World Geography and Politics

 I recently read this book called "Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps that tell you everything you need to know about Global Politics" by Tim Marshall. It was a fascinating read that describes the geographies of all of the continents and majors global powers and gives context to world politics. Marshall is a journalist, but he does not push his thesis too hard. He actually just gives a good description of where natural resources are, a brief history of most continents and also discusses the history of people as well. He gives good color behind the conflict in Russia and Ukraine, Korea, Syria, India and Pakistan. 

Russia needs a warm water port and feels constricted by NATO and having Crimea and Ukraine fall under the influence of NATO gives Russia lack of access to trade. Russia has a lot of energy resources and supplies energy to Eastern Europe and Germany. Russia also has good arable flatland only in the West and cannot expand East since it's too cold there. 

Korea situation is like a bomb waiting to go off. North Korea has nuclear capabilities and the leader seems capable of anything. Nobody wants to push the situation, so everyone is trying to keep things cool and deal with it later. South Korea is in a precarious situation.

India and Pakistan have very different people. After the British left, there was a lot of fighting and death between Hindus and Muslims. The Muslims were driven to Pakistan and Bangladesh and the Hindus were left with India. Both Indians and Pakistani are made up of diverse groups of people within their respective countries. They've been largely separated with China by mountains, but Tibet is the only connection by land between the two territories.  

He also gives good background on why there's been more conflict in Europe in the past and why Africa and South America are not as developed - because of the lack of connecting rivers to bring about trade and flow of ideas. Africa's rivers have several waterfalls, which look beautiful but are not conducive to travel and trade. Both Africa and South America have amazing natural resources, but are mostly connected by ports and are more coastally developed.