Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall provides us with a thought-provoking analysis of how the geography or land in which we live has shaped us, and how leaders always protect their land by seeking the high ground. Prisoners of Geography is similar to Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” strategy, in which he describes different strategies and factors of war, including geography. Tim Marshall presents a concise view of ten geographical locations and how these locations shape their respective states politically, economically, and socially. With the development of technology, geographical barriers are reducing, but only for developed countries like the US, which can conduct airstrikes on targets such as Iraq from 6915 miles away (from Missouri to Mosul).
In his book Prisoners of Geography, Marshal argues that geography and history remain crucial in how states are formed and organized. For example, India and China have a territorial dispute over Ladakh, but apart from 1962 the one-month-long battle, they have never had another long war due to the Himalayas, which serve as a natural border between them. The river Ibar in Kosovo has also become the de facto border of what some countries now recognize as the independent state of Kosovo.
In the case of Afghanistan, the twenty-year-long war on terror failed due to Afghanistan’s
location, which is landlocked. While America used its satellites to locate Al-Qaeda terrorists and used fighter jets and bombers to hit them, the mountains, dusty plains, and hills became barriers for them to finish the job. There are rules of geography to move forward, and some leaders adopt them while others ignore them. China used these rules to occupy Tibet, while the US ignored them.
Geography can make states both vulnerable and invulnerable. For example, Russia has never been conquered from the West due to the Ural Mountains, but this is a double-edged sword that requires a long supply chain. Invaders such as the Poles in 1605, the Swedes under Charles X11 in 1708, the French under Napoleon in 1812, and Hitler in 1941 all failed to conquer Russia because they did not follow the rules of geography. This is why Winston Churchill famously observed that “It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Later on, a policy of containment, also known as the Truman Doctrine, was used to prevent the expansion of communism through NATO, formed in 1949, in which the US supported democratic countries.
To counter this, under Russia’s leadership, the communist states formed the Warsaw Pact in 1955. The USSR collapsed in 1991, and fifteen states gained their independence from Russia. Lucian Pye in his take on China said that China is a civilization pretending to be a nation. With a population of 1.4 billion, a 4000-year-old history, and a very different ideology, Confucianism (551-479 BCE), China’s geography is also multi-dimensional. The Gobi Desert and North China Plain cover the north border of China with Mongolia. In 1279, Kublai Khan, the emperor of the Mongol dynasty became the first foreign ruler to rule all of China. After ninety years, the Han people were able to take charge of their own affairs with the establishment of the Ming dynasty.
The Yellow River is China’s east border with the Korean peninsula and Japan. Japan attacked China in 1932 and again in 1937 in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia. If we move
down the Yangtze River and Taiwan, we find the Great Wall of China, which was constructed by the Qin dynasty (221-207 BC). Between 605 and 609 CE, the Grand Canal, the longest
man-made waterway, linked the Yellow River to the Yang. All the lines drawn to create nation-states, and the idea of traveling with documents to meet with one’s own relatives were created by Europe before World War One. There were not as many nation-states in any region of the world, mostly in the Middle East, where only a few empires ruled, such as the Ottoman Empire (1299-1922). But after the world wars, the structure of the entire region changed due to Europe’s actions. By drawing artificial borders, disputes cannot be
resolved because geography cannot be moved from one place to another. Moreover, those who draw the border lines are not familiar with their historical locations.
Thus, the partition in 1948 that created Israel and settled it between Arab countries caused more disputes, and the conflict between Israel and Palestine has remained unresolved since then, despite the efforts of some leaders to resolve the issue. The Middle East is a disputed area where things couldn’t be resolved in the way they needed to be solved. For example, after World War One, in the Treaty of Sevres (1920), they promised an independent Kurdistan, the fourth-largest ethnic group in the world. However, until now, they cannot achieve independence because their interests are with the elder state, not with Kurdistan. Mostly, Kurdish people are living in border regions among three to four states, including Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran, and over time, they have risen to fight for their independence.
A long ideological dispute between Shia and Sunni is also deeply rooted in the Middle East, mainly between Iran (a Shia state) and Saudi Arabia (a Sunni state. Once again, the West’s mistake became the reason for four major battles between Pakistan and India and many small-scale conflicts between Pakistan and Afghanistan. In 1893, Sir Durand and Abdur
Rahman Khan drew the Durand Line and divided the same ethnic group, the Pashtuns, into two regions, Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent. This created Afghanistan as a buffer state between the British and Russia. After the partition of India in 1947, two new states emerged: Pakistan and India. However, the same mistake was repeated by the West, who drew artificial borders that became the reason for many major wars between Pakistan and India.
The book “The Prisoners of Geography” gives us an idea of how human attitude, behavior, way of living, political and social progress, and love for nature and humanity depend on the land where they live. The location becomes the reason behind all of this. There are different theories in International Relations that explain human nature and the structure of governance, but they forget to mention where people live. The most important thing that shapes human nature is their location, which I call Geograpism.
