The Revenge of Geography by Robert D. Kaplan Read Free Book Online Page B

the chapters that follow, I will try to adhereto their sensibilities as well as to their theories. I will write about Europe, which lies adjacent to Mackinder’s Heartland and is so influenced by it; about Russia, Mackinder’s Heartland itself; China, which may in future decades come to dominate part of the Heartland and part of Spykman’s Rimland; the Indian Subcontinent, which forms the core region of the Rimland; Iran, where the Heartland and Rimland actually meet; the Turkish and Arab Middle East, which approximates Hodgson’s Oikoumene; and finally North America, the largest of Mackinder’s continental satellites to challenge Eurasia and the World-Island. I will try not to make predictions, but rather to describe geography as it affects history, so as to get some idea of what the future might hold.

Part II

    THE EARLY-TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY MAP

Chapter XIV

THE FORMER OTTOMAN EMPIRE
    If the Iranian plateau is the most pivotal geography in the Greater Middle East, then the land bridge of Anatolia, or Asia Minor, follows in importance naturally from it. Just as the Iranian plateau is completely covered by one country, Iran, so is the Anatolian land bridge, by Turkey. Together, these two countries, defined by mountains and plateaus overlooking desert Arabia from the north, boast a combined population of almost 150 million people, slightly larger than that of all the twelve Arab countries to the south which comprise the Fertile Crescent and the Arabian Peninsula. One would have to add Egypt and the rest of North Africa stretching to the Atlantic in order for the Arabs to demographically overwhelm the weight of Turkey and Iran.
    Turkey and Iran—crucial parts of both Mackinder’s wilderness girdle and Spykman’s Rimland—also contain the Middle East’s richest agricultural economies, as well as its highest levels of industrialization and technological know-how. The very existence of Iran’snuclear program, and the indigenous ability of Turkey to follow suit if—for the sake of national prestige—it wished, contrasts sharply with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, which lack the intellectual capacity for their own such programs, and would therefore require a technology transfer from an existing nuclear power like Pakistan.
    Turkey, like Iran, constitutes its own major region, influencing clockwise the Balkans, the Black Sea, Ukraine and southern Russia, the Caucasus, and the Arab Middle East. Especially in comparison to the Arab world, Turkey, writes Stratfor strategist George Friedman, “is a stable platform in the midst of chaos.” 1 However, while Turkey impacts all the places around it, Turkey’s position as a land bridge bracketed between the Mediterranean to the south and the Black Sea to the north makes it, in part, an island nation. The lack of dry-land contiguity means that though Turkey influences the surrounding area, it is not geographically pivotal in the way that Iran is to its neighbors. Turkey’s influence in the Balkans to the west and Syria and Mesopotamia to the south is primarily economic, though in the former Yugoslavia it has lately become involved in post-conflict mediation. Only in the Caucasus, and particularly in Azerbaijan, where the language is very close to Turkish, does Turkey enjoy the level of diplomatic influence that can dramatically affect daily politics.
    Turkey, it is true, controls the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates: a terrific geographical advantage, giving it the ability to cut off the supply of water to Syria and Iraq. But were Turkey to actually do this, it would constitute the equivalent of an act of war. Thus, Turkey must be subtle in pressing this advantage. It is the fear that Turkey might reduce the water flow, through upriver diversions for its own agricultural development purposes, that can give Turkey considerable influence over Arab politics. A relatively new geopolitical fact that is often overlooked is the Southeast Anatolia Project, whose