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The last section actually has the takeaway that 'cooperation is the key to the future' and it is true on the moon, in space and definitely on the Earth. Tim Marshall was Diplomatic Editor and foreign correspondent for Sky News. After thirty years’ experience in news reporting and presenting, he left full time news journalism to concentrate on writing and analysis. Tim Marshall’s third book, The Power of Geography,is just as relevant for Economists as books about Adam Smith are. Marshall proves the importance that geography has on international trade and the development of countries around the world. Nations have fought wars and built empires to source resources such as raw materials and even slaves. Since the dawn of trade, geography has been the primary constraint in determining which trade routes grew and which economies developed. Countries with access to seas, rivers, mountain ranges, and even soil types all determine a country’s trade routes and defence concerns. Marshall takes nine countries (and Space) and explains how their geographical makeup determines their geopolitical stories. Katie Burton of Geographical, the official magazine of the Royal Geographical Society, called the book "A sharp and concise evaluation of today’s geopolitics", considering it accessible yet not oversimplified. [2] In the long run, we are creatures of our environments to an almost embarrassing degree, flourishing where circumstances permit and dying where they don’t. “If you look at a map of the tectonic plate boundaries grinding against each other and superimpose the locations of the world’s major ancient civilisations, an astonishingly close relationship reveals itself,” writes Lewis Dartnell in his splendid book, Origins. The relationship is no accident. Plate collisions create mountain ranges and the great rivers that carry their sediment down to the lowlands, enriching the soil. Ancient Greece, Egypt, Persia, Assyria, the Indus valley, Mesoamerica and Rome were all near plate edges. The Fertile Crescent – the rich agricultural zone stretching from Egypt to Iran, where farming, writing and the wheel first emerged – lies over the intersection of three plates.
This should be mandatory reading for young people learning about the world. Is not about which country is called what and the capital named after whom. It's about the the consequence of the resources. The fact that Ethiopia has the Nile's source and Egypt depend heavily on it, so how this molds their relationship. Also, colonialism may be outdated but its consequences are everywhere if you look close enough. I cannot even count the number of times I've passed like a complete illiterate by saying stuff like Iranians are Arabic. And this is no small thing. One day a girl asked me if all Colombians were Mexicans. I was so confused by what she even meant with the question. Of course, I'm sure I've been on the ignorant side of the question more times that I've realized. The optimist in me would say that Marshall didn't have good advice from his editors or he committed way too early to a format that he just couldn't see is broken. p. 176 - "In the 1990s Turkey had re-established itself as a major trade route after building gas and oil pipes running from Iraq and the Caspian Sea through Anatolia to supply Europe. It had also put together one of the largest and most efficient militaries in NATO, giving it confidence as it assessed the new world around it." The cynic in me wants to say that Marshall wanted to cash in on the success of his first outing. He had some leftover chapters that didn't make the cut because the content wasn't enough. So he padded it out with a lot of history to bash out another book.
Book Detail :
The book also explores Iran. Walking the reader through the mountains of Iran and its huge landscape it puts Iranian history into perspective due to its mountainous geography. After three years as IRN’s Paris correspondent and extensive work for BBC radio and TV, Tim joined Sky News. Reporting from Europe, the USA and Asia, Tim became Middle East Correspondent based in Jerusalem. Greece - tension with Turkey over the Aegean Sea and who actually "owns" which islands as well as economic collapse, few resources and dealing with masses of fleeing immigrants. Geography is unfair,” Ian Morris writes, and if “geography is destiny”, as he also contends, then this is a recipe for a world in which the strong remain strong and the weak remain weak. Geopoliticians excel at explaining why things won’t change. They’re less adept at explaining how things do. United Kingdom: The nations of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland make up the United Kingdom, an island country in Western Europe who used its naval power to build the world's biggest empire which collapsed after World War 2. About half the size of France, its main European concern was to keep a balance of power and avoid one European country from becoming too powerful and threatening its empire. A country caught between being close to USA based on language and history and Europe based on proximity. Facing a growing independence movement from Scotland following Brexit which could impact its military and naval bases.
p. 210 - "The wider argument is that a US withdrawal will leave China to dominate the region, and also that America needs to be seen to be supporting European allies, especially as massive population movements into Europe would destabilize them." The third chapter on Saudi Arabia explains how a tribe named Al Saud from an isolated region made their way to the throne of Arabia. In the process, oil made them important and Americans made them safe. A fat old middle section that goes through a very basic overview of the history of that country. Usually a third of this part is dedicated to the politics of the second half of the 20th century. Spain - tension with regions wanting independence - Basque region as well as Catalonia - although placing authority in regional governmental hands has eased some stress. Many parts of Europe want to support self-determination but in turn, are afraid that allowing it will encourage autonomy movements within. The UK was given as an example - encourages self-determination for Gibraltar and the Falklands but doesn't want it for Scotland and Northern Ireland. There is a name for Marshall’s line of thinking: geopolitics. Although the term is often used loosely to mean “international relations”, it refers more precisely to the view that geography – mountains, land bridges, water tables – governs world affairs. Ideas, laws and culture are interesting, geopoliticians argue, but to truly understand politics you must look hard at maps. And when you do, the world reveals itself to be a zero-sum contest in which every neighbour is a potential rival, and success depends on controlling territory, as in the boardgame Risk. In its cynical view of human motives, geopolitics resembles Marxism, just with topography replacing class struggle as the engine of history.Which is another way of saying that we don’t always accept the topographies we inherit. The world’s tallest skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa, sprouts from Dubai, which was for centuries an unpromising fishing village surrounded by desert and salt flats. Little about its relief map destined it for greatness. Its climate is sweltering and oil sales, though once substantial, now account for less than 1% of the emirate’s economy. If there’s something distinctive about Dubai, it is its legal landscape, not its physical one. The emirate isn’t governed by a single lawbook but is chopped up into free zones – Dubai Internet City, Dubai Knowledge Park and International Humanitarian City among them – designed to attract various foreign interests. The Dubai desert is essentially “a huge circuit board”, the urban theorist Mike Davis once wrote, to which global capital can easily connect. Marshall is a journalist for the BBC and Sky News. [1] In the book, he focuses on ten areas that he considers to be potential hotspots in the future due to their geography, for reasons including climate change, ethnic strife and competition for resources. The areas in focus are Australia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Greece and Turkey, the Sahel (the transition zone on the edge of the Sahara desert), Ethiopia, Spain and outer space. [2] Originally from Leeds, Tim arrived at broadcasting from the road less traveled. Not a media studies or journalism graduate, in fact not a graduate at all, after a wholly unsuccessful career as a painter and decorator he worked his way through newsroom nightshifts, and unpaid stints as a researcher and runner before eventually securing himself a foothold on the first rung of the broadcasting career ladder. United Kingdom - building an empire and then breaking it apart. Brexit could lead to further division especially with Scotland wanting independence - Northern Ireland and Wales leaning that way too. It wasn't that Turkey opposed the intervention against Saddam; it was more than it helped create a semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq (which, as we will see, was problematic as Turkey was trying to suppress its own Kurdish nationalism)."
What even was the “battlefield” by the 90s? The Gulf war portended a much-discussed “revolution in military affairs”, one that promised to replace armoured divisions, heavy artillery and large infantries with precision airstrikes. The Russian military theorist Vladimir Slipchenko noted that strategists’ familiar spatial concepts such as fields, fronts, rears and flanks were losing relevance. With satellites, planes, GPS and now drones, “battlespace” – as strategists today call it – isn’t the wrinkled surface of the Earth, but a flat sheet of graph paper. Turkey: Former ruler of the Ottoman Empire which controlled the Middle East and North Africa, it now rules a country primarily in minor Asia with a large percentage of its people living in the European capital Istanbul. It has a large Kurdish minority in Turkey and surrounding countries and uses its military might to stymie efforts for an independent Kurdistan in Iraq, Syria and at home. Has allied with Libya to compete with the influence of Egypt and support its claims over territorial waters controlled by Greece. Ongoing disputes with Greece over islands and territorial waters.The book opens with a chapter on Australia. As an Australian I found it quite interesting reading a perspective on my country and people... “Now Australia looks around at its neighbourhood and wonders what role it should play, and whom it should play it with”... “Australia’s size and location are both it’s strength and its weakness...” In this revelatory new book, Marshall explores 10 regions that are set to shape global politics in a new age of great-power rivalry: Australia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UK, Greece, Turkey, the Sahel, Ethiopia, Spain and space. Find out why Europe’s next refugee crisis is closer than it thinks as trouble brews in the Sahel; why the Middle East must look beyond oil and sand to secure its future; why the eastern Mediterranean is one of the most volatile flashpoints of the 21st century; and why the Earth’s atmosphere is set to become the world’s next battleground.
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