The Power of Geography: Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World

The Power of Geography is the second book in Tim Marshall's geopolitics series, following Prisoners of Geography (2015). While the first book explored enduring geographic realities such as the Himalayas separating India and China, this volume turns to 10 regions and arenas whose geography is shaping the emerging multipolar world order.

Marshall opens by framing the current era as a transition from the bipolar Cold War order and the "unipolar" 1990s of unchallenged American power to a multipolar contest among rising and established actors. He draws on his reporting in Kosovo in 1999 and Karbala, Iraq, in 2003 to illustrate moments when the post-Cold War order began to fracture. The withdrawal of American engagement under Presidents Obama and Trump, upheavals across the Middle East and North Africa, and the rise of China and India accelerated the shift. Marshall projects that by the century's end, a new bipolar contest will likely emerge between an American-led coalition of democracies and a loose alliance of authoritarian states dominated by China.

The first chapter examines Australia, a continent-sized island whose vast, largely uninhabitable Outback confined settlement to a narrow coastal crescent. Marshall traces the country's transformation from a British penal colony established in 1788, through the devastation of Aboriginal peoples and successive waves of immigration, to a strategic pivot from Britain to the United States during the Second World War. Australia now finds itself caught between its largest trading partner, China, and its principal security ally, the USA. China's territorial claims in the South China Sea and economic retaliation after Australia called for a Covid-19 origins inquiry have pushed Canberra toward deeper security partnerships, including the Five Eyes intelligence network (a signals-intelligence alliance among the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with the USA, Japan, and India, and a "Pacific step-up" policy to counter Chinese influence in the South Pacific.

Iran's chapter centers on the country's mountainous fortress geography, with the Zagros and Elburz ranges forming a ring that makes invasion extraordinarily difficult but constrains Iranian power projection. Marshall surveys Persian history from Cyrus II's founding of the Achaemenid Empire in 550 BCE through the Safavid dynasty's 1501 declaration of Shia Islam, a major branch of Islam, as the state religion, an act designed to define Persia against the Sunni Ottoman Empire. He traces modern Iran through the Anglo-American-backed 1953 coup against Prime Minister Mossadegh, the shah's repressive rule, and the 1979 Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini. The 2003 US invasion of Iraq inadvertently delivered Iran's strategic dream by enabling a Shia-dominated Iraqi government, extending Tehran's arc of influence through Baghdad, Damascus, and Beirut. Marshall argues that the regime is trapped: It cannot liberalize without undermining its revolutionary foundations, yet its young population resists a system rooted in the sixteenth century.

Saudi Arabia's chapter describes a kingdom built on a 1744 alliance between the Al Saud clan and Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, a religious scholar whose puritanical Sunni reform movement became the kingdom's spiritual foundation. Marshall recounts how Ibn Saud, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, reconquered Riyadh in 1902 with just 20 warriors, and describes the foundational 1945 bargain with President Roosevelt guaranteeing American security in exchange for oil access. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's Vision 2030 program aims to diversify the economy as oil revenues decline, but his consolidation of power, including the 2017 detention of princes and elites at the Ritz Carlton hotel and the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, has drawn international criticism. Marshall details the escalating proxy conflict with Iran across Yemen, Syria, and the Persian Gulf, and warns that while the USA will still fight to keep oil flowing, an era approaches when Americans will no longer defend Saudi interests.

The United Kingdom chapter argues that Britain's island geography has been both its greatest strategic asset and a source of psychological separateness from Europe that contributed to Brexit, the UK's withdrawal from the European Union (EU) following the 2016 referendum. Marshall traces key moments from the Roman founding of London to the 1707 Acts of Union with Scotland, which eliminated the threat of a Franco-Scottish alliance and unlocked two centuries of imperial expansion. Post-Brexit, the UK searches for a role balancing ties with Washington, relations with Beijing, and European partnerships. Scottish independence, Marshall warns, would strip the UK of its nuclear submarine base at Faslane, 32 percent of its land mass, and critical northern airbases.

Greece's chapter positions the country at the crossroads of migration, energy competition, and rivalry with Turkey within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Mountains covering four-fifths of the mainland hinder trade but block invasion, making maritime power essential since antiquity. The 2008 financial crisis and the migrant wave of 2015, when more than 850,000 people arrived, strained Greece's relationship with the EU. Newly discovered Mediterranean gas fields have intensified confrontation with Turkey, whose drilling ships, escorted by warships, have entered waters Greece considers sovereign. Marshall notes Greece's strategic repositioning as a potential replacement for Turkey as NATO's key ally in the Aegean.

Turkey's chapter examines President Erdoğan's "neo-Ottoman" agenda. The Ottoman Empire expanded from a small emirate in northwestern Anatolia to control most of the Balkans, the Middle East, and North Africa before its long decline, triggered by defeat at Vienna in 1683. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founding leader of the Turkish Republic, radically modernized the state after 1923 by switching from the Arabic to the Latin alphabet and separating state from religion. Erdoğan has dismantled much of that secular framework, jailing journalists, purging institutions after the failed 2016 coup, intervening militarily in Syria to block Kurdish autonomy and in Libya to support allied factions, and purchasing Russia's S-400 missile system despite American objections. The Mavi Vatan, or Blue Homeland, concept envisions Turkish domination of the Black Sea, Aegean, and eastern Mediterranean, placing Ankara on a collision course with Greece and its own NATO allies.

The Sahel chapter describes the 6,000-kilometer corridor between the Sahara and sub-Saharan rainforests as the site of an escalating regional crisis. Colonial-era borders cut across ancient ethnic territories, and the collision of inherited divisions with climate change and jihadist exploitation has produced mounting violence. Marshall focuses on Mali, where a 2012 uprising by the Tuareg, a nomadic people dominant in the country's arid north, allied with Al-Qaeda affiliates and captured territory larger than France before French military intervention. He details the role of the Fulani, a nomadic herding people of at least 23 million spread across the region, whose displacement by drought makes them vulnerable to jihadist recruitment.

Ethiopia's chapter presents the country as the "water tower of Africa," where abundant fresh water provides enormous leverage over downstream neighbors. Marshall traces Ethiopian history from the Aksum Empire through the Derg, a brutal Marxist military junta that killed up to 100,000 people and mismanaged the economy into devastating famine, to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's 2018 reforms, which earned him the Nobel Peace Prize but triggered civil war with the Tigray region. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile is both the country's greatest opportunity and the region's most dangerous flashpoint: 85 percent of the Nile's flow into Egypt originates from the Blue Nile, and Egypt has threatened to use "all available means" to protect its interests.

Spain's chapter argues that mountainous terrain has perpetually frustrated centralized control and preserved regional identities, particularly in Catalonia and the Basque Country. Marshall traces Spain from the Muslim conquest of 711 through the Reconquista, the centuries-long Christian reconquest of Muslim-ruled Iberia, the Golden Age, the catastrophic Civil War, and Franco's 36-year dictatorship. The post-Franco democratic transition led to NATO membership, EU accession, and economic modernization. The Catalan independence crisis, in which riot police used batons against voters in a 2017 referendum declared illegal by Spain's Supreme Court, now threatens not only Spanish unity but the EU's cohesion, since a successful secession would embolden separatist movements across Europe.

The final chapter turns to space as the newest arena of geopolitical competition. Marshall describes the 2020 Artemis Accords governing lunar exploration, noting that neither Russia nor China participated, and traces the space race from Nazi V-2 rockets through the 1969 Moon landing and the International Space Station. He analyzes the military dimension: Satellite-killer systems developed by the USA, Russia, China, India, and Israel could disable GPS, banking systems, and military early-warning networks if deployed. Marshall argues that space's vast resources could reduce terrestrial conflict if shared through binding agreements, but warns that the familiar pattern of territorial rivalry is already taking hold above the atmosphere.