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. Writing for The Hindu, Prasanna Aditya judged the book to be a good introduction to its topics that opens the way for the reader to further research. [4] Iran is another country with interesting geopolitical concerns as it needs to access the seas to exports its lucrative oil reserves. Most of its oilfields are towards the country’s south, with some gas fields near the Persian Gulf. Iran exports these commodities to international markets through the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait is tight at its narrowest part. This enables Iran to muscle significant influence in the region as countries like Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait need the Strait to export their commodities to access the Arabian Sea. Iran uses this chokepoint to gain influence and focuses its navy in the Strait. As a result, part of the geopolitical struggle in the Middle East is not just based on religious divides but just as much on geopolitical power and exporting oil. Geography is not necessarily fate, but it is more important, insists Marshall, than individual politicians. Consider Australia, he writes in the first chapter: It sits 5,000 miles from Africa, more than 7,000 miles from South America, and more than 2,500 miles from its supposed neighbor, New Zealand. The isolation of the island continent once allowed it to maintain a small White settler population and conduct genocidal wars on Indigenes largely unseen. Today, connected by air and sea routes and communication lines, it is “a territorially huge, Western-oriented, advanced democracy” that sits next door to China, “the world’s most economically and militarily powerful dictatorship.” This makes Australia a bulwark. What of Iran? Will it ever become a world power, as it was in the days of Darius and Xerxes? Hemmed in by mountains, “Iran’s main centers of population are widely dispersed and, until recently, poorly connected. Even now, only half of the country’s roads are paved.” This dispersal favors ethnic and cultural diversity, and Iran’s overwhelmingly young population is beginning to resist a fundamentalist ideology “more in tune with the sixteenth century than the twenty-first.” Regional rival Saudi Arabia contains vast resources of oil, a commodity that is increasingly less important than before, so much so that much of the vast sandy peninsula remains unexplored. The U.K. is another region that, Marshall projects, will become less important in world affairs as the U.S. looks to the Pacific rather than Europe. The author also considers the secondary effects of the movement for Scottish independence and, of course, China, with designs everywhere around the world, especially in a developing Sahel—and, significantly, in space, where it is vying with Russia to be the first to build lunar bases. Tim Marshall ist anerkannter Experte für Außenpolitik und arbeitete als Politik-Redakteur für die BBC und Sky News. In seinen Büchern erörtert er die großen internationalen Konflikte unserer Zeit auf geopolitischer Ebene. Sein neuestes, von Lutz-W. Wolff übersetztes Buch "Die Macht der Geographie im 21. Jahrhundert" wurde mir vor allem zum Verständnis des Kriegs in der Ukraine und den damit verbundenen Hintergründen und Zusammenhängen empfohlen.

Unlike his first book, Marshall’s “The Power of Geography” to me, was more dense. It speaks less about spatial influences on geopolitics and more about the geopolitical history of various countries.Prisoners Of Geography was a deserved smash, a clever angle to use geography to actually tell historical stories about current affairs, why the world is the way it is partially due to the way countries grew from their physical limitations. And so there is no shame in a sequel, and it is partially the fault of doing such a good job the first time around that what is left does feel like the off-cuts and crumbs from that book. The focus has shifted slightly, to look to the future. and how geography might affect future conflicts. But considering the land masses looked at in Prisoners were so massive, there is a little bit of going over the same ground. 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...” 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. Having read Marshall's earlier book Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World and hearing that he had an 'updated' sequel, I figured I'd see what had changed.

The more countries could secure vital resources by trade, the less reason they’d have to seize land. Optimists like Thomas Friedman believed countries that were tightly woven into an economic network would forgo starting wars, for fear of losing access to the humming network. Friedman lightheartedly expressed this in 1996 as the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention: no two countries with McDonald’s will go to war with each other. And he wasn’t far off. Although there have been a handful of conflicts between McDonald’s-having countries, an individual’s chance of dying in a war between states has diminished remarkably since the cold war. Hearing the mapmongers ply their trade, you wonder if anything has changed since the 13th-century world of Genghis Khan, where strategy was a matter of open steppes and mountain barriers. Geopolitical thinking is unabashedly grim, and it regards hopes for peace, justice and rights with scepticism. The question, however, is not whether it’s bleak, but whether it’s right. Past decades have brought major technological, intellectual and institutional changes. But are we still, as Marshall contends, “prisoners of geography”?Tim Marshall has become the most reputable and authoritative writer on modern geopolitics and current affairs. To say I have greatly enjoyed every book of his thus far is an understatement: I loved them. But there is something about The Power of Geography which fell a little short for me, this time. p. 75 - "It cannot liberalized, as that undermines the foundations of what legitimacy it has left among the millions of people who still support it. But if it does not, each year passes the increasingly young population will chafe against a system more in tune with the sixteenth century than the twenty-first." 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 author's understanding of our world, history and geography give us an educative insight into past, current and possible future political movements on this planet. Australia - whose population is restricted to the coasts and is under threat of more devastating drought and possible wildfires as climate changes along with carefully watching the actions of China to the north.An insider’s account of the rampant misconduct within the Trump administration, including the tumult surrounding the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021.

a b Thomas, Mark (18 September 2021). "Tim Marshall's The Power of Geography does not live up to its ambitions". The Canberra Times . Retrieved 23 December 2021. The Power of Geography" by Tim Marshall is an insightful and engaging look at the role of geography in shaping the world's political and economic landscape. Marshall, a former diplomatic editor and foreign correspondent, uses his wealth of knowledge and experience to weave together a compelling narrative that draws connections between geography and various historical and contemporary events. Also, too many instances of pro-British whitewashing of history. The colonial French were vile bastards. But Britain was just a little bit naughty and all is forgiven because we abolished slavery first. Any non-Western atrocities are given plenty of attention, however.

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The power of geography then looks at Britain after Brexit. Tim Marshall presents Britain the way it actually is. Britain has always been different from the rest of the Europe. Waters around it continue to play a central role in its culture and geopolitics. Its conflicts with France since its departure from the EU are given context. 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.