The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography

by Tim Marshall

When it comes to foreign policy and defence, a country’s starting point is not what it intends to do but what it is capable of, and that is often limited by geography.

By the time Cook showed up it was clear that the fabled terra australis incognita had been found. The term, meaning ‘unknown southern land’, originates from the ruminations of the Greek map-maker Claudius Ptolemy in about 150 CE. He reasoned that if the world was a sphere, and on the top of it was the land he knew of, it followed that to prevent it from toppling over there had to be land underneath. Some of this was spot on. Australia is still thought of as ‘down under’ in Europe.

The history books say that Britain was on the winning side, but in reality everyone lost – and lost in a manner which led to the Second World War.

NATO has a clause in its charter – ‘An attack on one is an attack on all’; it was never envisaged that an attack on one might be by a fellow NATO ally.

There is a view that assumes the great powers will seek to dominate space to achieve commercial and military dominance. This is realpolitik for space – astropolitik. It starts from an understanding that space is not featureless, but is, in the words of the astropolitik theorist Professor Everett Dolman, ‘a rich vista of gravitational mountains and valleys, oceans and rivers of resources and energy’.

Halford Mackinder’s famous 1904 ‘Heartland’ geopolitical theory about control of the world beginning, ‘Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland.’ Dolman’s version is: ‘Who controls low Earth orbit controls near-Earth space. Who controls near-Earth space dominates Terra. Who dominates Terra determines the destiny of humankind.’

As the sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke said, every revolutionary idea passes through three phrases characterized by the views of its critics: 1) ‘It’ll never work – it’s pure fantasy’; 2) ‘It might work, but it’s not worth doing’; 3) ‘I said it was a good idea all along.’