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Trapped in-between the Rimland and the Heartland: How Spykman can explain the US-Russian rivalry over Ukraine
Since 2014, US-Russian relations have progressively evolved into heated rivalry especially due to the Ukrainian crisis. Governmental sources and official discourses highlight an ongoing, patent US-Russian rivalry that pivots on the issue of Ukrainian integration in NATO. This article wishes to understand the opposite US and Russian views in relation to Ukraine from a geopolitical perspective following the assumptions of Nicholas Spykman’s Rimland theory. Unlike Halford Mackinder, Spykman believed that who controlled the Rimland would become hegemonic in Eurasia. Following Spykman’s scheme, the US wishes to distance Ukraine from Russia through Euro-Atlantic integration, acknowledging that a Russian hegemony over Ukraine would increase Moscow’s strategic weight in Eurasia. On the other hand, also given the important role of geopolitics in Russian post-Soviet discourse, Russia perceives the need to maintain a strong influence in Ukraine. As already highlighted by Mackinder, political-geographical neutralization could overcome world powers’ rivalry in eastern Europe.