Geography is the Key

Geography has historically determined the relations of people throughout the world.  Firstly, and most obviously, without places, people would not exist thus rendering relations between people impossible.  Acknowledging the fact that places and people both exist and have existed for quite some time, we can look back to see how and why history has occurred.   The geographical features, the resources, and the locations of the land determine most human history.  For example, the first civilizations cropped up in Mesopotamia because of its fertile land and its proximity to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.  Mesopotamia, with its origins as the area where many people inhabited, became the birthplace of many advances in technology and language.  As a settled community, population increase required innovations in order to feed the masses and allow for people to inhabit land farther from the rivers.  There is insufficient rainfall to support the crops and sustain life, so irrigation techniques were created to manipulate water from the rivers further into the desert.  Thus, a geographical problem advanced humanity. 

Entering present-day Mesopotamia, also known as Iraq, we can see how geography shaped the current situation there as well.  As humans developed, resources expanded from water and fertile soil, to oil and other fossil fuels.  Iraq, being a nation with a considerable amount of oil, can be viewed as an economic jackpot for whoever has control of the state.  A third world country has serious potential when it has commodities that the first world needs.  In Iraq’s case, the potential was the potential to be invaded.  However, geography provided the United States with more problems with the invasion than expected.  For instance, extreme sectarian violence led by mostly Arab-Sunnis can be seen as a reaction to not only the invasion, but also to the fact that Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds all inhabit the same geographical region.  American officials are facing problems in reconstructing Iraq because of the three sects are in such close proximity.   Some politicians, like vice presidential candidate for the Democratic Party Joe Biden, suggest that the Iraq should be split into three separate nations. Unfortunately, the geography of the country, more specifically the area in which oil is found, makes such a plan seem like less of a solution and more of a problem.   

Geography is imbedded into a country’s identity.  Geography determines wants and needs of a nation, which drives the nation’s interactions with other nations.  Geography presents people of a nation with problems, and these problems and their solutions can unify and divide the people.  Geography is the explanation for the past and the future of world politics.