"Geography and the Underpinnings of Confusion"
by Fred Reed
"Americans, including many of the intelligent and schooled, have little grasp of geography and, since geopolitics rests heavily on where places are, their understanding of events relies on moral fables of good and evil. They are thus subject to manipulation by the news media and unscrupulous politicians, which is to say almost any politicians.
Consider the war in Ukraine, routinely said to be consequent to Russia’s “unprovoked aggression” and supposed intention to conquer all of Europe. it isn’t. Since 1991, NATO, which means Washington, has been encroaching on Russia’s borders in an obvious attempt at military encirclement. In that year, there were sixteen countries in NATO, but now there are thirty-two. In the north, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia border on Russia, So do Norway and Finland, recently added to the alliance, and Sweden, also recently added, almost does. Littoral to the Black Sea, which NATO would like to control, are Romania, Bulgaria,, and Turkey, all in NATO. On the eastern end Washington has long been trying to get Georgia, in the Caucasus, into the EU and NATO. This would leave Ukraine, which borders on Russia, as the only non-NATO country with frontage on the Black Sea. The Crimea is a huge peninsula jutting into the Black Sea.
In 2014 a US-sponsored coup put a government friendly to Washington into power in Kiev with Ukraine’s membership in NATO visibly in the offing. This would shortly have led to American bases in Odessa and Sevastopol, US bases in the Crimea, and American nuclear-tipped missiles on the Russian border, eight minutes from Moscow. This is why Russia grabbed Crimea. It would have been crazy not to
There are only two reasons for putting military forces on another country’s borders: to intimidate, or to attack. Since a large majority of the American population probably don’t know where or what the Crimea and Caucus’s are, they can easily be told about Russia’s “unprovoked aggression.” Look at a map.
Now consider China, toward which Washington is engaging in actual unprovoked aggression. Key here is the First Island Chain running along China’s coast like a naval wall: Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu, Japanese and heavy with American military bases. Further south comes Okinawa in the Ryukyu’s, also Japanese and laden with American bases. Next Taiwan, being armed by the US preparatory, it appears, to being used as a second Ukraine. Then the Philippines,also being armed against China and, finally, Borneo.
A glance at a map makes the purpose clear: to bottle up the Chinese Navy and provide basing and launch sites against Chinese naval forces and the mainland. Again, there are only the two reasons for this, intimidation or war.
Note that the Chinese military, usually described as large and threatening, has very little capacity to project power remotely because it has no system of bases overseas and only one real aircraft carrier. Its submarine forces, heavy on diesel-electrics, are well-designed for local–i.e., anti-American – fighting but are nearly useless for remote patrols. They have many landing craft, but no way to employ them at any distance without air support. Their lack of apparent interest in acquiring geographically remote bases is not consistent with scare stories about dangerous aggressiveness. Again, check the map.
Now, trade routes. These are the new battlegrounds between the West and the rest of the world. Commerce moves largely by sea and must pass through oceanic choke points that the US Navy, the world’s largest blue water maritime force, can block at will: the Panama Canal, Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, Bab al Mandab, Hormuz, Malacca, and the Dardanelles.
For this reason countries of the Global South seek terrestrial replacements for maritime trade routes. China, which gets the bulk of its petroleum from the Persian Gulf, has particular reason to worry about the Strait of Malacca.
For example today trade between India and Russia goes from India through Bab al Mandab into the Red Sea, through Suez, and then through Gibraltar, all subject to naval blockade. Currently being developed, however, is the International North-South Transport Corridor, INSTC, which runs from Mumbai on the west coast of India to Chabahar on the south coast of Iran and then either westerly to Azerbaijan and up to Russia or, potentially across the Caucasus and on to Europe, or easterly up to the Caspian Sea to Astrakhan in Russia. It will also allow trade between India and Central Asia. It is largely immune to the US fleet.
Another trade route of note is the rail route from China to Europe through Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, and Poland to Germany. Heavy trade and consequent good relations between Russia and Germany have long been a nightmare in Washington as someone might then ask, “Well,what is NATO for?” Answer: The alliance is America’s chief means of controlling Europe. Thus the American push to discourage use of this route, or for that matter any route from Russia to Europe, relying on the Ukrainian war as pretext.
Further, the Global South, meaning in large part China, is building railroads all through Asia. One such is the semi-high speed line from Yunnan in China to Vientiane in Laos with connection with Nong Kai in Thailand in the expectation of extending down the Southeast Asian peninsula to Singapore. Many other rail lines exist or are being built in Central Asia, facilitating Asian trade and thus diluting American influence.
Yet another trade route independent of the US, under development by Russia and China, is the Northern Sea Route, going up the Pacific coast of Russia, across the Arctic, and down to the Atlantic. The route is within overlapping jurisdictions of many countries, including Russia, but is within range of Russian military forces. Like the INSTC it is shorter, cheaper, and faster than Suez. Washington is alarmed at the thought of trade it can’t control and has embarked on a crash program to get countries to build icebreakers for it. Russia has lots. The NSR is also why Washington wants Greenland, located to make blocking the NSR easy.
A trade route without an obviously happy future runs from Asia to Chancay on the Peruvian coast, where China has built a deep-water container port, highly automated in the usual Chinese manner. If allowed to survive, it will greatly increase Latin American trade with Asia. Washington is not happy with this. Previously much of such trade went across the Pacific to Long Beach or LA and was transferred to other ships to go to Latin America. Chancay cut America out. Washington is desperate to keep South America from becoming too prosperous, especially by trading with China as it would encourage independence. Geography, geography, geography."
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