Tim Marshall

Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics

Prisoners of Geography

Leonie

Below it is Manchuria, which the Russians would have to push through if they wanted to reach the Chinese heartland. The population of Manchuria is 100 million and growing; in contrast, the Russian Far East has fewer than seven million people and no indications of population growth.

The Chinese are determined to have Taiwan but are nowhere near being able to challenge for it militarily. Instead they are using soft power by increasing trade and tourism between the two states. China wants to woo Taiwan back into its arms. During the 2014 student protests in Hong Kong, one of the reasons the authorities did not quickly batter them off the streets – as they would have done in, for example, Ürümqi – was that the world’s cameras were there and would have captured the violence. In China much of this footage would be blocked, but in Taiwan people would see what the rest of the world saw and ask themselves how close a relationship they wanted with such a power. Beijing hesitated; it is playing the long game. The soft-power approach is to persuade the people of Taiwan they have nothing to fear in rejoining the ‘Motherland’. The Air Defence Identification Zone, the surfacing near US ships and the build-up of a navy are part of a long-term plan to weaken American resolve to defend an island 140 miles off the coast of mainland China, but 6,400 miles from the west coast of the USA.

China must secure the routes through the South China Sea, both for its goods to get to market, and for the items required to make those goods – oil, gas and precious metals among them – to get into China. It cannot afford to be blockaded. Diplomacy is one solution; the ever-growing navy is another; but the best guarantees are pipelines, roads and ports.

Diplomatically, China will attempt to pull the South-East Asian nations away from the USA using both carrot and stick. Too much stick, and the countries will tie themselves ever closer into defence treaties with Washington; too much carrot, and they may not bend to Beijing’s will. At the moment they still look across the Pacific for protection.

However, while President Putin is willing to use military power to back the regime, it should survive. Putin saw that Obama's lack of focus on Syria gave Russia an opportunity. It could reinsert itself into the Middle East, make Russia part of the solution to the Syrian problem, and try to link cooperation on resolving the crisis with the easing of sanctions against Moscow, which had been put in place following its annexation of Crimea.

It [ISIS] quickly became the ‘go to’ jihadist group, drawing thousands of foreign Muslims to the cause, partially due to its pious romanticism and partially for its brutality. Its main attraction, though, was its success in creating a caliphate; where Al Qaeda murdered people and captured headlines, IS murdered people and captured territory.

IS also seized upon an area that is increasingly important in the internet age – psychological space. It built on the pioneering work of Al Qaeda in social media and took it to new heights of sophistication and brutality. By 2015 IS was ahead of any government in levels of public messaging using jihadists brought up on the sometimes brutalising effects of the internet and its obsession with violence and sex. They are Generation Jackass Jihadis and they are ahead of the deadly game.

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