Alan J. Mackinder

These focus on energy, medicine, industry, and science—drawing from its nuclear properties and high density (especially depleted uranium, or DU, the non-fissile leftover after enrichment). (As a fun historical bonus: uranium was once used to color glass and ceramics a glowing yellow-green—called “Vaseline glass”—but that’s mostly phased out for safety reasons.) These applications turn…

From Britain and the British Seas (1902) by Halford John Mackinder was a foundational work in political geography. Mackinder opens by emphasizing Britain’s historical position as a peripheral, “utmost corner of the West” — isolated at the edge of the known world before the Age of Discovery, with its white cliffs visible from the European…

Dive deep into a fascinating geopolitical framing—applying Halford Mackinder’s 1904 Heartland theory to assess how Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s (or their successors’) visions might position the U.S. to lead in a projected 2032 world of multipolarity. Mackinder’s core idea remains prescient: Control of Eurasia’s “Heartland” (broadly, the resource-rich pivot from Eastern Europe through…

Halford Mackinder, the pioneering British geographer and father of modern geopolitics, is best known for his 1904 essay “The Geographical Pivot of History,” where he articulated the Heartland Theory. In it, he argued that control of the vast, resource-rich Eurasian “Heartland” (roughly Eastern Europe and Central Asia) would enable dominance over the “World-Island” (Eurasia,…

Ten years before I was born, Michigan was undergoing a pivotal transformation with the drafting of a new state constitution. 1961–1962 Constitutional Convention On October 3, 1961, 144 delegates from every walk of life assembled at the Lansing Civic Center to draft a new Constitution for Michigan. The delegates’ task was difficult. Michigan’s existing…