Foreign Policy: Kaplan's "The Revenge of Geography" - 0 views
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environmental determinism geographic theory determinism geopolitics geography
shared by Jim Pickett on 30 Sep 09
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but geography largely determines them, now more than ever
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it’s time to dust off the Victorian thinkers who knew the physical world best.
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And of all the unsavory truths in which realism is rooted, the bluntest, most uncomfortable, and most deterministic of all is geography.
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By bringing demography and nature itself into history, Braudel helped restore geography to its proper place. In his narrative, permanent environmental forces lead to enduring historical trends that preordain political events and regional wars. To Braudel, for example, the poor, precarious soils along the Mediterranean, combined with an uncertain, drought-afflicted climate, spurred ancient Greek and Roman conquest. In other words, we delude ourselves by thinking that we control ou