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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Tim Marshall
Read between
December 1 - December 16, 2024
The greater Mississippi basin has more miles of navigable inland waterways than the rest of the world put together.
But back to 1848. The Europeans had gone, the Mississippi basin was secure from land attack, the Pacific was reached and it was obvious that the remaining Indian nations would be subdued: there was no threat to the USA.
President Theodore Roosevelt was speaking relatively softly – but in essence he sailed a large stick around the world. Sixteen navy battleships from the Atlantic force set out from the USA in December 1907. Their hulls were painted white, the Navy’s peacetime colour, and this impressive example of diplomatic signalling became known as ‘the Great White Fleet’.
They were the ‘last man standing’. The Europeans had exhausted themselves, and their economies, like their towns and cities, were in ruins. The Japanese were crushed, the Chinese devastated and at war with each other, the Russians weren’t even in the capitalist game.
The USA 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 which persuades a state to switch sides.
the need for certain cultures not to lose face, or ever be seen to back down, but this is not just a problem in the Arab or East Asian cultures – it is a human problem expressed in different ways. It may well be more defined and openly articulated in those two cultures,
Strait of Malacca, which at its narrowest is only 1.7 miles across. Every day through that strait come 12 million barrels of oil heading for an increasingly thirsty China and elsewhere in the region. As long as these three countries are pro-American, the Americans have a key advantage.
The election of Mr Trump demonstrated that democracies are not immune to the cult of personality and the attraction of a strong man with easy answers to hard questions.
Otto von Bismarck, in a double-edged remark, said more than a century ago that ‘God takes special care of drunks, children and the United States of America.’ It appears still to be true.
These are the factors which led to the Europeans creating the first industrialised nation states, which in turn led them to be the first to conduct industrial-scale war.
The north industrialised earlier than the south and so has been more economically successful. 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
There are also unprovable theories that the domination of Catholicism in the south has held it back, whereas the Protestant work ethic propelled the northern countries to greater heights.
During the Cold War the Americans, and to a lesser extent the British, were content to underwrite some of the military requirements in order to keep the Soviet Union out of the Aegean and the Mediterranean. When the Cold War ended, so did the cheques. But Greece kept spending.
The stereotypes of profligate, slack southerners and careful, industrious northerners soon resurfaced, with the Greek media responding with constant and crude reminders of Germany’s past, including superimposing a Hitler moustache on a front-page photograph of Chancellor Merkel.
Russia, which has yet to forgive the Western nations for the bombing of Serbia in 1999 and the separation of Kosovo, is still attempting to coax Serbia into its orbit via the gravitational pull of language, ethnicity, religion and energy deals.
Before Germany existed as a single country this was not a problem. France was a considerable distance from Russia, far from the Mongol hordes, and had the Channel between it and England, meaning that an attempt at a full-scale invasion and total occupation could probably be repulsed. In fact 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.
What is now the EU was set up so that France and Germany could hug each other so tightly in a loving embrace that neither would be able to get an arm free with which to punch the other.
The German nation state, despite being less than 150 years old, is now Europe’s indispensable power. In economic affairs it is unrivalled, it speaks quietly but carries a large euro-shaped stick, and the Continent listens. However, on global foreign policy it simply speaks quietly, sometimes not at all, and has an aversion to sticks.
it has experienced more freedom and less despotism than the countries across the Channel. The theory goes that there were fewer requirements for ‘strong men’ or dictators, which, starting with Magna Carta (1215) and then the Provisions of Oxford (1258), led to forms of democracy years ahead of other countries. It is a good talking point, albeit one not provable. What is undeniable is that the water around the island, the trees upon it which allowed a great navy to be built, and the economic conditions which sparked the Industrial Revolution all led to Great Britain controlling a global empire.
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.
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.
‘For those who didn’t live through this themselves and who especially now in the crisis are asking what benefits Europe’s unity brings, the answer despite the unprecedented European period of peace lasting more than 65 years and despite the problems and difficulties we must still overcome is: peace.’
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.
The Ottoman Empire (1299–1922) was ruled from Istanbul. At its height it stretched from the gates of Vienna, across Anatolia and down through Arabia to the Indian Ocean. From west to east it took in what are now Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Israel/Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and parts of Iran. It had never bothered to make up names for most of these regions; in 1867 it simply divided them into administrative areas known as ‘Vilayets’,
In 1916 the British diplomat Colonel Sir Mark Sykes took a chinagraph pencil and drew a crude line across a map of the Middle East. It ran from Haifa on the Mediterranean in what is now Israel to Kirkuk (now in Iraq) in the north-east. It became the basis of his secret agreement with his French counterpart François Georges-Picot to divide the region into two spheres of influence should the Triple Entente defeat the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. North of the line was to be under French control, south of it under British hegemony.
They ruled this space accordingly, dividing it into three administrative regions: Mosul, Baghdad and Basra. In antiquity, the regions very roughly corresponding to the above were known as Assyria, Babylonia and Sumer. When the Persians controlled the space they divided it in a similar way, as did Alexander the Great, and later the Umayyad Empire.
Without a fully independent Kurdistan carved out of Iraq, the chances of a ‘greater Kurdistan’, stretching from the Iraqi mountains to the Mediterranean, have receded. Syria, Turkey and Iran have followed Iraq’s lead and seen to that.
Various Arabian tribes had helped the British against the Ottomans during the First World War, but there were two in particular which London promised to reward at the war’s end. Unfortunately both were promised the same thing – control of the Arabian Peninsula. Given that the Saud and Hashemite tribes frequently fought each other, this was a little awkward.
The Assad clan, from which President Bashar al-Assad comes, is Alawite, a group that comprises approximately 12 per cent of the population.
Moscow had been frozen out by President Sadat’s Egypt in the early 1970s and then out of Iraq following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. So Putin ensured that President Assad could not lose power by sending in his troops and warplanes.
To this day Egypt, Syria and Jordan are suspicious of Palestinian independence, and if Israel vanished and was replaced by Palestine, all three might make claims to parts of the territory.
from a military perspective the Israeli view is that a non-Israeli force cannot be allowed to control these heights, as heavy weapons could be fired onto the coastal plain where 70 per cent of Israel’s population lives.
Iran has only 81 million. With limited habitable space, most live in the mountains; the great deserts and salt plains of the interior of Iran are no place for human habitation. Just driving through them can subdue the human spirit, and living in them is a struggle few undertake.
Iran holds what might be a trump card – the ability to close the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf through which passes each day, depending on sales, about 20 per cent of the world’s oil needs. At its narrowest point the Strait, which is regarded as the most strategic in the world, is only 21 miles across. The industrialised world fears the effect of Hormuz being closed possibly for months on end, with ensuing spiralling prices.
When Iraq was under the heel of Saddam, a powerful buffer separated Saudi Arabia and Iran; with that buffer gone, the two countries now glare at each other across the Gulf.
With Iran accused of backing the Houthi rebels, and Saudi Arabia supporting the Yemen government, the battle for influence in the Middle East continues between the two countries, hence Saudi Arabia’s dislike of the Iran nuclear deal.
Western legal codes and the Gregorian calendar were introduced and Islamic public institutions banned. The wearing of the fez was forbidden, the Latin alphabet replaced Arabic script, and he even granted the vote to women (two years ahead of Spain and fifteen years ahead of France). In 1934, when Turks embraced legally binding surnames, Kemal was given the name ‘Atatürk’ – ‘Father of the Turks’. He died in 1938 but subsequent Turkish leaders continued working to bring Turkey into the West European fold, and those that didn’t found themselves on the wrong end of coups d’état by a military
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This fierce row was not just about Syria and the Russian jet – it was about Turkey and Russia vying for influence in the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, and among the Turkic peoples in countries such as Turkmenistan. They both know that as Turkey continues to grow, it will seek to rival Russia in the ‘Stans’ and neither is minded to back down on issues of sovereignty and ‘honour’.
In NATO terms, Turkey is a key country because it controls the entrance to and exit from the Black Sea through the narrow gap of the Bosporus Strait. If it closes the Strait, which is less than a mile across at its narrowest point, the Russian Black Sea Fleet cannot break out into the Mediterranean and then the Atlantic.
President Erdog˘an’s remarks on Jews, race and gender equality, taken with the creeping Islamisation of Turkey, have also set alarm bells ringing.
Because the Arab states have not experienced a similar opening-up and have suffered from colonialism, they were not ready to turn the Arab uprisings (the wave of protests that started in 2010) into a real Arab Spring. Instead they soured into perpetual rioting and civil war.
When Hosni Mubarak was ousted as President of Egypt it was indeed people power that toppled him, but what the outside world failed to see was that the military had been waiting for years for an opportunity to be rid of him and his son Gamal, and that the theatre of the street provided the cover they needed. It was only when the Muslim Brotherhood called its supporters out that there was enough cover. There were only three institutions in Egypt: Mubarak’s National Democratic Party, the military and the Brotherhood. The latter two destroyed the former, the Brotherhood then won an election, began
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The liberals never had a chance. Nor do they now. This is not because the people of the region are radical; it is because if you are hungry and frightened, and you are offered either bread and security or the concept of democracy, the choice is not difficult.
Sykes–Picot is breaking; putting it back together, even in a different shape, will be a long and bloody affair.
Pakistan. From then until the eighteenth century various foreign invasions brought Islam to the subcontinent; however, east of the Indus River Valley a majority of the Hindu population resisted conversion, thus sowing the seeds for the eventual partition of India.
The jewel in this particular crown is the coastal city of Gwadar. Many analysts believe this strategic asset was the Soviet Union’s long-term target when it invaded Afghanistan in 1979: Gwadar would have fulfilled Moscow’s long-held dream of a warm-water port.
Islam, cricket, the intelligence services, the military and fear of India are what hold Pakistan together.
Plan B is to fall back across the Afghan border if required, and that requires a sympathetic government in Kabul. Hence geography has dictated that Pakistan will involve itself in Afghanistan, as will India.
The Afghan–Pakistani border is known as the Durand Line. Sir Mortimer Durand, the Foreign Secretary of the colonial government of India, drew it in 1893 and
they were Afghans and Pakistanis – and, as they told these new technologically advanced foreign invaders from America and Europe, ‘You may have the watches – but we have the time.’ They would wait out the foreigners no matter what was thrown at them, and in this they would be helped by elements in Pakistan.
