IDEOLOGIES OF LAND AND SEA: ALFRED THAYER MAHAN, CARL SCHMITT, AND THE SHAPING OF GLOBAL MYTH ELEMENTS ARTICLE REVIEW

Christopher L. Connery’s 2001 article, Ideologies of Land and Sea, offers a nuanced examination of how global thought is constructed not solely through economic or cultural frameworks, but also through spatial and mythological dimensions. Drawing on the conceptual tension between Grotius’s legal universalism and Mahan’s strategic materialism, Connery argues that globalization has extended beyond the terrestrial sphere, reaching into the cosmos as a domain of ideological projection. The article transcends classical geopolitical paradigms centered on land and sea, suggesting the emergence of a new architecture of power that encompasses not only physical territory but also the human mind. In this context, Connery contends that global hegemony no longer operates exclusively through territorial control, but increasingly through the governance of concepts, imagination, and cognitive structures. Thus, the study functions not merely as a geopolitical analysis, but as a critical manifesto addressing the intellectual, ideological, and cosmic layers of modern global imaginaries.