The Power of Geography E-Book

Tim Marshall

• Herausgeber: Elliott & Thompson
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Tim Marshall on Geopolitics
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 536

Beschreibung

COMING SOON - The perfect companion to Tim Marshall's geopolitical explainers! Test your geography IQ with Prisoners of Geography: The Quiz Book. Includes over 300 questions, puzzles and word games based on world affairs, designed to challenge, entertain and inform. Available to PRE-ORDER NOW in paperback and ebook - out 10th October 2024 *THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER* 'I can't imagine reading a better book this year' Daily Mirror Tim Marshall's global bestseller Prisoners of Geography showed how every nation's choices are limited by mountains, rivers, seas and concrete. Since then, the geography hasn't changed. But the world has. In this revelatory new book, Marshall explores ten regions that are set to shape global politics in a new age of great-power rivalry: Australia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UK, Greece, Turkey, the Sahel, Ethiopia, Spain and Space. Find out why Europe's next refugee crisis is closer than it thinks as trouble brews in the Sahel; why the Middle East must look beyond oil and sand to secure its future; why the eastern Mediterranean is one of the most volatile flashpoints of the twenty-first century; and why the Earth's atmosphere is set to become the world's next battleground. Delivered with Marshall's trademark wit and insight, this is a lucid and gripping exploration of the power of geography to shape humanity's past, present – and future. 'Another outstanding guide to the modern world. Marshall is a master at explaining what you need to know and why.' Peter Frankopan

Leseprobe

‘A useful reminder of the value of consulting an atlas before blundering into world affairs, and especially so in times of rising geopolitical tensions . . . interesting insights.’

Financial Times

‘A skilful navigation of the regions that could define geopolitics for future generations. One to read to stay ahead of the game.’

Dharshini David, author of The Almighty Dollar

‘A compelling account of the return of geopolitics by the master of maps.’

Professor Brendan Simms, author of Britain’s Europe: A Thousand Years of Conflict and Cooperation

‘This valuable book is an urgent and accessible study of the facts and forces that will shape our future on earth and beyond.’

Ed Husain, author of The House of Islam

‘Marshall’s books are excellent for anyone who takes satisfaction in understanding the world and who harbours a fascination for the shifting alliances . . . Each segment of The Power of Geography is accessible, although by no means simple. Marshall covers much ground, moving smoothly through each nation’s background, current struggles and options for the future . . . A sharp and concise evaluation of today’s geopolitics.’

Geographical Magazine

‘An insight into what has and will shape the world . . . clear writing in complex times.’

Eamonn Holmes

To the youth of Generation Covid who did their bit. Now is your time!

CONTENTS

Introduction

1. Australia

2. Iran

3. Saudi Arabia

4. The United Kingdom

5. Greece

6. Turkey

7. The Sahel

8. Ethiopia

9. Spain

10. Space

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

INTRODUCTION

The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

‘The Second Coming’, W. B. Yeats

IN THE MIDDLE EAST, THE VAST FORTRESS OF IRAN AND its nemesis, Saudi Arabia, face off across the Persian Gulf. South of the Pacific, Australia finds itself caught between the two most powerful nations of our time: the USA and China. In the Mediterranean, Greece and Turkey are in a contest that has roots going back to antiquity but could flare into violence tomorrow.

Welcome to the 2020s. The Cold War era, in which the USA and the Soviet Union dominated the entire world, is becoming a distant memory. We are entering a new age of great-power rivalry in which numerous actors, even minor players, are jostling to take centre stage. The geopolitical drama is even spilling out of our earthly realm, as countries stake their claims above our atmosphere, to the Moon and beyond.

When what was the established order for several generations turns out to be temporary, it is easy to become anxious. But it has happened before, it is happening now and it will happen again. For some time we have been moving towards a ‘multipolar’ world. Following the Second World War, we saw a new order: a bipolar era with an American-led capitalist system on one side, and on the other the communist system operated by what was in effect the Russian Empire and China. This lasted anything from about fifty to eighty years, depending on where you draw your lines. In the 1990s we saw what some analysts call the ‘unipolar’ decade, when American power went almost completely unchallenged. But it is clear that we are now moving back to what was the norm for most of human history – an age of multiple power rivalries.

It’s hard to pin down when this began to happen; there is no single event that sparked a change. But there are moments when you catch a glimpse of something, and the opaque world of international politics becomes clearer. I had one such experience on a humid summer’s night in 1999 in Pristina, the ramshackle capital of Kosovo. The break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991 had led to years of war and bloodshed. Now, NATO’s planes had bombed the Serbian forces out of Kosovo and its ground troops were waiting to enter the province from the south. During the day we heard rumours that a Russian military column had set off from Bosnia to make sure Russia maintained its traditional influence in Serbian affairs.

For a decade the Russian bear had been out of the game, impoverished, uncertain and a shadow of its former self. It had watched haplessly as NATO ‘advanced’ on its western borders, as time and again the peoples of the nations it had subjugated voted in governments committed to joining NATO and/or the EU; and in Latin America and the Middle East its influence had waned. In 1999 Moscow had reached a decision vis-à-vis the Western powers – this far and no further. Kosovo was a line in the sand. President Yeltsin ordered the Russian column to intervene (although it’s thought the upcoming hardline nationalist politician Vladimir Putin had a role in the decision).

I was in Pristina as the Russian armoured column rumbled down the main street in the early hours of the morning heading for Kosovo’s airport on the outskirts of town. I’m told President Clinton heard of their arrival, ahead of NATO’s troops, via my report ‘The Russians rolled into town, and back onto the world stage’. It was hardly Pulitzer Prize material, but as a first draft of history it did the job. The Russians had staked their claim to play a role in the biggest event of the year, and announced that the tide of history, which had been running against them, would now be challenged. In the late 1990s the USA was apparently unrivalled, the West seemingly triumphant in global affairs. But the pushback had started. Russia was no longer the fearsome power it had once been – now it was one among many – but the Russians would fight to assert themselves where they could. They would go on to prove it in Georgia, Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere.

Four years later I was in the Iraqi city of Karbala, one of the most holy places in Shia Islam. Saddam Hussein had been overthrown by the American- and British-led coalition, but the insurgency was getting under way. Under Saddam (a Sunni Muslim) many of the Shia ways of worship had been banned, including ritual self-flagellation. On a scorching-hot day I watched as more than a million Shia poured into Karbala from across the country. Many of the men were whipping their backs and cutting their foreheads until their whole bodies were covered in blood, which dripped down onto the streets turning the dust red. I knew that across the border to the east, Iran, the major Shia power, would now play every trick in the book to help engineer a Shia-dominated Iraqi government and use it to project Tehran’s power with even greater force westwards across the Middle East, connecting to Iran’s allies in Syria and Lebanon. Geography and politics made it almost inevitable. My take that day was along the lines of: ‘This looks religious, but it’s also political, and the waves from this fervour will ripple out as far as the Mediterranean.’ The political balance had changed, and the increasing reach of Iranian power would challenge US dominance in the region. Karbala provided the backdrop to begin to paint the picture. Sadly, one colour would dominate – blood-red.

These were just two seminal moments that helped to shape the complicated world in which we find ourselves, as myriad forces push, pull and sometimes clash in what in previous times was called ‘the great game’. Both gave me a glimpse of the direction in which we were headed. It started to become even clearer as events unfolded in Egypt, Libya and Syria in the 2010s. Egyptian President Mubarak was deposed in a coup d’état by the military using violent street theatre to hide their hand; in Libya, Colonel Gaddafi was overthrown and then murdered; and in Syria, President Assad hung on by his fingertips until the Russians and Iranians saved him. In all three cases the Americans signalled they would not save the dictators they had done business with for decades. The USA slowly withdrew from the international scene during the eight years of the Obama presidency, a move continued under Trump for four years. Meanwhile, other countries such as India, China and Brazil began to emerge as new world powers, with rapidly growing economies, looking to expand their own global influence.

Many people dislike the idea that the USA played the role of ‘world policeman’ in the post-Second World War era. You can make a case for both the positives and negatives of its actions. But, either way, in the absence of a policeman various factions will seek to police their own neighbourhood. If you get competing factions, the risk of instability increases.

Empires rise, and they fall. Alliances are forged, and then they crumble. The post-Napoleonic Wars settlement in Europe lasted about sixty years; the ‘Thousand-Year Reich’ lasted for just over a decade. It is impossible to know precisely how the balance of power will shift during the coming years. There are undoubtedly economic and geopolitical giants that continue to have huge sway in global affairs: the USA and China, of course, as well as Russia, the collective nations of Europe in the EU, the fast-growing economic power of India. But the smaller nations matter too. Geopolitics involves alliances, and with the world order currently in a state of flux, this is a time when the big powers need small powers on their side as well as vice versa. It gives these countries, such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the UK, an opportunity to strategically position themselves for future power. For the moment, the kaleidoscope is still being shaken and the pieces have not yet settled.

It is likely, though, that by the end of the century we will again find ourselves in a bipolar era, this time between China and the USA. It will not be the same as the previous one, nor will it result in the same ‘Cold War’, but as shorthand terms they are useful to frame where we are heading.

In this new version the term ‘Western’ will be outdated. This time the competition will be between an American-led informal coalition of industrialized democracies, and a loose alliance of authoritarian states dominated by China. It was not a coincidence that when the UK hosted the G7 summit in the summer of 2021 it invited South Korea, India and Australia to attend. Together the ‘Democratic 10’ populations comprise 85 per cent of people living in advanced democracies. The invitations dovetailed with the slowly emerging Biden Doctrine, which aims to re-energize democracy and offer a global economic alternative to the Chinese ‘Belt and Road’ initiative.

In 2015, I wrote a book called Prisoners of Geography, in which I aimed to show how geography affects global politics and shapes the decisions that nations and their leaders are able to make. I wrote about the geopolitics of Russia; China; the USA; Europe; the Middle East; Africa; India and Pakistan; Japan and Korea; Latin America; and the Arctic. I wanted to focus on the biggest players, the great geopolitical blocs or regions, to give a global overview. But there is more to say. Although the USA remains the only country capable of projecting serious naval power into two oceans simultaneously, the Himalayas still separate India and China, and Russia is still vulnerable in the flatlands to its west, new geopolitical realities are emerging all the time, and there are other players worthy of our attention, with the power to shape our future.

Like Prisoners of Geography, The Power of Geography looks at mountains, rivers, seas and concrete to understand geopolitical realities. Geography is a key factor shaping what humanity can and cannot do. Yes, politicians are important, but geography is more so. The choices people make, now and in the future, are never separate from their physical context. The starting point of any country’s story is its location in relation to neighbours, sea routes and natural resources. Live on a windswept island on the periphery of the Atlantic Ocean? You’re well placed to harness wind and waves. Live in a country where the sun shines 365 days a year? Solar panels are the way ahead. Live in a region where cobalt is mined? That could be a blessing and a curse.

There remains among some people a disdain for this starting point as it is deemed deterministic. There has been talk of a ‘flat world’ in which financial transactions and communications through cyberspace have collapsed distance, and landscape has become meaningless. However, that is a world inhabited only by a tiny fraction of people who may well speak via video conference, and then fly over mountains and seas to speak in person; but it is not the experience of most of the other 8 billion people on earth. Egyptian farmers still rely on Ethiopia for water. The mountains to the north of Athens still hinder its trade with Europe. Geography is not fate – humans get a vote in what happens – but it matters.

There are many factors that have contributed to what will be an uncertain and divided decade as we progress to a new era. Globalization, anti-globalization, Covid-19, technology and climate change have all had an impact, and all feature in this book. The Power of Geography looks at some of the events and conflicts that have emerged in the twenty-first century with the potential for far-reaching consequences in a multipolar world.

Iran, for example, is shaping the future of the Middle East. A pariah state with a nuclear agenda, it must keep its Shia ‘corridor’ to the Mediterranean open via Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut to maintain influence. Its regional rival Saudi Arabia, a country built on oil and sand, has always counted the USA as an ally. But as demand for oil declines and the USA becomes more energy-independent, its interest in the Middle East will slowly wane.

Elsewhere it is not oil but water that is causing turmoil. As the ‘water tower of Africa’, Ethiopia holds a crucial advantage over its neighbours, particularly Egypt. This is one of the key sites for the potential ‘water wars’ this century, but also shows the power of technology as Ethiopia uses hydroelectricity to change its fortunes.

That is not an option in many parts of Africa, such as the Sahel, the vast scrubland at the southern edge of the Sahara, a war-torn region that straddles ancient geographical and cultural divisions, and where in parts Al-Qaeda and ISIS now hold sway. Many people will flee, some heading north towards Europe. What is already a major humanitarian crisis may worsen.

As the gateway to Europe, Greece is one of the first countries to feel the effects of new waves of migration. Its geography has also placed it at the heart of one of the geopolitical flashpoints of the coming years: the eastern Mediterranean, where newly discovered gas fields are bringing this EU member to the brink of conflict with an increasingly aggressive Turkey. But while Turkey is flexing its muscles in the eastern Med, it has much wider ambitions. Its ‘neo-Ottoman’ agenda derives from its imperial history and position at the crossroads of East and West. Turkey aims to fulfil its ambition to emerge as a major global power.

Another nation that lost its empire, the UK, a group of chilly islands at the western end of the North European Plain, is still looking for its role. After Brexit, it may find one as a middle-ranking European power forging political and economic ties around the world. But the challenges it faces are internal as well as external, as it grapples with the prospect of an independent Scotland.

To the south, Spain, one of Europe’s oldest nations, also faces the threat of break-up from regional nationalism. The EU cannot offer support to the Catalonian independence struggle; but rejection of a fledgling state could leave the door open to Russian and Chinese influence within Europe. Spain’s struggles epitomize the fragility of some nation states, and of supranational alliances, in the twenty-first century.

However, perhaps the most fascinating development of current times is that our geopolitical power struggles are now breaking free of our earthly restraints and being projected into space. Who owns space? How do you decide? There’s never really a ‘final frontier’, but this is as close as it gets, and frontiers tend to be wild, lawless places. Above a certain height there’s no sovereign territory; if I want to place my laser-armed satellite directly over your country, by what law do you say I can’t? With multiple countries racing to be the pre-eminent power in space, and private companies entering the fray, the stage is set for a dangerous cutting-edge arms race, unless we can learn from past mistakes and accept the many benefits of international co-operation.

But we begin down on earth, in a place which for centuries was considered isolated and unknown, but now, finding itself between China and the USA with the power to shape events in the Indo-Pacific region, it is a key player in our story: the island continent, Australia.

CHAPTER 1

AUSTRALIA

‘Play it tough, all the way. Grind them into the dust.’ Don Bradman, cricketer

AUSTRALIA WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, BECAME a very big somewhere, and is now centre stage. How did that happen?

The land ‘down under’ is an island, but an island like no other. It’s massive – so massive that it’s also a continent encompassing lush subtropical rainforest, baking-hot desert, rolling savannah and snow-covered mountains. Driving from Brisbane to Perth you cross one country, but a similar distance would be from London to Beirut via France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Syria.

As for being in the middle of nowhere, well, from Brisbane looking north-east across the Pacific Ocean it is 11,500 kilometres to the USA, due east is South America 13,000 kilometres distant, and west from Perth across the Indian Ocean it’s 8,000 kilometres to Africa. Even Australia’s ‘neighbour’ New Zealand is 2,000 kilometres to the south-east and from there down to Antarctica is another 5,000 kilometres of water. Only when we look north do we see Australia’s true position in a geopolitical sense. There it sits, a territorially huge, Western-oriented, advanced democracy, and there above it is the world’s most economically and militarily powerful dictatorship – China. Put it all together and you see a national state/continent positioned right in the middle of the Indo-Pacific – the economic powerhouse of the twenty-first century.

The story begins when the British decided to deport their convicts, wanted them as far away as possible, and then wanted nothing to do with them. Where better than the bottom of the world, a place from which they could never return? They were locked up and the key was thrown away. And yet eventually, as the faraway world changed, the prison bars of geography were bent, and Australia found itself a player on the stage of global politics. For a long time it was one hell of a hellish journey.

In the quote at the start of this chapter Don Bradman may have been referring to playing England at cricket but his words are rooted in an Australian psyche that has been forged by the country’s geography. The popular concept of the egalitarian, straight-talking, no-nonsense, indomitable Aussie spirit may be a cliché, but it is also real. It has emerged from a vast, scorchingly hot land, much of which cannot be inhabited, out of which has sprung a flourishing modern society that has shifted from being virtually monocultural to one of the most multicultural in the world.

Now Australia looks around at its neighbourhood and wonders what role it should play, and whom it should play it with.

When it comes to foreign policy and defence, a country’s starting point is not what it intends to do but what it is capable of, and that is often limited by geography. Australia’s size and location are both a strength and weakness. They protect it from invasion but also held back its political development. They make it necessary to have extensive long-distance trade links, which in turn requires a strong navy to ensure the sea lanes are kept open. And Australia is isolated by distance from its key allies.

Australia only became an island about 35 million years ago after it broke off from Antarctica and drifted northwards. It is currently on a collision course with Indonesia, but inhabitants of both countries should not be too alarmed as it’s moving at seven centimetres a year and they have several hundred million years to brace for impact.

Comprising 7.5 million square kilometres, Australia is the world’s sixth-largest country. The bulk of modern Australia consists of six states; the largest is Western Australia, which accounts for a third of the continent and is bigger than every country in Western Europe combined. Then, in terms of size, come Queensland, South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria and the island of Tasmania. There are two main territories, the Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory, and numerous minor territories including the Cocos Islands and Christmas Island.

Life in Australia presents many challenges. For starters, between becoming an island and the arrival of humans (about 60,000 years ago), there was ample time for the singularity of Australia’s animal life to develop. Given that so much of it appears to want to bite, sting, peck or poison you it’s a wonder that within 30,000 years of showing up humans had spread out across the whole continent.

More challenging to avoid are the land and climate. Much of the terrain consists of vast, flat, arid plains, and only 6 per cent of it is above 600 metres in elevation. As a continent it experiences extreme diversity in its climate and topography, from deserts to tropical forests to snow-capped mountains. But the majority of it is taken up by what is known as the Outback, covering about 70 per cent of Australia, much of it uninhabitable. The great plains and deserts of the interior, where summer temperatures commonly reach 38ºC and there is little water to be found, stretch out over vast distances with no relief and no one to come to your aid if you get into trouble.

In 1848 an attempt to cross the entire continent from east to west, beginning inland from Brisbane across to Perth, ended in failure when the expedition leader, Ludwig Leichhardt, and his team – a party of seven men, including two Aboriginal guides, fifty bullocks, twenty mules, seven horses and a mountain of equipment – simply vanished. The great Outback holds many secrets, among them Leichhardt’s fate. They are still looking for him to this day.

Over millennia this geography has dictated where human activity has taken place. While the Aboriginals conducted the ritual ‘walkabout’ in the Outback, the European settlers tended to cling to the shoreline, a practice continued today. There’s a crescent-shaped belt of populated areas starting in Brisbane halfway up the east coast; it wraps itself around the coastline, running through Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and down to Adelaide on the south coast. Along the crescent heading west are the suburbs and satellite towns, which extend inland for about 320 kilometres before petering out once you are over the mountains and heading into the extreme remote regions. Right across on the west coast is Perth, and way up north is Darwin, but here also the populations are tied to the coastal areas. It’s likely to stay that way.

Much of the Australian Outback is uninhabitable; the majority of Australia’s population is located in the south-east of the country along the coastline.

A century ago the founder of geography at Sydney University, Griffith Taylor, caused outrage when he argued that due to Australia’s topography its population would be restricted to about 20 million people by the year 2000. He dared to state that the Australian desert was ‘almost useless’ for permanent settlement, a sentiment considered unpatriotic. ‘Jeremiah!’ howled the press, ‘Environmental determinism!’ grumbled the politicians, who preferred an American ‘sea to shining sea’ narrative of constant expansion. He was right; they were wrong. A hundred years on Australia’s population is still only 26 million. Even now you can fly the 3,200 kilometres from Sydney up to Darwin, or across to Perth, without seeing a town. Almost 50 per cent of the people live in just three cities – Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. By no coincidence, this is the location of the Murray–Darling River Basin.

Most of the country’s rivers are seasonal in their flow, and so water links were never a major part of its development. The annual discharge of all the rivers on the continent amounts to less than half of that just from the Yangtze in China. If we exclude Tasmania, the only Australian rivers that have a permanent flow are in the eastern and south-western regions. The two biggest are the Murray River and its tributary, the Darling River. Fed by melting snows in the Australian Alps, the Murray has enough volume to run uninterrupted for 2,500 kilometres to the southern coast. Parts of it are navigable and it is the jewel in the crown of the Murray–Darling Basin. However, shipping cannot enter from the sea, which limits its ability to move goods. It was used in the nineteenth century to support upriver trade, but even these smaller vessels had problems with the lack of rainfall, and some would become stuck upstream on dried-out tributaries. Nevertheless, the Murray–Darling system contains the fertile lands which have fed and watered generations of Australians. Without it the first settlers would barely have got off the beach.

The Murray–Darling River Basin supported the early European settlements in south-east Australia.

It’s worth contrasting the history of Australia with that of another colonial experiment – the USA. It too grew from settlements on a fertile east coast and then pushed inland. But, once over the Appalachian mountain range, the fledgling nation expanded into the greatest river system in the world, situated in some of the most fertile land anywhere – the Mississippi River Basin. In Australia a similar-sized region contained next to nothing to sustain transport, farming and permanent settlement, and was far more isolated from the international trading system than was America: it was 19,000 kilometres back to the UK, whereas the thirteen colonies that became the USA were 5,000 kilometres away from Europe.

It’s a common misconception that Britain’s Captain Cook ‘discovered’ the continent in 1770. Leaving to one side the problematic term ‘discovered’, the first recorded landing was in 1606 when Willem Janszoon and the crew of the Dutch sailing ship Duyfken went ashore in northern Australia. Janszoon thought he was on the island of New Guinea and, after a hostile encounter with locals, soon departed. Several more European expeditions came and went but no one bothered to explore inland.

By the time Cook showed up it was clear that the fabled terra australis incognita had been found. The term, meaning ‘unknown southern land’, originates from the ruminations of the Greek map-maker Claudius Ptolemy in about 150 CE. He reasoned that if the world was a sphere, and on the top of it was the land he knew of, it followed that to prevent it from toppling over there had to be land underneath. Some of this was spot on. Australia is still thought of as ‘down under’ in Europe.

Cook’s maps were of course more up to date than those of Ptolemy. He became the first European to make land on the eastern coast. He went ashore in Botany Bay, now part of Sydney, and stayed for seven days. At the time his crew’s first encounters with the people who lived there must have seemed like minor incidents; in hindsight they were momentous and a harbinger of what would follow. Writing in his ‘Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks during Captain Cook’s first voyage in HMS Endeavour in 1768–71’, Cook’s chief scientific officer ruminated on this clash of civilizations and the differences between them: ‘Thus live these, I had almost said happy, people, content with little, nay almost nothing; far enough removed from the anxieties attending upon riches, or even the possession of what we Europeans call necessaries . . . From them appear how small are the real wants of human nature, which we Europeans have increased to an excess which would certainly appear incredible to these people could they be told it.’

This encounter was not enough to prevent Banks from later recommending that Botany Bay should be the location for Britain to establish a penal colony, the idea being both to alleviate its appalling prison overcrowding and to send the felons to a place from which they might never return. The strategic implications of planting the British flag 17,000 kilometres from the centre of the empire were also considered.

Ships were readied, convicts assembled, supplies loaded, and the First Fleet set sail from Portsmouth on 13 May 1787, reaching Botany Bay on 24 January 1788. The eleven ships carried about 1,500 souls, 730 convicts (570 men and 160 women) and the rest free persons, mostly navy personnel.

After two weeks the man in charge, Governor Arthur Phillip, decided the location was totally unsuitable for settlement and moved lock, stock and convict a few kilometres north to what became Sydney harbour. On the beach of this new location, in this land now claimed for the British Crown, he gave a speech in which, as recorded by a naval surgeon, George Worgan, ‘The Governor gave strict orders that the natives should not be offended or molested on any account . . . they were to be treated with friendship.’ It didn’t turn out that way. Governor Phillip was dealing with the Eora and Darug peoples in the region around Sydney. After first contact the early interactions were based on trade, but what the Eora and Darug didn’t know was that these new, strange people in their midst had come not for trade but for their land.

Although many generations thought of the Aboriginals as a single people, there are numerous diverse groups and languages throughout the country, for example the Murri from Queensland, the Nunga from the south of South Australia and the Palawa from Tasmania, all of which can be broken into subgroups. In 1788 the populations are thought to have totalled between 250,000 to 500,000, although a few estimates go higher. In the following decades it’s estimated that at least tens of thousands of them died in what became a frontier war lasting into the twentieth century.

As the settlements around Sydney expanded, and others grew in Melbourne, Brisbane and Tasmania, so did the ‘Frontier Wars’, as they became known. Historians argue over the levels of violence, but it’s estimated that about 2,000 colonists and many times that number of Aboriginals were killed, the latter suffering numerous massacres. It is a sorry tale of one side seeing the other as having no rights; indeed, many colonists regarded the Aboriginals as barely human.

As early as 1856 the devastation of cultures had been articulated in a searing article written by the journalist Edward Wilson in Melbourne’s Argus newspaper:

In less than twenty years we have nearly swept them off the face of the Earth. We have shot them down like dogs . . . and consigned whole tribes to the agonies of an excruciating death. We have made them drunkards, and infected them with diseases which have rotted the bones of their adults, and made such few children as are born amongst them a sorrow and a torture from the very instant of their birth. We have made them outcasts on their own land, and are rapidly consigning them to entire annihilation.

The bleakness of their existence continued right through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, long after the killing stopped. From 1910 Aboriginal children from the surviving nations were taken from their families and raised either in the homes of white families or in state institutions; in both cases the idea was to force assimilation. The practice was only halted in 1970, by which time the ‘Stolen Generation’ numbered over 100,000. The right to vote in national elections had only been given them in 1962, and it took until 1967 for the Aboriginal people to be formally acknowledged as part of the Australian population. A referendum changed the constitution to allow them to be counted in the census and thereby gain greater access to state resources. As the civil rights activist Faith Bandler put it in 1965, ‘Australians have to register their dogs and cattle, but we don’t know how many Aborigines there are.’

The referendum was passed with a 90 per cent majority on a 93 per cent turnout. The vote is regarded by many as a turning point, even if the short-term practical effects were limited. It revealed a desire to extend equality, although there was a long way to go in a battle that is still being fought today. Aboriginal men and women are graduating from universities, entering the middle class and populating all aspects of modern Australia; however, their life expectancy is lower than the national average and incidents of chronic illnesses are higher, as are infant mortality rates and imprisonment. Unemployment, alcoholism and illness are rife among some communities, together with psychological problems partially brought on by a sense of alienation, accentuated by the drift from rural areas to the towns and cities beginning in the 1970s.

There was a gradual change in attitudes towards the peoples of the ‘First Nations’ charted partially by symbolic moves. In the 1990s the name of the massive rust-coloured desert monolith known as Ayers Rock was changed to Ayers Rock/Uluru to acknowledge its original name in the language of the Anangu people, for whom it is a sacred site, and in 2002 was switched to Uluru/Ayers Rock. In 2008, recognizing the ongoing responsibility for more than 200 years of devastation, repression and negligence, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issued a formal apology to the Aboriginal peoples for the abuses they had suffered.

Despite all the deprivations, the population grew during the twentieth century. Estimates in the 1920s put it as low as 60,000, whereas now there are about 800,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (who are ethnically different from Aboriginals), centred mainly in Queensland, New South Wales, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Most of the hundreds of languages are lost, and of those which survive there are perhaps 50,000 people who can speak at least one.

The drive across the continent by the settlers who caused this havoc was slow but relentless. As more shiploads of people, mostly convicts, arrived from the UK the white population increased by several thousand each year. By 1825 explorers had already breached what was considered an impassable barrier – the Blue Mountains to the west of Sydney – and discovered that beyond them lay the great Outback. The population then was 50,000; by 1851 it had grown to about 450,000, by which time penal transportation had dropped significantly as many of the newcomers were immigrants seeking a new life in a new world.

They’d arrived in time for the first Australian gold rush, located north of Melbourne, which began to transform Australian society as hundreds of thousands of people came from abroad to try their luck. Most of them were from Britain, but also China, North America, Italy, Germany, Poland and a smattering of other countries. Thanks to the ‘gold generation’, Australia’s population not only rocketed to 1.7 million in the early 1870s, but it gradually started to become more ethnically and culturally diverse.

The madness of the early gold rush meant that the first few waves crashing onto Melbourne’s shores consisted mostly of young single men. They gave rise to a ‘Wild West’ atmosphere but gradually prosperity led to a change in the nature of immigration, attracting skilled craftsmen, traders and professionals such as accountants and lawyers who began to arrive with their families.

They all contributed to the emerging Australian character, but there is a theory that ‘the diggers’, as the prospectors were known, forged the resourcefulness, can-do attitude and friendliness for which Australians are known. The Old-World social niceties meant little up in the rugged, muddy prospecting regions, and the independent, yet simultaneously collegiate, spirit of the diggers contributed to an identity with less respect for British colonial authority than before.

As it approached the twentieth century Australia was becoming a modern country, albeit comprised of colonies that were almost like separate countries; they had few formal relations with each other and were often preoccupied with their own economic and political systems. The distances between the settlements had proved a challenge. The rivers, as we’ve seen, were not suited to trade and transport, and so initially, in order to move anything by land humans usually had to drag it over rough tracks as there were few beasts of burden available. The early transport systems concentrated on each individual port sending goods inland, or back out to the mother country, the UK. As each region was a separate colony, connecting them along the coastline was not a priority; so these early ‘roads’ led inland but not, at least for significant distances, along the coast. With such limited options, each colony continued to develop as a separate entity.

In the second half of the nineteenth century a fledgling railway system began to emerge, some of which linked the coastal towns and paved the way for a connected economy. As the transport and communication systems developed, so did the idea of the different regions coming together as a federation. A referendum was held in 1899 and passed but with significant opposition, and on 5 July 1900 the British Parliament passed the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 which was signed by Queen Victoria four days later; on 1 January 1901 the six British colonies united to form the Commonwealth of Australia. Half a million people lined the streets of Sydney to celebrate. Australia had not become a sovereign state, only a ‘self-governing colony’ (it wasn’t until 1986 that full independence was declared via the Australia Act) but a great leap forward in self-determination had been achieved.

By this time the population was past the 3 million mark and Australia had started to become an urban society, with Sydney and Melbourne each boasting populations of just under 500,000. The majority of immigrants arriving were still from the UK, but wherever they came from almost all were white. One of the first laws the new government passed was the Immigration Restriction Act, which became known as the ‘White Australia’ policy. The wording of the act is not explicit on the page but is clearly racist in intent, barring ‘Any person who when asked to do so by an officer fails to write out at dictation and sign in the presence of the officer a passage of fifty words in length in an European language directed by the officer’.

In the extraordinary circumstance that, say, a would-be immigrant from China could write out fifty words dictated in Portuguese, he or she could always be asked to do the test again, this time in, let’s say, Flemish. As stated, the language was chosen ‘by the officer’, and the application of the test was usually to put a legal stamp on a decision already made. Most people refused entry were non-white, but the act could also be used to deport immigrants who were not naturalized if they were jailed for a violent crime. None of this fitted with the words of the popular song ‘Advance Australia Fair’, played at the inauguration ceremony for the new commonwealth and later to become the national anthem:

We’ve boundless plains to share; With courage let us all combine To Advance Australia fair.

The overwhelming political and popular opinion was that the boundless plains should only be shared with white people, preferably British white people. The new law was aimed mostly at Chinese, Japanese, Indonesians and anyone else from the wider neighbourhood who might not only come and undercut wages, but also dilute the racial ‘purity’ of Australia. The White Australia policy continued up into the 1970s. At all times it was viewed extremely negatively by Australia’s Asian neighbours, especially those emerging from the colonial era.

The post-Second World War period saw the ‘Ten Pound Poms’ arrive in droves. Australia still needed to grow its workforce, and so for just £10 Britons could sail to Australia to start a new life. The full fare was about £120, almost six months’ wages for many working-class people, and the offer was one that many in drab, post-war, class-bound Britain could not refuse. Between 1947 and 1982 more than 1.5 million set out for ‘down under’, opportunity, sunshine and at first, frequently – hardship. My aunt, uncle and four cousins were among them. Ann was a nurse and Dennis worked in a shoe shop. Sailing from Southampton docks in 1972, they swapped Leeds for Melbourne and (after moving from a hostel) relatively low wages for a significantly higher standard of living. They and the others were ‘Poms’, shortened from pomegranate, sometimes spelt pommygrant, which was close enough to the word ‘immigrant’ to be incorporated into Aussie slang.

During this period, ‘Brits’ were still the main source of labour, but gradually the demographic of the country began to change as world events drove increasing numbers of Europeans to Australia, opening the floodgates and gradually relaxing the White Australia policy. Italians, Germans and Greeks arrived to join the communities established in the late 1900s. Following on were many Hungarians who had escaped after the 1956 revolution, then Czechs after the Soviet occupation in 1968. Gradually people from South America and the Middle East came, many fleeing persecution. In the 1970s thousands of ‘boat people’ from Vietnam were allowed in, and in the 1990s refugees from the Yugoslav Wars.

This resulted in a pronounced cultural shift from what was essentially a British, or perhaps Anglo-Celtic, society to a multicultural country. It was a remarkably rapid conversion into what we see now in modern Australia – a nation of people whose heritage can be traced back to 190 countries. In the 2016 census the proportion of the total population born abroad was 26 per cent, but where they come from shows the changes in policy, attitudes and global economics since the start of the twentieth century. Of the foreign-born the British were still the most numerous, but in the top ten were New Zealanders (8.4 per cent), Chinese (8.3 per cent), Indians (7.4 per cent), Filipinos (3.8 per cent) and Vietnamese (3.6 per cent); five of the top ten nationalities are Asian.

This is a long way from 1901, even further from 1788, and not just in terms of time. As in every other country racism and inequality still exist, but the change was summed up in a speech by Kevin Rudd in 2019: ‘Our definition of Australia’s national identity must be grounded in the ideals, institutions and conventions of our democratic society, not in its racial composition.’

The country remains an attractive destination for outsiders, including migrant workers and refugees. It is so popular, and people are so desperate to get there by any means, that successive governments this century have enacted tough laws against those who seek to enter illegally.

In 2001 the Australian navy began intercepting boatloads of refugees and migrants. The boats are either forced to turn round, taken to a third country or if people are taken on board the navy ship they are then transferred to the remote islands of Nauru and Manus. The policy was halted in 2008 but resumed in 2012. Since then well over 3,000 people have been detained. Some have returned to their own countries, while several hundred have been granted refugee status in the USA. In 2020 about 290 remained in what Australia calls ‘processing centres’ on the islands where they have been subjected to violent attacks by local people.

The policy has been vilified as inhuman and illegal by human rights activists, but it is still popular enough with the Australian electorate for it to remain in place. The number of boats arriving has declined, and the number of people arriving by air, who then claim asylum, has increased.

They come because to a great extent modern Australia remains the ‘lucky country’. The phrase comes from a 1964 book of the same name by Donald Horne. He meant it somewhat sarcastically, but it has stuck as a positive description and with reason. The land ‘down under’ is among the richest in the world and looks destined to remain that way. It has abundant natural resources including many that are perfectly suited for selling around the world. Its wool, lamb, beef, wheat and wine industries remain world leaders; it holds a quarter of the world’s uranium reserves, the largest zinc and lead deposits, and is a major producer of tungsten and gold, as well as having healthy deposits of silver; and it is a key supplier of liquefied natural gas while also still producing large quantities of coal. And there we see how the country is caught between an Ayers Rock and a hard place.

Australia is acutely aware that fossil fuels are driving climate change. Global warming was a significant factor in the devastating wildfires of 2019/20 which were exacerbated by record temperatures and water shortages. The direct human fatality toll was in the dozens, but thousands of koalas, one of the symbols of the country, were killed along with hundreds of thousands of other creatures. The flames did not reach the urban areas, but clouds of acrid smoke hung over Canberra causing the capital’s air quality temporarily to sink to one of the lowest in the world. Flakes of white ash moved across the land like warm snow and travelled on as far as New Zealand. On 4 January 2020 Sydney was one of the hottest places in the world – the temperature was measured at 48.9ºC.

Who can live in such conditions? At the moment the answer is 25 million people, but if the Australian Bureau of Statistics medium-growth prediction is correct then in 2060 the answer will be about 40 million.

If the climate-change modelling is on target Australia will continue to suffer record-shattering heatwaves, drought and forest fires, creating a scorched, uninhabitable landscape. The more the suburbs of the great cities sprawl out into the countryside, the greater the number of people at risk. This means Australians are likely to continue to cling to the coastline, creating ever more densely packed urban areas, even as sea levels may be rising. The country could require a slow retreat from some areas and a long-term building plan for locations designated as lower-risk.

Australia has an abundance of one potential energy source, sunshine, but a lack of another – water. Hydroelectric power generation is restricted because of the mostly flat topography of the regions through which its rivers flow, and because of their variable volume of water. The exception is in Tasmania, where the terrain and climate have already allowed a hydroelectric industry to flourish. Water scarcity, already an issue, may become a top priority, and the nation will have to have a frank discussion about sustainability.

That will include talking about coal. Given that all the states have coal mines, and that the AU$69.6-billion industry employs tens of thousands of people, that won’t be easy. Before he became prime minister, Scott Morrison caused uproar in parliament when he brandished a large lump of coal and exhorted the House: ‘Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared, it won’t hurt you. It’s coal.’ Australia could close down its industry tomorrow and not significantly reduce global pollution – it is part of a problem that will not be resolved without each country working to reduce their carbon footprint – but it would have a profound effect on the Australian economy. As such, coal is likely to remain king for years to come even as the country looks to alternative sources of energy.

Access to energy is a major concern for Australia – and, given Australia’s geography and location, it’s unavoidably linked with security issues.

Economically, modern Australia is increasingly tied into its location. Its politicians declare it is part of the Asia-Pacific Community, but tend to shy away from the debate about whether the Community considers it is part of them. In its ‘near abroad’ this former colony and ally of the West is the main power and is respected, but not loved; in the wider region it is one of several major powers and a potential ally or enemy.

Strategically, most of Australia’s focus is to its north and east. As a first line of defence it looks up to the South China Sea area, below that it views the Philippines and the Indonesian archipelago, and then the seas between it and Papua New Guinea. To its east it focuses on the islands of the South Pacific such as Fiji and Vanuatu.

It does have some advantages: Australia would be difficult to invade – not impossible, but difficult. The bulk of any invasion force would have to conduct amphibious assaults, and because of the islands to Australia’s east and north the probable lines of attack are narrow. Once enemy troops were ashore, it would not be feasible to occupy the whole continent, and places of value would be fiercely contested. If they landed in the Northern Territory, for example, they would be 3,200 kilometres from Sydney, getting there would be difficult and the supply lines would be a nightmare, and getting there would be a nightmare.

However, it is vulnerable to blockade. Most of its imports and exports flow through a series of narrow passageways to the north, many of which could be closed in times of conflict. They include the Malacca, Sunda and Lombok Straits. The Malacca Strait is the shortest route from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific. Just this one passageway sees 80,000 vessels pass through it each year, carrying about a third of the world’s traded goods including 80 per cent of the oil heading for Northeast Asia. If these straits were closed then alternative routes would have to be found; for example the oil tankers feeding Japan could try to sail further south, cut across the north of Australia, past Papua New Guinea and out into the Pacific. This would add hugely to transport costs but would keep Japan and Australia open for business.

In the event of a successful blockade Australia would quickly be in a state of energy crisis. It holds about two months’ oil supply in its strategic reserves onshore, and at any one time there’s another three weeks’ worth or so making its way there on tankers. Canberra took advantage of the oil price crash in 2020 to top up with a few extra days’ supply, but stored it in the USA’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve stockpiles and so might not be able to access it.

Australian defence strategy is partially focused on this scenario. It has ships and submarines which could be used to protect convoys, and planes capable of long-range maritime patrols. It has six air force bases north of the 26th parallel, three fully staffed and three mothballed for emergencies. The 26th parallel is the line dividing the north and south of the continent. It begins about 100 kilometres north of Brisbane and runs across the continent to Shark Bay on the Indian Ocean. Only 10 per cent of Australia’s population lives above the line and there are theories, never acknowledged, that, in the event of invasion from the north, they would be abandoned as the military concentrated on defending the main population centres. But that is a theoretical last-ditch scenario, one the government seeks to avoid by having what it hopes is a robust ‘forward defence’ posture in the shape of the airbases and the navy.

However, given the size of the country, its population and its middle-ranking wealth, Australia cannot operate a navy capable of protecting all of the sea approaches to its shores. Simply patrolling the seas closest to Australia is a challenge. The mainland has 35,000 kilometres of coastline and there’s an additional 24,000 kilometres of island coastline to keep an eye on. The Royal Australian Air Force is now investing in F-35A fighter jets, which are useful for defending the shores of the country, but it appears to be several years behind being able to meet the emerging threat of long-range and hypersonic speed missiles. As part of its response the air force has been tasked with creating a Space Division.

To deter any threats the government is also investing heavily in its navy and is concentrating on diplomacy, choosing its allies carefully. Canberra has always had an eye on who is the dominant sea power. When it was Great Britain, the old imperial power was the most important ally, but when it became the USA it was obvious whom to choose as the new number-one political, military and strategic priority.

When the First World War broke out, Australians rallied to the cause in huge numbers. But the Second World War was the turning point in the military relationship between Australia and the UK. It was obvious the British could not defend Australia, and, as the tide of war turned, it became ever clearer who the world’s dominant power would be in the aftermath.

As early as December 1941, following Pearl Harbor, Prime Minister John Curtin spelt it out in an article titled ‘The Task Ahead’: ‘The Australian Government, therefore, regards the Pacific struggle as primarily one in which the United States and Australia must have the fullest say in the direction of the democracies’ fighting plan. Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.’ With characteristic Aussie bluntness he laid out the realpolitik of the message: ‘we know too that Australia can go and Britain can still hold on.’

It was a watershed moment – the Yanks were coming. The advance parties were already on the ground, and by mid 1943 150,000 US military personnel were in Australia, the bulk of them in Queensland, where General Douglas MacArthur established his headquarters. Ships from the US navy were anchored in Sydney and Perth, and ‘made in America’ put down roots. Coca-Cola, hamburgers, pizza, hotdogs, Hollywood films and American consumer goods began to displace the more conservative British-based imports of previous decades.

The war also came to Australia. On 19 February 1942 the Japanese air force unleashed a devastating attack on the Allied military port of Darwin using the same aircraft carrier group which had attacked Pearl Harbor ten weeks previously. A month before, the Japanese had already launched an invasion of New Guinea (now Papua New Guinea/part of Indonesia), and they quickly took over the north of the massive island. The land mass is the second-largest island in the world and it is directly above Australia. Had it fallen it could have been used either as the launchpad for an invasion of Australia, or to blockade it. However, a planned amphibious landing at Port Moresby was thwarted by the Battle of the Coral Sea. The Japanese plan was turned against them and New Guinea was used as the springboard for General MacArthur’s retaking of the Philippines as part of the island campaign leading to the defeat of Japan.

Since then Australia’s relationship with America has been similar to the one it had with the British. Australia contributes parts of its military (especially its well-trained Special Forces) and the US navy keeps the international sea lanes open, and holds a nuclear umbrella above the Australians. Canberra sent troops to fight in the Korean War (1950–53), Vietnam (1955–75), the first Gulf War (1990–91) and the invasion of Iraq (2003), just as they had during both world wars. The Americans meanwhile remain resolute in their determination to maintain their control as the greatest sea power. They have established a major base in Darwin. It hosts 2,500 US Marines, not enough to keep the Chinese military awake at night, perhaps, but more than enough to send the signal that the Americans are in town, and willing to defend Australia. For now . . .

And there’s the dilemma for Australia. With the rise of China, the USA is having to make choices in the West Pacific region. It can resist China’s push to control what Beijing sees as its backyard, it can attempt to create an understanding of regional spheres of influence, or it can make a long, slow retreat, pulling in its horns all the way back to California. After all, between there and the Chinese coast is 11,000 kilometres of ocean. American military and diplomatic officials assure Australia that the alliance is rock-solid, but President Trump made Australia nervous, often giving the appearance that he preferred authoritarian strongmen from tinpot dictatorships such as North Korea to long-standing democratic allies. The change in president brought a change in tone. President Biden’s victory in November 2020 was followed a month later by a stark warning from the chiefs of the US Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard that, of all the world powers, China represents the most ‘comprehensive, long-term’ threat to America and its allies. More alarm bells had begun to ring in early 2020 as the Chinese started to scope out Papua New Guinea’s Daru Island following an agreement to build a huge fisheries complex there. The island is just 200 kilometres from the Australian mainland, and while the seas around it are not renowned for their commercial fishing potential, Chinese trawlers are known to be frequently used as spy ships. Perhaps this is a simple commercial enterprise; then again, perhaps the port will be built to accommodate Chinese warships. It’s an example of the constant vigilance Australia must now keep when it comes to China’s activities in the region, and why it must also constantly assess the USA’s commitment to joint security.

Australia knows it is probable that by the mid-century the USA will not outspend China on defence. The difference between the Cold War and now is stark: a declining Soviet Union fell massively behind the USA in economic terms and eventually could not compete in the arms race. China is a rising power expected to exceed America’s GDP by mid-century, if not sooner. America’s decisions on these issues will impact on Australia’s ‘China choice’.

We tend to think of China and Australia as being relatively close to each other, and this is probably for two reasons. Australia is so far from any other major land mass east, west, or south that we tend to look north on the map, see China, and mentally associate the two. But the classic map most of us use, the Mercator, distorts our view as it portrays a curved distance on a flat surface. If you want to see how much Mercator influences our idea of where things are take a look at the Waterman maps, which take a little getting used to but offer another perspective. We never think of China as being geographically close to Poland, but Beijing is as close to Warsaw as it is to Canberra. This is why China has a constant 360-degree view of the map, while Australia looks mostly north. Put simply, China has more choices than Australia.

When it comes to China, Australia must walk a difficult line between economic interests, defence strategy and diplomacy. China is by far its biggest trading partner, although levels of investment fluctuate sometimes in line with those of diplomatic warmth. In recent years about 1.4 million Chinese arrived annually for holidays, and Chinese students made up 30 per cent of people from abroad studying in the country. China buys almost a third of Australia’s exported farm produce, including 18 per cent of its beef exports and half its barley. It is also a major market for Australia’s iron ore, gas, coal and gold. But China’s wider interests in the region, its attempts to expand its territorial claims and influence, don’t always align with Australia’s.

The region off China’s coastline is a complicated place. China claims geographical and historical rights over 80 per cent of the South China Sea. A quick look at the map suggests that might not be entirely fair, as Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei are always ready to point out. They hold different geographical and historical views which explain their often-overlapping territorial claims. But Beijing is still busy pouring concrete onto small rocks sticking out of the water more than 1,600 kilometres from the mainland, calling them islands, and then constructing runways, radars and missile batteries on them.