Clik here to view.
Geography Strikes Back
If you want to know what Russia, China or Iran will do next, don’t read their newspapers or ask what our spies have dug up—consult a map. Geography can reveal as much about a government’s aims as its...
View ArticleClik here to view.
So What’s In Antarctica For Britain?
After the Queen’s visit to the Foreign Office this week, Foreign Secretary William Hague announced that the southern part of the British Antarctic Territory will now be known, at least on British maps,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Recipe For Disaster
The policy of a nation, Napoleon once quipped, can be read in its geography. For much of human history, the verity of such an assertion would have appeared self-evident. After all, what is geostrategy...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mapping Change
Humans have been sketching maps for millennia, but Claudius Ptolemy was the first to use math and geometry to develop a manual for how to map the planet using a rectangle and intersecting lines—one...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Data Tells Peking’s Shift To Beijing; Persia’s To Iran
What’s in a name? Place names often change, and those changes stem from a tangle of politics and language. A fun tool from Google, the Ngram Viewer, lets us watch those changes play out across history....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Let Iraq Break
Iraq is really three separate geographical regions, now contested by Kurds and Arabs ethnically, Arabic and Kurdish speakers linguistically, and Sunni and Shiite Muslims religiously. Ethnically Iraqis...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Russia And The Curse Of Geography
Vladimir Putin says he is a religious man, a great supporter of the Russian Orthodox Church. If so, he may well go to bed each night, say his prayers, and ask God: “Why didn’t you put mountains in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Two Friendly Neighbours And Fish
As Anders Fogh Rasmussen puts it, America is bordered by “two friendly neighbours and fish.” As a result of this geographic position, Rasmussen argues, Americans have the luxury of alternating between...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Wahhabism, Meet Han-ism: CPEC Betokens China’s Search For Lebensraum In...
China, through its economic corridor with Pakistan, has proposed a dramatic redrawing of demographic and geographic boundaries. It is undertaking an unabashed, confrontational and neo-colonial smash...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Return Of Marco Polo’s World And The U.S. Military Response
As Europe disappears, Eurasia coheres. The supercontinent is becoming one fluid, comprehensible unit of trade and conflict, as the Westphalian system of states weakens and older, imperial legacies –...
View ArticleAmerica Must Prepare For The Coming Chinese Empire
More to the point, when it comes to China, we are dealing with a unique and very formidable cultural organism. The American foreign policy elite does not like to talk about culture since culture cannot...
View ArticleThe Role Of Geography In National Security Decision-Making
Being able to “think in space” is a crucial tool for decision-makers, but one that is often de-emphasised. In order to improve its ability to think in space, the national security community ought to...
View ArticleThe Little-Known Thinker Who Holds The Key To Cold War II
To read Nicholas J Spykman today is to find that rarest of things: a foreign policy theory bolstered and derived from real events of the past, even as they make sense of the present and light the way...
View Article
