Sir Halford John Mackinder (15 February 1861 – 6 March 1947) was a British geographer, academic and politician, who is regarded as one of the founding fathers of both geopolitics[1] and geostrategy.

At Oxford he started studying natural sciences, specializing in zoology under Henry Nottidge Moseley, who had been the naturalist on the Challenger expedition.

[10] He was a member of the Coefficients dining club, set up in 1902 by the Fabian campaigners Sidney and Beatrice Webb, which brought together social reformers and advocates of national efficiency.

"[18] This message was composed to convince the world statesmen at the Paris Peace conference of the crucial importance of Eastern Europe as the strategic route to the Heartland was interpreted as requiring a strip of buffer states to separate Germany and Russia.

He reiterated and expanded his Heartland view of the world, suggesting that the Atlantic Ocean would be jumped, with North America's influence pulled into the region by its use of Britain as a "moated aerodrome".

Elsewhere in the world, beyond the "girdle of deserts and wilderness", and the "Great Ocean" region of the Indo-Pacific Rim, was the "Monsoon lands" area of India and China that would grow in power.

[21] The two fathers of geopolitics both believed that the development of international transportation on land was growing to such a high rate "that the advantage of the sea powers was more of historical importance.

[25]: 34 The Heartland Theory and more generally classical geopolitics and geostrategy were extremely influential in the making of US strategic policy during the period of the Cold War.

[28][29][30] On China, Mackinder predicted in 1904 that it may become the greatest threat "to the world's freedom" because of it "would add an oceanic frontage to the resources of the great continent.

[31] Reviewing the work, Swaran Singh writes, "Asanga talks of Mackinder's 'outer crescent' that makes him see two other nations, Britain and Japan, being similarly ordained.

However, as world drifts from continents to Oceans following Mahanian axioms, it leaves only Sri Lanka that sits in the midst of global east-west super expressway of sea lanes of communications connecting the two ends of the Indo-Pacific geopolitical paradigm.".

[32] His ideas experienced a revival of interest in post-Cold War former-Soviet Central Asia, in particular the republics of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.