Prisoners of Geography Masood

PRISONERS OF GEOGRAPHY Reader's Club 1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
OVERVIEW 2
CHAPTER SUMMARIES AND ANALYSES 4
Introduction-Chapter 4 4
Chapters 5-7 15
Chapter 8-Conclusion 24
KEY FIGURES 33
Tim Marshall 33
Vladimir Putin 33
Barak Obama 33
Ali 34
Simon Bolivar 34
Kemal Ataturk 34
Roald Amundsen 34
Theodore Roosevelt 34
Colonel Sir Mark Sykes 35
THEMES 36
INDEX OF TERMS 39
IMPORTANT QUOTES 44
ESSAY TOPICS 53
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OVERVIEW
Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World , by
Tim Marshall, was published in 2015 and became a New York Times bestseller and
a Sunday Times #1 bestseller. The book describes how geography—mountains,
plains, rivers, coastlines, climate, and natural resources—shape the fate of nations.
Each chapter explains geography’s effects on a particular country or region. The
book also considers how other influences—religion, culture, language, ethnicity—
interact with local geography.
Chapter 1 explores Russia, where the North European Plain, which opens a path
from western European armies directly into Russia, has contributed to the Russians’
desire to control a buffer zone of countries between it and the rest of the world.
Moving eastward, Chapter 2 describes the variety of natural formations—including
the Tibetan Plateau, the Himalayas, jungles, deserts, and the Pacific Ocean—that
delineate the borders of China, even as the country’s coastal location allows it to
reach out to rest of the world through trade and its military.
Chapter 3 examines the United States, with its splendid isolation between two
oceans, excellent river system, and productive agriculture—all of which have
contributed to its generally stable growth as a nation with a common language and
heritage. By contrast, in resource-rich Western Europe, featured in Chapter 4, the
main rivers don’t connect and mountain ranges divide regions, resulting in the
emergence of separate nation-states with different languages and a propensity for
war.
Chapter 5 considers how geographical challenges, from the Sahara Desert in the
north, to the dense tropical jungles of the midsection, to the arid and mountainous
south, have stymied Africa’s development. Local plants and animals are hard to
cultivate; thousands of languages divide the populace; and arbitrary political
borders pit ethnicities against one another.
Chapter 6 delves into the Middle East, where mountains alternate with deserts and
borders push enemies together. Chapter 7 focuses on another region rife with
conflict: Pakistan and India. The two nations, officially separated in 1947, continue
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to dispute the Kashmir region in the north of India, while each also faces both
internal and external pressures.
Japan and Korea are the subjects of Chapter 8. Divided after World War II, North
and South Korea rely on alliances with larger nations and a man-made border to
preserve a precarious peace. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Sea of Japan, the
nation of Japan has drawn together a series of isolated islands to create an
economic and military force that far exceeds its physical size.
Chapter 9 deals with Latin America’s geographic and political challenges, including
bureaucratic neglect of the Amazon rainforest and a lack of arable land to feed a
growing population. Finally, Chapter 10 focuses on another region crucial to the
global climate debate: the Arctic. Global warming has melted the oceanic ice pack,
opening the area to mining and drilling and setting the stage for conflicts over
resource extraction.
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CHAPTER SUMMARIES AND ANALYSES

Introduction-Chapter 4
Introduction Summary
Tim Marshall begins his survey of the effects of geography by noting that “the land
on which we live has always shaped us” (1). Mountains, deserts, rivers, plains, and
other features affect politics, warfare, and the development of societies. Russia, for
example, worries continuously about Ukraine because Ukraine has few mountains;
thus it potentially offers Russia’s enemies “an encouraging territory from which to
attack Russia repeatedly” (1). By the same token, China and India, the two most
populous nations in the world, have almost never come into conflict with each
other despite sharing a 2,500-mile border “because between them is the highest
mountain range in the world” (2).
Marshall first became interested in the effects of geography on political, economic,

and social development while reporting on the conflicts in the Balkans in the 1990s.
He writes, “I watched close at hand as the leaders of various peoples, be they
Serbian, Croat, or Bosniak, deliberately reminded their ‘tribes’ of the ancient
divisions […] in an area crowded with diversity” (3). He goes on to examine the
importance of the Ibar River in shaping those divisions, historically and during his
time there. Beginning in the late 14th century, following defeat by the Ottomans,
Serbians retreated to one side of the Ibar River and Muslim Albanians moved into
the area on the other side. Well into the twentieth century, the river continued to
serve as a de facto divide between ethno-religious groups, and it has since
become the border between Serbia and an independent Kosovo. Mountains also
played a role in the Kosovo War, constraining NATO’s response to Serbian
aggression.
Marshall again saw “how crucial the physical landscape was” (4) when reporting
from Afghanistan shortly after the 9/11 attacks. He was following the Northern
Alliance troops as they prepared to march on Kabul, when a huge sandstorm blows
in, followed by torrential rain. All movement ground to a halt in the resulting mud.
He notes that “even with today’s modern technology, climate still dictates the
military possibilities of even the world’s most powerful armies” (4).
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In yet another example of the role of geography in conflict, Marshall describes how
during the Syrian civil war in 2012, one village set fire to a nearby enemy village to
chase them out of the valley, so that “the valley could be joined onto other land
that led to the country’s only motorway, and as such would be useful in carving out
a piece of contiguous, viable territory” (5).
Marshall argues that many regional disputes erupt in warfare today because the
“colonial powers used ink to draw lines that bore no relation to the physical
realities of the region” (6). Moreover, although technology has removed many
geographical barriers and the internet has made the world smaller, “geography [...]
remains critical to our understanding of the world today and to our future” (7).
Chapter 1 Summary: “Russia”
The largest country in the world, Russia is 6,000 miles wide, spanning two
continents and covering 11 time zones from Poland to the Pacific Ocean. The Ural
Mountains divide European Russia in the west from the Asian portion to the east.
Western Russia is part of the North European Plain, a vast flatland that stretches
from France all the way to the Urals and makes it easy for European armies to
enter Russia.
Although the flatlands provide relatively easy access to Russia, the invading forces
need extremely long supply lines to reach Moscow. Still, many have tried: since
1605, Poland, Sweden, France, and Germany have sent forces into Russia. Over
the past two centuries, Marshall notes, “the Russians [have fought] on average in or
around the North European Plain once every thirty-three years” (13).
Russia’s traditional defense has been offense: absorbing nearby countries. In the
1500s, Tsar Ivan the Terrible expanded Moscow’s reach to more defensible
borders, from the Arctic Sea in the north to the Urals in the east and the Caucasus
Mountains in the south, buttresses against invading Mongol hordes. Over time,
Russia drove east of the Urals to conquer Siberia; in later centuries, Russia surged
west, conquering Ukraine and the Baltic states.
By the end of World War II, Russian Soviet forces had captured the rest of Eastern
Europe, making the Soviet Union “simply the Russian Empire writ large” (16). Forty
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years later, however, the Soviet Union fell. The western NATO alliance began to
absorb the newly independent countries, although Russia still retains economic
and military alliances with former Soviet states to the south and east, such as
Armenia and Kazakhstan.
Though twice the geographic size of the US or China, Russia has a relatively small
population, with only 144 million citizens—many ethnically different from Russians,
with little allegiance to Moscow. In addition, many Chinese have begun to move
into Russia’s sparsely populated Siberia. Despite its small population, Russia still
struggles with food shortages due to a short growing season and the logistical
difficulties of distributing supplies throughout such a large territory.
Russia has always suffered from the lack of a warm-water port. Its Arctic and Far
East docks are frozen for months of the year, and it has no access to the Indian
Ocean and difficulty projecting power in the western Pacific, where the sea lanes
are dominated by Japan.
Russia needs Ukraine in its orbit to provide a much-needed warm-water port and to
protect against invasion from the West. Europe and the US efforts to get Ukraine to
join them sparked a Ukrainian uprising that overthrew the Russian-friendly
president and replaced him with a pro-Europe leader. Russia promptly annexed
Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, where Russian naval forces anchor at Sebastopol,
“Russia’s only true major warm-water port” (23). In the event of war, however, this
Black Sea port is in a weak position, as Russian forces, to enter the Mediterranean,
would have to sail through the narrow Bosporus straits, controlled by Turkey and
easy to blockade. Further north, Russia’s Baltic fleet also would struggle to break
free as it would need to sail through the narrow straits of Denmark in order to
reach the Atlantic.
To strengthen its position in Ukraine, Russia has supported ethnic Russian

uprisings in eastern and southern Ukraine. To the northwest, in the Baltics—
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, former Soviet satellites but now NATO members—
ethnic Russian populations have sometimes suffered discrimination, which could
give Russia a pretext to try to retake those countries, should it decide to shore up
its exposed western border. However, NATO would respond with force; for now,
it’s a stalemate.
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Another “gap in the wall” (29) between Russia and the West is Moldova. Southeast
of Romania's Carpathian Mountains lies a plane, “a flat corridor into Russia” (31)
straddled by Moldova, an independent country that looks east to Moscow for trade.
Russia has sought to intimidate Moldova by supporting separatist Moldovan
Russians and their breakaway state of Transnistria.
One way that Russia exerts its power over Moldova, as well as throughout the
world, is its control of one of the world’s largest supplies of natural gas. Marshall
notes that “leaving to one side nuclear missiles,” gas and oil are Russia’s “most
powerful weapons” (32). One-fourth of Europe’s natural gas supply comes from
Russia. The US, currently a leading exporter, is working with Europe to develop
ports and terminals to supply them with liquid natural gas and reduce their
dependence on Russian supplies. To guard against lost revenue, Russia "is
planning pipelines heading southeast and hopes to increase sales to China” (35).
Chapter 2 Summary: “China”
China’s history begins in the North China Plain. The Yellow and Yangtze rivers
often flood the highly fertile region, which “is now one of the most densely
populated areas in the world” (41), heavily industrialized, and populated with
roughly a billion people, mostly ethnic Han Chinese. This heartland is surrounded
by geographic obstacles: deserts to the north, the Tibetan Plateau and Himalayas
in the west, and ocean to the east and south. Thus, as Marshall notes, “The
heartland is the political, cultural, demographic, and—crucially—the agricultural
center of gravity” in China (42).
Feeling threatened from without, ancient China “chose the same strategy as
Russia: attack as defense” (43), expanding outward its control of nearby regions. To
connect inner regions, in 609 China completed the Grand Canal, which connects
the Yellow and Yangtze rivers. Despite its efforts, in the 1200s, Mongols invaded
from the north and ruled China for 90 years.
Although strongly protectionist, in later centuries, China began to trade with

Europe, opening up trading posts on the Chinese coast: “It remains a feature of
China to this day that when China opens up, the coastland regions prosper but the
inland areas are neglected” (44). In the 1700s, China expanded to the west,
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conquering the vast desert-and-mountain region of Xinjiang, whose restive Muslim

population provided a buffer zone between China and Russia. Despite its efforts to
protect itself, in the 1800s and 1900s China is again controlled by outsiders, this
time by European powers and Japan.
After World War II, China descended into civil war; "the Communists emerged
victorious and the nationalists withdrew to Taiwan” (45), an island off the coast.
Communist China quickly annexed Tibet and reinforced its control of Xinjiang.
Under the Communist regime, “the country remained desperately poor [...] but
unified” (46). In order to “turn [Mao’s] Long March to victory into an economic
march to prosperity,” Mao’s successors retained a Community government but
began to move toward a market economy: “socialism with Chinese
Characteristics,” as Deng Xiaoping put it (46).
China is currently attempting to reinforce its northern border with Mongolia and
Russia by encouraging Chinese to migrate to those sparsely populated regions. To
the southwest, China borders on Vietnam, with easy military access but few
reasons to squabble, and Laos and Burma, whose jungles and mountainous
frontier are hard to cross.
Further west, the Himalayas divide China and India. China controls Tibet, the
source of China’s major rivers, lest India try to cross the mountains, take Tibet, and
threaten the Chinese heartland. Millions of Han Chinese have moved to Tibet,
bringing both modernization and domination. To the northwest lies Kazakhstan,
crossed by the ancient Silk Route trading corridor; this frontier is porous but quiet
and far from the Chinese heartland.
China’s Xinjiang Province, ever restive with independence movements, borders on

eight countries and therefore holds strategic importance. After rioting there in
2009, “Beijing responded in three ways: it ruthlessly suppressed dissent, it poured
money into the region, and it continued to pour in Han Chinese workers” (52).
China also is reviving the old trade route through Xinjiang to move goods west
toward Europe.
To protect its coastline to the east and south, and to wield greater control over the
nearby seas, China is building up its navy. Already it claims the South China Sea,
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and it wants to control all of the ocean west of the “first island chain,” namely, the
Kurils, Japan, the Ryukyus, Taiwan, and the Philippines, where narrow passages
can easily be blockaded and most of the region is allied with the US.
China claims Taiwan as a province but it lacks the military strength to enforce it;
meanwhile, the US has promised to protect the island nation if China attacks
without provocation. China also has disputes with neighboring countries over
ownership of small islands in the South China Sea. It has begun developing some
of these islands as military bases: “The move underlies China’s intention to be the
rule maker in the region and for that it will both court and threaten its neighbors”
(62).
Also on China’s to-do list are construction of major ports in Bangladesh, Burma,
Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, “investment that buys it good relations, the potential for its
future navy to have friendly bases to visit or reside in, and trade links back home”
(63). Gas and oil pipelines link China to Burma, and an overland trade route down
through Pakistan is being developed. China also invests heavily in Africa in a quest
“for minerals and precious metals” (64).
Chapter 3 Summary: “United States”
The US has three large sections: the East Coast Plain, the Mississippi Basin, and
the desert-and-mountain West. These are protected in the north by the sparsely
populated Canadian Shield, to the southwest by desert, and on the west, south and
east by seas. America also “contains hundreds of millions of guns, which are
available to a population that takes its life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness very
seriously” (69), as well as interlinked armed forces, national guards, and state and
local police.
When the American colonists first arrived, they were hemmed in by the
Appalachian Mountains, but after winning their independence from the British, they
began to move to the west, all the way to the Mississippi River. Beyond the river
was French territory, which the US bought in 1803, doubling the new nation’s size
with vast tracts of fertile land. Known as the Louisiana Purchase, this territorial
acquisition also provided “mastery over the greatest inland water transport route in
the world”—the Mississippi River and its tributaries—with “more miles of navigable
river than the rest of the world put together,” creating inland trade routes “many
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times cheaper than road travel” (72) and helping to unite the widely dispersed
population.
The United States continued to expand its borders through the Transcontinental
Treaty of 1819, in which Spain gave Florida to the US and acknowledged American
control of western territory north of the 42nd parallel: “The United States had
reached the Pacific” (73). As the US population grew and moved west, so too did its
territorial ambitions. In 1846, the US declared war against Mexico in order to take
control of Texas and the Southwest.
The California Gold Rush of 1849, along with the Homestead Act of 1862—which
gave 160 acres in the new territories to anyone who works it for five years—pushed
settlement even further westward. European immigrants flocked to America. In
1867, the US purchased Alaska from Russia, and in 1869 the transcontinental
railroad is completed, reducing cross-country travel time from months to a week.
By the late 19th century, the US controlled an impressive expanse of land, spanning
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but its coastal borders and, more importantly, its
trade were still vulnerable. Spain still controlled major islands in the Caribbean Sea,
including Cuba, just south of Florida, and could blockade trade coming from the
Mississippi Basin. Thus, Marshall writes, “In 1898, the US declared war on Spain,
routed its military, and gained control of Cuba, with Puerto Rico, Guam, and the
Philippines thrown in for good measure” (77). That same year, the US annexed
Hawaii, “protecting the approaches to its own West Coast” (77).
In 1907 the US Navy sent a fleet of 16 battleships around the world on a tour,
visiting many nations and letting the world know that America could project power
anywhere on the planet. In 1940, the US acquired Britain’s Western Hemisphere
naval bases in exchange for 50 ships that helped Britain during World War II. With
Europe and Japan devastated by the war, America was “the last man standing” and
“needed to control the world’s sea-lanes, to keep the peace, and get the goods to
market” (78). To that end, it built bases “all over the Pacific” (79).
After the war, America retained military forces in Germany and led the formation of
the NATO alliance to protect Western Europe against Soviet incursions. Soon, it
had forces stationed in “Iceland, Norway, Britain, and Italy” and “dominated the
North Atlantic and the Mediterranean as well as the Pacific” (80).
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By 1991, the Russian threat had subsided with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
China, however, had grown in strength, and its neighbors—“Japan, Thailand,
Vietnam, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and others” (83)—were
vulnerable to falling under Chinese sway and becoming less friendly to America:
“Hence, we will see the United States increasingly investing time and money in
East Asia to establish its presence and intentions in the region” (83). In recent
years, the US 3rd Fleet has moved many of its ships from the Eastern Pacific to
back up the 7th Fleet in the Western Pacific, and the US Marines have deployed a
forward base in Northern Australia. With the outbreak of war an ever-present
possibility, the US “must reassure its allies it will stand by them and guarantee
freedom of navigation in international areas, while simultaneously not going so far
as to draw China into a military confrontation” (85).
Elsewhere, US interests in the Middle East will slacken as America’s own oil and
gas resources continue to grow. America’s recent attempt to engineer democratic
“nation building” in the region has failed to reduce tribal animosities. In the
Western Hemisphere, principal concerns include keeping the Panama Canal open
and keeping other countries out of Cuba. In Africa, the US will compete with China
for access to the continent’s resources.
With its vibrant economy and huge military, America will continue for decades to
play a dominant role on the world stage.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Western Europe”
Europe is warm and rainy enough for nearly year-round agriculture, yet cold
enough in winter “to kill off many of the germs, which to this day plague huge parts
of the rest of the world” (92), and its many navigable rivers and natural ports make
trade easy: “These are the factors that led to the Europeans creating the first
industrialized nation states” (93).
Natural barriers help define the borders of Europe’s various nation states and
cultures, and have shaped their uneven development. For example, Spain and
Portugal are walled off by the Pyrenees, whereas France is outlined “by the
Pyrenees, the Alps, the Rhine, and the Atlantic Ocean” (93) and contains many
rivers suitable for the transport of goods. The Danube flows through southeast
Europe, where it forms the borders of several countries, including Slovakia,
Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria. Northern Europe has more
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coastal plains for agriculture, and it industrialized sooner, than Southern Europe,
which lags behind economically. For instance, Spain’s isolation and poor soil have
hindered its development, while Greece’s mountainous terrain makes large-scale
agriculture and trade difficult. Moreover, its hundreds of populated Aegean Sea
islands are expensive to protect from invasion. During the Recession of 2008,
Greeks become prominent recipients of bailout money bestowed on Southern
Europe by Germany and the wealthy northern countries of the European Union
(EU).
In the northeast, Poland, a flat corridor which has long been used by armies moving
into and out of Russia, has emerged from centuries of foreign rule to become
independent and prosperous. Fearing Russian resurgence, Poland joined NATO in
1999, along with several other former Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe.
Yugoslavia’s states, broken apart by war in the 1990s, today look to the west,
except for Serbia, which tilts toward Russia “via the gravitational pull of language,
ethnicity, religion, and energy deals” (101). Beyond that, the Balkans, including
Bulgaria and Romania, have pulled away from Russia and now belong to NATO
and/or the European Union (EU).
To the north, Scandinavia, except for Denmark, is not part of NATO. Sweden,
however, has suffered mock Russian air attacks and has begun to consider
breaking its centuries-long neutrality.
France’s natural borders protect it from attack, except in the northeast, “at the point
where the flatland of the North European Plain becomes what is now Germany”
(102). Through that corridor, Germany—which also abuts the Plain and has in the
past feared invasion from either France or Russia—invaded France three times
between 1870 and 1940.
The EU was formed, in part, as an attempt to stop the recurring warfare between
France and Germany. It also welds together most of Europe under a single
currency, the Euro. On its introduction in 1999, the Euro was supposed to be
protected by member nations, who were to keep “levels of debt, unemployment,
and inflation within certain limits” (105). However, some nations, such as Greece,
“were cooking the books” (105). With the 2008 recession, these problems came to
the fore and bitter arguments broke out among EU member nations.
Should the EU fail, “the old fears of Germany will reappear, especially as it is now
by far the most populous and wealthy European nation” (106). For its part,
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Germany, not wishing to lose its best trade partners, has floated the idea “about
whether the eurozone countries should form a genuine fiscal union” (106).
Germany also has the option to increase trade with Russia.
Britain, somewhat isolated off the coast of Europe, enjoys good “farmland, decent
rivers, excellent access to the seas and their fish stocks” (107). It is “close enough
to the European continent to trade, and yet protected by dint of being an island
race” (107). Britain carefully monitors continental power politics and sometimes
“inserts itself between the great Franco-German alliances in the EU” (107).
Britain’s democratic traditions and civil liberties may stem from its relative safety as
an island nation distant from the mainland’s wars; this has permitted “less
despotism than the countries across the channel” (108). Its navy, and its leadership
in the Industrial Revolution, allowed Britain to rule a global empire for centuries.
Britain still enjoys a strategic advantage due to geography, as it guards the sea
lanes from northern Europe to the Atlantic.
Britain is “angered by the amount and type of laws enacted by the EU” (109) and
feels frustrated by the European tendency to funnel Middle Eastern and African
immigrants it doesn’t want straight to England, so it has begun to pull away from
the EU. Other EU countries, shaken by massive immigration and terrorist attacks,
have begun checking travel documents despite the EU’s notion of open borders
among its member nations. Moreover, large Muslim populations within Europe
have affected national politics, with parliaments having to consider their Muslim
constituencies when debating civil rights or policy toward the Middle East.
Should the EU or NATO fail, “we would return to a Europe of sovereign nation
states, with each state seeking alliances in a balance of the power system” (111). In
the end, “history tells us how much things can change in just a few decades, and
geography tells us that if humans do not constantly strive to overcome its ‘rules,’ its
‘rules’ will overcome us” (113).
Introduction-Chapter 4 Analysis
Although outsiders may dismiss Russia as an aggressive, expansive empire-

builder, the Russian perspective reveals a different picture. Russia lost tens of
millions of people during the two world wars, and over the centuries it has suffered
invasions from Mongols, Swedes, Poles, Turks, French (once), and Germans (twice).
It’s no wonder, then, that Russia yearns to be surrounded by friendly client states.
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Russia also wants its navy to breathe free. To that end, it has built up its Arctic fleet,
which figures prominently in Chapter 10. Russia’s recent aggression toward its
neighbors’ air and sea patrols may, in part, be a way of testing outsiders for gaps or
weaknesses that Russia can exploit during a crisis.
China similarly appears to be a belligerent empire builder, but it too faces

geographic challenges and constraints. As a country finally reaching its true
technological potential, China trades vigorously with the world and searches for
resources to help it further develop. Fearing entrapment within the East and South
China Seas behind a hostile chain of pro-US islands, China is on a program to build
up its navy so that it may expand economically with less chance of being
blockaded. Whether it holds designs on its neighbors remains to be seen.
China turned inward in the 1400s, abandoning its nascent international trade
routes, while the Middle East—for a time the world’s tech leader— began to
stagnate. Meanwhile, European nation states, battling over territory, developed
more advanced weaponry, culminating in the Industrial Revolution. With no
outsiders to check them, European states expanded outward in a quest for empire,
dividing up Africa, the Middle East, and much of Asia among themselves.
Northern Europe’s centuries of dominance may in part be due to its Protestant

revolution, which arguably freed entrepreneurial and creative minds from the
strictures of Catholic bureaucracy. Marshall briefly mentions this religious
movement as a possible explanation for the ongoing divide between the EU’s
northern members and its recently bailed-out, Catholic-dominated southern tier.
The EU is, in a way, the latest attempt by Germanic people to revive the Roman
Empire. Chased from their homeland near Ukraine in the late 300s by the
advancing Huns, the Germanic Ostrogoths begged sanctuary within Roman-
controlled areas. Once admitted, they became citizens and began to participate in
government; the last ruler of the Western Roman Empire was Germanic. The
Roman Empire collapsed, but the Germanics made several attempts over the
centuries to revive it, beginning with Charlemagne in 800 and the Holy Roman
Empire that waxed and waned during the next 800 years, then continuing with the
Austrian and German empires of the 19th century, passing through the ugly
conquests of the Nazi Third Reich, and arriving today at the European Union. If they
can hold the EU together, perhaps Germany will finally achieve the centuries-old
dream of a revived Roman empire in Europe.
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Even as the Germans have sought to rebuild an empire in Europe, Americans have
pursued their own “manifest destiny” in building a new empire in a “new world.”
Although the United States’ geographic isolation has largely protected it against
the types of invasions that have embroiled Russia, China, and Europe, its political
and economic ties to the global system have drawn it into various world conflicts.
Moreover, whereas in the past the US has concerned itself with protecting its
coastal borders and sea-based trade routes, today’s debates over security center
on its southern border with Mexico. In the absence of natural barriers in the south—
and in contrast to Russia and China, which have sought to fortify their barriers by
conquering or intimidating neighboring nations—the US is considering creating a
physical barrier along the border. The US is also seeking to reduce its vulnerability
to vagaries of the global economic system, particularly its dependence on Russia
and the Middle East for gas and oil, by exploring options to exploit more of its own
natural resources, a move that, like the border “wall,” has generated considerable
debate.
Geography is by no means the only influence on national destinies. The human

character, through tribalism, ambition, and inventiveness, also makes its mark on
history. Distrust between nations, the desire to better one’s country even at the
expense of others, and the practical needs of a populace get nearly as much
mention by Marshall as geographical factors do. In that sense, geography becomes
a starting point for a more general discussion on how humans negotiate with, and
plan for and against, each other in the game of foreign affairs.
Chapters 5-7
Chapter 5 Summary: “Africa”
Africa is a huge continent. Much larger than it appears on a standard world map,
Africa is three times the size of the US. Five thousand miles long and 3,000 miles
wide, Africa is mostly desert in the north and jungle in the middle, while the south
has high plains, desert, and a semi-arid Mediterranean-type region much like that
on the far-northern coast.
Despite its great size, Africa has been a difficult region for humans to develop.
Aside from the isolation of the various regions, there are few natural harbors; the
rivers are interrupted with waterfalls, which “has hindered contact and trade
between regions” (119); and there are few arable plants or domesticable animals.
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Moreover, its crowded population and hot interior provide breeding grounds for
such diseases as malaria, yellow fever, and HIV.
Over the centuries, European and Arab traders struggled with penetrating the
African interior, but they were able to engage in trade at the edges of the
continent, mainly buying salt and slaves. Europe eventually did conquer Africa’s
interior, and for a time it dominated the continent, divvying it up among the various
European powers into colonies with arbitrary borders. In the mid-twentieth century,
African countries freed themselves from colonial rule but they retained the colonial
borders, which contained conflicting ethnic groups that still fight for political
control.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in central Africa, is an example of a

country mapped out arbitrarily, exploited for its mineral wealth by outsiders, and
consigned to near-continuous internal conflict that has caused the death of six
million people “during wars that have been fought since the late 1990s” (124).
Bordering countries also fight civil wars that spill over into the DRC. Despite its
great resources, the DRC is the second-poorest country in the world.
Surrounded by desert and seas, and, without trees, for centuries unable to build a
true blue-water navy, Egypt has always been no more than a regional power.
Today, with support from the US, it boasts the largest military in the Middle East;
though Egypt no longer battles Israel, it fights insurgents and oversees the Suez
Canal. Egypt is nurtured by the Nile River, and most of Egypt’s people live within a
few miles of it. Neighbor Ethiopia plans to build a dam across the Blue Nile, a
source of the Nile River; unless carefully managed, the project may cause the two
countries to “come to blows over the region’s major source of water” (128).
Nigeria, in West Africa, is the largest African nation by population and the largest oil
producer. The southern part is tropical, while the northern highlands are drier. The
oil comes from the south, and “Nigerians in the north complain that the profits from
that oil are not shared equitably across the country’s regions” (129). The Islamist
group Boko Haram operates in the north, taking over territory as it nurtures the
region’s resentments.
Well to the south along the coast lies Angola, “sub-Saharan Africa’s second-largest
oil producer” (132). It’s bordered on the west by the Atlantic Ocean, on the east by
rugged land, to the north by jungle, and to the south by desert. The western
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portion sustains agriculture; offshore oil fields send more than half of their product
to China.
Following independence from Portugal in 1975, Angola immediately fell into

internecine fighting, “disguised as a civil war over ideology,” between the Mbundu
tribe, supported by Russia and Cuba, and the Bakongo and Ovimbundu tribes,
supported by the US and South Africa. The “socialist” Mbundu tribe won and
promptly “enriched themselves at the expense of the people” (133).
Foreign involvement and exploitation continue in Africa. American and European

companies predominate, “but China is quickly catching up” (133), extracting
minerals and oil and developing port facilities and railroads. In the process, Kenya
is becoming the dominant economic power in East Africa, with Tanzania in second
place, while Niger develops its oil fields and Angola’s main port receives minerals
by rail from the DRC for shipment to China.
Angola’s capital, Luanda, boasts a new airport and houses upward of 200,000
Chinese workers. Marshall notes, “Thousands of these workers are also trained in
military skills and could provide a ready-made militia if China so required” (135).
China protects stable leaders who cooperate on development projects, defending
them in the UN despite outstanding international arrest warrants. The US is aware
“that it now plays second fiddle to China in business terms across the continent”
(136).
South Africa also works with China; the second-largest African economy thrives
due to its “access to two oceans; its natural wealth of gold, silver, and coal; and a
climate and land that allow for large-scale food production” (137). The dry climate
makes it hard for malaria to get a foothold. South Africa’s many ports and advanced
rail and road systems improve trade with neighboring states. The country also
boasts a well-armed military, which deters invasion and helps control the nearby
sea lanes. Not wishing to be left out of “the spoils of war” (138) in the mineral-rich
but eternally strife-torn DRC, South African forces participate in the UN operation
there, putting it at odds with forces from Uganda, Burundi, and Rwanda (139).
Overall, Africa is beginning to overcome its difficult geography, making economic

progress that may finally pull it out of its historic doldrums.
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Chapter 6 Summary: “The Middle East”
The Middle East extends “from the Mediterranean Sea to the mountains of Iran”
(143), and from the Black Sea in the north to the Arabian Sea in the south. In
between are “vast deserts, oases, snow-covered mountains, long rivers, great
cities, and coastal plains” (143), beneath which lie huge reserves of oil and gas. The
Arabian Desert, “the largest continuous sand desert in the world” (143), is sparsely
populated and, until the arrival of colonial powers, was largely unmarked by
borderlines.
As in Africa, European colonial powers established arbitrary national borders in the

Middle East. Before Europe colonized the region, “there was no state of Syria, no
Lebanon, nor were there Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Israel, or Palestine”
(145). With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire early in the twentieth century,
Europe carved up the region for its own purposes, the Sykes-Picot line separating
French and British control. These unnatural borders are still fought over by
competing locals. Marshall notes that “an attempt is now being made to redraw
them in blood” (142), as the Islamic State spearheads a push to reshape the region.
Another cause of strife is the ancient divide between the Muslim majority Sunni and
minority Shia sects over how to practice Islam and how to determine leadership of
the religion. The Sunni and Shia sects are further subdivided, causing even more
conflict.
Iraq, historically parsed into three sections (Assyria, Babylonia, and Sumer, today
known as Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra), was forcefully united under British rule and
has since struggled under a series of strongman leaders. Meanwhile, the Kurds, in
mountainous northern Iraq, fought for their own independent homeland. In 1988,
Saddam Hussein purged the rebels; “Up to one hundred thousand Kurds were
murdered and 90 percent of their villages wiped off the map” (148). With the
overthrow of Hussein in 2003, a “de facto Kurdistan began to take shape [...]
Baghdad will not again rule the Kurds” (148).
After World War I, Britain granted control of newly founded Transjordan to the
Hashemite tribe, while the Saudis were given rein over the Arabian Peninsula to
the south. In 1948, Transjordan became independent Jordan, mostly populated by
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Palestinians who felt no allegiance to the Hashemite rulers. Meanwhile, one million
Syrian and Iraqi refugees, escaping recent conflicts, crowded into eastern Jordan,
“putting a huge strain on its extremely limited resources” (150).
Lebanon was originally a Christian stronghold created by France on the

Mediterranean coast; by the 1950s, it was majority-Muslim. A civil war rocked
Lebanon between 1975 and 1990. Next door, “Syria is another multi-faith, multi-
confessional, multi-tribal state that fell apart at the first time of asking” (152). The
French originally gave control of the militia and police to the minority Alawites, who
today rule over the Sunni majority; bloody conflict has ensued. As Marshall notes,
“when the nationwide uprising began in 2011 there were scores to be settled” (153).
Arab populations long frustrated by failures of governance have been attracted to

the fundamentalist promises offered by al-Qaeda and Islamic State (ISIS) militants.
Military success and territorial conquests in Syria and Iraq made ISIS “the ‘go to’
jihadist group, drawing thousands of foreign Muslims to the cause” (155).
ISIS’s bloody ways soon alienated many Middle Easterners, especially Shia and
other minorities, whom ISIS tended to kill when possible. In 2014, US, British,
French, and Russian forces, with support from the Iraqi military, attacked ISIS, and
ISIS began to lose its territory. Many ISIS fighters fled to Libya, where they hoped to
establish a new front.
In Iraq, Sunnis, the erstwhile rulers, are now caught between Kurds in the north and
Shia in the south, both of whom control the oil fields. Sunnis elsewhere must deal
with simmering jihadist movements within their own countries. Jordan, for example,
could easily descend into the same chaos as in Syria, while Saudi Arabia, having
made inroads against internal al-Qaeda cells, now faces insurgents in neighboring
Yemen.
Israel, often in conflict with its neighbors since its founding in 1948, lately contends
with Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank as well as in the nearby Gaza
strip. Israelis do not want an enemy army perched on the heights of the West Bank,
where it can fire into Israel, which is so narrow that “any half-decent military could
cut Israel in two” (165). To the south, the Sinai desert protects Israel from Egypt,
with whom it has a peace treaty; to the east, across a large desert, Israel and
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Jordan also are at peace. To the north, Lebanese Hezbollah militants harass Israel
with occasional rocket fire, while in the northeast, Israel commands the Golan
Heights, which look down into Syria, who otherwise might be tempted to invade
Israel, in part for its coastal access.
Iran’s 78 million people live mostly in the mountainous regions; “the great deserts
and salt plains of the interior of Iran are no place for human habitation” (166).
Despite having the world’s third-largest oil reserves, Iran suffers from
mismanagement, international sanctions, and mountain ranges that restrict
transport. The mountains protect the country—except in the south and west, which
are guarded by marshland and the Persian Gulf—but they also divide Iranians into
many hard-to-control groups and minorities.
The threat of a nuclear-armed Iran frightens the Arab world; a US-brokered deal
whereby Iran promises to limit its bomb-making program has been derided in the
region as appeasement. Both Iran and Saudi Arabia have ambitions to dominate
the Middle East, and war between them is an ugly possibility.
When the defeated Ottoman Empire was carved up by Europe at the end of World
War I, Turkey, led by Kemal Ataturk, rebelled and formed its own independent
nation. Ataturk westernized the country, hoping to make it fit in with Europe. A
member of NATO, Turkey has applied for, but never received, membership in the
European Union, in part because only a small portion of the country is in Europe
while the rest lies in the Middle East. Turkey’s “record on human rights, especially
when it comes to the Kurds” (171) is another issue, along with its weak economy
and the fact that Turkey is 98 percent Muslim, which troubles majority-Christian
Europe.
Turkey has begun to see itself as a regional power, taking sides in conflicts in
Egypt and Syria, and perhaps harboring larger ambitions. Geographically the link
between Europe and the Middle East, Turkey also controls the Bosporus Straits,
which connect the Black Sea, and its Russian fleet, to the Mediterranean. Turkey
buys gas from Russia and would like some from Israel, but it is on strained terms
with both countries. Moreover, President Erdogan’s “remarks on Jews, race, and
gender equality, taken with the creeping Islamization of Turkey, have set alarm
bells ringing” (175) among Western nations.
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Marshall contends that in the contemporary Middle East, “religious beliefs, social
mores, tribal links, and guns are currently far more powerful forces than ‘Western’
ideals of equality, freedom of expression, and universal suffrage,”; he argues, “if
you are hungry and frightened, and you are offered either bread and security or
the concept of democracy, the choice is not difficult” (178).
Chapter 7 Summary: “India and Pakistan”
India and Pakistan are neighbors and bitter enemies with nuclear weapons. India’s
geographical size and population of 1.3 billion both greatly exceed those Pakistan,
and India’s economy vastly outperforms its neighbor’s. Pakistan wouldn’t be a
threat to India except for its nuclear arsenal. Mountains to the north, seas to the
south, deserts to the west, and jungles to the east protect the two nations from
external threats but not from each other.
Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan share the northeast section of the region, but none
of them pose a threat to Pakistan or India. Nepal and Bhutan are landlocked and
poor, while Bangladesh, surrounded by India except for its southern border on the
Bay of Bengal, suffers regular flooding.
Over the centuries, widely diverse peoples have crowded into the region, and it
has been invaded many times, “but none have ever truly conquered it” (184).
Muslim invaders made inroads in the region, but “east of the Indus River Valley a
majority of the Hindu population resisted conversion” (185). Moreover, governing
the area is difficult because of “the ancient disparities of the languages of the
Punjab and Gujarat, the mountains and the deserts, and Islam and Hinduism” (185).
In 1947, Britain divided its south Asian holdings into India and Pakistan and then
left: “millions of Muslims fled the new borders of India, heading west to Pakistan,
with millions of Hindus and Sikhs coming the other way” (185). Chaos and riots
erupted, and “at least a million people died” (186). Pakistan, in turn, is divided into
two sections separated by over a thousand miles of India’s territory; in 1971, “after
much bloodshed, East Pakistan seceded, becoming Bangladesh” (186).
India, despite its diverse peoples, is politically more unified and democratic than
Pakistan, “an Islamic state with a history of dictatorship” (187). With “five distinct
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regions, each with their own language” (187), Pakistan struggles for unity. Most of
the population lives in the north, but most of the resources—minerals and gas, as
well as the port of Gwadar, being built up to move energy overland to China and
Chinese products back through Gwadar to the world—are in the south and west.
India and Pakistan fought eight wars between 1947 and 1999, mainly over Kashmir,
which both sides claim. Full control of Kashmir would give India a doorway into
central Asia and deny Pakistan completion of its economic corridor to China. Also,
the headwaters of the Indus River, which provide Pakistan with most of its water,
pass through Indian Kashmir and its growing population.
The “Line of Control” border between each country’s portion of Kashmir suffers
from periodic violent flare-ups. India has a much larger military, but Pakistan can hit
India’s main highway and cut off its supplies. Plans for attack and counter-attack
across the Punjab plains to the south keep military thinkers up at night. The danger
of nuclear war is ever-present.
When not engaged in full-out war, each country has sought to sow discontent
within the other’s borders. For example, Pakistan has supported “terrorist attacks
inside India such as the Mumbai massacre of 2008” (191).
Each country has tried to bring nearby Afghanistan to its side, but Pakistan has the
advantage of tribal affiliation with the Afghans, and it has backed the Taliban there.
The colonial Durand Line, which still sets the border between Pakistan and
Afghanistan, is largely ignored.
For its support of the Taliban, who attacked the US on 9/11, Pakistan was
threatened by the US, and it agreed to support the War on Terror, forcing Pakistan
“to turn on the very Taliban leaders they had trained and formed friendships with in
the 1990s” (196). Battles have erupted between Taliban and Pakistani forces, and
“up to fifty thousand Pakistani civilians have been killed” (196), but elements within
the Pakistani government continue quietly to support the Taliban.
American forces, distrusting Pakistan’s loyalties, slipped into Pakistan to kill Osama
bin Laden, while Taliban forces crossed into northern Pakistan, where they have
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caused trouble for their former mentors. The Taliban are not easy to dislodge, as
they simply fade back into the mountainous Pashtun border region.
India and China pester each other in small ways along their mountainous border.
India supports Tibetan independence; as a pushback, China supports Maoists in
Nepal. China also claims a portion of northeastern India, while nearby liberation
movements each want a piece of the Indian state of Assam.
Playing economic catch-up to China, India “has nine thousand miles of internal
navigable waterways, reliable water supplies, and huge areas of arable land" (203).
Although it produces a lot of coal and some oil and gas, India must import much of
its energy, and increasing trade may pressure the two countries—who once could
safely ignore each other across forbidding borderlands—to engage at sea. India
has aligned itself with several Southeast Asian countries “to check China’s
increasing domination of the South China Sea”; India is especially concerned about
“the friendly port China has built at Gwadar in Pakistan” (205).
Despite these other external pressures, as Marshall contends, “with India, it always
comes back to Pakistan, and with Pakistan, to India” (205).
Chapters 5-7 Analysis
Africa and the Middle East suffer from distinct geographic limitations that don’t
plague Europe, the United States, or even China and Russia. These limits prevent
rapid economic development and tilt the regions toward war.
Marshall refers to the book Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, which
points out that Africa’s north-south orientation across the Equator creates distinct
climatic regions that generate hard-to-traverse landscapes. The Sahara Desert
blocks North African coastal cities from the deep interior, where jungles add to the
difficulty of transporting traffic and goods. The southern tip of Africa resembles the
far-northern edge in that both have Mediterranean climates, semi-arid foliage, and
good growing seasons. South Africa, however, is somewhat isolated, as there are
few navigable rivers crisscrossing the region to help with trade and
communication. Marshall also mentions Diamond’s contention that Africa’s wild
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animals are uniquely difficult to tame and domesticate, which complicates the
development of agriculture on the continent.
Yet, human factors are often the most vexing constraint on Africa’s development.
For example, the DRC contains important mineral deposits coveted in the West, but
due to contending armies continuously battling for control of these riches, the
country’s development is nearly at a standstill. In short, Africa’s potential is hard to
unearth or develop, and warfare undercuts many efforts to do so.
The Middle East alternates between sand deserts and mountains. Originally the
“cradle of civilization,” and also called the Fertile Crescent, where agricultural
civilization first began 10,000 years ago, the area surrounding the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers has, over time, slowly dried up. Oil is a boon to the region, but its
wealth tends to flow through relatively few hands. A strong middle class, essential
for the growth of general prosperity, has yet to emerge in most areas.
Meanwhile, religious and ethnic strife upend the stability of Pakistan, Afghanistan,
Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, while an insurgence in Yemen threatens
to start a war between the region’s military powerhouses, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
The possibility of nuclear war hangs over everyone’s heads.
All three areas exemplify the human tendency to separate along sectarian and
ethnic lines. Geography, through physical barriers as well as limited natural
resources, can exacerbate the cultural and political divides, as groups fight over
territory and economic spoils, even when groups might benefit more by
cooperating.
Chapter 8-Conclusion
Chapter 8 Summary: “Korea and Japan”
North Korea is a small country caught between China, to the north, and South
Korea. Run as “a dynasty shared by one family and one party” (210), North Korea is
a Communist dictatorship that rules over an impoverished nation of about 25
million with “arbitrary arrest, torture, show trials, internment camps, censorship, rule
of fear, corruption, and a litany of horrors” (210). Isolated, playing regional powers
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against one another, and acting “the crazed, powerful weakling to good effect”
(210), North Korea constitutes an ongoing, dangerous problem that no one has
been able to solve.
Divided from China by the Yalu River, the Korean peninsula has often fallen victim
to outside forces, including Mongol, Chinese, and Japanese empires. At the end of
World War II, Korea was freed from Japanese control but divided along the 38th
parallel between a Communist north, guarded by Russian troops, and a pro-
American south. In 1950, after the US and Russia removed their forces, North Korea
invaded South Korea, and, moving across the western coastal plain, “raced down
the country almost to the tip of the southern coast” (213). Although the US didn’t
need South Korea strategically, it also didn’t want its Asian allies to lose faith and
“hedge their bets or go over to the Communist side” (214). America sent troops to
Korea, where they quickly pushed the North Korean military back to the Chinese
frontier. Communist China, in turn, did not want the US military at its border: “thirty-
six months of fierce fighting ensued with massive casualties on all sides before
they ground to a halt along the current border” (214), roughly on the original 38th
parallel demarcation line, “and stuck they remain” (214) in an uneasy truce.
The Korean Peninsula, with mountains on the east and plains on the west, divides
more easily that way than north and south. Thus, the major populations centers lie
in the west and face off across the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Half of South Korea’s
50 million people live in or near their capital, “the megacity of Seoul” (215), a mere
35 miles south of the border, while 10,000 North Korean artillery pieces aim down
at them from the hills just north of the border.
Thus, according to Marshall, “a major conflict is never more than a few artillery
rounds away” (215). Within the first hour of a war, the North might lob 100,000 to
500,000 explosive shells at the south’s major urban area. The North Korean army,
one of the world’s largest, could quickly invade the southern lowlands. Eventually
the South, aided by the US, would likely prevail, but China might once again
intervene.
Were the two Koreas somehow to unify, Japan—despite its fears of a powerful
Korean peninsula—might support it as a move against China. Most of the costs
would be borne by the industrial South, since the North is much less developed,
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but the North’s rich natural resources, including coal, zinc, copper, and iron (218),
would help. A renewal of war between the two, however, “could wreck the
economies of the region.” South Korea, with few natural resources but a massive
industrial base and seas on three sides, has built a proper navy to help it deal with
any future conflicts, including against Japan, a traditional enemy.
“The Japanese are an island race” (220) with 127 million people spread across four
large islands and thousands of smaller ones. Its distance from the Asian landmass
“is among the reasons why it has never been successfully invaded” (220). Japan is
mountainous, so the people crowd together mainly along the narrow coasts,
especially in Tokyo, “the biggest megacity in the world” with nearly 40 million
people. Poor in mineral resources, Japan “remains the world’s largest importer of
natural gas, and the third-largest importer of oil” (222).
During the early twentieth century, in a militant search for resources, Japan
overtook Korea and northern China, “conducted a full-scale invasion of China in
1937” (222), and invaded northern Indochina. In response, the US embargoed
Japan’s oil. Japan retaliated by attacking the US at Pearl Harbor, and “then swept
on across Southeast Asia, taking Burma, Singapore, and the Philippines, among
other territory” (223). The US needed rubber and other resources from that region,
so it entered World War II by launching total war against Japan.
Geography helped determine the outcome. US forces, liberating Southeast Asia

island by island, finally reached Okinawa on the outskirts of Japan. Foreseeing
massive troop losses in an invasion of Japan’s mountainous terrain, the US instead
dropped nuclear weapons on two of the nearest cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Japanese surrendered.
America “helped them rebuild, partially as a hedge against Communist China,” and
Japan “became a global economic powerhouse” (223), its limited Self-Defense
Forces watched over by 30,000 US troops. With the growing threat posed by
China, the US has relaxed its grip, “prepared to accept a remilitarized Japan” (223).
Despite their differences, South Korea and Japan need each other, along with help
from outside, to make cautious the Chinese behemoth. The US military presence in
both countries, then, is likely to remain for years to come.
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Chapter 9 Summary: “Latin America”
Latin America’s geography—from Mexico to the southern tip of South America—

limits the region’s economic success. Latin America’s “total population [...] is 600
million people, yet their combined GDP is equivalent to that of France and the UK,
which together comprise 120 million people” (232).
Wealthy European colonists established cities near the coast, with roads inland to
collect resources, but because the interior of the region, especially the disease-
infested jungles, is of little interest to the Europeans, they did not invest in building
roads that cross from coast to coast.
Mexico is limited by harsh northern deserts, dense southern jungles, and

mountains in between; its coasts on the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico have few deep
harbors. Brazil’s “internal regions will remain isolated from one another” (231).
Argentina and Chile, “despite their wealth of natural resources, will still be farther
away from New York and Washington than are Paris and London” (231). Moreover,
South America’s Andes mountain range runs 4,500 miles, cutting off western
coastal areas from the rest of the continent. East of the Andes, in the temperate
southern region, the land is fairly flat and good for agriculture and construction, but
the northern areas are dominated by mountains and jungles.
One overall advantage is that nearly all Latin American countries speak Spanish or
Portuguese. A drawback is that the borders between countries descend from
arbitrary decisions made centuries ago in Europe. Add the mix of African and
European immigrants living among native peoples, and a culture clash results. On
top of that, “a fluctuating set of anticolonialist/pro-socialist ideas that often stray
into nationalism” (234) generates instability.
Bolivia in 1879 lost a war with Chile and gave up its Pacific coastline, making it
landlocked: “This in turn has exacerbated the severe divide between the mostly
European lowlands population and the mostly indigenous peoples of the
highlands” (234). Several countries lay claim to portions of their neighbors, and
wars have erupted over these disputes, the latest in 1995 between Ecuador and
Peru.
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The land that makes up California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas belonged to
Mexico until 1848, when the US took over the land in the Spanish-American War.
Mexico’s modern-day northern border lies on difficult desert terrain; this helps
prevent massive migration to America, but the border is “porous—a problem with
which successive US administrations will have to deal” (236). By 2050, the largest
ethnic group in America’s southern border states will be Hispanic.
Internally, “the rugged terrain still prevents Mexico from developing as it would
like” (237). To the south lie Belize and Guatemala, but their terrain also is difficult
and unprofitable, and Mexico is too busy trying to develop its industry and oil
reserves, while quelling various internal conflicts, to embark on military adventures.
One of Mexico’s biggest problems began elsewhere, in Colombia, where, in the

1990s, the US launched a campaign against drug cartels, “closing down many of
the air and sea drug routes” (238). The cartels responded by moving contraband
north through Central America and Mexico and smuggling it across the US border.
Drug-gang turf wars sprung up, “with the winners using their new power and
money to infiltrate and corrupt the Mexican police and military and get inside the
political and business elites” (238). According to Marshall, “Mexico is now in the
grip of what is almost a civil war” (239).
Panama, in Central America, is so thin that a canal is built across it in 1914 to

connect Atlantic and Pacific trade, shaving 8,000 miles off the sea journey. China
wants Venezuelan oil, but Venezuela and the US are at loggerheads, and
Venezuela has cut ties with Panama, an American ally. China therefore has
partnered with Nicaragua to build a canal across that nation, hoping this will ensure
access to South American resources.
Elsewhere, “China is lending huge sums of money to Latin American governments”

(243), hoping they’ll support China at the UN and elsewhere. China also offers
them an alternative to America as a trading partner. The US has “used force in
Latin America almost fifty times between 1890 and the end of the Cold War” (244).
This rankles the locals, who welcome the Chinese opportunity.
Brazil, the largest country by far in South America, with “an area bigger than the
twenty-eight EU countries combined” (245), also struggles to prosper because of
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its geography. One-third of its area is Amazon rainforest, with soils that support
jungle but little else; to the south lie the Brazilian Shield highlands, which contain
productive agricultural land but poor interconnections. The coastal cities are walled
off by mountains. Moreover, “Brazil’s seven largest ports combined can handle
fewer goods per year than the single American port of New Orleans” (247). A
quarter of Brazil’s population lives in poverty-stricken slums.
According to Marshall, “Brazil is working on its transport infrastructure, and the

newly discovered offshore gas reserves” (247), but this will take time. The country
wants to establish an EU-like common market with its neighbors, but, again, the
difficult South American terrain stymies interconnection. Brazil’s foreign policy is
nonconfrontational, so there are few border disputes.
Argentina has some of the best geography in Latin America for development, with
large agricultural plains and rivers that flow toward the main port of Buenos Aires.
Though economic and political instability have stifled Argentina’s growth, shale oil
and gas could provide it with energy “for the next 150 years with excess to export”
(250).
Chapter 10 Summary: “The Arctic”
At the top of the world, the Arctic ice cap is melting, probably due to human-
caused global warming. This has opened the Arctic Ocean to exploitation of its
resources. Russia is well ahead in the race for Arctic riches.
Explorers long dreamed of finding a short route from the Atlantic through the Arctic
to the Pacific; many died trying until “the great Norwegian explorer Roald
Amundsen charted his way across” (258) the fabled Northwest Passage above
Canada and Alaska in 1905. Today, as the ice recedes, ships during summer ply
that route or a northeastern lane off the Russian coast.
Experts believe that “vast quantities of undiscovered natural gas and oil reserves
may be in the Arctic region,” along with “extra reserves of the gold, zinc, nickel,
and iron already found in part of the Arctic” (262). Several countries border the
Arctic—Russia, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Greenland, and the US
in Alaska, all of whom make up the Arctic Council—but many of their claims to the
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region are disputed by other Council members. More distant countries argue that
the region is part of the international commons and open to all.
Most Arctic Council nations have beefed up their armed forces in the area. Russia
engages in massive arctic war games, and it possesses the world’s largest
icebreaker fleet, with 32 ships. The US, on the other hand, has only one icebreaker,
and it no longer maintains a military presence on Iceland, the first line of defense
should Russia send its arctic fleet south into the Atlantic during a crisis.
The US also has not ratified the UNCLOS treaty, the UN Convention on the Law of
the Sea, “effectively ceding two hundred thousand square miles of undersea
territory in the Arctic” (268) that it otherwise could claim as an Economic Exclusion
Zone (EEZ).
The greatest threats, however, come from the Arctic itself: “dark, dangerous, and
deadly” (270). International law and dispute resolution are well settled, and the
“Arctic Council is composed of mature countries” (269). It may be better to reach
reasonable agreements quickly on the territorial issues, so all can work together,
protecting each other in the harsh polar environment.
Conclusion Summary
Overcoming the limitations of geography is an age-old dream, but many challenges

remain. Russia still fears invasion across its plains. India and China, separated by
the Himalayas, may take to the seas to fight. Flooding from global warming, along
with desertification elsewhere, will likely increase, causing wars and mass
migrations, while battles may break out over scarce fresh-water resources.
A new frontier, space, presents its own physical challenges: “in space, too, we will
plant our flags, ‘conquer’ territory, claim ground, and overcome the barriers the
universe puts in our way” (276). We can work together beyond the Earth, but
according to Marshall, “we are still imprisoned in our own minds, confined by our
suspicion of the ‘other’ […] There is a long way to go” (277).
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Chapter 8-Conclusion Analysis
The devastation left by two world wars provided the great powers with a sharp
reminder: Direct conflict can devastate not just armies, but entire nations. The
proxy war in North Korea and the careful dancing by major powers around the
resources of South America and the Arctic feature prominently in the final three
chapters of the book.
A proxy war is a battle fought between two powers in a place geographically

distant from both. This land must be important enough to fight over but far enough
away so that the skirmish doesn’t flare up into a much larger contest. Proxy wars
are especially important in the nuclear age, when any set-to can escalate into total
annihilation.
Notable proxy wars have taken place in recent decades. In Korea in the early
1950s, Communist China supported the North Korean army against South Korean
troops backed by US forces trying to quell Communist expansion. In Vietnam in the
1960s and 1970s, the US similarly battled Marxists in a small tropical country far
from the real enemy, Soviet Russia, which supported Communist North Vietnam. In
Afghanistan in the 1980s, the tables were turned as Soviet colonial forces fought
local rebels who were provisioned and trained by the US.
Proxy battles of one type or another have also been waged, off and on, between
US interests in Latin America and those of other countries. In 1962, America and
Soviet Russia nearly approach nuclear war over Russian missiles found in Cuba, off
the Florida coast. The Soviets agreed to remove the missiles if the US pulled its
own nuclear-tipped weapons from Turkey, which borders Soviet territory.
A more subtle conflict involves US, Russian, and Chinese economic interests in
Latin America. Both Russia and China are courting the socialist Venezuelan
government, while the US campaigns against the government with words,
diplomatic pressure, and supplies to the rebels. Elsewhere, America profits from
economic development contracts with several Latin American nations, but China
lately has made counter-offers, increasing competition.
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The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 stipulates that European powers must no longer try
to colonize Latin America. Trade, on the other hand, is permitted. This gives China
a fairly free hand in offering development projects to the region. Apart from
backroom arm-twisting and the occasional black-ops assassination, the most
America can do is improve its offers to the countries involved.
In the far north, the US lacks a significant icebreaking fleet, which would appear to
be a disadvantage in the push for polar resources. If the Arctic is melting, however,
countries may not need as many such vessels. On the other hand, Russia’s
icebreakers help ensure that its Arctic naval bases can remain open for longer
periods each year.
The Russians, notes Marshall, “are even considering building a floating nuclear
power plant capable of withstanding the crushing weight of ten feet of ice” (269).
These power plants would be towed to cities of up to 200,000, where they can
provide power, heat, or desalinated sea water. In August 2019, the Russians
launched the first such power plant.
Also in 2019, US President Trump floated the idea of America buying Greenland
from Denmark. The notion was ridiculed—sovereignty shouldn’t be for sale, argue
the naysayers, and if Greenland is valuable enough to attract American interest, it’s
probably too important to sell—but it points up the importance of Arctic access. The
US in particular, though it already claims a part of the Arctic in Alaska, is somewhat
late to the polar power game and needs to improve its hand.
Even if the US were merely to station a larger military mission in Greenland, both it
and Denmark would stand to gain, especially in any shoving match that might erupt
with Russia. Greenland is part of the GIUK Gap (Greenland, Iceland, United
Kingdom), a narrow region of the North Atlantic through which Russia would likely
try to deploy its arctic navy during wartime. Moreover, the US oil industry is well
equipped to assist Denmark in developing its oil reserves off the northern
Greenland coast. The idea for America to buy Greenland is thus merely the first
signal that the island will soon become a major piece in the polar game.
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KEY FIGURES
Tim Marshall
Author Tim Marshall is a British foreign affairs journalist, editor, and commentator at
Sky News, the BBC, and LBC radio. He has written five books on world events.
Vladimir Putin
Peter the Great founded the Russian empire in 1721; he also resisted the Swedish
military threat from the west, improved the naval presence in the Black Sea to push
back against the Muslim Ottoman Empire in the south, improved the military, and
reformed the bureaucracy.
Russia’s leader in the early years of the twenty-first century, Vladimir Putin, has
worked on similar projects. He, too, has pushed back against European and NATO
adventurism, especially in Ukraine, where he responded to the overthrow of a
Moscow-friendly regime by retaking the Crimean Peninsula and fomenting
rebellion among ethnic Russians in Ukraine’s eastern provinces. He also has put
pressure on the western border by encouraging Russians in Moldova to press for
independence. Moreover, like Peter, Putin has made improvements to the navy
and its seaports.
With the same understanding of border issues as Peter the Great, Putin has tried to
build a more powerful Russia behind secure borders that can withstand the ever-
present threats from Europe and the Islamic south.
Barak Obama
Regardless of their differences on domestic policy, US chief executives tend to

think alike when it comes to foreign affairs. President Obama continued this
tradition by promoting American interests, especially the quest for economic ties
and the desire to extend democratic values to other nations. He was critical of
Chinese occupation of Tibet; as Russia tried to puff itself up, he put it down by
calling it a “regional power”; he negotiated restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program;
and he criticized corruption and human-rights violations in Africa.
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Ali
One of the original disciples of Islam, Ali was set to inherit founder Muhammad’s
leadership, but he and his sons were assassinated. Shia Muslims believe the
genuine line of religious leaders should have passed through Ali as he was the
successor appointed by Muhammad. Sunni Muslims, on the other hand, believe
that there was no appointed successor, but rather that leadership was meant to be
decided through an election. Shias and Sunnis often clash, which destabilizes the
Middle East.
Simon Bolivar
Bolivar led South America away from colonial rule and toward self-government. To
this day, his legacy is cited by anti-American, pro-socialist groups in the region,
including in Venezuela, Bolivar’s homeland, where a failed socialist regime clings
to power.
Kemal Ataturk
Ataturk was a reformer who, after World War I, wrested the dying Ottoman Empire’s
rump state of Turkey away from European forces. He then reformed and
modernized the new nation, democratizing it and restricting Islamic influence in
governance to make it more European. Only lately, as Turkey’s institutions become
more Islamic, have Ataturk’s reforms begun to unwind.
Roald Amundsen
Amundsen was the first explorer to sail into the Arctic Ocean near Greenland and
emerge through the Bering Strait off Alaska. His achievement realized the age-old
dream of a Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. However, the reality
of a Northwest Passage was postponed due to weather for nearly a century, until
global warming had melted enough of the polar ice cap to make summer passage
practical for shipping.
Theodore Roosevelt
In the early 1900s, President Roosevelt changed the world’s perception of the US.
He sent a fleet of 16 battleships on a world tour, and he insisted on America’s right
to police the Western Hemisphere. The Roosevelt administration marks the
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moment when America emerged as a major player on the world stage. The US’s
ability to project military and economic power helped shape recent world history.
Colonel Sir Mark Sykes
Toward the end of World War I, Englishman Sykes and his French counterpart,
François Georges-Picot, divided up the Middle East’s failing Ottoman Empire with a
straight line through the desert, the Sykes-Picot Line. Today the line still demarks
the border between countries including Iraq and Syria, lately riven by strife. The
Sykes-Picot Line is emblematic of European colonialism and its lack of regard for
local conditions, which has led to many wars as regional peoples fight for control
across arbitrary borders, not only in the Middle East but in Africa, Asia, and
elsewhere.
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THEMES
How Geography Shapes Power
One country wants to attack another for its resources, but a huge mountain range
blocks the way. Another nation yearns to expand to both sides of a wide river, but
its neighbors easily thwart the efforts of the invaders to ferry themselves across. A
third state wishes to improve its economy, but high ridges and hot deserts make
transport difficult, and thick jungles harbor malaria and resistance movements.
Sometimes the terrain can be too nice. Russia is a large and powerful nation with a
serious weakness on its western border, namely, the North European Plain that
sweeps across Poland and into Russia, creating a highway for invading armies.
Thus, Russia has been very aggressive, over the centuries, in defending its borders
and, where possible, absorbing nearby countries into a zone of protection against
outsiders.
Africa, though the second largest continent with over a billion occupants, is one of
the poorest regions on Earth, due in part to its geography. The continent straddles
the Equator, where tropical jungles thrive, while the regions to the north and south
are dry and often forbidding, and transit and communication across the continent
are challenging. Rivers are plentiful but usually broken by waterfalls, making vessel
transit difficult. The local plants and animals are nearly impossible to domesticate,
which limits farming. Oil production and minerals are among the few bright spots.
Sometimes geographical features create surprising advantages. The warring

nations of Europe developed technology that enabled several European countries
become major colonial powers. The US lies isolated thousands of miles from its
European trading partners, but that distance also protects it from invasion, while its
fruitful central basin provides agricultural plenty and a set of wide, navigable rivers
for trade, helping the nation grow into a superpower.
How Human Nature Shapes Power
Nearly as important as geography is the human factor. A nation must feed its
people and protect its treasures, and sometimes, through necessity or greed, a
country will be tempted to venture across borders into its neighbors’ backyards,
searching for more reserves of wealth. Even if a country resists this temptation, it
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must nonetheless guard against other nations who may, for whatever reason,
launch an attack.
These incursions are a given in international relations. Beyond that, what matters is
the quality of play, in the manner of a chess game. Each side must see to its own
best interests; its geographical and economic situations will set limits; and leaders
must choose the best option among those available. In this respect, leaders tend to
behave rationally, much like businesses or consumers who review the available
marketplace choices before making a purchase.
The results, of course, can be bloody, but this doesn’t change the need for
strategic thinking. After reporting from 40 countries, the author describes the
decisions made by local governments in a way that suggests that they do, indeed,
try to advance their countries’ interests by playing as good a game as they can.
The Trouble with Artificial Borders
Although natural borders—mountains, rivers, deserts, marshlands—can make trade

more difficult, they have advantages. They tend to create cohesive, ethnically
distinct groups while also preventing armies from invading. Artificial borders, on the
other hand, can lead to internecine conflict that hobbles a nation regardless of its
other geographic advantages.
The great European Powers developed powerful military technology and used it to
conquer lands in the Western Hemisphere, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. For
their own purposes, they divided these regions up, often placing straight lines
between neighboring colonies as simple solutions to territorial disputes between
colonial powers, without considering the cultural or geographic features of the
colonies they were creating.
After World War II, most of these colonies gained independence, but the artificial
borders remained in place, splitting apart ethnic groups in some place and
clumping together enemy tribes in others. Thus, fights erupted over control of the
new countries. Wars in Central Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and South America
often ignite over this issue, making more difficult the efforts of former colonies to
rise up from their past and participate fully in the prosperity of the modern age.
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Transcending the Limits
Technological improvements have helped people cut roads through mountains,

dam rivers for irrigation, sail across giant oceans, and fly across deserts and
jungles. Nations dig ever deeper as they mine for metals and energy. In these
ways, humans push back against the limits imposed by geography.
While such technological advances can be used for war—China’s construction of

islands in the South China Sea as naval bases, for example—it also can be used for
peaceful trade, as with China’s planned transit routes and pipelines to Pakistan and
its ports. The Arctic Council has looked ahead to the economic development of the
polar region, arranging treaties that limit possible points of conflict between
member nations. In South America, a nascent common market may soon improve
transportation infrastructure among its countries.
At a certain point, it becomes cheaper to buy other’s resources than to conquer

them. As humanity reaches out to the planets and stars, overcoming new physical
obstacles and building outposts in space—and as people advance prosperity
among peoples right here on Earth—the technical means of cooperation may
indeed prove more compelling than the ancient lure of war.
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INDEX OF TERMS
Basins, Plains, and Highlands
Basins, plains, and highlands often provide a country with excellent agricultural
land and easy transport options. The Mississippi Basin, North China Plain, North
European Plain, Brazilian highlands, and Argentina’s Rio de la Plata lowlands are
among the world’s major agricultural areas. They also provide corridors for
invaders, as with the North European Plain, which provides easy access to Russia’s
western border.
Borders
Many borders form naturally along mountain ranges, rivers, coastlines, deserts, and
jungles. Others are laid down artificially by invading colonizers. Natural borders do
a reasonable job of keeping some distance between competing groups, allowing
them to evolve separately. Artificial borders often cut across ethnic or linguistic
lines, forcing incompatible groups to live together while separating related ones.
This can lead to conflicts, especially in the Middle East and Africa, where colonial
powers divided regions into countries with little thought for the inhabitants.
Examples of artificial borders include the Sykes-Picot Line that divides Syria from
Jordan and Iraq, the Durand Line between Afghanistan and Pakistan (which the
Pashtun peoples ignore with impunity), the Spanish-Portuguese carve-up of South
America, the US-Mexican border, and the Demilitarized Zone between North Korea
and South Korea.
Energy
Oil and gas are highly coveted resources, leading to conflict over control of the
reserves as well as over the distribution of the wealth produced. They can also
lead to cooperation and innovation as nations seek to ensure access without
becoming overly dependent. Some states, particularly in the Middle East, have
grown rich from oil reserves, while others have failed to capitalize on the economic
potential of oil and gas as a result of internal conflict and corruption.
The US, Saudi Arabia, and Russia lead the world in oil and gas production, followed
by several Middle Eastern countries, China, Canada, India, Venezuela, Mexico, and
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Nigeria. Many other nations have small reserves they can exploit. Oil reserves lie
beneath the Arctic Ocean, which lately is losing its summer ice cap, making oil
exploration more feasible; nearby nations vie for control over this bonanza.
Ethnic and Religious Strife
Strife is common between peoples of differing ethnicities; this is particularly true

when they live within the same national boundaries or along a shared boundary.
Sometimes the majority group will try to overpower the minority through sheer
numbers, as in China, where majority Han Chinese poured into Tibet,
overwhelming the northwestern Uighur population and the indigenous peoples.
Elsewhere, conflicts erupt when no single group has overwhelming power and
each must vie for power, as with the Pashtuns, Punjabis, and other groups in
Pakistan.
Religion also has played a large part in conflict, as between the Muslims and
Hindus in Kashmir, the Muslim immigrants and Christians of Europe, and the
Sunni and Shia Muslims, especially the tense hostility between Shiite Iran and
Sunni Saudi Arabia.
European Union
The EU is a grand attempt to bring together the many nations, cultures, and
political styles of Europe into a common trading market. Most EU nations use the
Euro as currency, and most allow free passage without visas. The 2008 global
recession revealed an underlying schism between the wealthier nations of the
Protestant north and the struggling southern tier of mostly Catholic countries. The
north has had to bail out Greece and help Spain.
Other problems have arisen, including the struggle to accommodate the massive
migration into Europe from Middle East war zones, the perennial tensions between
France and Germany, Britain’s decision to exit the EU altogether, and the threats
posed by a resurgent Russia.
Islamic State
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a terrorist organization that split off from al-
Qaeda to become a major military player in the Middle East. Starting in 2014, it
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rapidly conquered large sections of Syria and Iraq, especially along the Euphrates
River, and declared a new Caliphate to rule a revived Islam. ISIS appeals to locals
tired of the wars and corruption of the regular authorities, but the organization’s
extreme violence puts off others. A consortium of powers—including the US,
Britain, Russia, France, and Iraq—engaged ISIS in battle and retook most of the
conquered territory. ISIS established an outpost in Libya and hopes to make a
comeback. President Trump’s decision in 2019 to withdraw all US troops from Syria
may open the door for a resurgent ISIS.
Monroe Doctrine
US policy since the Monroe administration of the early 1800s stipulates that no
European country may form new colonies in the Western Hemisphere. The US
enforces this policy and, nominally at least, follows it itself. US president Teddy
Roosevelt recharged the doctrine in 1904, declaring that the US has the right to
use force to police the region.
In the twentieth century, American interests sometimes collide with South

American priorities, and periodically the US arranges for coups or assassinations to
replace recalcitrant leaders there. Lately, China has competed with the US for
development contracts in the region, and the locals hope such agreements will
free them from America’s sometime heavy-handed dealings.
Rivers
Rivers serve as borderlines, water sources, fisheries, and transport corridors. Best
for development are navigable rivers without rapids or falls that prevent vessels
from passing. Even better are multiple large rivers that drain into one another,
connecting them in a watery highway system, such as the Mississippi River and its
tributaries in the United States.
Sea Passages
Sea passages permit vessels to travel a shorter distance instead of sailing around
land obstacles; they also can be used to control sea traffic. As such they become
choke points during wartime.
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All of Russia’s naval bases are located in places controlled by such choke points:
It’s Black Sea fleet can be cut off at the Bosporus strait; its Baltic fleet can be
blockaded at the straits of Denmark; Japan guards the entrance to Russia’s
Kaliningrad navy; and the GIUK gap between Greenland, Iceland, and the UK can
stifle the Russian Arctic fleet. If the Arctic fleet tried to sail into southern waters
from the other direction during a crisis, it would pass through the Bering Strait,
where it would face American land and naval forces.
Similarly, if the Chinese navy needs to break out into the Pacific during a
confrontation, it must confront the “first island chain” that includes Japan, Taiwan,
and the Philippines. As a pushback, China has lately claimed the entire South China
Sea for itself, which has rankled other countries that also border the sea. To the
south, China’s access to the Indian Ocean is controlled by the Strait of Malacca
between Malaysia and Indonesia. To bypass that potential choke point, China
wants to build a transit system from its western provinces down to the Pakistani
port of Gwadar on the Indian Ocean.
Other straits that can choke off transport include the Strait of Hormuz at the
gateway to the oil-rich Persian Gulf; the Straits of Florida between the US and Cuba
that control access to New Orleans and the Mississippi river system; and the
Northwest Passage above Canada and its northeast counterpart above Russia,
which are narrowly ice-free during summer. The Panama Canal, and a proposed
Nicaraguan Canal, are meant to ease passage from the Pacific Ocean to the
Atlantic, but these, too, can serve as controllable straits.
Territorial Disputes
Territorial disputes are currently being fought over Tibet, Taiwan, Ukraine, and the
Arctic Circle.
Two of these disputes involve China. Seeking to strengthen its western border,
protect the source waters of its major rivers, and increase its territory for its
burgeoning population, China overtook the independent nation of Tibet in 1951 and
has since governed the area as the Tibetan Autonomous Region. China also claims
rule over Taiwan, even as Taiwan’s nationalist movement declares its sovereignty.
Recognition of Taiwan is a flash point in international relations with China.
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The 2014 revolution in Ukraine, formerly part of the Soviet Union, ushered in a pro-
Western government that alarmed neighboring Russia, which depends on Ukraine
for grain and for access to its Crimean naval bases. In response, Russia has
occupied the Crimean Peninsula and has fomented an insurgency among ethnic
Russians in eastern Ukraine.
Global climate change is warming the Arctic Ocean and melting the polar ice caps,
creating opportunities for nearby nations to exploit the oil and mineral riches that
lie beneath the ice. International treaties have resolved many sticking points, but
disagreements still remain over the size of each country’s Economic Exclusion
Zone, especially with the US, who hasn’t yet ratified the enabling treaty. Because of
the uncertainties, several Arctic nations have begun a military build-up in the area.
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IMPORTANT QUOTES
1. “Technology may seem to overcome the distances between us in both
mental and physical space, but it is easy to forget that the land where we live,
work, and raise our children is hugely important and that the choices of those
who lead the seven billion inhabitants of this planet will to some degree
always be shaped by the rivers, mountains, deserts, lakes, and seas that
constrain us all—as they always have.” (Introduction, Page 1)
Although technology has enabled us to overcome many geographic

limitations, geography still exerts a considerable force on national and
international relations. Borders will continue to be important into the future,
and the mountains, deserts, jungles, rivers, and seashores of the world will
continue to provide convenient frontiers between nations.
2. “Broadly speaking, geopolitics looks at the ways in which international affairs

can be understood through geographical factors: not just the physical
landscape—the natural barriers of mountains or connections of river
networks, for example—but also climate, demographics, cultural regions, and
access to natural resources. Factors such as these can have an important
impact on many different aspects of our civilization, from political and military
strategy to human social development, including language, trade, and
religion.” (Introduction, Page 2)
Geographical features not only form borders between nations and regions
but also help determine the political, cultural, and economic life within
nations and regions. For example, the natural borders created in Europe by
rivers and mountains helped foster the growth of distinct groups, with their
own cultures, languages, and governments.
3. “From the Grand Principality of Muscovy, through Peter the Great, Stalin, and
now Putin, each Russian leader has been confronted by the same problems.
It doesn’t matter if the ideology of those in control is czarist, Communist, or
crony capitalist—the ports still freeze, and the North European Plain is still
flat. Strip out the lines of nation states, and the map Ivan the Terrible
confronted is the same one Vladimir Putin is faced with to this day.” (Chapter
1, Page 39)
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The North European Plain offers Western European nations easy military
access to Russia, while its navy is bottled up by ice in the north and narrow
straits elsewhere. In the south, Muslim insurgents or invaders periodically
make forays into Russia. Over the centuries, these conditions have dictated
Russian foreign policy.
4. “If we look at China’s modern borders we see a great power now confident
that it is secured by its geographical features, which lend themselves to
effective defense and trade.” (Chapter 2, Page 46)
With a high plateau and mountains in the west, deserts to the north, seas to
the east and south, and jungles in the southwest, China has considerable
natural barriers to invasion. Its ambitions now focus on the seas, where its
navy seeks to dominate the western Pacific while its cargo fleet carries more
and more goods across the world’s oceans.
5. “China’s massive population, mostly crammed into the heartland, is looking

for ways to expand. Just as the Americans looked west, so do the Chinese,
and just as the iron horse brought the European settlers to the lands of the
Commanche and the Navajo, so the modern iron roosters are bringing the
Han to the Tibetans.” (Chapter 2, Page 51)
The Chinese ethnic majority Han population has overtaken the Tibetan
plateau, partly to ease crowding elsewhere and partly to ensure that the
Tibetan frontier remains under the firm control of China.
6. “It will take another thirty years (assuming economic progression) for China to
build naval capacity to seriously challenge the most powerful seaborne force
the world has ever seen—the US Navy. But in the medium to short term, as it
builds, and trains, and learns, the Chinese navy will bump up against its rivals
in the seas; and how those bumps are managed—especially the Sino-
American ones—will define great power politics in this century.” (Chapter 2,
Page 56)
China claims for itself the South China Sea, which angers its neighbors, who
are used to untrammeled access. The US objects as well, concerned that
China’s usurpation of those waters is merely the beginning of Chinese
territorial expansion into regions where America enjoys trade and military
alliances.
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7. “All great nations spend peacetime preparing for when war breaks out.”
(Chapter 2, Page 58)
Any country that assumes that it won’t suffer an invasion is courting disaster.
A well-prepared country, on the other hand, has much less to fear.
8. “China is not weighed down or motivated diplomatically or economically by

human rights in its dealings with the world. It is secure in its borders, straining
against the bonds of the first island chain, and now moving around the globe
with confidence. If it can avoid a serious conflict with Japan or the United
States, then the only real danger to China is itself” (Chapter 2, Page 64).
China’s greatest risk is internal. Should its modernization and development

program slow, tens of millions of its citizens will suffer, and political instability
may set in, putting the largest population in the world at risk of economic
disaster.
9. “If you won the lottery, and were looking to buy a country to live in, the first
one the real estate agent would show you would be the United States of
America [...] It’s in a wonderful neighborhood, the views are marvelous, and
there are some terrific water features, the transport links are excellent, and
the neighbors? The neighbors are great, no trouble at all.” (Chapter 3, Page
68)
Separated from most of the world’s dangerous hotspots by two oceans, one
on each side of the country, America enjoys physical isolation. Its interior
boasts an excellent river system and fertile farmlands. To the north lies
Canada, a friendly country with similar politics and culture; to the south lies
Mexico, whose problems are mostly separated from the US by a large desert.
10. “There are fifty American states, but they add up to one nation in a way the
twenty-eight sovereign states of the European Union never can.” (Chapter 3,
Page 68)
America’s states have evolved under one political system and with one
language, whereas Europe’s polyglot nations have fought each other, off and
on, for centuries. The EU struggles to hold itself together in the face of
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modern stresses that strike its members unevenly, causing disagreements

and conflicts.
11. “The deadly game in this century will be how the Chinese, Americans, and
others in the region manage each crisis that arises without losing face and
without building up a deep well of resentment and anger on both sides.”
As modern trade and communication make the world smaller, the great
nations—with their ongoing ambitions for power and wealth—will bump up
against one another with greater frequency. These tense moments will have
to be negotiated carefully, lest wars break out. If today’s military powers,
armed with nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, engage in battle,
the entire planet may be at risk.
12. “The modern world, for better or worse, springs from Europe. This western
outpost of the great Eurasian landmass gave birth to the Enlightenment,
which led to the Industrial Revolution, which has resulted in what we now see
around us every day. For that, we can give thanks to, or blame, Europe’s
location.” (Chapter 4, Page 92)
Europe is blessed with fertile soils, temperate climate, and good rivers. These
encouraged prosperity and, eventually, the first modern industries that make
European nations among the dominant powers on the globe. Its technology
spread to other countries, some of whom, like Japan and China, adopted
Western methods with great success. Other regions, especially those
colonized by Europe, have fared less well.
13. “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.” (Chapter 4, Page 104)
France and Germany, for centuries the most powerful nations in Europe, have
fought numerous bloody wars against each other, with millions of deaths in
the last century alone. The EU helps to tone down the rivalry and, instead,
motivates the two nations to focus on trade and prosperity.
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14. “Africa, being a huge continent, has always consisted of different regions,
climates, and cultures, but what they all had in common was their isolation
from one another and the outside world.” (Chapter 5, Page 117)
Africa is almost entire surrounded by seas; internally, it is made of alternating

bands of nearly impenetrable geography, beginning with a narrow coastal
region that borders the Sahara Desert in the north, passing through the dry
Sahel to the vast equatorial jungle, then continuing to open dry country and
finally to a temperate southern region. Cross-country transport is difficult at
best; native plants and animals are mostly useless to local farmers. A wide
diversity of cultures and languages makes inter-African communication a
challenge.
15. “Many of the civil wars of the 1960s and 1970s followed this template: if
Russia backed a particular side, that side would suddenly remember that it
had socialist principles, while its opponents would become anti-Communist.”
For a dissident group to receive Soviet support, it needed to at least pay lip
service to the principles of Marxism. Opponents turned to the Americans,
dedicated anti-Communists with large wallets. Stable countries without
insurgencies have more freedom to pursue mixed economic policies.
16. “Beijing and the big Chinese companies don’t ask difficult questions about
human rights, and they don’t demand economic reform or even suggest that
certain African leaders stop stealing their countries’ wealth, as the IMF or
World Bank might.” (Chapter 5, Page 135)
China wants to improve its own fortunes, not to reform the world. This makes
China easier to deal with than Western nations that have rules about how a
country’s government must conduct itself before doing business. To protect
its interests, China will defend its trading partners in international forums,
even when those partners commit crimes. When America complains about
this, China simply points to the US’s record of protecting third-world dictators.
17. “The Africa of the past was given no choice—its geography shaped it—and
then the Europeans engineered most of today’s borders. Now, with its
booming populations and developing megacities, it has no choice but to
embrace the modern globalized world to which it is so connected. In this,
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despite all the problems we have seen, it is making huge strides.” (Chapter 5,
Page 139)
Africa struggles for stability and growth. Arbitrary African borders, set by
European colonial powers, cut across natural ethnic, tribal, and geographical
regions, making harder the challenge of governance in the region. However
slowly, the continent is managing to overcome these obstacles to achieve
economic progress.
18. “Arab leaders have failed to deliver prosperity or freedom, and the siren call
of Islamism, which promises to solve all problems, has proved attractive to
many in a region marked by a toxic mix of piety, unemployment, and
repression.” (Chapter 6, Page 154)
Like Africa, the Middle East struggles for stability and growth amid arbitrary
borders determined by outsiders. On top of this is the regional attraction to
authoritarian religious rule as an answer of sorts to the challenges of
modernity. Yet worse is the ongoing conflict between the two main religious
sects, Sunni and Shia, that inflame regional warfare.
19. “In the Middle East, power does indeed flow from the barrel of a gun. Some
good citizens of Misrata in Libya may want to develop a liberal democratic
party, some might even want to campaign for gay rights; but their choice will
be limited if the local de facto power shoots liberal democrats and gays. Iraq
is a case in point: a democracy in name only, far from liberal, and a place
where people are routinely murdered for being homosexual.” (Chapter 6,
Page 176)
Westerners have tried, largely without success, to export democracy and

progressive values to the Middle East, where politics, culture, and business
are governed by the Muslim religion. Middle Easterners tend to be much less
receptive to the idea of individual rights than are the citizens of Europe and
the US. It doesn’t help that the West has interfered long and hard in Middle
Eastern affairs, stripping themselves of nearly all moral authority in the
region. The Middle East will have to decide for itself, and in its own way, the
merits of democracy and human rights. Meanwhile, individuals there who
practice non-standard lifestyles will do so at their peril.
20. “In Pakistan there are several nations within one state.” (Chapter 7, Page 187)
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Pakistan’s somewhat arbitrary borders with its neighbors are porous, and
many of its citizens move in and out of the country without interference. This
is especially true in the Afghan border area, where being a Pashtun tribal
member is more important than one’s nationality. Several other ethnic groups
spill across the borders, and Pakistan’s citizens speak at least five different
languages. Punjabi immigrants from the 1947 partition of India have poured in
to become the new majority ethnic group, exacerbating tensions with and
between the older Pakistani tribes.
21. “Americans are staying in both Korea and Japan. There is now a triangular
relationship among them [...] Japan and South Korea have plenty to argue
about, but will agree that their shared anxiety about China and North Korea
will overcome this.” (Chapter 8, Page 227)
Despite their mutual animosity, especially over Japan’s colonization and

abuse of Korea during the early twentieth century, both Japan and South
Korea understand that the real threat now lies elsewhere. Without a US
military presence, the region might soon be overrun by the Chinese. America
likely will remain there for decades, and South Korea and Japan will continue
to serve as tripwires against Chinese expansionism.
22. “Mexico makes its living by supplying consumer goods to America, and as
long as Americans consume drugs, Mexicans will supply them—after all, the
idea here is to make things that are cheap to produce and sell them at prices
higher than those in legal trade. Without drugs the country would be even
poorer than it is, as a vast amount of foreign money would be cut off. With
drugs it is even more violent than it would be.” (Chapter 9, Page 239)
Contraband costs a lot to smuggle, but the return on investment is so strong

that drug cartels must fight to protect their delivery routes. Lacking a strong
tradition against corruption, the Mexican government is easily bought off, and
the gangs have become the law of the land, enforcing their will with private
armies. Since the cartels don’t have courts or prisons, their conflict resolution
is carried out with bullets and bombs.
23. “All the [Arctic’s] sovereignty issues stem from the same desires and fears—
the desire to safeguard routes for military and commercial shipping, the
desire to own the natural riches of the region, and the fear that others may
gain where you lose. Until recently the riches were theoretical, but the
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melting ice has made the theoretical probable, and in some cases certain.”
The Arctic region holds huge deposits of oil, gas, and minerals, as well as the
possibility of a shorter shipping route between the Atlantic and Pacific
oceans. All of this, however, has been buried under millions of square miles
of ice until recently. Now global warming is melting the ice pack around the
edges, making possible the exploitation of the continental shelves beneath.
Control of these riches is still up in the air, with decisions—and possible
military conflict—to be settled among the eight nations that border the Arctic
and the dozens of other countries who also yearn for a piece of the action in
the polar realm.
24. “Our history has shown us the rapacious way of the zero-sum game.
Arguably, a belief in partial geographic determinism, coupled with human
nature, made it difficult for it to have been any other way. However, there are
examples of how technology has helped us break out from the prison of
geography [;] that technology was made by us, and, in our newly globalized
world, can be used to give us an opportunity in the Arctic. We can overcome
the rapacious side of our nature, and get the Great Game right for the benefit
of all.” (Chapter 10, Page 271)
Modern technology makes it possible to overcome the physical limitations of

geography. Advanced communications, air transport, canals, icebreakers,
huge cargo vessels, and improved road materials make possible the
development of regions previously inaccessible and the breaching of barriers
long impassible. These new powers can be used for economic growth or
misused in war.
25. “The final frontier has always called out to our imagination, but ours is the
age in which humanity has lived the dream and pushed out into space, a
millimeter into infinity, on our way to the future. Humanity’s restless spirit
ensures that our boundaries are not confined to what Carl Sagan famously
called the ‘Pale Blue Dot.’” (Conclusion, Page 273)
The growth of technology now makes possible space exploration and

colonization, opening up huge expanses of the universe to human
occupation. With each advance into our solar system and beyond, people will
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encounter new and different physical barriers either to be breached or

accommodated, shaping civilization and its conflicts for centuries to come.
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ESSAY TOPICS
1. The first island chain and the Strait of Malacca pose problems for China in the
western Pacific. What are these problems, and how is China resolving them?
2. Compare and contrast natural and artificial borders. Drawing on examples

from the text, what are the advantages and disadvantages of each?
3. Identify three things Russia has done to enhance its borders, and describe
briefly how those things make Russia more secure.
4. What features of Europe helped to make it the world’s first industrial power?
Name three and explain how each added to Europe’s advantage.
5. Drawing on at least three different nations or regions, explain the various

ways that rivers can affect political, economic, and cultural development.
6. Discuss the divergent paths of Europe and the United States. Why did one
become a unified federation of states with a single government and common
language, while the other developed into separate nation states with distinct
cultures and languages?
7. Which do you think has been more detrimental to Africa’s development: its
natural geography or the effects of colonialism? Defend your answer with
evidence from the book.
8. Describe three examples of artificial borders, and discuss the ramifications of

those borders today.
9. Describe the geographic barriers to Brazil’s economic development.
10. In the Conclusion, author Tim Marshall suggests that space may be the next
frontier to be colonized. Imagine that you are part of an international
committee to create the framework for colonizing space. What lessons from
this book would you apply to the framework for space? Explain your
reasoning.
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PRISONERS OF GEOGRAPHY Reader's Club 1

CHAPTER SUMMARIES AND ANALYSES 4

CHAPTER SUMMARIES AND ANALYSES

Marshall first became interested in the effects of geography on political, economic,

Chapter 1 Summary: “Russia”

To strengthen its position in Ukraine, Russia has supported ethnic Russian

Chapter 2 Summary: “China”

Although strongly protectionist, in later centuries, China began to trade with

conquering the vast desert-and-mountain region of Xinjiang, whose restive Muslim

China’s Xinjiang Province, ever restive with independence movements, borders on

Chapter 3 Summary: “United States”

Chapter 4 Summary: “Western Europe”

Although outsiders may dismiss Russia as an aggressive, expansive empire-

China similarly appears to be a belligerent empire builder, but it too faces

Northern Europe’s centuries of dominance may in part be due to its Protestant

Geography is by no means the only influence on national destinies. The human

Chapter 5 Summary: “Africa”

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in central Africa, is an example of a

Following independence from Portugal in 1975, Angola immediately fell into

Foreign involvement and exploitation continue in Africa. American and European

Overall, Africa is beginning to overcome its difficult geography, making economic

Chapter 6 Summary: “The Middle East”

As in Africa, European colonial powers established arbitrary national borders in the

Lebanon was originally a Christian stronghold created by France on the

Arab populations long frustrated by failures of governance have been attracted to

Chapter 7 Summary: “India and Pakistan”

Chapters 5-7 Analysis

Chapter 8 Summary: “Korea and Japan”

Geography helped determine the outcome. US forces, liberating Southeast Asia

Chapter 9 Summary: “Latin America”

Latin America’s geography—from Mexico to the southern tip of South America—

Mexico is limited by harsh northern deserts, dense southern jungles, and

One of Mexico’s biggest problems began elsewhere, in Colombia, where, in the

Panama, in Central America, is so thin that a canal is built across it in 1914 to

Elsewhere, “China is lending huge sums of money to Latin American governments”

According to Marshall, “Brazil is working on its transport infrastructure, and the

Chapter 10 Summary: “The Arctic”

Overcoming the limitations of geography is an age-old dream, but many challenges

Chapter 8-Conclusion Analysis

A proxy war is a battle fought between two powers in a place geographically

Regardless of their differences on domestic policy, US chief executives tend to

Colonel Sir Mark Sykes

Sometimes geographical features create surprising advantages. The warring

How Human Nature Shapes Power

The Trouble with Artificial Borders

Although natural borders—mountains, rivers, deserts, marshlands—can make trade

Transcending the Limits

Technological improvements have helped people cut roads through mountains,

While such technological advances can be used for war—China’s construction of

At a certain point, it becomes cheaper to buy other’s resources than to conquer

Ethnic and Religious Strife

Strife is common between peoples of differing ethnicities; this is particularly true

In the twentieth century, American interests sometimes collide with South

Although technology has enabled us to overcome many geographic

2. “Broadly speaking, geopolitics looks at the ways in which international affairs

5. “China’s massive population, mostly crammed into the heartland, is looking

8. “China is not weighed down or motivated diplomatically or economically by

China’s greatest risk is internal. Should its modernization and development

modern stresses that strike its members unevenly, causing disagreements

Africa is almost entire surrounded by seas; internally, it is made of alternating

Westerners have tried, largely without success, to export democracy and

Despite their mutual animosity, especially over Japan’s colonization and

Contraband costs a lot to smuggle, but the return on investment is so strong

Modern technology makes it possible to overcome the physical limitations of