resemblance to Alfred Thayer Mahan's "debated and debatable zone" than to Mackinder's Inner or Marginal Crescent. The Rimland has great importance because of its demographic weight, natural resources, and industrial development. Spykman sees that its importance to be the reason that the Rimland will be crucial to containing the Heartland, but Mackinder had believed that the Outer or Insular Crescent would be the most important factor in containing the Heartland. Offshore continents There are two offshore continents flanking Eurasia: Africa and Australia. Spykman sees both continents' geopolitical status as determined respectively by the state of control over the Mediterranean Sea and the "Asiatic Mediterranean." Neither has ever been the seat of significant power; chaos prevents Africa from harnessing the resources of its regions, and Australia has too little arable territory. Other than the two continents, there are offshore islands of significance are Britain, Japan and the New World, buffered by the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. Eurasian dynamics Again, Spykman differs from Mackinder, who sees Eurasian wars as historically pitting the Heartland against the sea powers for control of the rimland, establishing a land power-sea power opposition. Spykman states that historically, battles have pitted either Britain and Rimland allies against Russia and its Rimland allies or Britain and Russia together against a dominating Rimland power. In other words, the Eurasian struggle was not the sea powers containing the Heartland but the prevention of any power from ruling the Rimland. Spykman disagrees with Mackinder's famous dictum: Who controls eastern Europe rules the Heartland; Who controls the Heartland rules the World Island; and Who rules the World Island rules the World. He refashions it thus: Who controls the Rimland rules Eurasia; Who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the world. Therefore, British, Russian, and US power would play the key roles in controlling the European litoral and there the essential power relations of the world. US strategic goals Spykman thought that it was in the American interests to leave Germany strong after World War II to be able to counter Russia's power. Strategically, there was no difference between Germany dominating all the way to the Ural or Russia controlling all the way to Germany, and as both scenarios were equally threatening to the US. Spykman predicted that Japan would lose the Pacific War and that China and Russia would remain to struggle against each other over boundaries. He also forecast the