Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World

The largest country in the world, Russia is 6,000 miles wide, spanning two continents and covering 11 time zones from Poland to the Pacific Ocean. The Ural Mountains divide European Russia in the west from the Asian portion to the east. Western Russia is part of the North European Plain, a vast flatland that stretches from France all the way to the Urals and makes it easy for European armies to enter Russia.

Although the flatlands provide relatively easy access to Russia, the invading forces need extremely long supply lines to reach Moscow. Still, many have tried: since 1605, Poland, Sweden, France, and Germany have sent forces into Russia. Over the past two centuries, Marshall notes, “the Russians [have fought] on average in or around the North European Plain once every thirty-three years” (13).

Russia’s traditional defense has been offense: absorbing nearby countries. In the 1500s, Tsar Ivan the Terrible expanded Moscow’s reach to more defensible borders, from the Arctic Sea in the north to the Urals in the east and the Caucasus Mountains in the south, buttresses against invading Mongol hordes. Over time, Russia drove east of the Urals to conquer Siberia; in later centuries, Russia surged west, conquering Ukraine and the Baltic states.

By the end of World War II, Russian Soviet forces had captured the rest of Eastern Europe, making the Soviet Union “simply the Russian Empire writ large” (16). Forty years later, however, the Soviet Union fell. The western NATO alliance began to absorb the newly independent countries, although Russia still retains economic and military alliances with former Soviet states to the south and east, such as Armenia and Kazakhstan.

Though twice the geographic size of the US or China, Russia has a relatively small population, with only 144 million citizens—many ethnically different from Russians, with little allegiance to Moscow. In addition, many Chinese have begun to move into Russia’s sparsely populated Siberia. Despite its small population, Russia still struggles with food shortages due to a short growing season and the logistical difficulties of distributing supplies throughout such a large territory.

Russia has always suffered from the lack of a warm-water port. Its Arctic and Far East docks are frozen for months of the year, and it has no access to the Indian Ocean and difficulty projecting power in the western Pacific, where the sea lanes are dominated by Japan.

Russia needs Ukraine in its orbit to provide a much-needed warm-water port and to protect against invasion from the West. Europe and the US efforts to get Ukraine to join them sparked a Ukrainian uprising that overthrew the Russian-friendly president and replaced him with a pro-Europe leader. Russia promptly annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, where Russian naval forces anchor at Sebastopol, “Russia’s only true major warm-water port” (23). In the event of war, however, this Black Sea port is in a weak position, as Russian forces, to enter the Mediterranean, would have to sail through the narrow Bosporus straits, controlled by Turkey and easy to blockade. Further north, Russia’s Baltic fleet also would struggle to break free as it would need to sail through the narrow straits of Denmark in order to reach the Atlantic.

To strengthen its position in Ukraine, Russia has supported ethnic Russian uprisings in eastern and southern Ukraine. To the northwest, in the Baltics—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, former Soviet satellites but now NATO members—ethnic Russian populations have sometimes suffered discrimination, which could give Russia a pretext to try to retake those countries, should it decide to shore up its exposed western border. However, NATO would respond with force; for now, it’s a stalemate.

Another “gap in the wall” (29) between Russia and the West is Moldova. Southeast of Romania's Carpathian Mountains lies a plane, “a flat corridor into Russia” (31) straddled by Moldova, an independent country that looks east to Moscow for trade. Russia has sought to intimidate Moldova by supporting separatist Moldovan Russians and their breakaway state of Transnistria.

One way that Russia exerts its power over Moldova, as well as throughout the world, is its control of one of the world’s largest supplies of natural gas. Marshall notes that “leaving to one side nuclear missiles,” gas and oil are Russia’s “most powerful weapons” (32). One-fourth of Europe’s natural gas supply comes from Russia. The US, currently a leading exporter, is working with Europe to develop ports and terminals to supply them with liquid natural gas and reduce their dependence on Russian supplies. To guard against lost revenue, Russia "is planning pipelines heading southeast and hopes to increase sales to China” (35).

China’s history begins in the North China Plain. The Yellow and Yangtze rivers often flood the highly fertile region, which “is now one of the most densely populated areas in the world” (41), heavily industrialized, and populated with roughly a billion people, mostly ethnic Han Chinese. This heartland is surrounded by geographic obstacles: deserts to the north, the Tibetan Plateau and Himalayas in the west, and ocean to the east and south. Thus, as Marshall notes, “The heartland is the political, cultural, demographic, and—crucially—the agricultural center of gravity” in China (42).

Feeling threatened from without, ancient China “chose the same strategy as Russia: attack as defense” (43), expanding outward its control of nearby regions. To connect inner regions, in 609 China completed the Grand Canal, which connects the Yellow and Yangtze rivers. Despite its efforts, in the 1200s, Mongols invaded from the north and ruled China for 90 years.

Although strongly protectionist, in later centuries, China began to trade with Europe, opening up trading posts on the Chinese coast: “It remains a feature of China to this day that when China opens up, the coastland regions prosper but the inland areas are neglected” (44). In the 1700s, China expanded to the west, conquering the vast desert-and-mountain region of Xinjiang, whose restive Muslim population provided a buffer zone between China and Russia. Despite its efforts to protect itself, in the 1800s and 1900s China is again controlled by outsiders, this time by European powers and Japan.

After World War II, China descended into civil war; "the Communists emerged victorious and the nationalists withdrew to Taiwan” (45), an island off the coast. Communist China quickly annexed Tibet and reinforced its control of Xinjiang. Under the Communist regime, “the country remained desperately poor [...] but unified” (46). In order to “turn [Mao’s] Long March to victory into an economic march to prosperity,” Mao’s successors retained a Community government but began to move toward a market economy: “socialism with Chinese Characteristics,” as Deng Xiaoping put it (46).

China is currently attempting to reinforce its northern border with Mongolia and Russia by encouraging Chinese to migrate to those sparsely populated regions. To the southwest, China borders on Vietnam, with easy military access but few reasons to squabble, and Laos and Burma, whose jungles and mountainous frontier are hard to cross.

Further west, the Himalayas divide China and India. China controls Tibet, the source of China’s major rivers, lest India try to cross the mountains, take Tibet, and threaten the Chinese heartland. Millions of Han Chinese have moved to Tibet, bringing both modernization and domination. To the northwest lies Kazakhstan, crossed by the ancient Silk Route trading corridor; this frontier is porous but quiet and far from the Chinese heartland.

China’s Xinjiang Province, ever restive with independence movements, borders on eight countries and therefore holds strategic importance. After rioting there in 2009, “Beijing responded in three ways: it ruthlessly suppressed dissent, it poured money into the region, and it continued to pour in Han Chinese workers” (52). China also is reviving the old trade route through Xinjiang to move goods west toward Europe.

To protect its coastline to the east and south, and to wield greater control over the nearby seas, China is building up its navy. Already it claims the South China Sea, and it wants to control all of the ocean west of the “first island chain,” namely, the Kurils, Japan, the Ryukyus, Taiwan, and the Philippines, where narrow passages can easily be blockaded and most of the region is allied with the US.

China claims Taiwan as a province but it lacks the military strength to enforce it; meanwhile, the US has promised to protect the island nation if China attacks without provocation. China also has disputes with neighboring countries over ownership of small islands in the South China Sea. It has begun developing some of these islands as military bases: “The move underlies China’s intention to be the rule maker in the region and for that it will both court and threaten its neighbors” (62).

Also on China’s to-do list are construction of major ports in Bangladesh, Burma, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, “investment that buys it good relations, the potential for its future navy to have friendly bases to visit or reside in, and trade links back home” (63). Gas and oil pipelines link China to Burma, and an overland trade route down through Pakistan is being developed. China also invests heavily in Africa in a quest “for minerals and precious metals” (64).

The US has three large sections: the East Coast Plain, the Mississippi Basin, and the desert-and-mountain West. These are protected in the north by the sparsely populated Canadian Shield, to the southwest by desert, and on the west, south and east by seas. America also “contains hundreds of millions of guns, which are available to a population that takes its life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness very seriously” (69), as well as interlinked armed forces, national guards, and state and local police.

When the American colonists first arrived, they were hemmed in by the Appalachian Mountains, but after winning their independence from the British, they began to move to the west, all the way to the Mississippi River. Beyond the river was French territory, which the US bought in 1803, doubling the new nation’s size with vast tracts of fertile land. Known as the Louisiana Purchase, this territorial acquisition also provided “mastery over the greatest inland water transport route in the world”—the Mississippi River and its tributaries—with “more miles of navigable river than the rest of the world put together,” creating inland trade routes “many times cheaper than road travel” (72) and helping to unite the widely dispersed population.

The United States continued to expand its borders through the Transcontinental Treaty of 1819, in which Spain gave Florida to the US and acknowledged American control of western territory north of the 42nd parallel: “The United States had reached the Pacific” (73). As the US population grew and moved west, so too did its territorial ambitions. In 1846, the US declared war against Mexico in order to take control of Texas and the Southwest.

The California Gold Rush of 1849, along with the Homestead Act of 1862—which gave 160 acres in the new territories to anyone who works it for five years—pushed settlement even further westward. European immigrants flocked to America. In 1867, the US purchased Alaska from Russia, and in 1869 the transcontinental railroad is completed, reducing cross-country travel time from months to a week.

By the late 19th century, the US controlled an impressive expanse of land, spanning from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but its coastal borders and, more importantly, its trade were still vulnerable. Spain still controlled major islands in the Caribbean Sea, including Cuba, just south of Florida, and could blockade trade coming from the Mississippi Basin. Thus, Marshall writes, “In 1898, the US declared war on Spain, routed its military, and gained control of Cuba, with Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines thrown in for good measure” (77). That same year, the US annexed Hawaii, “protecting the approaches to its own West Coast” (77).

In 1907 the US Navy sent a fleet of 16 battleships around the world on a tour, visiting many nations and letting the world know that America could project power anywhere on the planet. In 1940, the US acquired Britain’s Western Hemisphere naval bases in exchange for 50 ships that helped Britain during World War II. With Europe and Japan devastated by the war, America was “the last man standing” and “needed to control the world’s sea-lanes, to keep the peace, and get the goods to market” (78). To that end, it built bases “all over the Pacific” (79).

After the war, America retained military forces in Germany and led the formation of the NATO alliance to protect Western Europe against Soviet incursions. Soon, it had forces stationed in “Iceland, Norway, Britain, and Italy” and “dominated the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean as well as the Pacific” (80).

By 1991, the Russian threat had subsided with the collapse of the Soviet Union. China, however, had grown in strength, and its neighbors—“Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and others” (83)—were vulnerable to falling under Chinese sway and becoming less friendly to America: “Hence, we will see the United States increasingly investing time and money in East Asia to establish its presence and intentions in the region” (83). In recent years, the US 3rd Fleet has moved many of its ships from the Eastern Pacific to back up the 7th Fleet in the Western Pacific, and the US Marines have deployed a forward base in Northern Australia. With the outbreak of war an ever-present possibility, the US “must reassure its allies it will stand by them and guarantee freedom of navigation in international areas, while simultaneously not going so far as to draw China into a military confrontation” (85).

Elsewhere, US interests in the Middle East will slacken as America’s own oil and gas resources continue to grow. America’s recent attempt to engineer democratic “nation building” in the region has failed to reduce tribal animosities. In the Western Hemisphere, principal concerns include keeping the Panama Canal open and keeping other countries out of Cuba. In Africa, the US will compete with China for access to the continent’s resources.

With its vibrant economy and huge military, America will continue for decades to play a dominant role on the world stage.

Europe is warm and rainy enough for nearly year-round agriculture, yet cold enough in winter “to kill off many of the germs, which to this day plague huge parts of the rest of the world” (92), and its many navigable rivers and natural ports make trade easy: “These are the factors that led to the Europeans creating the first industrialized nation states” (93).

Natural barriers help define the borders of Europe’s various nation states and cultures, and have shaped their uneven development. For example, Spain and Portugal are walled off by the Pyrenees, whereas France is outlined “by the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Rhine, and the Atlantic Ocean” (93) and contains many rivers suitable for the transport of goods. The Danube flows through southeast Europe, where it forms the borders of several countries, including Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria. Northern Europe has more coastal plains for agriculture, and it industrialized sooner, than Southern Europe, which lags behind economically. For instance, Spain’s isolation and poor soil have hindered its development, while Greece’s mountainous terrain makes large-scale agriculture and trade difficult. Moreover, its hundreds of populated Aegean Sea islands are expensive to protect from invasion. During the Recession of 2008, Greeks become prominent recipients of bailout money bestowed on Southern Europe by Germany and the wealthy northern countries of the European Union (EU).

In the northeast, Poland, a flat corridor which has long been used by armies moving into and out of Russia, has emerged from centuries of foreign rule to become independent and prosperous. Fearing Russian resurgence, Poland joined NATO in 1999, along with several other former Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe. Yugoslavia’s states, broken apart by war in the 1990s, today look to the west, except for Serbia, which tilts toward Russia “via the gravitational pull of language, ethnicity, religion, and energy deals” (101). Beyond that, the Balkans, including Bulgaria and Romania, have pulled away from Russia and now belong to NATO and/or the European Union (EU).

To the north, Scandinavia, except for Denmark, is not part of NATO. Sweden, however, has suffered mock Russian air attacks and has begun to consider breaking its centuries-long neutrality.

France’s natural borders protect it from attack, except in the northeast, “at the point where the flatland of the North European Plain becomes what is now Germany” (102). Through that corridor, Germany—which also abuts the Plain and has in the past feared invasion from either France or Russia—invaded France three times between 1870 and 1940. 

The EU was formed, in part, as an attempt to stop the recurring warfare between France and Germany. It also welds together most of Europe under a single currency, the Euro. On its introduction in 1999, the Euro was supposed to be protected by member nations, who were to keep “levels of debt, unemployment, and inflation within certain limits” (105). However, some nations, such as Greece, “were cooking the books” (105). With the 2008 recession, these problems came to the fore and bitter arguments broke out among EU member nations.

Should the EU fail, “the old fears of Germany will reappear, especially as it is now by far the most populous and wealthy European nation” (106). For its part, Germany, not wishing to lose its best trade partners, has floated the idea “about whether the eurozone countries should form a genuine fiscal union” (106). Germany also has the option to increase trade with Russia.

Britain, somewhat isolated off the coast of Europe, enjoys good “farmland, decent rivers, excellent access to the seas and their fish stocks” (107). It is “close enough to the European continent to trade, and yet protected by dint of being an island race” (107). Britain carefully monitors continental power politics and sometimes “inserts itself between the great Franco-German alliances in the EU” (107).

Britain’s democratic traditions and civil liberties may stem from its relative safety as an island nation distant from the mainland’s wars; this has permitted “less despotism than the countries across the channel” (108). Its navy, and its leadership in the Industrial Revolution, allowed Britain to rule a global empire for centuries. Britain still enjoys a strategic advantage due to geography, as it guards the sea lanes from northern Europe to the Atlantic. 

Britain is “angered by the amount and type of laws enacted by the EU” (109) and feels frustrated by the European tendency to funnel Middle Eastern and African immigrants it doesn’t want straight to England, so it has begun to pull away from the EU. Other EU countries, shaken by massive immigration and terrorist attacks, have begun checking travel documents despite the EU’s notion of open borders among its member nations. Moreover, large Muslim populations within Europe have affected national politics, with parliaments having to consider their Muslim constituencies when debating civil rights or policy toward the Middle East.

Should the EU or NATO fail, “we would return to a Europe of sovereign nation states, with each state seeking alliances in a balance of the power system” (111). In the end, “history tells us how much things can change in just a few decades, and geography tells us that if humans do not constantly strive to overcome its ‘rules,’ its ‘rules’ will overcome us” (113).