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Rating: I am progressively distancing myself from novels. Occasionally I read, or reread, some classics, but in this phase, I realize they don't fulfill me as they did a decade ago. Lately, I want to delve into the major gaps I have, and I've returned to a passion I had during my university days, nearly twenty years ago now. This book makes you feel ignorant, but it encourages you to try to know more about history, politics, and, not least, geography. Yes, because history is certainly conditioned by the context in which it operates: the margin of action for statesmen is therefore limited, but it is often underestimated that the current world balances were also determined by geography. And geography, despite the technological advances of the contemporary age, still holds fundamental importance.
Geopolitics, therefore, and here I criticize Debaser because it's not among the genres I can click on.
Marshall's book examines ten maps and analyzes them geographically in a meticulous way to then reconstruct history up to the present times and try to understand what the future will be. It's a simple scheme but particularly interesting.
Reading this work, you better understand why Putin's Russia is obsessed with the eastern European plain. You look at the map and see that indeed up to the Urals, there is no barrier except for the hostile climate. To reach the heart of the country, extremely long supply lines are needed, but it has already happened four times since 1800. It's like a door left carelessly open, and the buffer states that have passed under NATO and the EU are a major problem, and for this reason, the possible critical scenarios come from that area. Russia does not have access to temperate seas, and Crimea, in this sense, assumes crucial importance, and similarly, countries like Georgia and Moldova, which would like to enter the EU, can hardly do so without military interventions. And the independence of the 5 "Stans" is very, very relative.
The reason the modern world developed in Europe is largely due to the presence of navigable rivers essential for developing trade and ideas. Suitable soil for intensive farming and what about the climate? Temperatures, apart from some peripheral areas, sufficiently mild to allow work and to eliminate devastating germs that still infest good parts of the planet. No deserts and rare extreme phenomena. France and Germany are like two boxers hugging in the middle of the ring to avoid, with an economic and financial union, going to war against each other once again. In fact, Germany is vulnerable both to the east and the west. The EU, with all its limitations, has led to the longest period of peace: will it withstand nationalism and the demographic crisis?
Why have China and India, three billion people, which share a border of several thousand kilometers, never had overly problematic relations? Perhaps the answer lies in the world's most imposing mountain range, and anyway, the tensions they have had occurred precisely in Tibet and Nepal. In the future, these two rising powers may clash at sea, where they are investing significantly to have increasingly important fleets that can oversee the Chinese Sea and beyond. China has used the same strategy as Russia: the preemptive attack as a defense to expand its territory and be less vulnerable to invasions given the extensive plains of its vast territory. But now it no longer aims to defend its borders but to consolidate them with a settlement of the most problematic areas (see Tibet) and to weave relationships to continue its growth and support almost 1.5 billion people. It invests billions of dollars to build a canal in Nicaragua and even more in Africa and Asia to develop immense port areas. What effects would an economic crisis like the Great Depression of '29 in the U.S.A. have? And in foreign policy, its presence in hot zones is destined to become increasingly important and decisive, for example, in Korea.
A huge state, perfect connections, no threat from neighbors, same language and currency with a single nation formed by 50 states that believes in and identifies with its flag and the values it represents. Americans are fanatics about their being American. What the EU would like to create but can never fully achieve because the national identity of European states is much stronger than any European idea. The United States is a geographically fortunate country; it does not have to worry about defending its borders, it has natural resources, navigable rivers, vast cultivable areas, outlets on the world's two largest oceans. If it's not a pair of aces in poker, it's close. Despite being in decline for thirty years, it is the country that invests the most in research and military spending, has a growing birth rate, and a predominance in foreign policy that might be questioned in the coming years but is not in crisis.
Lack of natural ports, huge rivers of devastating beauty but full of waterfalls. Could these be some of the reasons why Africa has not succeeded technologically and politically despite being the cradle of Homo sapiens and having immense natural resources? These geographic limitations, the extreme climate, the world's largest desert area, and temperatures favorable to the proliferation of viruses have also contributed to African history. And when Europe arrived with colonialism and traced many borders without considering ethnic differences, wars with millions of deaths emerged. With the contribution of Chinese investments, Africa has development prospects, provided it manages to achieve greater political stability.
Also in the Middle East, the ink lines created by Europeans did not exist in reality, and now they are trying to redraw those borders with blood. Assyria, Babylonia, and Sumeria are nothing but the division of the area between Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites. These areas were respected by both the Ottomans and Alexander the Great. Oil has made this geographically hostile and difficult area very attractive with devastating effects. Management, more than solution in the medium and perhaps long term. The biggest question mark of current foreign policy.
In Latin America, instead, the knowledge of the old continent has been transferred to the new, but with a hostile geography, the success has been limited. It is a depleted continent with large cities developed only in coastal areas, with vast areas unsuitable for agriculture, extensive desert areas, and the world's lungs being deforested to be cultivated unsuccessfully because, surprise, it's an unsuitable terrain. Latin America is destined to grow, appears more politically stable than other developing areas, but its natural limits will prevent it from keeping pace with the more advanced countries.
The book is dense, full of insights, and analyzes each map with future scenarios based on current politics and medium and long-term economic prospects, focusing on the interconnections between the various areas. I find it a fascinating, powerful, and exciting read: it helps you understand better the reasons behind events. History is wonderful if you understand it, not if you memorize dates. If you can immerse yourself in the process that determined the current geopolitical situation, you are captivated by how much there is to learn and discover. It is also a disconcerting work because it makes you understand how extremely fragile, complex, and undefined the world's balances are. I was born in the middle of the Cold War, 1981, and grew up with a simplistic, bipolar view of the world.
Now I want to scrutinize the bibliography and analyze what will most likely be the next "battleground." The Arctic. Immense and unknown resources, trade routes that were historically impractical will become operational for several months in the next century, as widely demonstrated by satellite photos related to the progressive melting of the ice cap. It is conceivable that the environmental impacts will be significant, if not devastating (cf. states like Bangladesh), and if you believe in the theory of global cooling, resulting from low solar activity... Well, know that the United States, Russia, and China do not think exactly like that. And on the Arctic, they are investing tens of billions of dollars and are ready to drill and exploit to the bone an area on which there is not yet a flag and that could redefine balances. Once again.
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