Prisoners of Geography: a satisfied read!

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

Book author: Tim Marshall

Perfect time for me to read this book, since my appetite for knowing global politics just ignited and I do not understand why Moscow has a good relation with Dhaka and why Washington doesn’t have. Why Bangladesh receives construction aids from Russia and China when we have the reputation of being denied credit from the World Bank thanks to being a champion in corruption. What is the US's interest in so and so. Why Russia is at war with Ukraine, Europe justifying its wrongness, but not actively cooperating with Ukraine. Why pieces of land are still the focus of today’s democratic government. After reading this book, I feel so satisfied to get the information straightforward, geo-politics felt like pure science!

It’s a grappling book. Especially for someone who reads the newspaper headlines alright, but when reading the full news report, struggles to understand the references.

The book is divided into ten chapters. Five of them discussed the geo-political maps of Africa, USA, Latin America, Western Europe and Arctic. And the rest five, all reserved for Asia - Russia, China, Korean and Japan, Middle East, India and Pakistan.

The first chapter is about Russia, the land of Medved or bears. I have been seeing Putin as the Prime Minister of Russia from the time we were to memorize the names of PMs of different countries. I never had to memorize another name. And I knew about Russia’s Baikal lake from board games during my childhood. Apart from that, nothing much really. Oh, Russia invaded Ukraine, but why? The first chapter from the book answered my question. Got to know about Russia's geography and the problems Putin tries to solve. The Russian problem I tried to state this way- a vast country, frozen at times of the year, has reserves of natural gas that it tries to distribute to the West and worries about keeping its vast size and dominance by trying to have a shield at its open side. So thus also answering my curiosity why the West doesn’t answer Russian invade on Ukraine “impolitely”

The EU imposed limited sanctions - limited because several European countries, Germany among them, are reliant on Russian energy to heat their homes in winter. The pipeline runs East to West and the Kremlin can turn the taps on and off.

The chapters on Africa, Middle East, India and Pakistan had one thing in common - colonial fuckery. I loved the chapter on Africa! I don’t know why. Maybe because we share many similar problems, LOL.

There may have always been conflicts: the Zulus and the Xhosas had their differences long before they had ever set eyes on a European. But colonialism forced these differences to be resolved within an artificial structure - the European concept of a nation state. The modern civil wars are now partially because the colonials told different nations that they were one nation in one state, and then after the colonialists were chased out a dominant people emerged within the state who wanted to rule it all, thus ensuring violence.

Africa has been equally cursed and blessed by its resources - blessed in so far it has natural riches in abundance, but cursed because outsiders have long plundered them. In more recent times the nation states have been able to claim a share of these riches, and foreign countries now invest rather than steal, but still the people are rarely the beneficiaries.

All these can be said for the Indian sub-continent as well.

Chinese involvement is an attractive proposition for many African governments. Beijing and the big Chinese companies don’t ask difficult questions about human rights, they don’t demand economic reform or even suggest that African leaders stop stealing their countries wealth as the IMF or World Bank might. For example, China is Sudan’s biggest trading partner, which goes some way to explaining why China consistently protects Sudan at the UN Security Council and continued to back its President Omar al-Bashir even when there was an arrest warrant out for him by the International Criminal Court. Western criticism of this gets short shrift in Beijing, however; it is regarded as simply another power play aimed at stopping China doing business, and hypocrisy given the West’s history in Africa.

China plays the game economically. They trade, trade and trade. Their focus is getting the dominance of the market. The book also clears the relation of China with different countries. How India and China two giant neighbors touch their jaws by the mountains of Ladakh, and it is the mountain that keeps them away from fighting. With Pakistan, China is using their Gwadar port for fuel and making them a transportation infrastructure in return, which can be useful for them too.

The chapter on Western Europe was cold, neighbors are in a “cold” war. But the chapter on the Middle East was blazing hot.

The middle of what? East of where? The region’s very name is based on a European view of the world, and it is a European view of the region that shaped it. The Europeans used ink to draw lines on maps: they were lines that did not exist in reality and created some of the most artificial borders the world has seen. An attempt has now been made to redraw them in blood.

Most problems of the new nations of the world have originated because these nations had their own culture, practices that were invaded by colonialists. And after they left, they messed up how a land was run for centuries and there was no way to go back to running it the previous way. Pretty much all the countries in the world today have to solve food, energy, communication etc. problems. And for these new nations, additionally keep the unrest at bay.

The notion that a man from a certain area could not travel across a region to see a relative from the same tribe unless he had a document, granted to him by a third man he didn’t know in a faraway town, made little sense. The idea that the document was issued because a foreigner has said the area was now two regions and had made up names for them made no sense at all and was contrary to the way in which life had been lived for centuries.

Towards the later chapters, I formulated a few theories to establish two nations relations. One—neighbors are enemies. Two—neighbor’s neighbor is friend. Three—between two adjacent nations A and B, if A is a friend of the USA, B must be a friend of Russia/China. Forgive me for exceptions, even periodic tables have them, if not more than my theory’s.

This book is a fundamental reading on ge-politics. If you are as confused about global politics, as I was before, get a copy and hop in. You might not be able to get the book down easily!