Words&Dirt

Geography is one of the glaring weak points in American education. I’m college-educated, but know relatively little about world geography, and even less about how it shapes national economies and political strategies. A portion of my ignorance can be attributed to personal preferences and limitations, but it’s a good bet that my geopolitical blind spots are shared by many of my fellow Americans. Tim Marshall’s Prisoners of Geography offers a terrific opportunity to begin filling in the gaps.

Inhabitants of this rapidly-globalizing world often believe that political ideas and economic imperatives are the main drivers of international cooperation and conflict. Not so, says Tim Marshall. Prisoners of Geography is a sober reminder of the powerful influence geography exerts on human communities: “Geography has always been a prison of sorts––one that defines what a nation is or can be, and one from which our world leaders have often struggled to break free” (259).

Marshall has no trouble gathering examples from numerous corners of the globe and historical eras to support this argument, touching on fascinating topics such as the richness or paucity of a region’s natural resources, the destructive legacy of European colonialism, and the new role climate change is playing in 21st-century geopolitics. Marshall’s general outlook is that geography constrains much more than it enables, and that the availability of favorable landscapes makes a huge difference in a country’s ability to thrive in the globalized world.

There is an intriguing connection here with our modern understanding of the relationship between the human imagination and the body/mind. Our imaginations are free to run wild, but our ability to live out our dreams is always constrained by the physical compositions of our bodies and communities. World leaders face the same problem on a larger scale, Marshall claims:

Each Russian leader has been confronted by the same problems. It doesn’t matter if the ideology of those in control is czarist, Communist, or crony capitalist––the ports still freeze, and the North European Plain is still flat. (35)

Russia is hardly the only country whose ambitions have been limited by geographical factors. Marshall deftly shows geography’s remarkable explanatory power when analyzing economic and political decisions:

The physical realities that underpin national and international politics are too often disregarded in both writing about history and in contemporary reporting of world affairs. Geography is clearly a fundamental part of the “why” as well as the “what.” Take, for example, China and India: two massive countries with huge populations that share a very long border but are not politically or culturally aligned. It wouldn’t be surprising if these two giants had fought each other in several wars, but in fact, apart from one monthlong battle in 1962, they never have. Why? Because between them is the highest mountain range in the world. (2)

The mountainous terrain of Iran means that it is difficult to create an interconnected economy, and that it has many minority groups each with keenly defined characteristics…As a result of this diversity, Iran has traditionally centralized power and used force and a fearsome intelligence network to maintain internal stability. Tehran knows that no one is about to invade Iran, but also that hostile powers can use its minorities to try and stir dissent. (158-9)

Africa’s coastline? Great beaches––really, really lovely beaches––but terrible natural harbors. Rivers? Amazing rivers, but most of them are worthless for actually transporting anything, given that every few miles you go over a waterfall. These are just two in a long list of problems that helps explain why Africa isn’t technologically or politically as successful as Western Europe or North America. (110)

Prisoners of Geography is brimming with such passages. As someone unaccustomed to thinking that geography can keep two natural enemies from conflict, influence the machinations of intelligence networks, or determine the economic potential of an entire continent, I find these observations novel and enlightening.

This book’s weakness is that it flirts too freely with geopolitical fatalism; the ease and regularity with which Marshall applies geopolitical explanations to complex international phenomena will become a source of discomfort for the observant reader. Take, for example, his assertion that “Mexico is destined to live in the United States’s shadow and as such will always play the subservient role in bilateral relations” (223). That is a very bold statement, and it’s impossible to know if Marshall’s perspective is overly reductionist, or if it’s sound and we’re simply uncomfortable admitting that the US is likely to dominate Mexico not because of the superiority of its people or organizational structures, but because it’s sitting on a better piece of real estate.

Marshall appears to believe that our geographical prisons leave little room for the self-actualization of individuals and communities. He characterizes nations as children squabbling over the final slices of a rapidly disappearing pie, and leans heavily on the idea that geography is destiny. We should be wary of this zero-sum approach, and question it in the same way we’ve come to question the unhelpful notion that biology is destiny. Even if we accept nothing beyond a cause-and-effect interpretation of reality, there are far too many inputs for us to feel comfortable saddling Earth’s landscapes with the blame for the gross shortcomings of human civilization.

Even when Marshall acknowledges the non-geographical factors that influence international affairs, his scope of vision seems unnecessarily narrow: “Of course, geography does not dictate the course of all events. Great ideas and great leaders are part of the push and pull of history” (260). There’s no doubt ideas and leaders can move us one way or another, but what about regular people? What about the countless hours, days, years, and lifetimes spent traversing continents and crossing rivers, hopping borders and staking claims? Must we downplay these dynamics just because they are notoriously difficult to track and quantify? Can we ignore the quotidian failures and victories of common people, watching only the broad strokes and attributing them to storms or droughts or insuperable mountain ranges?

These are questions Marshall did not set out to address, so it would be unfair to hold him accountable for the answers. But those answers––however difficult to uncover, contingent in duration, or romantic in substance––remain relevant to any discussion about where is humanity has been and where we might be headed.

In the final analysis, Prisoners of Geography is an engaging and worthwhile read. Marshall doesn’t have the power to settle our geopolitical problems, but he does bring us one step closer to understanding them.

Rating: 8/10