Truman Doctrine (1946); Defense Planning Guidance (1991) & The National Security Strategy (2002)

the Mackinder & Spykman Dialects revisited

Résumé

The aim of this article is to test the hypothesis that Halford
Mackinder and Nicholas Spykman’s geopolitical theories,
which sustained the grand strategy of the United States
with the implementation of 1946 Truman Doctrine, are
still relevant today after their termination. The results
indicate that the intellectual matrixes were found in
documents of the grand strategy of the United States in
two moments. First, in 1992, in the George Herbert Walker
Bush’s government’s Defense Planning Guidance document,
formulated by the Pentagon, in February 1992. Second,
they were found replicated 10 years after in the first term
of President George Walker Bush, inaugurated in 2001. In
the latter, the theoretical formulations repercussions were
depicted in the official documents Quadrennial Defense
Review (2001) and the National Security Strategy (2002).
The article concluded that the authors’ ideas remain valid
to explain and interpret the actions of the United States’
grand strategy in the international scenario.