Trumpian Geoeconomics – The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

President Donald Trump is approaching world politics with geoeconomic means for a geopolitical purpose. His reinvigoration of the Monroe Doctrine in the Western Hemisphere, military pivot to the Indo-Pacific, and rapprochement with Russia in Europe is the geographic part. His tariffs, encouragement of foreign investment in the United States, promotion of domestic energy production unhampered by climate regulations, and domestic cuts in government programs is the economic part. Back in 1990, the strategic thinker Edward Luttwak wrote that the world was moving from geopolitics to geoeconomics. But, as Luttwak certainly knew, economics has always been an important component of geopolitics. Trump the businessman understands that.

China understands it, too. Its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is geoeconomics on steroids, extending China’s economic influence throughout Europe, Africa, and the Western Hemisphere. The BRI uses economic power to advance China’s geopolitical interests. Trump is merely doing the same thing with his America First policies.

In his 1919 classic Democratic Ideals and Reality, the great British geopolitical thinker Sir Halford Mackinder wrote about the importance of a society’s “social momentum” in making a nation a “Going Concern.” That economic aspect of Mackinder’s work has been downplayed, if not ignored, by contemporary scholars and strategists. Mackinder’s geographic concepts of the “Heartland,” “World-Island,” and “World-Ocean” have been invoked and debated for many years. It is time in the Age of Trump to take a closer look at Mackinder’s geoeconomic ideas because they shed light on Trumpian geopolitics.

Mackinder explained that modern nations thrived due to the production of wealth, which was generated by the social momentum of businesses and labor using the latest technology and methods of social organization. “The output of modern wealth,” he wrote, “is conditional on the maintenance of our social organization and capital.” A nation, he explained, is like a “running machine.” As long as the machine keeps running, the nation will be a Going Concern. “Productive power,” Mackinder continued, “is far more important … to modern civilization than is accumulated wealth.” And productive power depends on social organization and the customs and habits of the men and women who populate and work in the nation. Two of the most important habits of the citizens of a Going Concern, Mackinder believed, are discipline and order. When either breaks down, social momentum slows or stops altogether. This can lead to economic stagnation, societal breakdown, and political chaos.

Mackinder attributed Germany’s rise in the late 19th century in part to tariffs, which he characterized as being part of its “economic offensive” that led to greater domestic production. Germany’s economic offensive, he wrote, “was increased by methods of penetration abroad,” including subsidized shipping, German banks in trade outposts, German control of international combines, and unequal commercial treaties with adjoining countries. Germany’s financial and industrial strength and its growing population, especially relative to France, made it the most powerful country in Europe. And Germany translated its burgeoning economic power into an unrivaled military power. (Germany’s mistake, after the guiding hand of Bismarck was removed, was to abandon international restraint, which had been the hallmark of Bismarck’s foreign policy after the Franco-Prussian War. Bismarck would never have gone to war over the Balkans and would not have challenged British sea power.)

President Trump’s geographical (Panama Canal, Greenland) and economic offensive is designed to protect American interests in the Western Hemisphere while maintaining the global balance of power. Trump’s energy policy and tariffs are designed to once again make the United States a manufacturing Going Concern that will create jobs for American citizens, lower and ultimately end our trade deficits with allies and adversaries, and restore our industrial might that once made us the “arsenal of democracy.”

Economic strength can translate into geopolitical advantage. We need to build more warships in order to effectively contain China, which currently has an enormous advantage in shipbuilding capacity, in the western Pacific. (Mackinder, who once wrote about “the dominant value of sea-power in the modern globe-wide world,” would understand this). Rapprochement with Russia — despite what the naysayers claim — may over time weaken the “strategic partnership” between Russia and China.

Trump appears to instinctively understand the truism that historian Paul Kennedy documented in his great book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: “To be a Great Power … demands a flourishing economic base.” A flourishing economic base is a necessary ingredient for a country to be a Going Concern. The U.S.-China rivalry is as much economic as it is strategic. The winner of the economic rivalry will likely win the strategic rivalry, too.

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