Isegoria

The modern world, for better or worse, Tim Marshall explains (in Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World), 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.

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The climate, fed by the Gulf Stream, blessed the region with the right amount of rainfall to cultivate crops on a large scale, and the right type of soil for them to flourish in. This allowed for population growth in an area in which, for most, work was possible year-round, even in the height of summer. Winter actually adds a bonus, with temperatures warm enough to work in but cold enough to kill off many of the germs, which to this day plague huge parts of the rest of the world.

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Western Europe has no real deserts, the frozen wastes are confined to a few areas in the far north, and earthquakes, volcanoes, and massive flooding are rare. The rivers are long, flat, navigable, and made for trade. As they empty into a variety of seas and oceans, they flow into coastlines that are—west, north, and south—abundant in natural harbors.

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The various tribes of the Iberian Peninsula, for example, prevented from expanding north into France by the presence of the Pyrenees, gradually came together, over thousands of years, to form Spain and Portugal—and even Spain is not an entirely united country, with Catalonia increasingly vocal about wanting its independence. France has also been formed by natural barriers, framed as it is by the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Rhine, and the Atlantic Ocean.

Europe’s major rivers do not meet (unless you count the Sava, which drains into the Danube in Belgrade). This partly explains why there are so many countries in what is a relatively small space. Because they do not connect, most of the rivers act, at some point, as boundaries, and each is a sphere of economic influence in its own right; this gave rise to at least one major urban development on the banks of each river, some of which in turn became capital cities.

Europe’s second longest river, the Danube (1,771 miles), is a case in point. It rises in Germany’s Black Forest and flows south on its way to the Black Sea. In all, the Danube basin affects eighteen countries and forms natural borders along the way, including those of Slovakia and Hungary, Croatia and Serbia, Serbia and Romania, and Romania and Bulgaria. More than two thousand years ago it was one of the borders of the Roman Empire, which in turn helped it to become one of the great trading routes of medieval times and gave rise to the present capital cities of Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, and Belgrade. It also formed the natural border of two subsequent empires, the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman.

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The countries of northern Europe have been richer than those of the south for several centuries. The north industrialized earlier than the south and so has been more economically successful. As many of the northern countries comprise the heartland of Western Europe, their trade links were easier to maintain, and one wealthy neighbor could trade with another—whereas the Spanish, for example, either had to cross the Pyrenees to trade, or look to the limited markets of Portugal and North Africa.

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There are also unprovable theories that the domination of Catholicism in the south has held it back, whereas the Protestant work ethic propelled the northern countries to greater heights. Each time I visit the Bavarian city of Munich, I reflect on this theory, and while driving past the gleaming temples of the headquarters of BMW, Allianz, and Siemens I have cause to doubt it. In Germany, 34 percent of the population is Catholic, and Bavaria itself is predominantly Catholic, yet their religious predilections do not appear to have influenced either their progress or their insistence that Greeks work harder and pay more taxes.

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France is the only European country to be both a northern and southern power. It contains the largest expanse of fertile land in Western Europe, and many of its rivers connect with one another; one flows west all the way to the Atlantic (the Seine), another south to the Mediterranean (the Rhône). These factors, together with France’s relative flatness, were suitable for the unification of regions, and—especially from the time of Napoleon—centralization of power.

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The south of Italy, for example, is still well behind the north in terms of development, and although it has been a unified state (including Venice and Rome) since 1871, the strains of the rift between north and south are greater now than they have been since before the Second World War. The heavy industry, tourism, and financial centers of the north have long meant a higher standard of living there, leading to the formation of political parties agitating for cutting state subsidies to the south, or even breaking away from it.

Spain is also struggling, and has always struggled because of its geography. Its narrow coastal plains have poor soil, and access to markets is hindered internally by its short rivers and the Meseta Central, a highland plateau surrounded by mountain ranges, some of which cut through it. Trade with Western Europe is further hampered by the Pyrenees, and any markets to its south on the other side of the Mediterranean are in developing countries with limited income. It was left behind after the Second World War, as under the Franco dictatorship it was politically frozen out of much of modern Europe. Franco died in 1975 and the newly democratic Spain joined the EU in 1986. By the 1990s, it had begun to catch up with the rest of Western Europe, but its inherent geographical and financial weaknesses continue to hold it back and have intensified the problems of overspending and loose central fiscal control. It has been among the countries hit worst by the 2008 economic crisis.

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Much of the Greek coastline comprises steep cliffs and there are few coastal plains for agriculture. Inland are more steep cliffs, rivers that will not allow transportation, and few wide, fertile valleys. What agricultural land there is is of high quality; the problem is that there is too little of it to allow Greece to become a major agricultural exporter, or to develop more than a handful of major urban areas containing highly educated, highly skilled, and technologically advanced populations. Its situation is further exacerbated by its location, with Athens positioned at the tip of a peninsula, almost cut off from land trade with Europe. It is reliant on the Aegean Sea for access to maritime trade in the region—but across that sea lies Turkey, a large potential enemy.

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It didn’t take long for people in Germany to point out that they were working until sixty-five but paying taxes that were going to Greece so that people could retire at fifty-five. They then asked “Why?” And the answer, “In sickness and in health,” was unsatisfactory.

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The trauma of two world wars, followed by seven decades of peace and then the collapse of the Soviet Union persuaded many people that Western Europe was a “post-conflict” region.

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The corridor of the North European Plain is at its narrowest between Poland’s Baltic coast in the north and the beginning of the Carpathian Mountains in the south. This is where, from a Russian military perspective, the best defensive line could be placed or, from an attacker’s viewpoint, the place at which its forces would be squeezed together before breaking out toward Russia.

The Poles have seen it both ways, as armies have swept east and west across it, frequently changing borders. If you take The Times Atlas of European History and flick through the pages quickly as if it were a flip book, you see Poland emerge circa 1000 CE, then continually change shape, disappear, and reappear until assuming its present form in the late twentieth century.

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In 1999, Poland joined NATO, extending the Alliance’s reach four hundred miles closer to Moscow. By then, several other former Warsaw Pact countries were also members of the Alliance, and in 1999 Moscow watched helplessly as NATO went to war with its ally, Serbia. In the 1990s, Russia was in no position to push back, but after the chaos of the Yeltsin years, Putin stepped in on the front foot and came out swinging.

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Denmark is already a NATO member, and the recent resurgence of Russia has caused a debate in Sweden over whether it is time to abandon the neutrality of two centuries and join the Alliance. In 2013, Russian jets staged a mock bombing run on Sweden in the middle of the night. The Swedish defense system appears to have been asleep, failing to scramble any jets, and it was the Danish air force that took to the skies to shepherd the Russians away. Despite that, the majority of Swedes remain against NATO membership, but the debate is ongoing, informed by Moscow’s statement that it would be forced to “respond” if either Sweden or Finland were to join the Alliance.

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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.

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The Germans were involved in the machinations that overthrew Ukraine’s President Yanukovych in 2014 and they were sharply critical of Russia’s subsequent annexation of Crimea. However, mindful of the gas pipelines, Berlin was noticeably more restrained in its criticism and support for sanctions than, for example, the UK, which is far less reliant on Russian energy.

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Geographically, the Brits are in a good place. Good farmland, decent rivers, excellent access to the seas and their fish stocks, close enough to the European continent to trade, and yet protected by dint of being an island race—there have been times when the UK gave thanks for its geography as wars and revolutions swept over its neighbors.

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There is a theory that the relative security of the UK over the past few hundred years is why it has experienced more freedom and less despotism than the countries across the channel. The theory goes that there were fewer requirements for “strong men” or dictators, which, starting with the Magna Carta (1215) and then the Provisions of Oxford (1258), led to forms of democracy years ahead of other countries.

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Its location still grants it certain strategic advantages, one of which is the GIUK gap. This is a choke point in the world’s sea-lanes—it is hardly as important as the Strait of Hormuz or the Strait of Malacca, but it has traditionally given the UK an advantage in the North Atlantic.

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The GIUK is one of many reasons why London flew into a panic in 2014 when, briefly, the vote on Scottish independence looked as if it might result in a yes. The loss of power in the North Sea and North Atlantic would have been a strategic blow to and a massive dent in the prestige of whatever was left of the UK.

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Prejudice against immigrants always rises during times of economic recession such as recently suffered in Europe, and the effects have been seen across the continent and have resulted in the rise of right-wing political parties, all of which militate against pan-nationalism and thus weaken the fabric of the EU. A stark example came in early 2016 when for the first time in half a century, Sweden began checking the documents of travelers from Denmark. This was a direct response to the waves of refugees and migrants flowing into northern Europe from the wider Middle East and the ISIS attacks on Paris in December 2015. The idea of the EU’s “Schengen Area,” a border-free area composed of twenty-six countries, has taken some heavy blows with different countries, at different times, reintroducing border controls on the grounds of security.

If you won the lottery, and were looking to buy a country to live in, Tim Marshall explains (in Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World), the first one the real estate agent would show you would be the United States of America:

First, there is the East Coast Plain leading to the Appalachian Mountains, an area well watered by short but navigable rivers and with fertile soil. Then, heading farther west, you have the Great Plains stretching all the way to the Rocky Mountains, and within this section lies the Mississippi basin with its network of huge, navigable rivers flowing into the Mississippi River all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico, which is sheltered by the peninsula of Florida and several islands. Once over the massive mountain range that is the Rockies you get to the desert, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, a narrow coastal plain, and finally to the shores of the Pacific Ocean.

To the north, above the Great Lakes, lies the Canadian Shield, the world’s largest area of Precambrian rock, much of which forms a barrier to human settlement. To the southwest—desert.

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The last of the original thirteen colonies to be established was Georgia in 1732. The thirteen became increasingly independent minded all the way up to the American Revolutionary War (1775–83). At the beginning of this period, the colonies, which gradually began to connect to one another, stretched one thousand miles from Massachusetts in the north, down to Georgia, and had an estimated combined population of approximately 2.5 million people. They were bounded by the Atlantic to their east and the Appalachian Mountains to their west. The Appalachians, 1,500 miles long, are impressive, but compared to the Rockies not particularly high.

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The British government forbade settlement west of the Appalachians, as it wanted to ensure that trade, and taxes, remained on the Eastern Seaboard.

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In the early 1800s this new country’s leadership still had little idea that it was thousands of miles from the “south sea,” or Pacific. Using Native American trails, a few explorers, for whom the word intrepid could have been coined, had pushed through the Appalachians and reached the Mississippi. There they thought they might find a waterway leading to the ocean and thus joining up with the vast tracts of lands the Spanish had explored across the southwestern and Pacific coastal regions, including what are now Texas and California.

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Its citizens already had access to the Ohio River, just west of the Appalachians, but that led to the Mississippi, whose western bank was controlled by the French all the way down to the city of New Orleans. This gave the French command of American trade heading out to the Old World from the Gulf of Mexico, as well as the vast territory to the west in what is now the American heartland. In 1802, a year after Thomas Jefferson assumed the presidency, he wrote: “There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans.”

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The greater Mississippi basin has more miles of navigable river than the rest of the world put together. Nowhere else are there so many rivers whose source is not in highland and whose waters run smoothly all the way to the ocean across vast distances. The Mississippi, fed by much of the basin river system, begins near Minneapolis and ends 1,800 miles south in the Gulf of Mexico. So the rivers were the natural conduit for ever-increasing trade, leading to a great port and all using waterborne craft that was, and is, many times cheaper than road travel.

The Americans now had strategic geographical depth, a massive fertile land, and an alternative to the Atlantic ports with which to conduct business. They also had ever-expanding routes east to west linking the East Coast to the new territory, and then the river systems flowing north to south to connect the then sparsely populated lands with one another, thus encouraging America to form as a single entity.

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In 1819 the Spanish ceded Florida to the United States and with it a massive amount of territory.

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Mexico controlled land all the way up to Northern California, which the United States could live with, but it also stretched out east, including what is now Texas, which, then as now, borders Louisiana. Mexico’s population at the time was 6.2 million, the United States’s 9.6 million. The US army may have been able to see off the mighty British, but they had been fighting three thousand miles from home with supply lines across an ocean. The Mexicans were next door.

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Mexico is not blessed in the American way. It has poor-quality agricultural land, no river system to use for transport, and was wholly undemocratic, with new arrivals having little chance of ever being granted land.

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By the mid-1830s there were enough white settlers in Texas to force the Mexican issue. The Mexican, Catholic, Spanish-speaking population numbered in the low thousands, but there were approximately twenty thousand white Protestant settlers. The Texas Revolution of 1835–36 drove the Mexicans out, but it was a close-run thing, and had the settlers lost then, the Mexican army would have been in a position to march on New Orleans and control the southern end of the Mississippi. It is one of the great what-ifs of modern history.

However, history turned the other way and Texas became independent, via American money, arms, and ideas. The territory went on to join the Union in 1845 and together they fought the 1846–48 Mexican War, in which they crushed their southern neighbor, which was required to accept that Mexico ended in the sands of the southern bank of the Rio Grande.

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In the south, the Rio Grande runs through desert; to the north are the Great Lakes and rocky land with few people close to the border, especially in the eastern half of the continent; and to the east and west are the great oceans. However, in the twenty-first century, in the southwest the cultural historical memory of the region as Hispanic land is likely to resurface, as the demographics are changing rapidly and Hispanics will be the majority population within a few decades.

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The Homestead Act of 1862 awarded 160 acres of federally owned land to anyone who farmed it for five years and paid a small fee. If you were a poor man from Germany, Scandinavia, or Italy, why go to Latin America and be a serf, when you could go to the United States and be a free land-owning man?

In 1867, Alaska was bought from Russia. At the time it was known as “Seward’s Folly,” named for the secretary of state, William Seward, who agreed to the deal. He paid $ 7.2 million, or two cents, an acre. The press accused him of purchasing snow, but minds were changed with the discovery of gold in 1896. Decades later, huge reserves of oil were also found.

Two years on, in 1869, came the opening of the transcontinental railroad. Now you could cross the country in a week, whereas it had previously taken several hazardous months.

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The only real threat was from Spain—it may have been persuaded to leave the mainland, but it still controlled the islands of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and part of what is now the Dominican Republic.

Cuba in particular kept American presidents awake at night, as it would again in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The island sits just off Florida, giving it access to and potential control of the Straits of Florida and the Yucatán Channel in the Gulf of Mexico. This is the exit and entry route for the port of New Orleans.

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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. They would all come in useful, but Guam in particular is a vital strategic asset and Cuba a strategic threat if controlled by a major power.

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In the same year it secured Cuba, the Straits of Florida, and to a great extent the Caribbean. It also annexed the Pacific island of Hawaii, thus protecting the approaches to its own West Coast. In 1903, America signed a treaty leasing it exclusive rights to the Panama Canal. Trade was booming.

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Sixteen navy battleships from the Atlantic force set out from the United States in December 1907. Their hulls were painted white, the navy’s peacetime color, and this impressive example of diplomatic signaling became known as “the Great White Fleet.” Over the following fourteen months the fleet called on twenty ports, including ones in Brazil, Chile, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, Japan, China, Italy, and Egypt. Of these the most important was Japan, who was put on notice that in extremis America’s Atlantic fleet could be deployed to the Pacific. The voyage, a mixture of hard and soft power, preceded the military term force projection, but that is what it was, and it was duly noted by every major power in the world.

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In the autumn of 1940, the British desperately needed more warships. The Americans had fifty to spare and so, with what was called the Destroyers for Bases Agreement, the British swapped their ability to be a global power for help in remaining in the war. Almost every British naval base in the Western Hemisphere was handed over.

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In 1949, Washington led the formation of NATO and with it effectively assumed command of the Western world’s surviving military might. The civilian head of NATO may well be a Belgian one year, a Brit the next, but the military commander is always an American, and by far the greatest firepower within NATO is American.

No matter what the treaty says, NATO’s Supreme Commander ultimately answers to Washington. The UK and France would learn at their expense during the Suez Crisis of 1956—when they were compelled by American pressure to cease their occupation of the canal zone, losing most of their influence in the Middle East as a result—that a NATO country does not hold a strategic naval policy without first asking Washington.

With Iceland, Norway, Britain, and Italy (all founding members of NATO) having granted the United States access and rights to their bases, it now dominated the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean as well as the Pacific. In 1951, it extended its domination there down to the south by forming an alliance with Australia and New Zealand, and also to the north following the Korean War of 1950–53.

There were now two maps of the United States. The familiar one stretching diagonally down from Seattle on the Pacific coast to the panhandle in the Sargasso Sea, and the part real/ part conceptual one of America’s geopolitical-power footprint.

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There were now only three places from which a challenge to American hegemony could come: a united Europe, Russia, and China. All would grow stronger, but two would reach their limits.

The dream of some Europeans of an EU with “ever closer union” and a common foreign and defense policy is dying slowly before our eyes, and even if it were not, the EU countries spend so little on defense that ultimately they remain reliant on the United States. The economic crash of 2008 has left the European powers reduced in capacity and with little appetite for foreign adventures. The gradual splintering of the idea of unity was magnified by the UK’s decision to hold a referendum on its membership in the EU in the summer of 2016. The complicated aftermath of the Brexit vote has brought confusion to the continent. It also disappointed Washington, DC, which always favored having the UK inside the EU as its eyes and ears

In 1991, the Russian threat had been seen off due to their own staggering economic incompetence, military overstretch, and failure to persuade the subjected masses in their empire that gulags and the overproduction of state-funded tractors was the way ahead. The recent pushback by Putin’s Russia is a thorn in America’s side, but not a serious threat to America’s dominance. When President Obama described Russia as “no more than a regional power” in 2014, he may have been needlessly provocative, but he wasn’t wrong. The bars of Russia’s geographical prison, as seen in chapter one, are still in place: they still lack a warm-water port with access to the global sea-lanes and still lack the military capacity in wartime to reach the Atlantic via the Baltic and North Seas, or the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.

The United States was partially behind the change of government in Ukraine in 2014. It wanted to extend democracy in the world, and it wanted to pull Ukraine away from Russian influence and thus weaken President Putin. Washington knows that during the last decade, as America was distracted in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Russians took advantage in what they call their “near abroad,” regaining a solid footing in places such as Kazakhstan and seizing territory in Georgia. Belatedly, and somewhat half-heartedly, the Americans have been trying to roll back Russian gains.

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Economically the Chinese are on their way to matching the Americans, and that buys them a lot of influence and a place at the top table, but militarily and strategically they are decades behind. The United States will spend those decades attempting to ensure it stays that way, but it feels inevitable that the gap will close.

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For example, Washington might be outraged at human rights abuses in Syria (a hostile state) and express its opinions loudly, but its outrage at abuses in Bahrain might be somewhat more difficult to hear, muffled as it has been by the engines of the US 5th Fleet, which is based in Bahrain as the guest of the Bahraini government.

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Many US government foreign policy strategists are persuaded that the history of the twenty-first century will be written in Asia and the Pacific. Half of the world’s population lives there, and if India is included it is expected to account for half of the global economic output by 2050.

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The Cuban Missile Crisis is generally considered an American victory; what is less publicized is that several months after Russia removed its missiles from Cuba, the United States removed its Jupiter missiles (which could reach Moscow) from Turkey. It was actually a compromise, with both sides, eventually, able to tell their respective publics that they had not capitulated.

In the twenty-first-century Pacific there are more great-power compromises to be made. In the short term, most, but not all, are likely to be made by the Chinese—an early example is Beijing’s declaration of an Air Defense Identification Zone requiring foreign nations to inform them before entering what is disputed territory, and the Americans deliberately flying through it without telling them. The Chinese gained something by declaring the zone and making it an issue; the United States gained something by being seen not to comply. It is a long game. It is also a game of cat and mouse. In early 2016, for the first time, China landed a plane on one of the runways it has constructed on the artificial islands it is building in the Spratly Islands area of the South China Sea. Vietnam and the Philippines made formal protests as they both have claims on the area and the US described the move as threatening “regional stability.” Washington, DC, now watches each construction project, and flight, and has to pick and choose when and where it makes more vigorous protests or sends naval and air force patrols near the disputed territory. Somehow it 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.

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While all the other countries in the region matter, in what is a complicated diplomatic jigsaw puzzle, the key states look to be Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. These three sit astride the narrow Strait of Malacca. Every day through that strait come 12 million barrels of oil heading for an increasingly thirsty China and elsewhere in the region. As long as these three countries are pro-American, the Americans have a key advantage.

On the plus side, the Chinese are not politically ideological, they do not seek to spread Communism, nor do they covet (much) more territory in the way the Russians did during the Cold War, and neither side is looking for conflict.Due to offshore drilling in US coastal waters, and underground fracking across huge regions of the country, America looks destined to become not just self-sufficient in energy, but a net exporter of energy by 2020. This will mean that its focus on ensuring a flow of oil and gas from the Gulf region will diminish. It will still have strategic interests there, but the focus will no longer be so intense. If the American attention wanes, the Gulf nations will seek new alliances. One candidate will be Iran, another China, but that will only happen when the Chinese have built their blue-water navy and, equally important, are prepared to deploy it.

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Elsewhere in the Middle East, US policy in the short term is to attempt to ensure Iran does not become too strong, but at the same time build on that nuclear deal to try and reach what is known as the “grand bargain”—an agreement settling the many issues that divide the two countries, and ending three and a half decades of enmity. With the Arab nations embarking on what may be a decades-long struggle with armed Islamists, Washington looks as if it has given up on the optimistic idea of encouraging Jeffersonian democracies to emerge and will concentrate on attempting to manage the situation, while at the same time desperately trying not to get sand on the boots of US soldiers.

The close relationship with Israel may cool, albeit slowly, as the demographics of the United States change. The children of the Hispanic and Asian immigrants now arriving in the United States will be more interested in Latin America and the Far East than in a tiny country on the edge of a region no longer vital to American interests.

The policy in Latin America will be to ensure that the Panama Canal remains open, to inquire about the rates to pass through the proposed Nicaraguan canal to the Pacific, and to keep an eye on the rise of Brazil in case it gets any ideas about its influence in the Caribbean Sea. Economically the United States will also compete with China throughout Latin America for influence, but only in Cuba would Washington pull out all the stops to ensure it dominates the post-Castro/ Communist era. The proximity of Cuba to Florida, the historic relationship (albeit mixed), and Chinese pragmatism should be enough to ensure that the United States will be the dominant power in the new Cuba.

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In Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, the United States underestimated the mentality and strength of small powers and of tribes. The Americans’ own history of physical security and unity may have led them to overestimate the power of their democratic rationalist argument, which believes that compromise, hard work, and even voting would triumph over atavistic, deep-seated historical fears of “the other,” be they Sunni, Shia, Kurd, Arab, Muslim, or Christian. They assumed people would want to come together, whereas in fact many dare not try and would prefer to live apart because of their experiences.

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For thirty years it has been fashionable to predict the imminent or ongoing decline of the United States. This is as wrong now as it was in the past. The planet’s most successful country is about to become self-sufficient in energy, it remains the preeminent economic power, and it spends more on research and development for its military than the overall military budget of all the other NATO countries combined. Its population is not aging as in Europe and Japan, and a 2013 Gallup Poll showed that 25 percent of all people hoping to emigrate put the United States as their first choice of destination. In the same year, Shanghai University listed what its experts judged the top-twenty universities of the world: seventeen were in the United States.