CENTCOM and the Doctrine of Engineered Turbulence
Center of What, Exactly?
CENTCOM’s area of responsibility overlays both the Pivot Area, defined in Halford Mackinder’s Heartland Theory, and the historically strategic zone known as the Land of the Five Seas.
This geography defines the operational map of the ongoing empire. It includes the oil corridors, inland basins, and friction zones where global logistics intersect with ancient imperial infrastructure.
Mackinder identified the central Eurasian landmass as the organizing principle of global strategy. He warned that the Heartland—rich in land power, internal cohesion, and natural resources—could, if unified, dominate the “World Island” of Europe, Asia, and Africa. His proposed solution became the architecture of Anglo-American containment: manage the perimeter, disrupt consolidation, and hold the inner core at arm’s length through external force and proxy control.
This strategy did not dissolve after the formal end of the British Empire. It transferred. It adapted. It persisted through relationships, advisory networks, and regional force agreements. British imperial strategy continued through offshore balancing (False flags, FDR assassination?), intelligence fusion (espionage), and layered partnerships (compromise and coercion), which shaped the conditions under which the United States assumed command responsibilities. CENTCOM inherits this framework.
The Land of the Five Seas — Black Sea, Caspian Sea, Aral Sea, Persian Gulf, and Eastern Mediterranean — marks the outer edge of Mackinder’s core. British officers once held this perimeter through protectorates, commercial treaties, and naval patrols.
The same straits and port cities now host U.S. bases, joint command centers, and arms pipelines. CENTCOM maintains a forward presence in territory the Crown once governed through mandate or proxy. The mission remains consistent: prevent integration, maintain access, and supervise disruption.
The shape of the world itself presents a self-evident case in this doctrine. The “National Geographic” mapview, based on the Mercator projection, distorts the spatial relationships that govern imperial planning. It expands the Atlantic, minimizes Central Asia, and places Europe at the top-center of perception. This projection enforces a maritime worldview. It conceals the landlocked heart of the world island beneath a false margin.
The 1953 Bertin Projection, rooted in Mackinder’s 1904 diagrams, renders a different geography. It centers the Eurasian landmass. It contracts the oceans into gaps between consolidated powers. It reveals the strategic interior — where the Pivot Area touches Russia, China, Iran, and the Islamic world — as the central prize. This is the projection that empire strategists study. It reflects the world as a field of consolidation and encirclement, not a seascape of floating continents.
The choice of map is a form of epistemological warfare. It frames thought. It trains populations to mislocate the axis of control. It draws attention away from the land corridors and inland basins that CENTCOM exists to patrol.
CENTCOM governs the perimeter of the Pivot Area and the Land of the Five Seas. It controls the capacity to shape conflict, direct logistics, and prevent territorial consolidation outside sanctioned channels. It ensures regional turbulence as a strategic asset and facilitates a fluidity in alliances, vulnerabilities in governance, and constant visibility over trade routes, airspace, and borders.
The command appears to sustain chaos by disrupting cohesion and managing volatility and escalation. It permeates target zones with overlapping bases, advisory teams, arms deals, and joint exercises. It also seems to require constant recalibration, pretext, and forward deployment.
Since the Sykes-Picot Agreement, theater doctrine treats maps as instruments. It measures control in corridors, ports, and airfields. It favors shifting ground conditions, malleable proxies, and open-ended authorizations. It reduces sovereignty to throughput and risk tolerance.
CENTCOM monitors the peripheries of a centuries-old empire and responds with interventions that reflect the strategic principles developed in London and implemented in Washington. CENTCOM functions as a successor agency in a longer campaign to dominate the center of the world island from its periphery. The methods have evolved with technology, but the objective remains the same.
The purpose of this architecture is to hold the frontier of Eurasia and Africa in a state of permanent readiness, permanent access, and permanent flux. The function of Central Command is to maintain the structure of modern imperial management. Religion and Culture have been weaponized in this area to keep the charade going.
Why the Middle East is the World's Geopolitical Linchpin
Today, it’s impossible to understand events in Israel and Gaza without the knowledge that Zionism and the creation of Israel are centuries-old programs of Venetian Party British Imperialists.
Guido Preparata in his book Phantasmagoria argues that Geopolitics deceased post 1945 and has been replaced by a scripted “Geo Hollywood”. Todays geopolitics functions primarily for explanatory purposes to be advanced by expert commentary.
It’s certainly a plausible argument given the gruesome cast of today’s extreme twitter politicians who seem to be battling for the title of the craziest character in a badly scripted apocalypse movie.
Another viewpoint is the de-Dollarisation angle where the US has had a captive market where foreign states are forced to hold dollars they print. With the surplus they have got to do something with them. Fund the US deficit to fund the military industrial complex via Treasuries. Produce weapons in exchange for repatriating more dollars. What better way to get repeat orders than by having war to reduce their stock. Multi national companies profit from the chaos. Geopolitics such that it is today is run by the global elite to enrich themselves under the pretext of national security. I wasn’t exactly surprised to learn that the very country bringing the genocide case against Israel has been shipping massive amounts of coal to fuel electricity generation in Israel. All disguised through various multi national networks for plausible deniability. Realpolitik strikes again.
The post 9/11 twist is the addition of widespread coordinated internal conflicts and psychological warfare which seem largely to be attempts to scare populations into accepting less democracy in exchange for protective totalitarianism which in turn reduces the likelihood of internal opposition to external war/regime change.
I tend to view the MacKinder theory as necessary to explain how we got here but not sufficient to explain the present.