Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall
Ten maps that explain everything about the world
Rating: 5/5
I first read this book in 2020, during the covid outburst and ever since, it has completely changed the way I perceive world affairs. It has had such a profound impact on my understanding of the world that I recommend this book to anyone who has the slightest of interest in understanding how the world works. Over time, I have sent a copy of this book to numerous of my friends - especially the ones preparing for a career civil services or international business - and they too, have enjoyed reading this book.
For example, in the light of current events, this book also gives a subtle background on a more fundamental reason for the Ukraine-Russia war. In fact, it predicts a straight-out war if NATO tries to expand alongside Russia’s western borders.
From a geopraphical perspective:
Russia is vast. 5 times the size of India! Wherever you are in the world, Russia is closeby. Yes, even the USA - infact from a distant island in Alaska, you can actually see Russia. Although 75 percent of its territory is in Asia, only 22 percent of its population lives there. In the Russian Far East it is geography that protects Russia. It is difficult to move an army from Asia up into Asian Russia; there’s not much to attack except for snow and you could get only as far as the Urals. You would then end up holding a massive piece of territory, in difficult conditions, with long supply lines and the ever-present risk of a counterattack. The problem is the WEST. On the western front, their’s a plane corridor all the way upto Moscow. In the past five hundred years they have been invaded several times from the west. The Poles came across the North European Plain in 1605, followed by the Swedes under Charles XII in 1708, the French under Napoleon in 1812, and the Germans—twice, in both world wars, in 1914 and 1941. Looking at it another way, if you count from Napoleon’s invasion of 1812, but this time include the Crimean War of 1853–56 and the two world wars up to 1945, then the Russians were fighting on average in or around the North European Plain once every thirty-three years. This ignites their insecurity to fiercely protest their eastern borders, thus any act of expansion by NATO is seen as an act of war.
"Prisoners of Geography" is a book that explains how geography, like mountains, rivers, and oceans, influences the way countries behave and interact with each other. The author, Tim Marshall, shows how where a country is located can impact its politics, economy, and even its relationships with other nations.
Ever wondered: China and India: two massive countries with huge populations that share a very long border but are not politically or culturally aligned. It wouldn’t be surprising if these two giants had fought each other in several wars, but in fact, apart from one monthlong battle in 1962, they never have. Why? Because between them is the highest mountain range in the world, and it is practically impossible to advance large military columns through or over the Himalayas.
The book is like a journey around the world, where you'll learn about different countries and their challenges because of their geographical location. It talks about why some countries might be rich while others struggle, or why some countries have conflicts that seem hard to solve.
Marshall's writing is clear and easy to understand, even if you're not a geography expert. By unraveling the intricate connections between geography, politics, and global dynamics, Marshall provides readers with a fresh perspective on the complexities of our world. Prepare to view maps and geopolitics in a whole new light after delving into this insightful read.
Russia:
How big is the biggest country in the world? Russia is twice the size of the United States or China, five times the size of India, twenty-five times the size of the UK. However, it has a relatively small population (144 million), fewer people than Nigeria or Pakistan. Its agricultural growing season is short and it struggles to adequately distribute what is grown around the eleven time zones that Moscow governs.
Winston Churchill’s famous observation of Russia, made in 1939: “It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” but few go on to complete the sentence, which ends “but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest. I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness.”
Russia, like all great powers, is thinking in terms of the next one hundred years and understands that in that time anything could happen. A century ago, who could have guessed that American armed forces would be stationed a few hundred miles from Moscow in Poland and the Baltic States? By 2004, just fifteen years after 1989, every single former Warsaw Pact state bar Russia was in NATO or the European Union.
China may well eventually control parts of Siberia in the long run, but this would be through Russia’s declining birthrate and Chinese immigration moving north. Already as far west as the swampy West Siberian Plain, between the Urals in the west and the Yenisei River one thousand miles to the east, you can see Chinese restaurants in most of the towns and cities. Many different businesses are coming. The empty depopulating spaces of Russia’s Far East are even more likely to come under Chinese cultural, and eventually political, control.
The invasion of Afghanistan also gave hope to the great Russian dream of its army being able to “wash their boots in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean,” in the words of the ultra-nationalistic Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and thus achieve what it never had: a warm- water port where the water does not freeze in winter, with free access to the world’s major trading routes.
here are the pro-Western countries formerly in the Warsaw Pact but now all in NATO and/or the EU: Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, Albania, and Romania. By no coincidence, many are among the states that suffered most under Soviet tyranny. Add to these Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova, who would all like to join both organizations but are being held at arm’s length because of their geographic proximity to Russia and because all three have Russian troops or pro-Russian militia on their soil. NATO membership of any of these three could spark a war. A generous view is that the United States and the Europeans were looking forward to welcoming Ukraine into the democratic world as a full member of its liberal institutions and the rule of law and that there wasn’t much Moscow could do about it. That is a view that does not take into account the fact that geopolitics still exists in the twenty-first century and that Russia does not play by the rule of law.
The EU imposed limited sanctions—limited because several European countries, Germany among them, are reliant on Russian energy to heat their homes in winter. The pipelines run east to west and the Kremlin can turn the taps on and off.
Russia’s most powerful weapons now, leaving to one side nuclear missiles, are not the Russian army and air force, but gas and oil. Russia is second only to the United States as the world’s biggest supplier of natural gas, and of course it uses this power to its advantage.
China:
China is a civilization pretending to be a nation. \
Until now China has never been a naval power—with its large landmass, multiple borders, and short sea routes to trading partners, it had no need to be.
By 1500 BCE in this heartland, out of hundreds of mini city-states, many warring with each other, emerged the earliest version of a Chinese state—the Shang dynasty. This is where what became known as the Han people emerged, protecting the heartland and creating a buffer zone around them. The Han now make up more than 90 percent of China’s population and they dominate Chinese politics and business.
If China did not control Tibet, it would always be possible that India might attempt to do so. This would give India the commanding heights of the Tibetan Plateau and a base from which to push into the Chinese heartland, as well as control of the Tibetan sources of three of China’s great rivers, the Yellow, Yangtze, and Mekong, which is why Tibet is known as “China’s Water Tower.” China, a country with approximately the same volume of water usage as the United States, but with a population five times as large, will clearly not allow that.
In the north we see the 2,906-mile-long border with Mongolia. Straddling this border is the Gobi Desert. Nomadic warriors from ancient times might have been able to attack south across it, but a modern army would be spotted amassing there weeks before it was ready to advance, and it would have incredibly long supply lines running across inhospitable terrain before it got into Inner Mongolia (part of China) and toward the heartland. There are few roads fit to move heavy armor, and few habitable areas. The Gobi Desert is a massive early warning system–cum–defensive line. Any Chinese expansion northward will come not via the military but from trade deals as China attempts to sweep up Mongolia’s natural resources, primarily minerals. This will bring with it increased migration of the Han into Mongolia.
I once took a Chinese ambassador in London to a high-end French restaurant in the hope he would repeat Prime Minister Chou En-lai’s much quoted answer to President Richard Nixon’s question “What is the impact of the French Revolution?” to which the prime minister replied, “It’s too soon to tell.” Sadly, this was not forthcoming, but I was treated to a stern lecture about how the full imposition of “what you call human rights” in China would lead to widespread violence and death and was then asked, “Why do you think your values would work in a culture you don’t understand?” The deal between the party leaders and the people has been, for a generation now, “We’ll make you better off—you will follow our orders.” So long as the economy keeps growing, that grand bargain may last. If it stops, or goes into reverse, the deal is off. The current level of demonstrations and anger against corruption and inefficiency are testament to what would happen if the deal breaks.
United States:
Location, location, location. 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.
If you broke this living space up into numerous sections it would considerably lower its value, especially if the tenants did not all speak the same language and paid the rent in different currencies, but as one home, for one family—it can’t be bettered.
Anyone stupid enough to contemplate invading America would soon reflect on the fact that it contains hundreds of millions of guns, which are available to a population that takes its life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness very seriously.
In 1803, the United States simply bought control of the entire Louisiana Territory from France. The land stretched from the Gulf of Mexico northwest up to the headwaters of the tributaries of the Mississippi River in the Rocky Mountains. It was an area equivalent in size to modern-day Spain, Italy, France, the UK, and Germany combined. With it came the Mississippi basin, from which flowed America’s route to greatness. At the stroke of a pen, and the handing over of $15 million, the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 doubled the size of the United States and gave it mastery over the greatest inland water transport route in the world. As the American historian Henry Adams wrote, “Never did the United States get so much for so little.”
India and Pakistan
They have fought four major wars and many skirmishes. Emotions run hot. An oft-quoted remark by a Pakistani officer that Pakistan would make India bleed by a thousand cuts was addressed in late 2014 by military analyst Dr. Amarjit Singh writing in the Indian Defence Review: “Whatever others may believe, my opinion is simply that it is better for India to brave a costly nuclear attack by Pakistan, and get it over with even at the cost of tens of millions of deaths, than suffer ignominy and pain day in and day out through a thousand cuts and wasted energy in unrealized potential.” That may not reflect official government policy, but it is an indication of the depth of feeling at many levels in both societies. Modern Pakistan and India were born in fire; next time the fire could kill them.
Bangladesh is volatile and contains Islamist militants who trouble India, but none of these three smaller countries within the subcontinent can ever rise to threaten its undisputed master. Nor would Pakistan be considered a threat to India had it not mastered the technology of developing nuclear weapons in the decades following the partition of the region in 1947.
India: Even the British colonial overlords, with their famed bureaucracy and connecting rail system, allowed regional autonomy and indeed used it to play local leaders off against one another. The linguistic and cultural diversity is partially due to the differences in climate—for example, the freezing north of the Himalayas in contrast to the jungles of the south—but it is also because of the subcontinent’s rivers and religions.
Pakistan is geographically, economically, demographically, and militarily weaker than India. Its national identity is also not as strong. India, despite its size, cultural diversity, and secessionist movements, has built a solid secular democracy with a unified sense of Indian identity. Pakistan is an Islamic state with a history of dictatorship and populations whose loyalty is often more to their cultural region than to the state.
Baluchistan is of crucial importance: while it may contain only a small minority of Pakistan’s population, without it there is no Pakistan. It comprises almost 45 percent of the country and holds much of its natural gas and mineral wealth. Another source of income beckons with the proposed overland routes to bring Iranian and Caspian Sea oil up through Pakistan to China. The jewel in this particular crown is the coastal city of Gwadar. The Chinese have also been attracted by this jewel and invested billions of dollars in the region. A deep-water port was inaugurated in 2007 and the two countries are now working to link it to China. In the long run, China would like to use Pakistan as a land route for its energy needs. This would allow it to bypass the Strait of Malacca, which as we saw in chapter two is a choke point that could strangle Chinese economic growth.
Islam, cricket, the intelligence services, the military, and fear of India are what hold Pakistan together. None of these will be enough to prevent it from being pulled apart if the forces of separatism grow stronger. In effect, Pakistan has been in a state of civil war for more than a decade, following periodic and ill-judged wars with its giant neighbor, India.
The Kashmir issue is partially one of national pride, but it is also strategic. Full control of Kashmir would give India a window into central Asia and a border with Afghanistan. It would also deny Pakistan a border with China and thus diminish the usefulness of a Chinese-Pakistani relationship. The Pakistani government likes to trumpet that its friendship with China is “taller than the mountains and deeper than the oceans.” This is not true, but it is useful in sometimes making the Americans nervous about cutting Pakistan off from the massive financial aid it receives from Washington. China, well aware of this, is quite happy to chip away at American influence. It is already Pakistan’s biggest military supplier, and in 2015 signed a multibillion-dollar deal with Islamabad to sell Pakistan eight submarines and six patrol ships. If Pakistan had full control of Kashmir it would strengthen Islamabad’s foreign policy options and deny India opportunities. It would also help Pakistan’s water security. The Indus River originates in Himalayan Tibet, but passes through the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir before entering Pakistan and then running the length of the country and emptying into the Arabian Sea at Karachi.
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