Geography is Destiny – It Matters More Than Ever
Peloponnesian War was fought 2500 years ago, from 431 BC to 404 BC, between the Athenian-led Delian League and the Spartan-led Peloponnesian League for dominance in ancient Greece. Athens, which was a superpower of the times in the Aegean Sea suffered devastating consequences and it signalled the beginning of the end for the Athenian Empire. Sparta was a land-based power, while Athens relied on its naval supremacy. After decades of stalemate, the war reached its decisive phase, after a disastrous invasion of Sicily by Athens. Sparta, which built its own navy and was supported by the Persian empire inflicted a crushing and decisive defeat on Athens leading to their surrender in 404 BC.
The best account we have of the war was written by Thucydides, a native Athenian, who in the early years of the war had served as a commander in the Athenian army, until he was exiled for failing to prevent the capture of the important city of Amphipolis. Like most wars, Peloponnesian war had no single cause and had a complex origin, and according to Thucydides, the immediate causes cantered on disputes between Athens and Sparta about each other’s allies.
It began with Athens projecting its Naval power and imposing economic sanctions against the city-state of Megara, an ally of Sparta, and the Athenian blockade of Potidaea, a former ally of Athens, which had revolted and was seeking help from Corinth, a principal ally of Sparta. The deeper causes involved the clashing ambitions for hegemony and economic interests, fears of each other’s power, and concern about interference from the rival.
But at its core, Peloponnesian War was dictated by Geography, which was the fundamental, underlying cause and the divisions were dictated by the Greek landscape. Defined by its harsh terrain and numerous islands, “Greece” was a cultural and linguistic concept, not a nation. Greece never developed as a unified entity, evolving more as separate and independent city-states, which naturally led to political fragmentation and an intense competition over resources and trade.
Another important aspect of Geography that played a decisive role was the mountainous nature of Greece. It lacked the rich alluvial valleys of other civilizations in Middle East or Asia and had to do with only a thin, limestone soil watered by an average of just sixteen inches of rain per year. Because of limited agricultural opportunities, its population clustered on the coasts and engaged in fishing, manufacturing, and trade.
And it was trade that drove the Athenians towards an empire – a quest for food security and to trade in the most basic of commodities, Grain. This dependence on grain trade led to a paranoia and its obsession with controlling sea lanes. Ironically, while Greece is the cradle of Western Civilization, bestowing it with its cultural and institutional traditions, it is also a source of the obsession of the modern West with the control of vital sea lanes and strategic maritime choke points.
Greece’s convoluted coastline, a combination of hundreds of islands, peninsulas, inlets, bays, and channels, combined with the relatively mountainous landscape, ruled out land-based trade and almost all trade went by sea. While a traditional Greek farm was incapable of growing sufficient grain for its own needs, it had the right weather and conditions to produce wine and olive oil in sufficient quantities, that could be traded for wheat and barley from more abundant areas.
Where did the Greek’s get their wheat from? Initially it was imported from the Nile delta, which was the granary of the Mediterranean and the Greek’s had established a trading colony at the city of Naucratis on the arm of Nile delta. They also colonized Sicily in order to take advantage of the rich volcanic soil around Mount Etna on its eastern coast. Syracuse was founded in the late eighth century BC by colonists from Corinth.
But as populations of the Greek city-states grew and their trade networks expanded, it was in the vast, rich hinterlands of the northern shore of the Black Sea, which the Greeks called Pontus Euxine, that they found their version of El Dorado. Athens and other Aegean city-states began colonizing the extraordinarily fertile valleys of the Bug and Dnieper rivers, in what is now the southern Ukraine.
Again, Geography and ease of navigation dictated, who went where. Athens and its allies in the Aegean islands, sent ships northeast to the Pontus, while Sparta, Corinth, and Megara along with their allies looked west to Sicily. Corinthian and Megaran ships could sail directly west out the Gulf of Corinth toward Sicily or take the longer route south around the Peloponnese. But, both the routes, to Pontus and to Sicily, ran through narrow waterways, and were highly vulnerable to attacks by pirates and other city-states.
Vessels from Corinth and Megara sailing to and from the Gulf of Corinth could easily be blocked at its western entrance, which is only about a mile wide. The southern route also had its vulnerabilities as it passed through the island-studded strait between the Peloponnese and the island of Crete. The grain supplies of the Athenians were even more vulnerable. The route to their breadbasket in the Pontus threaded through not one, but two perilously constricted passageways between the Aegean Sea and the Black Sea: the Dardanelles, which they called the Hellespont and Bosphorus further north. What made Athens supply routes even more tenuous was the fact that, tempests and cloud cover closed the Black Sea for most of the year, with the navigation window open only between May and September.
As the populations of Greek city-states grew over centuries and their dependence on imported grain increased, rising geopolitical fractions resulted as a split into two major groups: one led by Athens and the other by Sparta, which repeatedly clashed over the control of key navigation chokepoints of Hellespont and Bosphorus and access to Pontic grain. Athen’s neighbour Megara established colonies at Byzantium and Chalcedon to guard the Bosphorus, while Athens fought to gain control of Sigeum and other islands that were situated at the mouth of Hellespont.
Athens also gained control of Euboea in western Aegean, which not only improved its grain supply, but also created a “marine superhighway” through which ships could sail uncontested between the Athenian port of Piraeus and the Hellespont. It also fought bitter battles with Sparta for the control of Sestos and Byzantium, which controlled their access to Hellespont and Bosphorus. By 450 BC, in order to secure its trading routes, the greatly enlarged Athenian navy began patrolling the Black Sea continuously.
Athens realized that merely becoming a naval power would not suffice and it further strengthened its political control of the tightest points along those routes. To further protect its interests, Athens started building a coalition of likeminded states with common interests, which depended on the same sea-lanes and choke points, and this eventually coalesced into Athenian empire. Control of the Aegean sea-lanes enabled Athens to punish its enemies - Sparta, Corinth, and Megara, by blocking their shipping. It would at times even manipulate the price of grain and maintain a reserve for use in times of blockade. The rivals led by Sparta had no option but to build their own coalition to counter Athens.
These two alliances squared off against each other repeatedly, it was inevitable that the rivalry culminated in the catastrophic Peloponnesian War. This was a war dictated by Geography, the limits and constraints it imposed on the Greek city-states. It defined the possibilities and drove actions of the leaders of respective factions. There was no escaping the “Logic of Geography” and for the Greeks, “Geography was Destiny”.
· Studying and understanding Geography has never been more important!
For those following the events in Straits of Hormuz, I had written about the vital geographic chokepoints, a couple of years ago - Revenge of Geography – Maritime Chokepoints and Supply Chains. And I had also reiterated the importance of Geography in an article written immediately after the October 7th attacks by Hamas - Geography’s Destiny and Revenge of Geopolitics
On August 28, 2023, the Ministry of Natural Resources of China issued the 2023 edition of its “Standard Map”, in which it added an additional dash to encompass Taiwan in the South China Sea, to the previously issued nine-dash map, thus creating a “ten-dash line.”1 This action by China can be read as having added a new role for the line, which clearly seemed to suggest its historical claim to Taiwan, in addition to its existing claims concerning historical rights to the maritime area of the South China Sea. This map also renamed the Uotsuri Island in the Senkaku Islands with the Chinese name of “Diaoyu Dao,” asserting its claim for the islands that Japan currently governs. In fact, the map claims Chinese ownership of almost the entire South China Sea, which has been a contested place and claimed by almost every country in the region. This U-shaped nine/ten dash line that outlines China’s claims has been a bone of long-standing contention with Philippines, Malaysia, Japan and Vietnam.
The South China Sea represents a nexus of geopolitical rivalry and economic interests. It is abundant in fishery and accounts for approximately 12% of the world’s total fish catch, providing livelihood for millions from the littoral countries. Additionally, it is estimated to hold significant untapped Oil and Gas reserves, estimated at around 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
The South China Sea’s strategic importance extends beyond the resources, to its role as an important maritime highway for international commerce. Annually, one-third of global maritime traffic passes through the corridors of SCS and carries goods worth over $3 Trillion, connecting major economies in Asia with markets in Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Its economic importance and strategic location make it a central stage for competing territorial demands and intersecting maritime jurisdictions.
For China, its geographical position on the map, creates an inherent insecurity, exposed in all directions to instability, pressure, and even invasion. Potentials for conflict are everywhere around China’s periphery. Its nearly 14,000 miles of land borders are the longest in the world and during the cold war, the 4,000-mile boundary with the Soviet Union was for over three decades, the longest unfriendly frontier in the world. Along the eastern and southern sides of the Chinese landmass are sea borders ranging for 9,000 miles.
China’s intentions and actions in the SCS cannot be seen in isolation. China’s quest for a Digital Silk Road and Belt and Road Initiative have the same roots as its quest for owning SCS, its Geography and Geographic insecurity, which gives its foreign policy a profound and definite direction. Its strategy is focussed on securing vast land borders, overcoming maritime bottlenecks, and ensuring energy access, using initiatives like BRI to bridge territorial constraints, while focusing on maritime security to break out of the “first island chain” constraints imposed by Japan, Taiwan and Philippines. A sense of paranoia prevails in the minds of planners in Beijing, about America’s potential ability to successfully blockade the naval chokepoints it is surrounded with, cutting off its energy and food lifelines.
About half of China’s population are ethnic Han Chinese and they are majorly clustered along the Eastern seaboard and South of the country, within 600 miles from the coast. Han China is surrounded within China by regions populated by what are essentially other nations, Tibet in the southwest, Xinjiang in the northwest, Inner Mongolia in the north, and Manchuria in the northeast. The first three are recognized by Beijing as autonomous regions while Manchuria is a larger region made up of three northeastern provinces. These four regions are a buffer around China, providing strategic depth, which it lacks along the Eastern seaboard. All four, at one time or another, resisted Chinese domination, which Tibet and Xinjiang still do today. Xinjiang is predominantly Muslim, and an insurgency and terrorist movement is particularly active there, while Tibetan opposition is passive, but omnipresent.
All along this coastline, the Han heartland lies exposed and most of this part of the country consists of fertile, well-watered lowland plains and valleys that grow wheat and rice. Only a small part of the heartland is protected by coastal mountains from seaward attack. When Japan invaded in 1937–1938, it occupied most of this area in a year of fighting. In today’s era of precision-guided munitions, ballistic missiles, satellite technology, and nuclear weapons, the heartland’s population is even more exposed to attack. What complicates matters for China is the simple fact dictated by Geography - most of China’s borders are easier to invade than to defend. The long coastline was invaded repeatedly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The inland border regions are mountainous and cold, difficult to garrison and defend.
In 1949, at the end of the civil war, newly formed PRC inherited a variety of territorial disputes along the entire length of its land and sea borders. During the 1960s, it concluded boundary treaties with Mongolia, Burma, Bhutan, Sikkim (subsequently annexed by India), Nepal, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. In the 1990s, it signed boundary treaties with Laos, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Russia. In 2004, it resolved the last details of its formerly disputed borders with Russia. China still has unresolved boundary or territorial disputes with Bhutan, North Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Brunei.
War with any of these countries is a low probability event today, but history and geography ensure that, Chinese defence planners are always prepared for one. China’s potential battlegrounds are not overseas, but on its own administered or claimed territory. This strategic situation is the opposite of that faced by American defense planners, whose home territory is so far from all conceivable enemies that invasion is not a concern in defense planning.
In geopolitics, maps are never just maps. They are an assertion of reality and tools to build narratives. For China, this map warfare is strategic. They often unveil new boundary claims ahead of significant summits, such as releasing its 2023 map days before the G20 summit. What it does is incrementally normalize outrageous claims and throws rivals off-balance. China follows-up these cartographic forays by building military outposts on these contested islands. China, through its cartographic warfare is controlling and owning the geographic narrative and can translate it to control of territory without a shot fired.
In the course of writing this article, I came across an interesting detail. There is an internet domain, .sj, which stands for Svalbard and Jan Mayen. Though officially created in 1997, it is not open for registration and access is restricted by Norway. Svalbard and Jan Mayen are territories of Norway, situated north and north-west of the country in the Arctic Ocean. While Jan Mayen is an uninhabited volcanic Island, the archipelago of Svalbard is a different issue altogether, given its strategic location, midway between Norway and the North Pole.
Svalbard, formerly known as Spitzbergen, was discovered by Dutch explorers during their quest for Northern sea route, it functioned predominantly as an outpost for whalers during the 17th and 18th centuries, falling into disuse for most of 19th century. It came into some prominence with the start of coal mining in the early 20th century and today remains a mining outpost. The Svalbard Treaty of 1920 recognizes Norwegian sovereignty, and the Norwegian Svalbard Act of 1925 made Svalbard a full part of the Kingdom of Norway. The Svalbard Treaty established Svalbard as a free economic zone and restricts the military use of the archipelago. The Norwegian Store Norske and the Russian Arktikugol remain the only mining companies in place.
But, times, they are a changing. As global warming and Arctic ice melt become a reality, what was once a place, which people would find it difficult to identify on maps, is set to become a bone of Geopolitical contention. The treaty explicitly marks Svalbard a demilitarized zone and prohibits military installations on the islands, but changing geographic and geopolitical imperatives might change the status-quo, which has existed for over a century.
Since the 1920 treaty recognizes Norway as the sovereign power in the archipelago, the country claims exclusive rights in the maritime zone around the islands, rights which Norway argues permit the Norwegian Coast Guard to conduct fishery and other maritime surveillance and enforcement in these waters. But other countries, which are part of the treaty, beg to differ. Spain, Iceland and particularly Russia argue that the Treaty provides them with extensive rights beyond Svalbard’s territorial sea, while Norway claims an exclusive economic zone of more than three-quarters of a million square kilometers around Svalbard. Russia denies the zone’s exclusivity, stating that economic zone is not officially defined.
Geography again dictates Russia’s interest. To the east of Svalbard are two Russian military bases - Murmansk and Severomorsk, home to Russia’s Northern Fleet and its ballistic missiles and submarine fleet. But for Russia, Svalbard also has economic significance, as it directly lies west of important Russian oil, gas and mining infrastructure, centered around the Kola peninsula. Svalbard also sits astride the navigation routes of critical energy flows and military transit, which further makes it strategically relevant for Russia.
Welcome to the 21st Century world of Arctic Geopolitics!
Arctic and non-Arctic states want to exploit commercial opportunities created by a changing physical environment. For most of the past hundred years, regional cooperation among the Arctic states - Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Russia and the United States ensured a peaceful state of affairs and tensions were non-existent. The Arctic zone has generally been well regulated, while mining and oil and gas operations proceeded without disputes, in territorial waters or on land where jurisdiction was clearly demarcated. The sharing of common assets like fish stocks is subject to regional and bilateral agreements.
As SIPRI, noted in of their briefings on Arctic - However, the long-standing ambition to keep the Arctic as a region of low tension and high cooperation is being increasingly challenged in light of three developments.
· The first factor is due to climate change. Rising temperatures and the melting of sea ice have increased accessibility for commercial shipping and made human access easier. An increase in commercial activity and the promise of further development of resources in the future has created new opportunities, but also new challenges.
· A second factor is the increased interest and activity of states from outside the region in Arctic affairs. The Arctic has been managed by a regional governance regime, but a wider spectrum of states have become more active in commercial projects and seek greater access to the resources the region contains. This has triggered a discussion of who should design the rules that will apply.
· A third factor is the spillover effect of growing geopolitical tensions between great powers. Military activity in the region is low compared to the cold war, but it is increasing. Growing concern about a military build-up in the Arctic has been fuelled by the significant increase in Russia’s military presence in the Arctic. The USA has begun to invest more heavily into military capabilities needed for operations in the region, including new projects implemented together with NATO allies. Escalating tensions between China and the USA may not be possible to contain.
This brings Greenland and the GIUK gap into the picture.
In the decade since the invasion of Crimea, increasing acrimony and conflict with NATO has resulted in Russia´s progressive militarization in the Arctic and the growing activity of its Navy. Added to this, the changing geography of the Arctic has prompted the resurgence in strategic importance of the maritime region comprising the waters between Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom, known as the GIUK Gap. Russia’s latest maritime doctrine emphasizes the need to control its surrounding seas more thoroughly, and since the GIUK gap acts as a gateway between the two oceans, Atlantic and the Arctic and is the only entrance into the Arctic, apart from the Bering Strait, the emerging activity in the region and tensions between Russia and NATO have ensured the resurgence of its importance.
During the Cold War, the Seas around Norway and to the north of it had a special strategic significance for Europe. Both NATO and the USSR became increasingly aware of the importance of this imaginary line drawn between Greenland, Iceland, and the UK. This imaginary line through which anyone aiming to cross from one ocean to another had to pass, became the defense barrier between an Arctic region predominantly controlled by the USSR and the Atlantic, which was controlled by the US.
As Tim Marshall pointed out in his fantastic book, Prisoners of Geography - The Hunger for energy suggests that the race is inevitable in what some Arctic specialists have called the New Great Game. There are going to be a lot more ships in the High North, a lot more oil rigs and gas platforms, in fact, a lot more of everything, which means the GIUK gap will be a contested place. The emerging importance of this area is playing out in real-time. Olavsvern Naval Base was the primary Cold War-era NATO submarine base in Norway. Carved directly into a mountainside, it provided a clandestine, blast-proof facility to protect vessels from Soviet intelligence. The importance of this base diminished post 1991 and it was decommissioned in 2009. But in 2021, Norway took back the control from private interests and reactivated it, modernizing it for NATO and the US submarine operations, to counter rising tensions with Russia.
What makes things interesting going forward, will be China’s rising interest in the Arctic. While none of China’s coasts border the Arctic and it does not claim sovereignty on Arctic continental shelves or Arctic waters, it has nevertheless identified itself as “near-Arctic state” and wants to play the role of an important stakeholder in Arctic affairs.
In January 2018, China published its first white paper on Arctic policy, where it highlighted its interests in the region.
· Continued interest in conducting scientific research and activities.
· Securing the ecological environment and addressing climate change.
· Developing the North Sea Route as a transport artery and commercial projects in energy, fisheries and tourism.
· Political interests in participating in Arctic governance and
· Security interests in safeguarding maritime security and safety.
As a non-Arctic state China has very limited influence over Arctic governance, but by positioning itself as an Arctic stakeholder and near Arctic state, China hopes to play an influential role in shaping the future Arctic agenda.
Final Words
I belong to generation that grew up in the 1970’s and 80’s, a period before GPS, Google Maps and Google Earth. I was one of those who romanced the Atlas. One of the favourite games in school was about opening the Atlas and asking each other to identify a place on the densely packed map of a country, state or region. For us, looking at the world through the lens of geography, was many a times, the Aha moment!
Even today, I have the “National Geographic Atlas of the World” on my desk, and I flip through it more times in a year than most have probably done it in their lifetime. It still provides me with those “wow moments”, throwing light on unexpected explanations or insights into seemingly intractable problems, making geography a great way to understand our complex world. Geography has a way of helping you connect the dots and furnishes those unforeseen links between political and historical events and natural phenomena. While geography tends to look at the here and now, it also throws light on what future might hold.
One of the best books I have read is, “Power and Plenty – Trade, War and the World Economy in the Second Millenium” by Ronald Findlay and Kevin O’Rourke. Those interested in economic history and want to understand how trade and globalization have evolved over a span of thousand years, please read it. The authors though being economists make a very valid observation:
“Many of today’s key interregional tensions can be traced back to earlier interactions between the world’s main regions. In seeking to understand this history, economists need to think seriously about another subject they have too often neglected, namely geography. By “geography” we do not mean the highly stylized models that pass for “economic geography” today. When we say geography, we mean geography: mountains, rivers, and all. If Genghis Khan had been born in New Zealand, he would have left no traces on world history. The Irish might have enjoyed holding the rest of Europe to ransom by controlling access to Southeast Asian spices but never had the opportunities which geography afforded the rulers of Egypt. A European seeking direct access to India might well head westward and stumble across the Americas, but no Chinese sailor would have been foolish enough to seek an eastern passage to Arabia.”
If you are still not convinced about the importance of geography, and why it matters even more today, repeat this 100 times – “Straits of Hormuz”