Book Review on The Power of Geography: Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World by Tim Marshall

But Marshall never really addressed the changing nature of armed conflict. He considers states to be constantly motivated by the fear of invasion or the desire to expand their territory. However, the usual conflicts between states over territory control are almost unheard of today. The exceptions – Russia’s incursions into its post-Soviet neighbors, China’s threats to Taiwan – only prove the rule, respectively, as disputes left over from disintegration. of the Soviet Union and the Chinese Civil War. As nations vie for territory today, the battles are strictly limited: Consider armies from India and China, two nuclear-armed superpowers, go into it, by mutual agreement, with rocks and metal rods on their disputed Himalayan border. Few of Marshall’s explanations for the decline of territorial conflict – among them the danger of nuclear war, the rise of globalization and economic interdependence, and opinion that human society as a whole has become more civilized and reasonable – has a lot to do with geography.