Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World (Politics of Place, #1)

by Tim Marshall

The land on which we live has always shaped us. It has shaped the wars, the power, politics, and social development of the peoples that now inhabit nearly every part of the earth.

When the Ottoman Empire began to collapse, the British and French had a different idea. In 1916, the British diplomat Colonel Sir Mark Sykes took a grease 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 northeast. 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.

Many analysts say that only a strong man could unite these three areas into one country, and Iraq had one strong man after another. But in reality the people were never unified; they were only frozen with fear. In

Because Israel is so small it has no real “strategic depth,” nowhere to fall back to if its defenses are breached,

distance from the West Bank border to Tel Aviv is approximately ten miles at its narrowest; from the West Bank ridge, any half-decent military could cut Israel in two. Likewise, in the case of the West Bank, Israel prevents any group from becoming powerful enough to threaten its existence.