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

Many borders form naturally along mountain ranges, rivers, coastlines, deserts, and jungles. Others are laid down artificially by invading colonizers. Natural borders do a reasonable job of keeping some distance between competing groups, allowing them to evolve separately. Artificial borders often cut across ethnic or linguistic lines, forcing incompatible groups to live together while separating related ones. This can lead to conflicts, especially in the Middle East and Africa, where colonial powers divided regions into countries with little thought for the inhabitants.

Examples of artificial borders include the Sykes-Picot Line that divides Syria from Jordan and Iraq, the Durand Line between Afghanistan and Pakistan (which the Pashtun peoples ignore with impunity), the Spanish-Portuguese carve-up of South America, the US-Mexican border, and the Demilitarized Zone between North Korea and South Korea.

Oil and gas are highly coveted resources, leading to conflict over control of the reserves as well as over the distribution of the wealth produced. They can also lead to cooperation and innovation as nations seek to ensure access without becoming overly dependent. Some states, particularly in the Middle East, have grown rich from oil reserves, while others have failed to capitalize on the economic potential of oil and gas as a result of internal conflict and corruption.

The US, Saudi Arabia, and Russia lead the world in oil and gas production, followed by several Middle Eastern countries, China, Canada, India, Venezuela, Mexico, and Nigeria. Many other nations have small reserves they can exploit. Oil reserves lie beneath the Arctic Ocean, which lately is losing its summer ice cap, making oil exploration more feasible; nearby nations vie for control over this bonanza.

Strife is common between peoples of differing ethnicities; this is particularly true when they live within the same national boundaries or along a shared boundary. Sometimes the majority group will try to overpower the minority through sheer numbers, as in China, where majority Han Chinese poured into Tibet, overwhelming the northwestern Uighur population and the indigenous peoples. Elsewhere, conflicts erupt when no single group has overwhelming power and each must vie for power, as with the Pashtuns, Punjabis, and other groups in Pakistan.

Religion also has played a large part in conflict, as between the Muslims and Hindus in Kashmir, the Muslim immigrants and Christians of Europe, and the Sunni and Shia Muslims, especially the tense hostility between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia. 

The EU is a grand attempt to bring together the many nations, cultures, and political styles of Europe into a common trading market. Most EU nations use the Euro as currency, and most allow free passage without visas. The 2008 global recession revealed an underlying schism between the wealthier nations of the Protestant north and the struggling southern tier of mostly Catholic countries. The north has had to bail out Greece and help Spain.

Other problems have arisen, including the struggle to accommodate the massive migration into Europe from Middle East war zones, the perennial tensions between France and Germany, Britain’s decision to exit the EU altogether, and the threats posed by a resurgent Russia.

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a terrorist organization that split off from al-Qaeda to become a major military player in the Middle East. Starting in 2014, it rapidly conquered large sections of Syria and Iraq, especially along the Euphrates River, and declared a new Caliphate to rule a revived Islam. ISIS appeals to locals tired of the wars and corruption of the regular authorities, but the organization’s extreme violence puts off others. A consortium of powers—including the US, Britain, Russia, France, and Iraq—engaged ISIS in battle and retook most of the conquered territory. ISIS established an outpost in Libya and hopes to make a comeback. President Trump’s decision in 2019 to withdraw all US troops from Syria may open the door for a resurgent ISIS.

US policy since the Monroe administration of the early 1800s stipulates that no European country may form new colonies in the Western Hemisphere. The US enforces this policy and, nominally at least, follows it itself. US president Teddy Roosevelt recharged the doctrine in 1904, declaring that the US has the right to use force to police the region.

In the twentieth century, American interests sometimes collide with South American priorities, and periodically the US arranges for coups or assassinations to replace recalcitrant leaders there. Lately, China has competed with the US for development contracts in the region, and the locals hope such agreements will free them from America’s sometime heavy-handed dealings.

Rivers serve as borderlines, water sources, fisheries, and transport corridors. Best for development are navigable rivers without rapids or falls that prevent vessels from passing. Even better are multiple large rivers that drain into one another, connecting them in a watery highway system, such as the Mississippi River and its tributaries in the United States. 

Sea passages permit vessels to travel a shorter distance instead of sailing around land obstacles; they also can be used to control sea traffic. As such they become choke points during wartime.

All of Russia’s naval bases are located in places controlled by such choke points: It’s Black Sea fleet can be cut off at the Bosporus strait; its Baltic fleet can be blockaded at the straits of Denmark; Japan guards the entrance to Russia’s Kaliningrad navy; and the GIUK gap between Greenland, Iceland, and the UK can stifle the Russian Arctic fleet. If the Arctic fleet tried to sail into southern waters from the other direction during a crisis, it would pass through the Bering Strait, where it would face American land and naval forces.

Similarly, if the Chinese navy needs to break out into the Pacific during a confrontation, it must confront the “first island chain” that includes Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines. As a pushback, China has lately claimed the entire South China Sea for itself, which has rankled other countries that also border the sea. To the south, China’s access to the Indian Ocean is controlled by the Strait of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia. To bypass that potential choke point, China wants to build a transit system from its western provinces down to the Pakistani port of Gwadar on the Indian Ocean.

Other straits that can choke off transport include the Strait of Hormuz at the gateway to the oil-rich Persian Gulf; the Straits of Florida between the US and Cuba that control access to New Orleans and the Mississippi river system; and the Northwest Passage above Canada and its northeast counterpart above Russia, which are narrowly ice-free during summer. The Panama Canal, and a proposed Nicaraguan Canal, are meant to ease passage from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic, but these, too, can serve as controllable straits.