Summary of Alfred W. McCoy's In the Shadows of the American Century

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 Even the greatest empires have been shaped by geography. America’s political, national security, and foreign policy elites continue to ignore the basics of geopolitics that have shaped the fate of world empires for the past five hundred years.

#2 In 1904, Halford Mackinder, the director of the London School of Economics, presented a paper at the Royal Geographical Society titled The Geographical Pivot of History. He argued that the future of global power lay not in controlling the sea lanes, but in a vast landmass he called Euro-Asia.

#3 Mackinder’s lecture was a foundational moment in the history of geography, and the field of geopolitics. His theory of how geography shapes global power has been proven correct time and time again, and his words still offer a prism of precision when it comes to understanding the geopolitics driving the world’s major conflicts.

#4 The age of sea power, which lasted just over four hundred years, was characterized by the great powers competing to control the Eurasian world island via the sea lanes that stretched for 15,000 miles from London to Tokyo.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822515666

IRB Media

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Insights on Alfred W. McCoy's In the Shadows of the American Century

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Even the greatest empires have been shaped by geography. America’s political, national security, and foreign policy elites continue to ignore the basics of geopolitics that have shaped the fate of world empires for the past five hundred years.

#2

In 1904, Halford Mackinder, the director of the London School of Economics, presented a paper at the Royal Geographical Society titled The Geographical Pivot of History. He argued that the future of global power lay not in controlling the sea lanes, but in a vast landmass he called Euro-Asia.

#3

Mackinder’s lecture was a foundational moment in the history of geography, and the field of geopolitics. His theory of how geography shapes global power has been proven correct time and time again, and his words still offer a prism of precision when it comes to understanding the geopolitics driving the world’s major conflicts.

#4

The age of sea power, which lasted just over four hundred years, was characterized by the great powers competing to control the Eurasian world island via the sea lanes that stretched for 15,000 miles from London to Tokyo.

#5

The ideas of Halford Mackinder influenced the world beyond anything he could have imagined. They shaped the course of World War II, with Germany trying to capture the Russian heartland as lebensraum.

#6

In 1942, the führer dispatched a million men, 10,000 artillery pieces, and 500 tanks to breach the Volga River at Stalingrad and capture that Russian heartland for lebensraum. In the end, the Reich’s forces suffered 850,000 casualties—killed, wounded, and captured—in a vain attempt to break through the East European rimland into the world island’s pivotal region.

#7

The United States relied on ever-thickening layers of military power to contain rival hegemons China and Russia inside the continental heartland from 1945 onward.

#8

The American Pax Americanan was built around the containment of Soviet land power, which was accomplished by the US Navy surrounding Eurasia. America also built air and naval bastions at the axial antipodes of the world island, which were aimed at containing the Sino-Soviet bloc.

#9

After the defeat of Soviet control in the Baltics and Balkans, the bloodiest battles of the Cold War were fought in the passageways around the massive Himalayan barrier in Laos and Vietnam, and then in Afghanistan westward.

#10

As Washington began to shift its focus to Asia, it continued to maintain its axial positions