This in itself should not be especially revelatory - in his wonderful Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies Jared Diamond give an extraordinarily well argued case of how these factors have shaped the history of humankind, and Marshall references this - but here the writer gives ten specific examples, focusing on recent history, current geopolitics, and the future. He is making the point that these factors seem to be something we have forgotten, that we have been blinded by the power of technology and how much it has shrunk the globe but, in fact, power - either economic or military - still relies on moving large amounts of material by land and/or sea.
He covers such things as Russia's lack of a warm-water port and single point of easy land access to Europe via the Northern European Plain and how this explains that Putin's focus on Ukraine is at least as much tactical as ideological. Why India and China have never had a major conflict, separated as they are by the greatest mountain range on Earth. Why any talk of a Latin American great economic power is premature to say the least, due to the all but insuperable terrain and, well, that it's just so damned far from the rest of world. How, once it gained control of the landmass via clever dealing/luck/genocide the United States was almost guaranteed dominance due to the terrain, climate, and positioning. (As an aside, he points out that annexing of Texas in 1836 was a close thing; how much would an opposite outcome have changed things?)
Marshall writes with clarity but, surprisingly given his pedigree as a journalist, rather drily. Perhaps this is a stylistic choice to let his assertions speak for themselves and grip the reader, which they generally do. While he mentions trade rather a lot, and food production and water availability, his focus is largely on how geography affects military movements (Russian tanks across the aforementioned Northern European Plain, Chinese warships through the Straits of Malacca, etc) and the transport of oil and gas. That this last currently tops all else for importance is difficult to argue with - the modern, and modernising, world runs on energy and fossil fuels are currently cheap and plentiful and (barring the increasingly obvious side effects of their use) incredibly efficient. Marshall seems to be implying increases in fossil fuel use - references to expansion of fields in South America, Africa, and the Arctic in particular - and not only is this depressing but his predictions barely touch on the effect of this use, and don't seem to account for the changes in climate in sea levels that they will bring.
This edition was revised in 2016, and I was constantly reminded of how some things have changed since publication. That Crimea is now part of Russia a startling but minor change. What kept leaping out were the points when discussing US influence around the world. For instance, in the sections on China and Korea & Japan, much was made of China's aggression nautical expansion and the pressure it is putting on its neighbours - throwing money at Pakistan and other places to develop friendly ports, or the threats toward South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the rest. The author regularly states that there is no percentage in countries switching allegiance despite China's best efforts while the US has their backs, and I could not help but think of Donald Trump's systematic dismantling of American diplomacy and soft power. OK, he may be out of the way in two years (or less!) but trust is easily lost and difficult to regain. When faced with both carrots and sticks from the new Asian proto-superpower and uncertainty on the reliability of the existing American one, it may not be a difficult decision. After all, to refocus and repurpose a quote from the book, "Beijing is close, and Washington is far away."
3.5 stars
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