Thoughts on "Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics"

 

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics by Tim Marshall

"Prisoners of Geography" is a very valuable book to read, not necessarily as an ultimate treatise (if you'd call it that) about a supposed deterministic nature of global politics but rather, more than anything, what it implies about the mindsets governing our governments.

First and foremost, I believe I'll start with the chronological starting-point - the past. Marshall doesn't merely illustrate the conflicts of interest, energy needs, and geographic obstacles as they are today and their contemporary impact but also retroactively uses this political logic handling these aspects in their modern form as the motivators behind past political policies as well as the nature of diplomacy throughout the ages. I'll only note that as a historical hypothesis I don't believe it holds up to scrutiny because it implies the same values and even cosmological vision governed the people of the past in precisely the same manner as it does to us. Similarly to the Marxist historical materialist conception of history, the terms are vague enough that any retroactive argument linking it to some supposedly omnipresent factor can be made. It is not at all clear to us that similar thought processes motivated past Kings and military leaders and I'll leave it at that. That's not to say geography itself is not a paramount factor, just that its linkage to political intent (as well as its supposed total nature) is wholly unfalsifiable.

What is, however, the truly interesting aspect of this book is when it deals with the present, which I believe it does with remarkable clarity. Although we cannot link this thought process to past political leaders, I believe only few would doubt that this mindset presented, informed by the development in the political sciences, dominates the contemporary economy of ideas in regards to foreign policy.

First and foremost, some of the mindsets that seem to be present are the desire for invulnerability (through easily defendable borders, unstoppable supply of energy and other resources etc.) as well as the direct undermining of competition with the intent of making them vulnerable for domination. Both of these mindsets are predicated on one awful assumption: that of the State of War. The different countries, according to this way of viewing things, compete for the time in which they'll be in a state of emergency, and in particular, war - they need to feed their people and make sure the machinery still operates, they need to know no invading force can succeed in dominating them etc. and this means that suspicion and aggression are but inherent aspects of any foreign policy nowadays.

In fact, little wonder that the neo-conservatism of the United States seems impossible to overcome - any leader helming the United States will have to confront an entire apparatus- nay, further than that, an entire world taken by this inherent suspicion - and any backpedalling of the United States will result in greater vulnerability for itself and lesser for its competitors, that would immediately take advantage.

Even supposed triumphs for the anti-war factions in the United States, like the overall abandonment of the Middle East, are much more based on developments of the United States' own ability to produce energy, and lesser dependence on Middle Eastern oil, rather than the general public sentiment (not to say it had no impact necessarily, mind you).

As I read this book, especially, as the tendency of such books with hypotheses tend to do, when it presents its primary ideas as deterministic and inevitable, I was overcome with a feeling of powerlessness - because ultimately the strategy so much represents the modern political mindset that we are stuck in a sort of catch-22. Even if one player would refuse to play by these rules, it would change nothing, as it would only mean it'd get dominated by other players.

Perhaps certain developments such as renewable energy may serve to undermine some of it, but still, at least in the foreseeable future, it appears that's just how foreign politics shall be.