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

by Tim Marshall

The Americans also looked to the land. If they were going to pay to reconstruct Europe through the Marshall Plan of 1948–51, they had to ensure that the Soviet Union wouldn’t wreck the place and reach the Atlantic coast. The Doughboys didn’t go home. Instead they set up shop in Germany and faced down the Red Army across the North European Plain.

The civilian head of NATO might well be a Belgian one year, a Brit the next, but the military commander is always an American, and by far the greatest firepower within NATO is American.

In 1951 it extended its domination there down to the south by forming an alliance with Australia and New Zealand, and also to the north following the Korean War of 1950–

the EU countries spend so little on defence that ultimately they remain reliant on the USA.

1991 the Russian threat had been seen off due to Russia’s own staggering economic incompetence, military overstretch and failure to persuade the subjected masses in its empire that gulags and the over-production of state-funded tractors was the way ahead.

Washington knows that during the last decade, as America was distracted in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Russians took advantage in what they call their ‘near abroad’, regaining a solid footing in places such as Kazakhstan and seizing territory in Georgia. Belatedly, and somewhat half-heartedly, the Americans have been trying to roll back Russian gains. President Trump has made overtures to Moscow and sought a personal relationship with Putin, but the differences between the two countries are greater than the bond between their leaders.

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 USA will spend those decades attempting to ensure it stays that way, but it feels inevitable that the gap will close.

The USA’s famous ‘pivot to Asia’ under the Obama administration was taken by some to mean the abandonment of Europe; but a pivot towards one place does not mean the abandonment of another. It is more a case of how much weight you put on which foot. Even before President Trump came to power the Americans were already hedging their bets. There was never a mad rush to get out of Europe – indeed US military hardware has been built up in Eastern Europe. Team Trump are balancing fairly evenly, although it is safe to say it is developments in Asia that are likely to keep them awake at night, rather than Europe or Russia.

if China begins shelling a Japanese destroyer and it looks as if they might take further military action, the US Navy may have to fire warning shots towards the Chinese navy, or even fire directly, to signal that it is willing to go to war over the incident. Equally, when North Korea fires at South Korea, the south fires back, but currently the US does not.

The Cuban Missile Crisis is generally considered an American victory; what is less publicised is that several months after Russia removed its missiles from Cuba, the United States removed its Jupiter missiles (which could reach Moscow) from Turkey. It was actually a compromise, with both sides, eventually, able to tell their respective publics that they had not capitulated.

Beijing’s declaration of an Air Defence 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 USA gained something by being seen not to comply. It is a long game.

The US policy regarding the Japanese is to reassure them that they share strategic interests vis-à-vis China and ensure that the US base in Okinawa remains open.

The Chinese can accept America guarding most of the sea lanes which deliver Chinese goods to the world, so long as the Americans accept that there will be limits to just how close to China that control extends.

A red line for China is formal recognition of Taiwan by the USA, or a declaration of independence by Taiwan. However, there is no sign of that, and a Chinese invasion cannot be seen on this side of the horizon.

Due to offshore drilling in US coastal waters, and underground fracking across huge regions of the country, America looks destined to become not just self-sufficient in energy, but a net exporter of energy by 2020.

policy in Latin America will be to ensure that the Panama Canal remains open, to enquire about the rates to pass through the proposed Nicaraguan canal to the Pacific, and to keep an eye on the rise of Brazil in case it gets any ideas about its influence in the Caribbean Sea. Economically, the USA will also compete with China throughout Latin America for influence

President Obama’s historic visit to the island in the spring of 2016 went a long way towards ensuring that. He is the first sitting US President to visit Havana since Calvin Coolidge in 1928.

In Africa, the Americans are but one nation seeking the continent’s natural wealth, but the nation finding most of it is China. As in the Middle East, the USA will watch the Islamist struggle in North Africa with interest but try not to get involved much closer than 30,000 feet above the ground.

In Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the USA underestimated the mentality and strength of small powers and of tribes. The Americans’ own history of physical security and unity may have led them to overestimate the power of their democratic rationalist argument, which believes that compromise, hard work and even voting would triumph over atavistic, deep-seated historical fears of ‘the other’, be they Sunni, Shia, Kurd, Arab, Muslim or Christian.

This allowed for population growth in an area in which, for most, work was possible all year round, even in the heights of summer. Winter actually adds a bonus, with temperatures warm enough to work in but cold enough to kill off many of the germs which to this day plague huge parts of the rest of the world.

It also formed the natural border of two subsequent empires, the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman. As each shrank, the nations emerged again, eventually becoming nation states.

As many of the northern countries comprise the heartland of Western Europe, their trade links were easier to maintain, and one wealthy neighbour could trade with another – whereas the Spanish, for example, either had to cross the Pyrenees to trade, or look to the limited markets of Portugal and North Africa.

Of all the countries on the plain, France was best situated to take advantage of it. France is the only European country to be both a northern and southern power. It contains the largest expanse of fertile land in Western Europe, and many of its rivers connect with each other; one flows west all the way to the Atlantic (the Loire), another south to the Mediterranean (the Rhône). These factors, together with its relative flatness, lent themselves to unification of regions, and – especially from the time of Napoleon – centralisation of power.

Spain is also struggling, and has always struggled because of its geography. Its narrow coastal plains have poor soil, and access to markets is hindered internally by its short rivers and the Meseta Central, a highland plateau surrounded by mountain ranges, some of which cut through it. Trade with Western Europe is further hampered by the Pyrenees, and any markets to its south on the other side of the Mediterranean are in developing countries with limited income.

What agricultural land there is of high quality; the problem is that there is too little of it to allow Greece to become a major agricultural exporter, or to develop more than a handful of major urban areas containing highly educated, highly skilled and technologically advanced populations.

Wars now seem to be what happens elsewhere or in the past – at worst they happen on the ‘periphery’ of Europe.

The corridor of the North European Plain is at its narrowest between Poland’s Baltic coast in the north and the beginning of the Carpathian Mountains in the south. This is where, from a Russian military perspective, the best defensive line could be placed or, from an attacker’s viewpoint, the point at which its forces would be squeezed together before breaking out towards Russia.

Relations with Britain, as a counterweight to Germany within the EU, came easily despite the betrayal of 1939: Britain and France had signed a treaty guaranteeing to come to Poland’s aid if Germany invaded. When the attack came the response to the Blitzkrieg was a ‘Sitzkrieg’ – both Allies sat behind the Maginot Line in France as Poland was swallowed up.

The best-known quote attributed to Henry Kissinger originated in the 1970s, when he is reported to have asked: ‘If I want to phone Europe – who do I call?’ The Poles have an updated question: ‘If the Russians threaten, do we call Brussels or Washington?’ They know the answer.

Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania have made their choice and are inside NATO – and, apart from Albania, are also in the EU, as is Slovenia. The tensions extend into the north and Scandinavia. Denmark is already a NATO member and the recent resurgence of Russia has caused a debate in Sweden over whether it is time to abandon the neutrality of two centuries and join the Alliance.

France was the pre-eminent power on the Continent: it could even project its power as far as the gates of Moscow. But then Germany united.

After the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved in 1806 the German Confederation of thirty-nine statelets came together in 1815 at the Congress of Vienna. This in turn led to the North German Confederation, and then the unification of Germany in 1871 after the Franco-Prussian War in which victorious German troops occupied Paris.

Germany had always had bigger geographical problems than France. The flatlands of the North European Plain gave it two reasons to be fearful: to the west the Germans saw their long-unified and powerful neighbour France, and to the east the giant Russian Bear.

The dilemma of Germany’s geographical position and belligerence became known as ‘the German Question’. The answer, after the horrors of the Second World War, indeed after centuries of war, was the acceptance of the presence in the European lands of a single overwhelming power, the USA, which set up NATO and allowed for the eventual creation of the European Union.

It has worked particularly well for Germany, which rose from the ashes of 1945 and used to its advantage the geography it once feared. It became Europe’s great manufacturer.

Ever closer union led, for nineteen of the member states, to a single currency – the euro. All twenty-eight members, except for Denmark and the UK, committed to joining it if and when they meet the criteria.

The problem was that some, notably Greece, were cooking the books. Most of the experts knew, but because the euro is not just a currency – it is also an ideology – the members turned a blind eye.

on global foreign policy it simply speaks quietly, sometimes not at all, and has an aversion to sticks. The shadow of the Second World War still hangs over Germany. The Americans, and eventually the West Europeans, were willing to accept German rearmament due to the Soviet threat, but Germany rearmed almost reluctantly and has been loath to use its military strength. It played a walk-on part in Kosovo and Afghanistan, but chose to sit out the Libyan conflict.

Geographically, the Brits are in a good place. Good farmland, decent rivers, excellent access to the seas and their fish stocks, close enough to the European Continent to trade and yet protected by dint of being an island race – there have been times when the UK gave thanks for its geography as wars and revolutions swept over its neighbours.

Its location still grants it certain strategic advantages, one of which is the GIUK (Greenland, Iceland and the UK) gap. This is a choke point in the world’s sea lanes – it is hardly as important as the Strait of Hormuz or the Strait of Malacca, but it has traditionally given the UK an advantage in the North Atlantic. The alternative route for north European navies (including Belgium, the Netherlands and France) to access the Atlantic is through the English Channel, but this is narrow – only 20 miles across at the Strait of Dover – and very well defended. Any Russian naval ship coming from the Arctic also has to pass through the GIUK on its way to the Atlantic.

reduced role and power of the Royal Navy, but in time of war it would again benefit the UK. The GIUK is one of many reasons why London flew into a panic in 2014 when, briefly, the vote on Scottish independence looked as if might result in a Yes. The loss of power in the North Sea and North Atlantic would have been a strategic blow and a massive dent to the prestige of whatever was left of the UK. What the British have now is a collective memory of greatness. That memory

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Voltaire’s maxim that he would defend to the death the right of a person to say something, even if he found it offensive, was once taken as a given. Now, despite many people having been killed because what they said was insulting, the debate has shifted. It is not uncommon to hear the idea that perhaps insulting religion should be beyond the pale, possibly even made illegal.

The Germans would again be fearing encirclement by the Russians and French, the French would again be fearing their bigger neighbour, and we would all be back at the beginning of the twentieth century. For the French this is a nightmare. They successfully helped tie Germany down inside the EU, only to find that after German reunification they became the junior partner in a twin-engine motor they had hoped to be driving.

France is capable of an independent foreign policy – indeed, with its ‘Force de frappe’ nuclear deterrent, its overseas territories and its aircraft carrier-backed armed forces, it does just that – but it operates safe in the knowledge that its eastern flank is secure and it can afford to raise its eyes to the horizon.

The end of the Cold War saw most of the Continental powers reducing their military budgets and cutting back their armed forces. It has taken the shock of the Russian–Georgian war of 2008 and the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 to focus attention on the possibility of the age-old problem of war in Europe.

diplomats and military strategists see that, while the threats of Charlemagne, Napoleon, Hitler and the Soviets may have vanished, the North European Plain, the Carpathians, the Baltic and the North Sea are still there. In his book Of Paradise and Power the historian Robert Kagan argues that Western Europeans live in paradise but shouldn’t seek to operate by the rules of paradise once they move out into the world of power.

There are lots of places that are unsuccessful, but few have been as unsuccessful as Africa, and that despite having a head start as the place where Homo sapiens originated about 200,000 years ago.

Almost the entire continent below the Sahara developed in isolation from the Eurasian land mass, where ideas and technology were exchanged from east to west, and west to east, but not north to south.

Cape of Good Hope, and is a reminder of the importance of the Suez Canal to world trade. Making it around the Cape was a momentous achievement, but once it became unnecessary to do so, the sea journey from Western Europe to India was reduced by 6,000 miles.