mia moraru’s Reviews > Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics > Status Update

NATO and EU lowkey fraying, if we go back to before (all solo) with no genuine structural change..we’re sorta back to the start of the 20th C in terms of issues in europe.
unity of europe like this has been unprecedented historically. and people are forgetting the benefits of it and the drawbacks of separation/conflict it easily brings.

france & germany always been sus of each other. creation of EU majorly influenced this; they’re now forced to be on the same side and trust.
euro launch in 1999 but a lot of countries were not ready for it. ‘…the euro is not just a currency—it is also an ideology’
ppl upset bc this kind of deal means the rich have to bail out the poor countries.
GIUK gap & english channel v important+strategic.

sooo US chapter made it very clear where this man's loyalties and biases lie. brushing over genocide/settler colonialism/manifest destiny and straight to why us is 'correctly' dominant over everybody else.
yawn

diplomatically C will try to carrot stick SE As nations away from US. court & threaten
pushing & pushing agenda until competitors back off.
C intends to become 2ocean power: Pacific+Indian.
British announced ‘freedom of navigation’ operations in SCS, v provocative.
C wants to reduce reliance on Straight of Malacca; burma coastline has pipelines linking BoBengal to SWChina.

‘All great nations spend peacetime preparing for the day war breaks out.’

sigh.

catch 22–needs to keep industrializing as modernizes but then threatens food production/arable land.
C wants to rival US navy. anywhere C could go by water, they pass by allies of US
C must secure routes thru S C Sea for goods and resources to make them. options are diplomacy or navy but best guarantee are pipelines roads & ports.

Xinjiang too strategically important but there will always be trouble—nuclear testing sites, borders 8 countries, has oil. Beij. paints separatists as Islamist terrorists. but movement is nationalist 1st, islamic 2nd.
resistance to democracy & individ rights bc then might crack unity of the Han, countryside & urban areas could come into conflict. ‘Chinese thought prizes collective above individ’

Deng Xiaoping 80s coined ‘Socialism w Chinese Characteristics’ aka ‘Total control for the CP in a Capitalist Economy.’
Tibet important bc borders india, and china wants to control that border so no relations w India beyond himalayas. geopolitics of fear.
Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang now all majority Han. so will Tibet soon
china pop always looking to expand bc mostly crammed in heartland. so looks W

by time of Confucius, already a strong feeling of Chinese identity and divide between civilized china & “barbarous” surrounding regions.
N & S Han linked when Yellow River & Yangtze linked by Grand Canal 609CE. increasingly less war w/in the Han. Mongols main problem (Ming Dyn) but now Gobi Desert separation and pretty impossible to invade South.
Mao centralized power to an extent never before seen in prev dyn.

concept of china as an inhabited entity began ~4000 yrs ago: in fertile N china plain (now Central Plain). by 1500BCE, Shang Dynasty, earliest version of a Ch state.
then ‘Han people’ emerged, who now make up over 90% of pop.
heartland is political cultural demographic and agri center of gravity.
attack as defense, like Russia.
struggle over millennia, fully realized w annexation of Tibet in 1951