world wars and the onset of a multi-generation Cold War in just over thirty years. The twentieth century saw desperate, repeated fights for global supremacy—fights that were often shocking in their intensity, global in their sprawl, epic in their stakes, and that all had Eurasia as their focal point.
Indeed, this Eurasian century was defined by epochal changes and outrageous extremes.11 It was a time when great-power wars and rivalries expanded uncontrollably, engulfing, like raging fires, everything they touched. It was an era in which new, terrible forms of tyranny perpetrated unprecedented crimes at home and abroad. It was an age in which technological breakthroughs, from railroads to nuclear weapons, upended global politics. It was a century shaped by America’s rise as a global superpower, which occurred largely in response to repeated crises of Eurasian security. Above all, it was a period whose unmatched carnage eventually produced—paradoxically—a modern system more peaceful, prosperous, and democratic than anything humanity had known before. The Eurasian century was unique in the destruction it sowed and the creation it spurred.
In many ways, Eurasian struggles made our modern world. To understand why this was the case—why a particular area became the engine of history at a particular moment—requires acquainting ourselves with the man whose life and work were at the center of this extraordinary age.
Sir Halford Mackinder isn’t a household name. A British polymath who lived from 1861 to 1947, Mackinder is remembered, not always fondly, by academics who study international relations. He has been forgotten by nearly everyone else.12 Though passionately committed to the British Empire, Mackinder was never fully part of its policymaking elite. His foray into high-level statecraft, as British High Commissioner for South Russia after World War I, ended with failure and a fair bit of humiliation. He served out the twilight of his career in meaningful if somewhat obscure posts, such as the chairmanship of the Imperial Shipping Committee.
Yet influence comes in many forms, and Mackinder left a shadow longer than those cast by many politicians, diplomats, and generals. Mackinder was one of the most interesting people of his era—at various times a mountaineer and an explorer, a member of Parliament, and a professor at prestigious academic institutions. He wrote prolifically, on a wider array of subjects than most intellectuals would now attempt to master. Mackinder was no dilettante, though; he largely founded geography as a proper academic discipline. He is also considered the father of its sister field, geopolitics—the study of how the physical features of the Earth interact with the struggle for influence and power. Beginning with a lecture delivered at the Royal Geographic Society in London in 1904, Mackinder provided as prescient a warning as any about what the next century would bring.
Mackinder’s talk, titled “The Geographic Pivot of History,” was a bracing work of analysis.13 Mackinder explained how the march of technology, particularly railroads, was shrinking Eurasia’s geography and potentially allowing a single power to control that vital landmass. The closing-off of the strategic safety valve provided by easy colonial expansion during the nineteenth century was now turning the great powers against one another in the twentieth. Politics and geopolitics were interacting in explosive ways; a theme that was mostly implicit in Mackinder’s original lecture, but loomed larger later, was that illiberal regimes now had modern industrial economies at their disposal, a factor that could only enable new programs of repression and conquest.14
All of this, Mackinder predicted, would precipitate titanic clashes. A country or coalition that marshaled the land power needed to control Eurasia would become a global menace, for it would then command the resources required to build sea power without rival. So the pattern of world politics would be one in which assertive continental states pushed for Eurasian—and perhaps global—primacy, while their enemies, both the sea powers located off Eurasia’s coasts and the vulnerable states situated at the edge of the landmass, labored to hem them in.
Mackinder got plenty wrong, which is why he spent the next four decades tinkering with his thesis. But he got the big themes of the young century right. His ideas became a touchstone for leaders who sought to overthrow the Eurasian balance and also for those who sought to preserve it—even when those leaders had never heard of Mackinder, let alone read his work. Some of the most important diplomats and strategists of the twentieth century, such as Eyre Crowe, the longtime British Foreign Office official who warned of a coming conflict with imperial Germany, and George Kennan, the American diplomat who authored his country’s approach to the Cold War, drew heavily on Mackinder’s thinking. It is a testament to Mackinder’s enduring influence that we can trace the history of the Eurasian century through analyses he composed in real time.
Mackinder wasn’t alone, of course. The Eurasian century spotlighted an international cohort of geopolitical thinkers who made intellectual waves by making sense of the emerging era. In the 1890s and early 1900s, the U.S. naval officer Alfred Thayer Mahan wrote incessantly about the role of sea power in a world of intensifying rivalry. His message was that the oceans were no longer moats protecting America but highways connecting it to a volatile world. Nicholas Spykman, the Dutch American sociologist-turned-strategist at Yale University, would challenge and adapt Mackinder’s concepts during World War II. Karl Haushofer, the most prominent German geopolitician of the interwar era, helped the Nazi Party put Mackinder’s ideas to awful purposes—a role Russian intellectuals close to the Kremlin have more recently reprised. They are exemplars of an authoritarian school of geopolitics that has both borrowed from, and threatened the very purposes of, its democratic counterpart. By revisiting the debates between these great (and not-so-great) intellectuals, we can better understand what happened in a tumultuous twentieth century and what is happening today.
Yet ideas don’t translate themselves into action; the course of the Eurasian century was charted by some of posterity’s most famous, and infamous, leaders. The protagonists included, on the one side, notorious tyrants who launched destructive grabs for greatness. Kaiser Wilhelm II, Adolf Hitler, Tojo Hideki and his coterie of Japanese militarists, and Joseph Stalin fused repression at home with aggression abroad; Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are their most notable present-day successors. Opposing them were democratic statesmen who rallied coalitions to turn back these authoritarian challenges: among them, Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, and Franklin Roosevelt during the world wars, as well as Harry Truman, Dean Acheson, and their transatlantic contemporaries during the Cold War.
World politics are messy, and so, at times, was the line between these categories. Stalin helped Hitler touch off World War II, before helping to defeat him, before confronting the West once again in the Cold War. China helped the free world win that contest, before becoming its most potent rival today. The Eurasian century is fascinating for the shifting alliances it produced—and because it demonstrates how history is made at the intersection of structural forces, big ideas, and the critical choices leaders make.
This book tells the story of the Eurasian century. It features research in the papers and archives of many countries that clashed in Eurasia’s prior contests; it draws on my travels to nations from Japan to India, Australia to the United Kingdom. It uses these materials to explore the tectonic shifts—the revolutions in technology and warfare, the rise of vicious totalitarian regimes and toxic ideologies of conquest, and others—that made Eurasia the central theater of twentieth-century geopolitics. It recounts the epic fights the Eurasian century produced. And it shows how the desperate struggles of the twentieth century ultimately birthed a thriving liberal order that is being threatened today. There are many reasons for revisiting this story; two are most important.
First, fights for Eurasian primacy are fights over the fate of the world and the future of human freedom. That claim may sound extravagant. It isn’t.
Eurasia is the fulcrum of world order: A country or group of countries that dominates its vital regions would have unmatched resources, wealth, and global reach. If an aggressive autocracy or alliance of autocracies became preeminent within Eurasia, it could fundamentally reshape world order and coerce its rivals around the globe. Even if this hegemon could not physically conquer the surviving overseas democracies, it could force them into such continual, piercing insecurity that they might struggle to preserve their safety and their freedoms simultaneously.
This was the nightmare of the great democratic leaders of the twentieth century. The same specter would haunt the democratic world if an autocratic China, or an autocratic axis, gained primacy within that landmass and its adjoining oceans today. The arc of this century, like the arc of the last one, will be determined by the outcome of Eurasian rivalry. The means and methods of Eurasian challenges may change over time; the stakes do not.
Second, how well America and other democracies fare in a second Eurasian century depends on how firmly they grasp the lessons of the first. It is easy to come away from this story with a sense of geographical determinism. After all, every country that reached for Eurasian hegemony was crushed in the end, because its ambitions brought down the collective force of an overwhelming enemy coalition. Imperial Japan, Germany (twice), and the Soviet Union all suffered this fate. Today’s autocratic allies are encountering this danger anew. This is the dilemma Eurasian powers face: in growing strong enough to overpower their neighbors, they grow strong enough to earn the enmity of the world.
Yet the struggles of the twentieth century didn’t have to turn out this way. As historian Richard Overy points out, the results of decisive battles can hinge on how accurately a few pilots drop a few bombs at a pivotal moment.15 Both world wars and the Cold War might have had different endings had key leaders pursued different strategies at crucial junctures. Likewise, the outcomes of today’s contests will hinge on the quality of leaders and the choices they make—and thus, on the degree to which those leaders harvest the insights the past 120 years have to offer. Not least of the reasons for studying the Eurasian century is that there is no better way of girding ourselves for the upheaval ahead.
留言
張貼留言