Prisoners of Geography Read online

  It has worked particularly well for Germany, which rose from the ashes of 1945 and used to its advantage the geography it once feared. It became Europe’s great manufacturer. Instead of sending armies across the flatlands it sent goods with the prestigious tag ‘Made in Germany’, and these goods flowed down the Rhine and the Elbe, along the autobahns and out into Europe and the world, north, south, west and, increasingly since 1990, east.

  However, what began in 1951 as the six-nation European Steel and Coal Community has become the twenty-eight-nation EU with an ideological core of ‘ever closer union’. After the first major financial crisis to hit the Union, that ideology is on an uncertain footing and the ties that bind are fraying. There are signs within the EU of, as the geopolitical writer Robert Kaplan puts it, ‘the revenge of geography’.

  Ever closer union led, for nineteen of the twenty-eight countries, to a single currency – the euro. All twenty-eight members, except for Denmark and the UK, are committed to joining it if and when they meet the criteria. What is clear now, and was to some clear at the time, is that at its launch in 1999 many countries which did join were simply not ready.

  In 1999 many of the countries went into the newly defined relationship with eyes wide shut. They were all supposed to have levels of debt, unemployment and inflation within certain limits. The problem was that some, notably Greece, were cooking the books. Most of the experts knew, but because the euro is not just a currency – it is also an ideology – the members turned a blind eye.

  The eurozone countries agreed to be economically wedded, as the Greeks point out, ‘in sickness and in health’, but when the economic crisis of 2008 hit, the wealthier countries had to bail out the poorer ones, and a bitter domestic row broke out. The partners are still throwing dishes at each other to this day.

  The euro crisis and wider economic problems have revealed the cracks in the House of Europe (notably along the old fault line of the north–south divide). The dream of ever closer union appears to be frozen, or possibly even in reverse. If it is, then the German question may return. Seen through the prism of seven decades of peace, this may seem alarmist, and Germany is among the most peaceful and democratic members of the European family; but seen through the prism of seven centuries of European warfare, it cannot be ruled out.

  Germany is determined to remain a good European. Germans know instinctively that if the Union fragments the old fears of Germany will reappear, especially as it is now by far the most populous and wealthy European nation, with 82 million inhabitants and the world’s fourth-biggest economy. A failed Union would also harm Germany economically: the world’s third-largest exporter of goods does not want to see its closest market fragment into protectionism.

  The German nation state, despite being less than 150 years old, is now Europe’s indispensable power. In economic affairs it is unrivalled, it speaks quietly but carries a large euro-shaped stick, and the Continent listens. However, on global foreign policy it simply speaks quietly, sometimes not at all, and has an aversion to sticks.

  The shadow of the Second World War still hangs over Germany. The Americans, and eventually the West Europeans, were willing to accept German rearmament due to the Soviet threat, but Germany rearmed almost reluctantly and has been loath to use its military strength. It played a walk-on part in Kosovo and Afghanistan, but chose to sit out the Libyan conflict.

  Its most serious diplomatic foray into a non-economic crisis has been in Ukraine, which tells us a lot about where Germany is now looking. The Germans were involved in the machinations that overthrew Ukraine’s President Yanukovych in 2014 and they were sharply critical of Russia’s subsequent annexation of Crimea. However, mindful of the gas pipelines, Berlin was noticeably more restrained in its criticism and support for sanctions than, for example, the UK, which is far less reliant on Russian energy. Through the EU and NATO Germany is anchored in Western Europe, but in stormy weather anchors can slip, and Berlin is geographically situated to shift the focus of its attention east if required and forge much closer ties with Moscow.

  Watching all of these Continental machinations from the sidelines of the Atlantic is the UK, sometimes present on the territory of the Continent, sometimes in ‘splendid isolation’, always fully engaged in ensuring that no power greater than it will rise in Europe. This is as true now in the diplomatic chambers of the EU as it was on the battlefields of Agincourt, Waterloo or Balaclava.

  When it can, the UK inserts itself between the great Franco-German alliances in the EU; failing that, it seeks alliances among other, smaller, member states to build enough votes to challenge policies with which it disagrees.

  Geographically, the Brits are in a good place. Good farmland, decent rivers, excellent access to the seas and their fish stocks, close enough to the European Continent to trade and yet protected by dint of being an island race – there have been times when the UK gave thanks for its geography as wars and revolutions swept over its neighbours.

  The British losses in, and experience of, the world wars are not to be underestimated, but they are dwarfed by what happened in Continental Europe in the twentieth century and indeed before that. The British are at one remove from living with the historical collective memory of frequent invasions and border changes.

  There is a theory that the relative security of the UK over the past few hundred years is why it has experienced more freedom and less despotism than the countries across the Channel. The theory goes that there were fewer requirements for ‘strong men’ or dictators, which, starting with Magna Carta (1215) and then the Provisions of Oxford (1258), led to forms of democracy years ahead of other countries.

  It is a good talking point, albeit one not provable. What is undeniable is that the water around the island, the trees upon it which allowed a great navy to be built, and the economic conditions which sparked the Industrial Revolution all led to Great Britain controlling a global empire. Britain may be the biggest island in Europe, but it is not a large country. The expansion of its power across the globe in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries is remarkable, even if its position has since declined.

  Its location still grants it certain strategic advantages, one of which is the GIUK (Greenland, Iceland and the UK) gap. This is a choke point in the world’s sea lanes – it is hardly as important as the Strait of Hormuz or the Strait of Malacca, but it has traditionally given the UK an advantage in the North Atlantic. The alternative route for north European navies (including Belgium, the Netherlands and France) to access the Atlantic is through the English Channel, but this is narrow – only 20 miles across at the Strait of Dover – and very well defended. Any Russian naval ship coming from the Arctic also has to pass through the GIUK on its way to the Atlantic.

  This strategic advantage has diminished in tandem with the reduced role and power of the Royal Navy, but in time of war it would again benefit the UK. The GIUK is one of many reasons why London flew into a panic in 2014 when, briefly, the vote on Scottish independence looked as if might result in a Yes. The loss of power in the North Sea and North Atlantic would have been a strategic blow and a massive dent to the prestige of whatever was left of the UK.

  What the British have now is a collective memory of greatness. That memory is what persuades many people on the island that if something in the world needs to be done, then Britain should be among the countries which do it. The British remain within Europe, and yet outside it; it is an issue still to be settled.

  Forty years after joining the EU, the British decided to hold a referendum of whether to remain a part of it. The two main issues that caused the British to edge towards the exit door are related: sovereignty and immigration. Anti-EU opinion, backed by some EU waverers, has been fuelled by the amount and type of laws enacted by the EU, which the UK, as part of the membership deal, has had to abide by. For example, headlines have been made about foreign criminals convicted of serious crimes in the UK who cannot be deported because of the European Convention on Human Rights.
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  At the same time, the wave of economic immigrants and refugees arriving in Europe from the Middle East and Africa has also driven anti-EU feeling as many of those migrants want to reach Britain, and it is believed they have been encouraged to so do by the EU countries through which they pass.

  Prejudice against immigrants always rises during times of economic recession, such as recently suffered in Europe, and the effects have been seen right across the continent and resulted in the rise of right-wing political parties, all of which militate against pan-nationalism and thus weaken the fabric of the EU.

  A stark example came in early 2016 when, for the first time in half a century, Sweden began checking the documents of travellers from Denmark. This was a direct response to the numbers of refugees and migrants flowing into northern Europe from the wider Middle East and to the IS attacks on Paris in November 2015. The idea of the EU’s ‘Schengen Zone’, a border-free area comprising twenty-six countries, has taken some heavy blows, with different countries at different times reintroducing border controls on the grounds of security. Fearing a bottleneck, Denmark then began checking people crossing from Germany. This all has an economic cost, makes travel more difficult, and is both a physical and conceptual attack on ‘ever closer union’. Some analysts have begun to speak of a ‘Fortress Europe’ due to bids to reduce immigration levels, but this misses the fact that there is also a drift towards a ‘Fortress Nation State’.

  Europe’s traditional white population is greying. Population projections predict an inverted pyramid, with older people at the top and fewer younger people to look after them or pay taxes. However, such forecasts have not made a dent in the strength of anti-immigrant feeling among what was previously the indigenous population, which struggles to deal with the rapid changes to the world in which it grew up.

  This demographic change is in turn having an effect on the foreign policy of nation states, particularly towards the Middle East. On issues such as the Iraq War or the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, for example, many European governments must, at the very least, take into account the feelings of their Muslim citizens when formulating policy.

  The characters and domestic social norms of the European countries are also impacted. Debates about women’s rights and the veiling of women, blasphemy laws, freedom of speech and many other issues have all been influenced by the presence of large numbers of Muslims in Europe’s urban areas. Voltaire’s maxim that he would defend to the death the right of a person to say something, even if he found it offensive, was once taken as a given. Now, despite many people having been killed because what they said was insulting, the debate has shifted. It is not uncommon to hear the idea that perhaps insulting religion should be beyond the pale, possibly even made illegal.

  Whereas previously liberals would have been entirely behind Voltaire, there are now shades of relativism. The massacre of journalists at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2015 was followed by widespread condemnation and revulsion; however, sections of liberal condemnation were tinged with a ‘but perhaps the satirists went too far’. This is something new for Europe in the modern age and is part of its culture wars, all of which loop back into attitudes towards the European political structures.

  NATO is fraying at the edges at the same time as is the European Union. Both can be patched up, but if not, then over time they may become either defunct or irrelevant. At this point we would return to a Europe of sovereign nation states, with each state seeking alliances in a balance of power system. The Germans would again be fearing encirclement by the Russians and French, the French would again be fearing their bigger neighbour, and we would all be back at the beginning of the twentieth century.

  For the French this is a nightmare. They successfully helped tie Germany down inside the EU, only to find that after German reunification they became the junior partner in a twin-engine motor they had hoped to be driving. This poses Paris a problem it does not appear to be able to solve. Unless it quietly accepts that Berlin calls the European shots, it risks further weakening the Union. But if it accepts German leadership, then its own power is diminished.

  France is capable of an independent foreign policy – indeed, with its ‘Force de frappe’ nuclear deterrent, its overseas territories and its aircraft carrier-backed armed forces, it does just that – but it operates safe in the knowledge that its eastern flank is secure and it can afford to raise its eyes to the horizon.

  Both France and Germany are currently working to keep the Union together: they see each other now as natural partners. But only Germany has a Plan B – Russia.

  The end of the Cold War saw most of the Continental powers reducing their military budgets and cutting back their armed forces. It has taken the shock of the Russian–Georgian war of 2008 and the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 to focus attention on the possibility of the age-old problem of war in Europe.

  Now the Russians regularly fly missions aimed at testing European air defence systems and are busy consolidating themselves in South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Crimea, Transnistria and eastern Ukraine. They maintain their links with the ethnic Russians in the Baltics, and they still have their exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea.

  The Europeans have begun doing some serious recalculation on their military spending, but there isn’t much money around, and they face difficult decisions. While they debate those decisions the maps are being dusted down, and the diplomats and military strategists see that, while the threats of Charlemagne, Napoleon, Hitler and the Soviets may have vanished, the North European Plain, the Carpathians, the Baltic and the North Sea are still there.

  In his book Of Paradise and Power the historian Robert Kagan argues that Western Europeans live in paradise but shouldn’t seek to operate by the rules of paradise once they move out into the world of power. Perhaps, as the euro crisis diminishes and we look around at paradise, it seems inconceivable that we could go backwards; but history tells us how much things can change in just a few decades, and geography tells us that if humans do not constantly strive to overcome its ‘rules’, its ‘rules’ will overcome us.

  This is what Helmut Kohl meant when he warned, upon leaving the Chancellorship of Germany in 1998, that he was the last German leader to have lived through the Second World War and thus to have experienced the horrors it wrought. In 2012 he wrote an article for Germany’s best-selling daily newspaper, Bild, and was clearly still haunted by the possibility that because of the financial crisis the current generation of leaders would not nurture the post-war experiment in European trust: ‘For those who didn’t live through this themselves and who especially now in the crisis are asking what benefits Europe’s unity brings, the answer despite the unprecedented European period of peace lasting more than 65 years and despite the problems and difficulties we must still overcome is: peace.’

  CHAPTER 5

  AFRICA

  ‘It always seems impossible until it is done.’

  Nelson Mandela

  AFRICA’S COASTLINE? GREAT BEACHES, REALLY, REALLY lovely beaches, but terrible natural harbours. Rivers? Amazing rivers, but most of them are rubbish for actually transporting anything, given that every few miles you go over a waterfall. These are just two in a long list of problems which help explain why Africa isn’t technologically or politically as successful as Western Europe or North America.

  There are lots of places that are unsuccessful, but few have been as unsuccessful as Africa, and that despite having a head start as the place where Homo sapiens originated about 200,000 years ago. As that most lucid of writers, Jared Diamond, put it in a brilliant National Geographic article in 2005, ‘It’s the opposite of what one would expect from the runner first off the block.’ However, the first runners became separated from everyone else by the Sahara Desert and the Indian and Atlantic oceans. Almost the entire continent developed in isolation from the Eurasian land mass, where ideas and technology were exchanged from east to west, and west to east, but not north to south.

 
Africa, being a huge continent, has always consisted of different regions, climates and cultures, but what they all had in common was their isolation from each other and the outside world. That is less the case now, but the legacy remains.

  The world’s idea of African geography is flawed. Few people realise just how big it is. This is because most of us use the standard Mercator world map. This, as do other maps, depicts a sphere on a flat surface and thus distorts shapes. Africa is far, far longer than usually portrayed, which explains what an achievement it was to round the Cape of Good Hope, and is a reminder of the importance of the Suez Canal to world trade. Making it around the Cape was a momentous achievement, but once it became unnecessary to do so, the sea journey from Western Europe to India was reduced by 6,000 miles.

  If you look at a world map and mentally glue Alaska onto California, then turn the USA on its head, it appears as if it would roughly fit into Africa with a few gaps here and there. In fact Africa is three times bigger than the USA. Look again at the standard Mercator map and you see that Greenland appears to be the same size as Africa, and yet Africa is actually fourteen times the size of Greenland! You could fit the USA, Greenland, India, China, Spain, France, Germany and the UK into Africa and still have room for most of Eastern Europe. We know Africa is a massive land mass, but the maps rarely tell us how massive.

  The geography of this immense continent can be explained in several ways, but the most basic is to think of Africa in terms of the top third and bottom two-thirds.

  The top third begins on the Mediterranean coastlines of the North African Arabic-speaking countries. The coastal plains quickly become the Sahara, the world’s largest dry desert, which is almost as big as the USA. Directly below the Sahara is the Sahel region, a semi-arid, rock-strewn, sandy strip of land measuring more than 3,000 miles at its widest points and stretching from Gambia on the Atlantic coast through Niger, Chad and right across to Eritrea on the Red Sea. The word Sahel comes from the Arabic sahil, which means coast, and is how the people living in the region think of it – as the shoreline of the vast sand sea of the Sahara. It is another sort of shore, one where the influence of Islam diminishes. From the Sahel to the Mediterranean the vast majority of people are Muslims. South of it there is far more diversity in religion.