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

by Tim Marshall

Take, for example, China and India: two massive countries with huge populations that share a very long border but are not politically or culturally aligned. It wouldn’t be surprising if these two giants had fought each other in several wars, but in fact, apart from one month-long battle in 1962, they never have. Why? Because between them is the highest mountain range in the world, and it is practically impossible to advance large military columns through or over the Himalayas.

Former US Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin was mocked when she was reported as saying, ‘You can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska’, a line which morphed in media coverage to ‘I can see Russia from my house.’ What she really said was, ‘You can see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.’ She was right. A Russian island in the Bering Strait is two and a half miles from an American island in the Strait, Little Diomede Island, and can be seen with the naked eye. You can indeed see Russia from America.

the country’s biggest province. An area of rugged mountains and vast desert basins, Xinjiang is 642,820 square miles, twice the size of Texas – or, to put it another way, you could fit the UK, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Belgium into it and still have room for Luxembourg. And Liechtenstein.

In China the points of the compass are always listed in the order east–south–west–north,

Obama described Russia as ‘no more than a regional power’ in 2014 he may have been needlessly provocative, but he wasn’t wrong. The bars of Russia’s geographical prison, as seen in Chapter One, are still in place: they still lack a warm-water port with access to the global sea lanes and still lack the military capacity in wartime to reach the Atlantic via the Baltic and North seas, or the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.

Most analysis written over the past decade assumes that by the middle of the twenty-first century China will overtake the USA and become the leading superpower. For reasons partially discussed in Chapter Two, I am not convinced. It may take a century. 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.

There are flashpoints. The Americans have a treaty with Taiwan which states that if the Chinese invade the latter, the USA will provide arms, although on several occasions President Biden’s administration has hinted it would go further than that. 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.

Put simply, at the personal level, the arrival of Mr Trump is new and may be part of the cheapening of political dialogue in a new age of populist leaders, but at the strategic level, the USA is behaving now as the USA has behaved before.

But to the south and west many countries remain in the second tier of European power, partially because of their location. The south of Italy, for example, is still well behind the north in terms of development, and although it has been a unified state (including Venice and Rome) since 1871, the strains of the rift between north and south are greater now than they have been since before the Second World War.

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. It has worked brilliantly and created a huge geographical space now encompassing the biggest economy in the world.

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.

Prejudice against immigrants always rises during times of economic recession, such as recently suffered in Europe, and the effects have been seen right across the continent and resulted in the rise of right-wing political parties, all of which militate against pan-nationalism and thus weaken the fabric of the EU.

Europe’s traditional white population is greying. Population projections predict an inverted pyramid, with older people at the top and fewer younger people to look after them or pay taxes. However, such forecasts have not made a dent in the strength of anti-immigrant feeling among what was previously the indigenous population, which struggles to deal with the rapid changes to the world in which it grew up.

AFRICA’S COASTLINE? GREAT BEACHES, REALLY, REALLY lovely beaches, but terrible natural harbours. Rivers? Amazing rivers, but most of them are rubbish for actually transporting anything, given that every few miles you go over a waterfall. These are just two in a long list of problems which help explain why Africa isn’t technologically or politically as successful as Western Europe or North America.

Given that Africa is where humans originated, we are all African.

Africa’s head start in our mutual story did allow it more time to develop something else which to this day holds it back: a virulent set of diseases, such as malaria and yellow fever, brought on by the heat and now complicated by crowded living conditions and poor healthcare infrastructure.

Most of the continent’s rivers also pose a problem, as they begin in high land and descend in abrupt drops which thwart navigation. For example, the mighty Zambezi may be Africa’s fourth-longest river, running for 1,600 miles, and may be a stunning tourist attraction with its white-water rapids and the Victoria Falls, but as a trade route it is of little use. It flows through six countries, dropping from 4,900 feet to sea level when it reaches the Indian Ocean in Mozambique.

in Africa thousands of languages exist and no one culture emerged to dominate areas of similar size. Europe, on the other hand, was small enough to have a ‘lingua franca’ through which to communicate, and a landscape that encouraged interaction.

In recent years the fighting has died down, but the DRC is home to the world’s most deadly conflict since the Second World War and still requires the UN’s largest peacekeeping mission to prevent full-scale war from breaking out again.

Because it is located so far south, and the coastal plain quickly rises into high land, South Africa is one of the very few African countries that do not suffer from the curse of malaria, as mosquitoes find it difficult to breed there.

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 most dominant feature is the vast Arabian Desert and scrubland in its centre which touches parts of Israel, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Yemen and most of Saudi Arabia including the Rub’ al Khali or ‘Empty Quarter’. This is the largest continuous sand desert in the world, incorporating an area the size of France.

So London dusted down the maps, drew some lines and said the head of the Saud family could rule over one region, and the head of the Hashemites could rule the other, although each would ‘need’ a British diplomat to keep an eye on things. The Saudi leader eventually landed on a name for his territory, calling it after himself, hence we know the area as Saudi Arabia – the rough equivalent would be calling the UK ‘Windsorland’.

The US houses its growing fleet of drones in at least ten bases around the world. This allows a person sitting in an air-conditioned office in Nevada with a joystick to hit targets or transfer control to an operative near the target. But it also means the US needs to keep good relations with whichever country is housing the regional drone headquarters. For example, the signal sent from Nevada may need to travel through an underwater cable to Germany and then be sent up to a satellite belonging to a third country that sells bandwidth to the Pentagon. This is a reminder of the conceptual map of US power, which is needed in order to fully understand geopolitics today.

In December 2017 President Trump said the USA would now recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Congress had supported such a policy back in 1995 and voted for funds to move the US embassy. However, Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama all signed waivers every six months postponing the move and Trump had been following suit before abruptly changing his mind. The embassy was officially relocated in March 2018. The White House suggested it was still being impartial in the Palestine/Israel dispute and that this was simply a recognition of the obvious. It also said the move did not rule out East Jerusalem becoming the capital of a Palestinian state one day. It wasn’t seen that way by the Palestinians; to many it was confirmation of decades of suspicions that the USA favoured Israel, especially when, in early 2019, Trump also recognised Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights. But it was notable that although the Arab world condemned both actions, it quickly moved on.

The Elburz range also begins in the north, but along the border with Armenia. It runs the whole length of the Caspian Sea’s south shore and on to the border with Turkmenistan before descending as it reaches Afghanistan. This is the mountain range you can see from the capital, Tehran, towering above the city to its north. It provides spectacular views, and also a better-kept secret than the Iranian nuclear project: the skiing conditions are excellent for several months each year.

yet less than 5 per cent of its territory is in Europe. Most geographers regard the small area of Turkey which is west of the Bosporus as being in Europe, and the rest of the country, south and south-east of the Bosporus, as being in the Middle East (in its widest sense).

In the 1920s, for one man at least, there was no choice. His name was Mustafa Kemal and he was the only Turkish general to emerge from the First World War with an enhanced reputation. After the victorious powers carved up Turkey he rose to become president on a platform of resisting the terms imposed by the Allies, but at the same time modernising Turkey and making it part of Europe. 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 determined to complete Atatürk’s legacy.

By the late 1980s, however, the continued rejection by Europe and the stubborn refusal of many ordinary Turks to become less religious resulted in a generation of politicians who began to think the unthinkable – that perhaps Turkey needed a Plan B.

Different powers have invaded the subcontinent over the centuries, but none have ever truly conquered it. Even now New Delhi does not truly control India and, as we shall see, to an even greater extent Islamabad does not control Pakistan.

On 3 June 1947 the announcement was made in the House of Commons: the British would withdraw – India was to be partitioned into the two independent dominions of India and Pakistan. Seventy-three days later, on 15 August, they were all but gone. An extraordinary movement of people followed as millions of Muslims fled the new borders of India, heading west to Pakistan, with millions of Hindus and Sikhs coming the other way. Columns of people 30,000-strong were on the roads as whole communities moved. Trains packed full of refugees criss-crossed the subcontinent disgorging people into cities and making the return journey filled with those heading in the other direction. It was carnage. Riots broke out across both countries as Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and others turned on each other in panic and fear. The British government washed its hands and refused pleas from the new Indian and Pakistani leaders for the few troops still in the country to help maintain order.

Pakistan received just 17 per cent of the financial reserves which had been controlled by the pre-partition government. It was left with an agricultural base, no money to spend on development, a volatile western frontier and a state divided within itself in multiple ways.

The name Pakistan gives us clues about these divisions; pak means ‘pure’ and stan means ‘land’ in Urdu, so it is the land of the pure, but it is also an acronym. The P is for Punjab, A is for Afghania (the Pashtun area by the Afghan border), K for Kashmir, S for Sindh and T stands for ‘tan’, as in Baluchistan.

Its relationship with China would dominate its foreign policy, but for one thing – the Himalayas. Without the world’s tallest mountain range between them, what is a lukewarm relationship would probably be frosty. A glance at the map indicates two huge countries cheek by jowl, but a closer look shows they are walled off from one another along what the CIA World Factbook lists as 1,652 miles of border.

To its captive population it says it is a strong, munificent, magnificent state standing up against all the odds and against the evil foreigners, calling itself the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). It has a unique political philosophy of ‘Juche’, which blends fierce nationalism with Communism and national self-reliance.

Japanese governments are trying a variety of measures to reverse the decline. A recent example is using millions of dollars of tax payers’ money to fund a matchmaking service for young couples. Subsidised konkatsu parties are arranged for single men and women to meet, eat, drink and – eventually – have babies.

Two hundred years after the beginning of the struggle for independence, the Latin American countries lag far behind the North Americans and the Europeans. Their total population (including the Caribbean) is over 600 million, and yet their combined GDP is equivalent to that of France and the UK, which together comprise about 133 million people. They have come a long way since colonialism and slavery. There is still a long way to go.

The independence movements began in the early 1800s, led by Simón Bolívar of Venezuela and José de San Martín of Argentina. Bolivar in particular is etched in the collective consciousness of South America: Bolivia is named in his honour, and the left-leaning countries of the continent are loosely tied in a ‘Bolivarian’ ideology against the USA. This is a fluctuating set of anti-colonialist/pro-socialist ideas which often stray into nationalism as and when it suits the politicians who espouse them.

To this day most people still live close to the coastal areas, despite the dramatic decision made in the late 1950s to move the capital (previously Rio de Janeiro) several hundred miles inland to the purpose-built city of Brasilia in an attempt to develop the heart of Brazil.

Around 25 per cent of Brazilians are thought to live in the infamous favela slums. When one in four of a state’s population is in abject poverty it is difficult for that state to become rich. This does not mean Brazil is not a rising power, just that its rise will be limited.

The word ‘arctic’ comes from the Greek arktikos, which means ‘near the bear’, and is a reference to the Ursa Major constellation whose last two stars point towards the North Star.

As for the first person to reach the ‘North Pole’, well, that’s a tricky one given that, even though there is a fixed point on the globe denoting its position, below it the ice you are standing on is moving, and without GPS equipment it is hard to tell exactly where you are. Sir Edward Parry, minus a GPS, tried in 1827, but the ice was moving south faster than he could move north and he ended up going backwards; but he did at least survive.

In 2008 the United States Geological Survey estimated that 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids and 90 billion barrels of oil are in the Arctic, with the vast majority of it offshore. As more territory becomes accessible, extra reserves of the gold, zinc, nickel and iron already found in part of the Arctic may be discovered.

There currently are at least nine legal disputes and claims over sovereignty in the Arctic Ocean, all legally complicated, and some with the potential to cause serious tensions between the nations. One of the most brazen comes from the Russians: Moscow has already put a marker down – a long way down. In 2007 it sent two manned submersibles 13,980 feet below the waves to the seabed of the North Pole and planted a rust-proof titanium Russian flag as a statement of ambition. As far as is known, it still ‘flies’ down there today. A Russian think-tank followed this up by suggesting that the Arctic be renamed. After not much thought they came up with an alternative: ‘the Russian Ocean’.

Greenland, with its population of 56,000 people, has self-government but remains under Danish sovereignty.

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.

history should spare a thought for the first animal to go into orbit. She was a placid little dog named Laika (Barker) after the public heard her barking on the radio in the run-up to the mission. Attached to sensors, and in a tiny space suit, she made at least one orbit of Earth before succumbing to heat and stress. A popular Soviet children’s book at the time told her story with a happy ending. In reality her death aboard Sputnik 2 helped to prove that humans could live in space.

Our atmosphere doesn’t just suddenly vanish, it becomes thinner over hundreds of kilometres. NASA and other US organizations define space as beginning 80 kilometres up from sea level, whereas the Swiss-based Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, which ratifies astronautical records, says it is 100 kilometres. Other definitions are available, but none can pinpoint an exact distance.

However, until the Moon Treaty is ratified, the Outer Space Treaty stands, and an enterprising chap in America called Dennis Hope spotted the loophole. In 1980 he filed a declaration of claim with the UN, took their lack of response as acquiescence, and started selling plots of land on the Moon for $25 an acre. For this you received a fancy certificate of ownership. Hope claims he has sold more than 611 million acres. If you bought one for any reason other than as a novelty gift, then it was the triumph of Hope over sense. And I have a bridge to sell you.

Military astro-strategists tend to divide the geography of the issue into four parts. They use different descriptions, but Dolman’s categorizations are useful for a broad-brush view. First there is Terra – the Earth and its immediate airspace, up to the limit after which a craft could go into orbit around the Earth without being powered. Above this is Earth Space – the region from lowest-possible orbit up to geosynchronous orbit, which aligns with the Earth’s rotation. After this is Lunar Space – from geosynchronous orbit to the Moon’s orbit. From there you enter Solar Space – everything in the solar system beyond the Moon’s orbit.