The Revenge of Geography

Title: The Revenge of Geography – What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate
Author: Robert D. Kaplan
Publisher: Random House, 2012 (First)
ISBN: 9781400069835
Pages: 403

The concept of a land of domicile, a country or a nation, is inseparably linked to geography which demarcates the boundaries of the entity. A nation is virtual, but its boundaries are often not. Kalidasa's epic poem Kumarasambhava starts with a description of the borders of India thus: "In the northern direction lies the divine-souled lord of mountains named Himalaya. Plunging into the eastern and western oceans, he stands as if he were the measuring rod of earth". These lines were composed in central India in the fourth century CE. Similarly, every country was demarcated by its natural frontiers. As migrations and invasions upset the rhythm of political life, artificial or no borders came up to separate nations. When natural borders faded, religion, ethnicity, language and ideology came to separate human societies. With the blindingly fast adoption of technology in transportation and communication, geography was thought to be irrelevant in the twentieth century because people could talk to each other in real time across the globe and can meet in person in a few hours. While this may be the obvious thing, this book argues that geography is not totally displaced and sometimes it will come back with a vengeance upsetting a strategic calculation or as an unexpected demographic flashpoint. The book supports these findings with well-thought-out arguments. Robert D. Kaplan is a renowned foreign policy expert who has authored fourteen books on foreign affairs and travel. He has been a foreign correspondent for The Atlantic for more than a quarter-century.

Kaplan makes a short review of the state of things and its historical development to the position it is in now. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, geography was an honoured discipline to which politics, culture and economics were often conceived of in reference to the relief maps. The author addresses the question of historical consequences and economic progress of different states based on their geography. An interesting point is his response to the question of why Africa is so poor. The geographically anchored answer is that though it has an area five times that of Europe, its coastline is only a quarter as long. It lacks many good natural harbours. Few of tropical Africa's rivers are navigable from the sea, often dropping from interior tableland by a series of falls, so that interior Africa was isolated from the coast. Moreover, the Sahara Desert hindered human contact from the north. The thick forests also prevented easy travel along the route. This may seem to be a deterministic argument which concedes to fate the full responsibility on the destiny of a region. Technology helped mankind to undo the geographical knot. The first cycle of the post-Cold War era saw military interventions in Kuwait, Serbia and Kosovo which appeared to be benign and also a defeat of geography through air power and the triumph of humanitarian intervention. In the second cycle involving Iraq and Afghanistan, the revenge of geography turned the tables on the Americans. This link to geography and human action was noted by ancient scholars as well. Herodotus, born around 490 BCE, maintains the perfect balance between geography and societal interactions in his narrative about the origins and execution of war between the Greeks and Persians.

The book then examines the theories put forward by eminent scholars around the turn of the twentieth century and how relevant they still are to deciding the probable course of action. Sir Halford J. Mackinder is the father of modern-day geopolitics whose thesis made central Asia the pivot on which the great empires of the Eurasian heartland rested. Russia was adjacent to this region whose natural protective border was only forests which were porous to the horse-mounted barbarians. In the thirteenth century, it fell prey to the Golden Horde of Mongols. Thus Russia would be denied access to the European Renaissance and branded forever with the bitterest feelings of inferiority and insecurity. Nicholas J. Spykman thought a little differently. Instead of the central heartland, he held that the Rimland of Asia such as comprising the demographic giants of Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia, China, Japan and the oil-rich Middle East, with their littorals, was the key to world power because in addition to dominating Eurasia, the maritime-oriented Rimland was central to contact with the outside world. The defence of Western Europe, Israel, moderate Arab states, Shah's Iran and the wars in Afghanistan and Vietnam all carried the notion of preventing a communist empire in the heartland from extending control to the Rimland. The third complementary theory in this field is from Alfred Thayer Mahan who postulated that sea power was not only more important than land power in the fight for dominance, but also less threatening to international stability. The limited capacity of navies to extend coercive force inland made them no menace to liberty and usually limited them to the role of protecting commercial shipping lines. Hence, he argued, instead of the heartland of Eurasia, the Indian and Pacific oceans are the geographical pivot of empires.

    The book provides some prescient observations on the political mindset of Russia that would set it in a belligerent mood against its neighbours and the Western world. Russia was always trying to expand whether it was under the Romanovs, Communists or Putin. Its expansionism was fuelled by its vulnerable state, which had no natural frontiers and hence always subject to invasions from the outside. In 1991, Russia was shorn off all its annexes in central Asia and was stripped to its lowest land extent since the time of Catherine the Great. The 2022 Ukraine war has its roots in this mentality of Russian politicians. Kaplan argues (in 2012) that Putin's concentration on Ukraine is proof of his desire to anchor Russia in Europe by re-creating a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. Ukraine is the pivot state that in and of itself transforms Russia. With it back under Russian domination, 46 million people would be added to Russia's Western-oriented demography. Examining the Indian subcontinent, the author comments that with the real possibility of the US and China becoming rivals, the direction in which India tilts could determine the course of geopolitics in Eurasia, or in other words, India would be the ultimate pivot state (p.228). He also advises the US to engage in wars where their air and sea power is involved, but not the army. It is the permanence of small wars that can undo America, not the odd, once every third of a century miscalculation, however much tragedy and consternation that causes.

With the theories set in the foreground Kaplan goes back and analyses each region one by one in some detail. He examines Europe, Central Asia, India, China, the Middle East, Iran and Turkey, Mexico and the oceanic appendages of great powers. Relying on Toynbee's statement that the static border between a prosperous and civilized state and a less civilized and poor neighbour, always works to the advantage of the economically weaker but physically virile barbarian, unless the border is pushed outward by the stronger nation. He cautions that the border between the US and Mexico falls in this category and speculates on the probability of Mexicans overrunning the southern frontier states of the US at least. The author wants the theocratic regime in Iran to get toppled, but stops short of condemning them on the issue of human rights violations against its own citizens. He suggests diplomatically that the Shia imagination is more easily adaptable than Sunni to the idea of revolution which required a sense of history and social justice combined with that of martyrdom, but clarifies immediately that the world will not see the true appeal of Iran in all its cultural glory until the clerical regime liberalizes or is toppled.

This book was written in 2012 and appears so outdated after the Ukraine war of 2022, Gaza conflict in 2023 and the Iran war of 2026, all of which seem to have rewritten the balancing equations of power in the world. The book accepts as a precondition that the US can control almost anything anywhere in the world and though it can sometimes make mistakes, taken as a whole it is a benevolent power. This prejudice forces the author to handle other issues as consequences rather than causes. A lot of political and strategic analysts' writings are examined and quoted in support of the author's argument.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star