Prisoners of Geography | Tim Marshall | Book Review

In the bestselling tradition of Why Nations Fail and The Revenge of Geography, an award-winning journalist uses ten maps of crucial regions to explain the geo-political strategies of the world powers.All leaders of nations are constrained by geography. Their choices are limited by mountains, rivers, seas, and concrete. To understand world events, news organizations and other authorities often focus on people, ideas, and political movements, but without geography, we never have the full picture. Now, in the relevant and timely Prisoners of Geography, seasoned journalist Tim Marshall examines Russia, China, the USA, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Japan and Korea, and Greenland and the Arctic—their weather, seas, mountains, rivers, deserts, and borders—to provide a context often missing from our political reportage: how the physical characteristics of these countries affect their strengths and vulnerabilities and the decisions made by their leaders.

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It is difficult to understand the history of countries without knowing their geography. Tim Marshall reviews the trajectory of some of them, analyzing how they have benefited or have been limited by mountain ranges, seas, rivers, coasts and deserts.

In the distribution of the world, each country plays with a different deck, very seldom equal. The resources and the terrain itself make evolution and development much easier in some places than in others and as if it were a Risk game, each one tries to obtain the greatest return on what he has or tries get what you lack either way. Because in the end, Russia will continue to need a warm ocean port that does not spend 9 months a year frozen, Africa will continue to be rich in resources but barely has navigable rivers to move them, something that the United States favors with the immense Mississippi or Europe with the Danube and vast arable plains. South America will continue to live mostly on the coasts rather than enter the complicated geographies of its interior. For China, having Tibet under her control is not only a way to obtain resources but to fix its border in the impregnable Himalayas. Global warming will make many areas of the Arctic begin to appear and a tough struggle to get hold of the resources that are there is predicted.

The book contains ten chapters that review the current state of the world and the challenges facing different areas of the world, from Russia to the Arctic, through China, the USA or the Middle East.

The book begins with Russia and, drawing the line for the rest of its chapters, shows how geography has shaped its foreign policy throughout its history, along with the challenges it faces today. But it is from the next two chapters, dedicated to China and the USA, where the book really begins. Because although in the following pages the protagonists are others, we will constantly see these two giants appear and their long-term strategies, either to maintain their hegemony or to establish themselves as a new global power.

The book helps us to analyse the current geopolitical situations like what influenced Russia's action in Ukraine? How far will Moscow go now? China finally feels safe within what it considers to be its natural land borders, and how will this affect Beijing's approach to maritime power and the US? What does this mean for the other countries in the region, including India and Japan? For more than two hundred years, the US has benefited from highly favourable geographic conditions and a very rich wealth of resources natural. Now they draw oil and gas from unconventional sources. Will global politics be affected? The United States has extraordinary power and phenomenal resilience; so why is there so much talk about their decline? Are the divisions and deep-seated emotions that are tearing apart North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia unsurpassable, or can we glimpse some hope for the future? Finally, how is Europe reacting to the uncertainties and conflicts that plague neighbouring regions, and those not so close? As Tim observes, over the past seventy years (and especially since 1991) Europe has become accustomed to peace and prosperity. Do we risk taking them for granted now? Do we still understand what is happening around us?

Interesting points worth mentioning:

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1. RUSSIA

- Even though 75% of the Russian territory is in Asia, only 22% of the population lives there. - The lack of a port in temperate waters overlooking the oceans has always been Russia's Achilles heel. Crimea is important because it is the only port facing warm waters. - Russia is second only to the United States as a global supplier of natural gas.

2. CHINA

3. UNITED STATES

4. WESTERN EUROPE

5. AFRICA

6. MIDDLE EAST

7. INDIA AND PAKISTAN

8. KOREA AND JAPAN

9. LATIN AMERICA

10. ARCTICS

Concluding Thoughts

Tim Marshall is highly qualified, personally and professionally, to contribute to this debate. He has participated directly in many of the most significant developments of the past twenty-five years. As his Introduction reminds us, he has been on the war front in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Syria. He thus understood that decisions and events, international conflicts and civil wars, can be interpreted correctly only by fully taking into account the hopes, fears and preconceptions induced by history, and that these feelings in turn derive from the physical environment - the geographical context - in which individuals, societies and countries have developed. Consequently, this book is filled with lucid insights and immediate relevance to our safety and well-being.

I think it is one of the most interesting books and the one that I have learned the most from all the ones I have read lately. #TimMarshall #PrisonersofGeography #Geopolitics #InternationalRelations