Tim Marshall on Ukraine, Gaza and how Geography Explains Our World | Intelligence Squared

Tim Marshall is one of the world’s most successful authors on foreign affairs. He’s the writer who put the ‘geo’ into geopolitics with his multi-million selling books Prisoners of Geography and The Power of Geography.
Marshall’s principal argument is that without geography we cannot understand the world. Geography explains why Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea: to remain a world power, Russia must have a navy and since Russian ports are frozen for half the year, Putin wanted to control the warm water port of Odessa.
Geography also explains why Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has remained in place: he may at one point have lost half the land space of Syria but he kept control of the cities where most of the population lives.
In February 2024 Marshall came to the Intelligence Squared stage where, in conversation with Ritula Shah, he discussed how geography can help us understand the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and other hotspots around the world. He also explained how his fascination with maps has led him to look upwards to space where, as he sets out in his new book The Future of Geography, planetary power play is likely to be the biggest geopolitical story of the coming century.
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[@paulmitchell9975]

This was so perceptive, aware and intelligent that I cannot understand how Tim doesn't realise he needs longer socks.

[@davidwhite5228]

I enjoy Tim Marshall's books on Geopolitics as an observer of world events and the feral beast that is mankind. Fighting over land since Homo Sapiens first showed up and borders marked down. Geography is important and Israel and Palestine are now doomed for ever, never to find peace because of the actions of Hamas and a right wing Israeli Government. New recruits for both sides now in their under 16's who have witnessed death. When hatred is at that level there is no solution which is sad. Putin talking about Nuclear war as a possibility is scary to me but if you don't think so fine. My opinion, your opinion, we should all be free to speak and also seek several news outlets to analyse and see smoke, mirrors and be discerning.

[@captainwin6333]

This guy is having a shocker. Lamenting Putin's Ukraine invasion on one hand then saying the US "wasted too much bandwidth on Iraq and Afghanistan". What the US did to both countries is no different to what Russia is doing in Ukraine, only the US killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in the process and called it "collateral damage". I think the latest UN firgure for civilian deaths in Ukraine is around 15,000 after more than two years of fighting. This will likely increase but if you compare it to the number of civilians killed in Gaza by Israel in only 5 months, you can't argue it's historically high. They also fired god knows how many depleted Uranium rounds in Iraq and I've heard some fluffers for the West claiming depleted Uranium rounds aren't that dangerous because Uranium only puts out Alpha and Beta radiation and not the vastly more dangerous Gamma radiation but that's a very sly angle to that question because in the process of Ukranium emitting Alpha and Beta radiation, the Uranium breaks down to other radioactive elements which do emit Gamma radiation. "Decay products of U-238 include thorium-234 (Th-234), protactinium-234 (Pa-234), U-234, Th-230, radium-226 (Ra-226), radon-222 (Rn-222), polonium-218 (Po-218), lead-214 (Pb-214), bismuth-214 (Bi-214), Po-214 Pb-210 and Po-210."

[@niccolomurtas3691]

Bro, I don't know how to make you notice that when the U.S. has left Afghanistan there were videos of civilians trying to get on their planes. When Russia left Eastern Europe, nobody did that. Nor will they when they'll eventually leave Ukraine. Might it tell something?

[@NoGoZoon]

Wow, what a paperthin analysis of the current israeli offensive. Already the opening arguments about ukraine and the geographic reasons for that conflict is pulled out of the air, unsubstantiated (and unquestioned by 'interviewer'). Then he has the novel take that hamas doesnt care about their civvies and were just too naïve and unsuphisticated to see the consequences of their actions. Hot take, my man. Brave stuff.

[@ekbastu]

Glad to see you hit the nail on its head. America established the rule based world order, and China and Russia are disturbing it. Simplistic and false. I was thinking of buying his books, but …

[@starc.]

cant take this seriously given trillions of dollars are wasted globally every year. Politics is obsolete, it is a matter of converting the high tech from weaponry to livingry

[@niccolomurtas3691]

it's a matter of shutting up and don't make yourself a clown mostly, then u can proceed to think of bigger issues

[@starc.]

@@niccolomurtas3691I didn't ask you to talk about yourself

[@niccolomurtas3691]

@@starc. nor has somebody asked you to express your indifference to a video you would simply skip had life treated your brain better

[@starc.]

@@niccolomurtas3691 its the mind not the brain. And expressing indifference implies not commenting. To repeat, I didn't ask you to talk about yourself

[@auturgicflosculator2183]

@@niccolomurtas3691 You're an unpleasant person.

[@advocate1563]

Vapid interviewer. Sad to hear Tim Marshall sounding defensive in expressing his views. Come tst9ra should be able to express the truth as they see/analyse it without being apologetic.

[@supercoolbrian]

This articulate man makes some good points and some bad ones, but the one thing I won't excuse is his flippant remark concerning Crimea being 80% Russian speaking. He's falling into a classic Russian propaganda blunder of conflating Russian speakers and ethnic Russians (who live in Ukraine) with those who are pro- Russian seperatists. There's a big difference between these groups. While there was and is in Ukraine a divide between those who consider themselves Ukrainian and ethnic Russian, that is not fundamentally what caused the Russian-Ukrainian war. For one, simply because someone who lives in Ukraine identifies as an ethnic Russian, does not mean they are in favor occupation. One ethnic Russian activist who was present at the EuroMaidan protest in Kyiv wrote on facebook, “Ukraine is my Homeland. Russian is my native language. And I would like to be saved by Pushkin. And delivered from sorrow and unrest, also by Pushkin. Pushkin, not Putin.” Similarly, when the Russian soldiers moved into Crimea in late February 2014, there was one local Crimean who was filmed in the Episode 1 of the Vice Russian Rolluette documentary series shouting at them saying, “I’m Russian, you’re Russian, but I don’t go to your home with guns!” Ukrainian historian Serhii Plohkii words the relation as such, “According to data provided by the respected Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, with Russians constituting 17 percent of the Ukrainian population, only 5 percent of those polled considered themselves exclusively Russian: the rest identified as both Russian and Ukrainian. Even those who considered themselves exclusively Russian often opposed Russian interference in Ukrainian affairs, refusing to associate themselves with Putin’s regime.” Incidentally, these numbers are much smaller than half the country. When Russia invaded in 2014, they conflated numbers, and never sent voter cards to Crimean Tartars. They said over 100% voted in Sevastapol, which is a statistic impossibility, and that 94% of 84% eligible voters voted to join Russia, which is a statistic lie. They also overthrew democratically elected officials like Anatolii Mohyliov, by replacing them militarily with pro-Russian officials, like Sergey Aksyonov. Less than 49 parliamentary deputies were present at the session that approved his ousting, thus violating Crimea's constitution. Ihor Girkin bragged about how he accomplished this militarily, which is not what you want in a democratic process, and Sergei Glasiev was recorded explaining how he wanted to orchestrate the movement so it appeared like a grassroots movement(Ukraine prosecutor general office, 2016) while Russia suppressed protests from the Tartar population. Sergei Glasiev would not need to do this if his operation was legitimate. Meanwhile during the subsequent "referendum" the actual ballot included the option of joining Russia or following an obsolete constitution that would most likely be manipulated by Moscow anyway. Remaining part of the Kyiv government was never on the ballot for Crimea. There was just simply nothing fair about the process. The fact that it was nearly bloodless sems to be more the result of Russia overpowering Ukraine than Ukrainians voluntarily handing over their territory. This is not even to mention the change in census since Russian occupied the region. The 2001 Ukrainian census showed that only 58.3% of the Crimea peninsula was Russian. The Russians shortly after annexing Crimea conducted their own census in which they found that 67.9% were Russian. This is according to Svetlana Nikitina, head of the population and health statistics department of Rosstat. Since then over 100,000 Crimeans left the Peninsula and over 500,000 Russian nationals moved in. The fact that 80% of Crimeans spoke Russian when Russia annexed the Penisula makes as much sense as England invading the US because the US speaks English.

[@mkkrupp2462]

Thanks for all that information.