Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics, by Tim Marshall

This book has a very interesting take on some of the key countries of the world, why they do what they do and links their history and actions as dependent on their geography. Most of the observations were very interesting, am sharing a few below:

Russia: Moscow is located in a vast flatland and was always at risk of attack from either the Central Asian powers in the south or from Western Europe in the west. Therefore it has always conquered land all around Moscow to keep a buffer zone, and that has been a driver of its foreign policy for a long long time. Till today two geographical limitations do matter to Russia and drive its actions – it still needs a port which does not freeze in winter. And it needs to protect itself from the great western plains of Europe and hence needs an ally in the Baltic States and Poland at all times.

China: The hinterland of China again is located in an open plain and therefore it has conquered other regions like inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet, to protect itself and conquer all of the ‘one geography’ to reduce any future risk. China also wants to maintain supremacy over the seas which has been a driver of its foreign policy in recent years.

Middle East: The Middle East border lines were all created by the western countries without any regard for its geography or its people. And therefore they’re having and will continue having tensions forever.

India and Pakistan: Pakistan needs to have a friendly government in Afghanistan and hence is always involved in its politics. And India and Pakistan will always be involved with each other due to their closeness in geography.

US: Once the US managed to control their land end to end and had access to both oceans, that gave them leverage to be powerful in the world. Also after WWII, they started owning sea assets across the globe (give up by the western powers) through which they will continue to dominate the world for some time.

Europe: The north has overall more agricultural land and huge navigable rivers which sustained these regions for long. The south was not so lucky and hence did not develop as much. For example, Greece has limited agricultural land and also ends up spending so much on its navy for safety of its islands, that its entire setup does not seem too sustainable. Similarly, Spain was always isolated as the Spanish had to travel over the Pyrenees. That always limited its ability to trade with the rest of Europe and hence they have always been behind. On the contrary, Germany and France were able to easily unite because of the Great European Plains which helped them both economically.

Africa: Africa is plagued by the huge desert of Sahara in the north and its non-navigable rivers which constrained its development for a long time. In addition, the Europeans created straight line borders which have led to large scale wars everywhere, e.g., DRC and its unlimited resources won't be able to help in the short term either.

Korea and Japan: Japan has been an isolated island for long and looked inward always, but when it looked outward, it did so militarily which led to large scale consequences. In the same region, friendship between North Korea and China led to Japan, South Korea and US becoming allies to be able to stop them. China will continue to support North Korea to keep a buffer with South Korea where the US military has bases. And North Korea will continue to have an upper hand with South Korea given its proximity to Seoul and ability to easily fire weapons across the border.

Latin America: The coastal plains where the Europeans settled first are much more developed than the interiors and this has been one of the reasons for continuous anger and revolutions in the region.

Arctic: The Arctic routes have opened up recently and control there helps in trade and possibly will be an asset with unlimited resources someday. Russia controls a lot of this region because it has many icebreaker ships. Countries looking to spread their control continue to disagree and there might be skirmishes some day but it seems less likely as they are all mature geographies.

Reading the book, I realised two other major things which I hadn't realised till now. One, all countries still are wary of each other and keep taking steps strategically and militarily even though there has been stability and peace for so many years!! I had assumed all these actions are things of the past. And having a navy and large naval control is very very important for a country to expand its influence. Even though it doesn't seem so in the non-military world as we see it, but it still exists in the background.