PRISONERS OF GEOGRAPHY

Nonfiction

Arbitrary lines in the sand

PRISONERS OF GEOGRAPHY:
Ten Maps that Explain Everything About the World

By Tim Marshall

305 pp. Scribner

Reviewed by Marty Carlock

Prisoners of Geography is a brief and opinionated course in geopolitics. Filled as it is with an intimidating amount of information, the fact that it finds itself on the best-seller list may have a lot to do with its clever title. Yet author Tim Marshall makes a case for his theme: that the geographical limitations of each nation and/or continent dictate its ambitions, its achievements, even its wealth. 

How does Marshall know so much about everything in the world? As a foreign correspondent for British television, he has reported from 30 countries, including six war zones. His expertise extends across four continents, omitting Antarctica because of the Antarctic Treaty, which declares it an international scientific preserve where military activity is banned. (He omits Australia, too.) However, he analyzes the newly accessible Arctic, which is not a continent but may conceal mineral wealth. And then there’s outer space.

So what happens when people ignore the realities of geography? The current mess in the Middle East is Exhibit A. Anybody who has been paying attention knows that the region was carved up by a pair of diplomats, British and French, in 1916, with no regard to the preferences of the people who actually lived there or the geographical realities of the region. Called the Sykes-Picot line, this mark on the map gave the French control to the area north of the line, the British, south. “As we saw in Africa,” Marshall says, “arbitrarily creating ‘nation states’ out of people unused to living together in one region is not a recipe for justice, equality and stability.”

Even in this era of technological minimization of boundaries, the exigencies of climate dictate. Marshall tells of being in Afghanistan shortly after 9/11 as American aircraft bombed the Taliban. The anti-Taliban allies planned to move south. 

Then: 

The most intense sandstorm I have ever experienced blew in, turning everything a mustard-yellow color…you couldn’t see more than a few yards ahead of you, and the only thing clear was that the Americans’ satellite technology, at the cutting edge of science, was helpless, blind in the face of the climate of this wild land…Then it rained and the sand that had settled on everything turned into mud. The rain came down so hard that the baked-mud huts we were living in looked as if they were melting.” The president, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, commanders and troops all had to wait “until geography finished having its say. The rules of geography, which Hannibal, Sun Tzu and Alexander the Great all knew, still apply to today’s leaders.

Geography dictates, Marshall says, the reason no army can ever conquer Russia – but also the fact that, however much we may lament it, Tibet really should belong to China. He explains Russia’s recent belligerence: The country has for centuries wanted a warm-water port. Murmansk, in the north on the Barents Sea, is iced-in many months of the year. Sevastopol, a Crimean port on the Black Sea, fills the bill, and when Putin annexed Crimea nobody figured it was worth a war – because (geography again!) Russian naval vessels based there would still have to pass the Bosphorus and navigate either the Mediterranean or the Suez Canal before reaching the high seas. 

Marshall cites topographical reasons for South America’s failure to emerge politically. Only Argentina, he says, with its quality agricultural land and navigable river system, has the ingredients to create a standard of living comparable to that of European countries. “A hundred years ago it was among the ten richest countries in the world…But a failure to diversify, a stratified and unfair society, a poor education system, a succession of coups d’etat and wildly differing economic policies” led to a squandering of its advantages.

Climate change is another geographical reality that has political consequences. If rising seas swamp the Maldives or Bangladesh, “the impact will not just be on those leaving before it is too late, but also on the countries to which they flee.”

Once it became unified in the 19^th century, the author contends, the United States was the model of the ideal geopolitical entity. It boasts fertile land, excellent river systems, and friendly neighbors. He is not convinced any other power can overtake the U.S., not even China, for at least a century.

There are more than ten maps. I counted nineteen, the extra ones in most cases details of the ten large ones. Summarizing the world’s problems in ten maps is a good gimmick, but faulty; at times crucial features are not labeled on the appropriate map. There’s a useful index but, oddly, no listing of page numbers for the maps.

Nevertheless, Prisoners of Geography is a springboard to understanding the political scene, a resource to consult when one or another world leader does something incomprehensible. Marshall can probably explain it.

Once a journalist chasing facts for The Boston Globe, Marty Carlock finds it’s more fun to make things up. Her short fiction has appeared in a dozen-plus journals and quarterly publications. She’s author of A Guide to Public Art in Greater Boston and several unpublished novels. She sometimes writes for Sculpture and Landscape Architecture magazines.