Daily Times

“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” Marc Anthony’s infamous words as he addresses the Roman rabble following the murder of his one-time friend. This line from the Shakespearean tragedy has always fascinated me. For hypocrites they are all of them, Et tu, Brute?

Yet today I come to you with neither tales of our collective woes nor of good cheer. Instead I bring an offering: geography. It is a subject with which I have begun to be increasingly enamoured. Thus today I put pen to paper not to bury geography, but, rather, to resurrect it.

In reality, this was the subject I found the least interesting as a child. It was only as a young man that its significance began to dawn on me. This was a process that continued until my early 30s when I finally registered its full import. Thus did I recast myself as a serious student of geo-strategy. And now it is a passion that forever holds my mind in a constant state of absorption. Indeed, the first thing I do when entering a new work environment is to arrange for a map of the world as well as a physical atlas.

The one thing about geography is that it is virtually immutable. Land masses move infinitesimally, meaning that hundreds of centuries may pass before any drift is detected. Thus what is presently known as South Asia remained moored for some thousands of years before finding itself adjunct to Asia. Nevertheless, the velocity with which this eventually happened gave us the highest mountain ranges in the world, among them, Mount Everest and K-2.

This geo-strategic economic advantage, if that is indeed what it is, equally represents our most pronounced vulnerability. Especially given how we appear to be squandering what has been afforded to us

Because it is immutable, geography dictates not only the climate of every region — but also eating habits as well as the psychological and socio-economic traits of a people. If an individual finds himself in an inhospitable environment, in theory at least, he can relocate. Not so with nation states. For them the backyard is fixed and if they don’t get on with the neighbours — there is not much that can be done aside from simply enduring the bickering.

My brother happens to be an astute historian and is thus well placed to explain to me, as he often does, the ‘causes’ that frame the course of history. That is, why nomads live nomadic lives; why settlers chose particular areas to put down sticks; why inter-state relations deteriorate; why states go to war; and what drives them to target distinct regions over others. His is naturally an historian’s perspective. Mine is that of a soldier. Yet I find it wholly gripping that these converge at a common point: namely, our old friend, geography.

If a nation produces neither fodder nor food it has no choice but to become a hardy land, which, in turn, produces a hardy people. If another land is better endowed, it has geography to thank for this non-random fortune. Now let us imagine that the former were to attack the latter — this would, of course, be prompted by economic compulsion. Yet it is geography and geography alone that facilitates this.

Those who lead a nomadic life include birds and other members of the animal kingdom. They engage in flights of fancy and often harrowing expeditions in search of better climes and food accessibility. In mountainous regions, all those who remain put for the winter know to stock up on food, supplies and clothing to see them throughout the five to seven month period whereby all living creatures are under veritable house arrest. Thus a familiar sight, as soon as the snow begins to melt, is that of barrens of mules laden with all sorts of provisions as man and beast make their way towards more hospitable habitats.

A landlocked country is forever dependent upon others for access to the sea, which is always the cheapest route for commerce. Yet even worse is this: no landlocked nation can ever aspire to be a regional, let alone, world power. Because quite simply, the export of military might is solely dependent upon maritime capability. This is something to which history bears testament. For only those naval forces that secured domination of the seas were able to threaten entire regions, or, indeed, the rest of the world.

Since Russia’s access to the seas is limited to the Kara, Laptev, and the East Siberian Sea — which remains frozen for more than nine months of the year — Moscow has spent almost an entire lifetime desperately seeking access to warm waters. Unsurprisingly, such moves have been repeatedly thwarted by its adversaries. Yet this didn’t stop Russia from throwing down the gauntlet back in 1979 when it entered Afghanistan in a bid to access the seas via Iran. This move precipitated what is now known as The New Great Game.

As for us, ever since Pakistan came into being we have heard nothing but how we are strategically located at the junction where the Middle East, South and Central Asia meet, although access to the is via either Afghanistan or China, with CPEC indicating recognition of this. Yet what we tend to forget is that whatever our geo-strategic position may be — we have done nothing to either earn or deserve this fact of geography. Of course, it is very much up to us how we capitalise on this gift of nature. And towards this end, at the risk of repeating myself, we must be mindful of one thing above all others. Namely, that this geo-strategic economic advantage, if that is indeed what it is, equally represents our most pronounced vulnerability. Especially given how we appear to be squandering what has been afforded to us.

We have in recent times witnessed a far greater understanding of geography, as evidenced by the inclusion of such terms as geo-politics, geo-strategy and geo-economics into the common lexicon. Nevertheless, I still intend to write one or two pieces exploring the impact of geographic diktats upon the above, as well as upon the behavioural patterns of a people of a particular region.

Stay tuned.

The writer is a retired brigadier. He is also former vice president and founder of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI)

Published in Daily Times, September 24^th 2017.