-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        Geography Strikes Back (i.e. look at a map)
Date:   Sat, 08 Sep 2012 10:04:39 -0400
From:   Joel Kovarsky <[log in to unmask]>
To:     [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>



This appeared late in yesterday's WSJ:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443819404577635332556005436.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories

. The author is Robert D. Kaplan, the chief geopolitical analyst for
Stratfor, a private (and decidedly non-partisan) global intelligence firm.

  From the article:

     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....

     As a way of explaining world politics, geography has supposedly been
     eclipsed by economics, globalization and electronic communications.
     It has a decidedly musty aura, like a one-room schoolhouse....

     But this is nonsense. Elite molders of public opinion may be able to
     dash across oceans and continents in hours, allowing them to talk
     glibly of the "flat" world below. But while cyberspace and financial
     markets know no boundaries, the Carpathian Mountains still separate
     Central Europe from the Balkans, helping to create two vastly
     different patterns of development, and the Himalayas still stand
     between India and China, a towering reminder of two vastly different
     civilizations....

                                             Joel Kovarsky