Geostrategy in Central Asia - Debated and Debatable Zone

Debated and Debatable Zone

Alfred Thayer Mahan, the father of U.S. geostrategy, outlined the geostrategic divisions of Eurasia in his 1900 piece The Problem of Asia and Its Effect Upon International Policies. He divided Asia into three parts:

• Russian dominated land to the north of the 40th parallel;
• British dominated lands to the south of the 30th parallel; and
• the Debated and Debatable zone located between the 30th and 40th parallels on the Asian continent.

Within this vast zone lie significant parts of Central Asia, including sections of what are now Tibet, Xinjiang, Kashmir, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Iran, and the Caucasus.

Mahan believed that the clash between the Russian land power from the North, pushing down toward warm water port, and the opposing coalition of sea powers from pushing upward from the South (including Britain, the U.S., Japan, and Germany), would play out their conflict in the Debated and Debatable zone. This zone featured areas of political vacuum, underdevelopment, and internecine conflicts which made it both unstable and ripe for conquest.

Even today, Central Asia is politically weak or unstable, and riven by separatism, ethnic, or religious conflict.