Understanding the essence of the “Great game” by representatives of Anglo-Saxon geopolitical schools

             This article is devoted to understanding the essence of “The Great Game”, that is, the policy of containing the development of Russia by Anglo-Saxon elites and powers (dating back more than two centuries), representatives of Anglo-Saxon geopolitical thought. Perceiving Russia as the main obstacle to achieving its global geopolitical hegemony, Anglo-Saxon elites and powers actively waged large-scale diplomatic, economic, information wars and battles against Russia, military operations, conducted operations to organize coups d’etat and “revolutions”, trying to destroy Russia both by actions from outside and undermining it from within. Naturally, to justify this kind of policy, a certain ideological justification and information support was required, which were carried out in particular by English and American geopolitics.

             The author emphasizes that the ideological justification of the “Great Game” by Anglo-Saxon geopolitics began in the classical period of the development of geopolitics, a characteristic feature of which was the unlimited dominance of the ideas of geographical determinism, which interprets the entire course of the development of human civilization as fundamental geopolitical dualism – the confrontation between two different powerful types of human civilizations and states – the powers of the Sea (sea, colonial powers) and Land (continental, land powers). The author considers the geopolitical concepts of the founders of the American and English national schools of geopolitics – A.T. Mahan, J.H. McKinder, N. Spikeman, formulated the main ideas of Atlantism – the geopolitical theory and practice of the collective West, NATO member countries that assign a leading role in world history to maritime states and civilizations.

             Within the framework of the modern period of the development of Anglo-Saxon political thought (which is characterized by the development of geeconomic concepts and a civilizational approach), the author of the article analyzes the views of American globalist geopolitics – J. Kennan, G. Kissinger, F. Fukuyama, Zb. Brzezinski, S. Huntington, as well as one of the founders of the civilizational approach – the English historian A. Toynbee,  as well as the concept of the “death of the West” P. Buchanan.

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