(credit @neilrkaye on reddit)
Review : Came across this at istheshipstillstuck.com. It wasn’t quite grabbing me in the beginning. But it got better as soon as I came across issues that I know or heard of.
This is an introductory read about geopolitics. It focuses on the legacy of geopolitics from the past, the challenges we face today, and the future. Everything starts to make sense when you see the world through the lens of geography. I suddenly reckon how crucial physical landscape is, and how geography is a decisive factor in the course of human history.
Overall it’s a good read, just that the history bits are rather dry to my liking.
Highlights
The land on which we live has always shaped us. It has shaped the wars, the power, politics, and social development of the peoples that now inhabit nearly every part of the earth. Technology may seem to overcome the distances between us in both mental and physical space, but it is easy to forget that the land where we live, work, and raise our children is hugely important and that the choices of those who lead the seven billion inhabitants of this planet will to some degree always be shaped by the rivers, mountains, deserts, lakes, and seas that constrain us all—as they always have.
Prisoners of Geography, Tim Marshall
The EU imposed limited sanctions—limited because several European countries, Germany among them, are reliant on Russian energy to heat their homes in winter. The pipelines run east to west and the Kremlin can turn the taps on and off.
Prisoners of Geography, Tim Marshall
Energy as political power will be deployed time and again in the coming years, and the concept of “ethnic Russians” will be used to justify whatever moves Russia makes.
The Chinese look at society very differently from the West. Western thought is infused with the rights of the individual; Chinese thought prizes the collective above the individual. What the West thinks of as the rights of man, the Chinese leadership thinks of as dangerous theories endangering the majority, and much of the population accepts, at the least, that the extended family comes before the individual.
Prisoners of Geography, Tim Marshall
All great nations spend peacetime preparing for the day war breaks out.
Prisoners of Geography, Tim Marshall
There are 1.4 billion reasons why China may succeed, and 1.4 billion reasons why it may not surpass America as the greatest power in the world. A great depression such as in the 1930s could set it back decades. China has locked itself into the global economy. If we don’t buy, they don’t make. And if they don’t make, there will be mass unemployment. If there is mass and long-term unemployment, in an age when the Chinese are a people packed into urban areas, the inevitable social unrest could be—like everything else in modern China—on a scale hitherto unseen.
Prisoners of Geography, Tim Marshall
Most analysis written over the past decade assumes that by the middle of the twenty-first century China will overtake the United States and become the leading superpower. For reasons partially discussed in chapter two, I am not convinced. It may take a century.
Prisoners of Geography, Tim Marshall
Economically the Chinese are on their way to matching the Americans, and that buys them a lot of influence and a place at the top table, but militarily and strategically they are decades behind. The United States will spend those decades attempting to ensure it stays that way, but it feels inevitable that the gap will close.
The concrete costs a lot. Not just to mix and pour, but to be allowed to mix and pour it where you want to. As we saw with the Destroyers for Bases Agreement, American assistance to other governments is not always entirely altruistic. Economic and, equally important, military assistance buys permission to pour the concrete, but much more as well, even if there is also an added cost.
We will see the United States increasingly investing time and money in East Asia to establish its presence and intentions in the region. […] But in order to exert real influence they may also have to invest in limited military action to reassure their allies that they will come to their rescue in the event of hostilities
Prisoners of Geography, Tim Marshall
[…] The United States is seeking to demonstrate to the whole region that it is in their best interests to side with Washington—China is doing the opposite. So, when challenged, each side must react, because for each challenge it ducks, its allies’ confidence, and competitors’ fear, slowly drains away until eventually there is an event that persuades a state to switch sides.
In the twenty-first-century Pacific, there are more great-power compromises to be made. In the short term, most, but not all, are likely to be made by the Chinese—an early example is Beijing’s declaration of an Air Defense Identification Zone requiring foreign nations to inform them before entering what is disputed territory, and the Americans deliberately flying through it without telling them. The Chinese gained something by declaring the zone and making it an issue; the United States gained something by being seen not to comply. It is a long game.
Prisoners of Geography, Tim Marshall
Back in the great capital cities of London, Paris, Brussels, and Lisbon, the Europeans then took maps of the contours of Africa’s geography and drew lines on them—or, to take a more aggressive approach, lies. […] These lines were more about how far each power’s explorers, military forces, and businessmen had advanced on the map than what the people living between the lines felt themselves to be, or how they wanted to organize themselves. Many Africans are now partially the prisoners of the political geography the Europeans made, and of the natural barriers to progression with which nature endowed them.
Prisoners of Geography, Tim Marshall
The Middle of what? East of where? The region’s very name is based on a European view of the world, and it is a European view of the region that shaped it. The Europeans used ink to draw lines on maps: they were lines that did not exist in reality and created some of the most artificial borders the world has seen. An attempt is now being made to redraw them in blood.
Prisoners of Geography, Tim Marshall
For at least a decade now, it has been clear that the Arctic is a priority for the Russians in a way it is not for the Americans. This is reflected in the degree of attention given to the region by both countries. […]
Prisoners of Geography, Tim Marshall
It takes up to $1 billion and ten years to build an icebreaker. Russia is clearly the leading Arctic power with the largest fleet of icebreakers in the world, thirty-two in total. […] By contrast, the United States has a fleet of one functioning heavy icebreaker, the USCGC Polar Star, down from the eight it possessed in the 1960s, and has no plans to build another
As the twenty-first century progresses, the geographical factors that have helped determine our history will mostly continue to determine our future: a century from now.
Prisoners of Geography, Tim Marshall
Geography has always been a prison of sorts—one that defines what a nation is or can be, and one from which our world leaders have often struggled to break free. […] As the twenty-first century progresses, the geographical factors that have helped determine our history will mostly continue to determine our future.
Prisoners of Geography, Tim Marshall
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