To understand today's global conflicts....take a hard look at a map

[dixiegrrrrl]

Worth the read, it is not long.
Just found it, it was written in 2012, now seems very prescient.
I would also add that geography AND history provide the lens thru which we observe global conflict.

Geography Strikes Back
To understand today's global conflicts, forget economics and technology and take a hard look at a map, writes Robert D. Kaplan

If you want to know what Russia, China or Iran will do next, don't read their newspapers or ask what our spies have dug up—consult a map. Geography can reveal as much about a government's aims as its secret councils. More than ideology or domestic politics, what fundamentally defines a state is its place on the globe. Maps capture the key facts of history, culture and natural resources. With upheaval in the Middle East and a tumultuous political transition in China, look to geography to make sense of it all.

Snip......Why, for example, are headlines screaming about the islands of the South China Sea?
As the Pacific antechamber to the Indian Ocean, this sea connects the energy-rich Middle East and the emerging middle-class fleshpots of East Asia. It is also thought to contain significant stores of hydrocarbons. China thinks of the South China Sea much as the U.S. thinks of the Caribbean: as a blue-water extension of its mainland. Vietnam and the Philippines also abut this crucial body of water, which is why we are seeing maritime brinkmanship on all sides. It is a battle not of ideas but of physical space. The same can be said of the continuing dispute between Japan and Russia over the South Kuril Islands.

snip.....Why does President Vladimir Putin covet buffer zones in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, just as the czars and commissars did before him?

and what about Europe, and the Balkans, and Greece, and..........lots of good info. at the link.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390443819404577635332556005436

[Fred Sanders]

1. "Middle class fleshpots of East Asia"? What does that even mean? End of reading....

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce

Alas, we forget it as soon as another glorious war ends.

[progressoid]

3. marking this for a later read.