Tim Marshall - The Power of Geography

To the youth of Generation Covid who did their bit.
Now is your time!

The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

The Second Coming, W. B. Yeats

I N THE MIDDLE EAST, THE VAST FORTRESS OF IRAN AND ITS nemesis, Saudi Arabia, face off across the Persian Gulf. South of the Pacific, Australia finds itself caught between the two most powerful nations of our time: the USA and China. In the Mediterranean, Greece and Turkey are in a contest that has roots going back to antiquity but could flare into violence tomorrow.

Welcome to the 2020s. The Cold War era, in which the USA and the Soviet Union dominated the entire world, is becoming a distant memory. We are entering a new age of great-power rivalry in which numerous actors, even minor players, are jostling to take centre stage. The geopolitical drama is even spilling out of our earthly realm, as countries stake their claims above our atmosphere, to the Moon and beyond.

When what was the established order for several generations turns out to be temporary, it is easy to become anxious. But it has happened before, it is happening now and it will happen again. For some time we have been moving towards a multipolar world. Following the Second World War, we saw a new order: a bipolar era with an American-led capitalist system on one side, and on the other the communist system operated by what was in effect the Russian Empire and China. This lasted anything from about fifty to eighty years, depending on where you draw your lines. In the 1990s we saw what some analysts call the unipolar decade, when American power went almost completely unchallenged. But it is clear that we are now moving back to what was the norm for most of human history an age of multiple power rivalries.

Its hard to pin down when this began to happen; there is no single event that sparked a change. But there are moments when you catch a glimpse of something, and the opaque world of international politics becomes clearer. I had one such experience on a humid summers night in 1999 in Pristina, the ramshackle capital of Kosovo. The break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991 had led to years of war and bloodshed. Now, NATOs planes had bombed the Serbian forces out of Kosovo and its ground troops were waiting to enter the province from the south. During the day we heard rumours that a Russian military column had set off from Bosnia to make sure Russia maintained its traditional influence in Serbian affairs.

For a decade the Russian bear had been out of the game, impoverished, uncertain and a shadow of its former self. It had watched haplessly as NATO advanced on its western borders, as time and again the peoples of the nations it had subjugated voted in governments committed to joining NATO and/or the EU; and in Latin America and the Middle East its influence had waned. In 1999 Moscow had reached a decision vis--vis the Western powers this far and no further. Kosovo was a line in the sand. President Yeltsin ordered the Russian column to intervene (although its thought the upcoming hardline nationalist politician Vladimir Putin had a role in the decision).

I was in Pristina as the Russian armoured column rumbled down the main street in the early hours of the morning heading for Kosovos airport on the outskirts of town. Im told President Clinton heard of their arrival, ahead of NATOs troops, via my report The Russians rolled into town, and back onto the world stage. It was hardly Pulitzer Prize material, but as a first draft of history it did the job. The Russians had staked their claim to play a role in the biggest event of the year, and announced that the tide of history, which had been running against them, would now be challenged. In the late 1990s the USA was apparently unrivalled, the West seemingly triumphant in global affairs. But the pushback had started. Russia was no longer the fearsome power it had once been now it was one among many but the Russians would fight to assert themselves where they could. They would go on to prove it in Georgia, Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere.

Four years later I was in the Iraqi city of Karbala, one of the most holy places in Shia Islam. Saddam Hussein had been overthrown by the American- and British-led coalition, but the insurgency was getting under way. Under Saddam (a Sunni Muslim) many of the Shia ways of worship had been banned, including ritual self-flagellation. On a scorching-hot day I watched as more than a million Shia poured into Karbala from across the country. Many of the men were whipping their backs and cutting their foreheads until their whole bodies were covered in blood, which dripped down onto the streets turning the dust red. I knew that across the border to the east, Iran, the major Shia power, would now play every trick in the book to help engineer a Shia-dominated Iraqi government and use it to project Tehrans power with even greater force westwards across the Middle East, connecting to Irans allies in Syria and Lebanon. Geography and politics made it almost inevitable. My take that day was along the lines of: This looks religious, but its also political, and the waves from this fervour will ripple out as far as the Mediterranean. The political balance had changed, and the increasing reach of Iranian power would challenge US dominance in the region. Karbala provided the backdrop to begin to paint the picture. Sadly, one colour would dominate blood-red.

These were just two seminal moments that helped to shape the complicated world in which we find ourselves, as myriad forces push, pull and sometimes clash in what in previous times was called the great game. Both gave me a glimpse of the direction in which we were headed. It started to become even clearer as events unfolded in Egypt, Libya and Syria in the 2010s. Egyptian President Mubarak was deposed in a coup dtat by the military using violent street theatre to hide their hand; in Libya, Colonel Gaddafi was overthrown and then murdered; and in Syria, President Assad hung on by his fingertips until the Russians and Iranians saved him. In all three cases the Americans signalled they would not save the dictators they had done business with for decades. The USA slowly withdrew from the international scene during the eight years of the Obama presidency, a move continued under Trump for four years. Meanwhile, other countries such as India, China and Brazil began to emerge as new world powers, with rapidly growing economies, looking to expand their own global influence.

Many people dislike the idea that the USA played the role of world policeman in the post-Second World War era. You can make a case for both the positives and negatives of its actions. But, either way, in the absence of a policeman various factions will seek to police their own neighbourhood. If you get competing factions, the risk of instability increases.

Empires rise, and they fall. Alliances are forged, and then they crumble. The post-Napoleonic Wars settlement in Europe lasted about sixty years; the Thousand-Year Reich lasted for just over a decade. It is impossible to know precisely how the balance of power will shift during the coming years. There are undoubtedly economic and geopolitical giants that continue to have huge sway in global affairs: the USA and China, of course, as well as Russia, the collective nations of Europe in the EU, the fast-growing economic power of India. But the smaller nations matter too. Geopolitics involves alliances, and with the world order currently in a state of flux, this is a time when the big powers need small powers on their side as well as vice versa. It gives these countries, such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the UK, an opportunity to strategically position themselves for future power. For the moment, the kaleidoscope is still being shaken and the pieces have not yet settled.