Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
ern Pakistan, the Taliban itself in Afghanistan, and the plethora of militias in Iraq, espe-
cially during the civil war of 2006-2007, are examples of this trend of terrain-specific
substate land forces. For at a time when precision-guided missiles can destroy a specif-
ic house hundreds of miles away, while leaving the adjacent one deliberately undamaged,
small groups of turbaned irregulars can use the tortuous features of an intricate mountain
landscape to bedevil a superpower. In the latter case the revenge of geography is clear. But
in the former case, too, those missiles have to be fired from somewhere, which requires a
land or a sea base, thus bringing us back to geography, albeit to a less intimate and tradi-
tional kind. For Spykman's Indian Ocean Rimland is crucial for the placement of American
warships, whose missiles are aimed deep into Iran and Afghanistan, two Heartland states,
the latter of which is as riven by tribal conflicts as it was in the time of Alexander the Great.
Spykman's and Mackinder's early-twentieth-century constructs coexist with those of an-
tiquity, and both are relevant for our own era.
The very burden of governing vast, poor urban concentrations has made statehood more
onerous than at any previous time in history; a reason for the collapse of sclerotic dictat-
orships, as well as for the weakness of young democracies. A state like Pakistan can have
weapons of mass destruction, even as it can barely provide municipal services and protect
its population from suicide bombers. States like Nigeria, Yemen, Somalia, to name but a
few, barely function, and are besieged by substate militias. The Palestinians, particularly in
Gaza, have engaged in violence to protest their condition, even as they have eschewed the
compromises required for statehood. The same with Hezbollah in Lebanon, which could
have toppled the government in Beirut anytime it wanted, but chose not to. A state has
to abide by certain rules and thus makes for an easier target. And so we have a new phe-
nomenon in this age of megacities and mass media: the power of statelessness. “The state
is a burden,” writes Jakub Grygiel, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University, so
these substate groups “seek power without the responsibility of governing.” Modern com-
munications and military technologies allow these groups to organize, to seek help abroad,
and to arm themselves with lethal weapons so that the state no longer owns the monopoly
on violence. As I've said earlier, whereas the Industrial Revolution was about bigness (air-
planes, tanks, aircraft carriers, railways, factories, and so on) the post-Industrial Revolu-
tion is about smallness—miniature bombs and plastic explosives that do not require the
large territory of a state to deploy. Small stateless groups are beneficiaries of this new age
of technology. In fact, there are more and more reasons not to have a state. Grygiel writes:
The greater the capability of nations to destroy one another, and of the great
powers in particular, the more dangerous it is to have a state, especially for
groups whose goal is to challenge the existing powers.
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