Inner Asian Nomadic Peoples, International Relations Theory, and the Geopolitical Imagination

Joseph MacKay, Australian National University

International relations has recently taken increased interest in historical Central and Inner Asia, including its historically migratory peoples. I argue it has done so before, to problematic effect, building aspects of early international relations theory on problematic concepts developed with reference to the region. To explain, I turn to the field’s early relationship with geopolitics. Theorists like Halford Mackinder and Nicholas Spykman developed accounts of world politics in which Inner Asian nomadic imperialism was central. They divided the Eurasian land mass into a geographical center (“Heartland”) and periphery (“Rimland”). They linked the former to Steppe nomadic peoples, who periodically raided Europe and East Asia—which responded by building the institutions and technologies of sedentary political life. This account framed Steppe nomads as central drivers of world history. It is also now widely recognized as inaccurate and racist. Yet these ideas shaped Anglophone IR theory in its early, post-1945 forms. Early realists in IR drew on classical politics geopolitics in tacit but problematic ways. Recent research traces this geopolitical influence on classical realism but elides Inner Asian nomadic peoples. I argue a residue of ideas about them persisted into classical realists like Hans Morgenthau. They echo as late as more recent realists like John Mearsheimer and Robert Gilpin, as well as other scholars like John Ruggie and Daniel Deudney, cite Mackinder and Spykmann as authorities. Critically tracing this influence is important as IR revisits both the region and nomadic peoples, past and present.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 28. From Nomadic Imperialism to Imperial Patronage: Rethinking Power Dynamics in Historical Contexts