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To see how geography and ideology collide, consider the ominous plain that is the Turkish-Syrian border. On one side is a Nato country. On the other, for long stretches, are the jihadis of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
（上图说明：这是从土耳其一侧看到的自叙利亚边境小镇科巴尼升起的浓烟。）
And yet when it comes to topography, the border is a non-event. The mountains that mark Turkey’s frontier with Iraq are absent here. Slipping across could barely be easier — a huge problem not just for Ankara but also for the western countries that live in fear of Isis.
要想看地理和意识形态如何碰撞，只要看一看土耳其和叙利亚边界的不祥平原。一边是一个北约(Nato)国家，而另一边是“伊拉克和黎凡特伊斯兰国”(ISIS)圣战分子盘踞的大片土地。
Tim Marshall’s book is a reminder of the salience of geography in international affairs — of the threats such open plains continue to pose in this age of Predator drones and cyber attacks. Countries’ relations with their neighbours are still dictated by their physical characteristics, he argues. So Russia remains preoccupied by Poland’s 300 mile wide plain, a key battleground for armies pushing east and west; China by Tibet.
然而从地形上说，这条边界线看起来平淡无奇。这里并没有突显出土耳其和伊拉克之间分界线的高山。悄悄穿越这里的边境再方便不过——对于土耳其政府和对ISIS感到惊恐的西方国家，这是一个巨大的问题。
Ideologies may come and go but, says Marshall, who served a long
蒂姆氠歇尔(Tim Marshall)的书提醒人们，地理在国际事务中占突出地位——在当今“捕食者”(Predator)无人机和网络攻击的时代，像这样开阔的平原依然构成威胁。他主张，一国的地理特征依然决定了其与邻国的关系。因此，俄罗斯依然念念不忘波兰300英里宽的平原，这是军队向东和向西推进的关键战场；中国也一直关注西藏。
stint as diplomatic editor of Britain’s Sky News, such geopolitical facts of life endure.
意识形态可能变化不定，但曾在英国天空新闻电视台(Sky News)长期担任外交事务主编的马歇尔表示，地缘政治的现实始终延续。
Presiding over the book is the shade of Sir Halford Mackinder, who inaugurated the discipline of geopolitics with a 1904 Royal Geographical Society lecture. His thinking about the world — notably the strategic importance of plains — pervades the book. But Marshall does more than just update Mackinder’s ideas. At the heart of his work is a thesis as dispiriting as it is radical: that the present dysfunctional state of the world is where we were always going to end up.
统领全书的是哈尔福德麦金德爵士(Sir Halford Mackinder)的影子，1904年他在皇家地理学会(Royal Geographical Society)发表了一篇演讲，开辟了地缘政治学这门学科。麦金德对于世界的思想——尤其是平原的战略重要性——渗透了全书。但马歇尔并非只是更新了麦金德的思想。其著作的核心是一个既令人沮丧又十分极端的命题：当今世界的这种乱局是我们无论怎么做都摆脱不了的宿命。
So Russian President Vladimir Putin had no choice but to claim Crimea and its warm water port of Sevastopol; China was always bound to overwhelm Tibet, with its border with India. This is, in short, the most deterministic book you will read for some time. There is no sense here, for example, that the wilful aggression of Mr Putin’s Russia is the result of mistakes, either by Moscow or the west, or that there is any alternative to the Chinese Communist party’s brand of nationalism.
按此逻辑，俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔渠京(Vladimir Putin)别无选择，只能吞并克里米亚及其塞瓦斯托波尔(Sevastopol)不冻港；鉴于西藏与印度交界，中国必然会占领西藏。简言之，这将是你好久以来读到的最有决定论色彩的书。按照此书的逻辑，普京治下的俄罗斯的蓄意侵略不可能是莫斯科或者西方犯下错误的结果，中国共产党的那种民族主义也不可能有什么替代路线。
It is an unabashed exposition of realpolitik and at times seems to evince a sneaking sympathy for coup leaders in Egypt and Turkey. Still, Marshall is excellent on some of the highways and byways of geopolitics: on the obstacles Iran’s mountainous terrain pose to an integrated economy and the role of rivers in fracturing Europe into nation states.
这本书毫不留情地展示了现实政治，偶尔似乎隐隐流露出对埃及和土耳其的政变领袖的同情。话说回来，马歇尔对地缘政治的一些脉络有精辟叙述：伊朗多山的地形对一体化经济造成的障碍，以及河流在分割欧洲大陆、形成多个民族国家中起到的作用。
There is plenty for a curmudgeon to object to. Although the book is subtitled “Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need To Know About Global Politics”, the black and white maps are not much to write home about. Marshall offers a virtual Atkins diet of geopolitics: there is plenty of the red meat of geographical and military analysis with little lighter fare, in terms of other voices or on-the-ground reporting.
这本书有很多地方可供不服气的人指摘。尽管本书的副标题是“10张地图诠释你需要掌握的所有全球政治知识”，但这些黑白地图并不值得大书特书。马歇尔提供的东西堪比一份地缘政治学的阿特金斯(Atkins)减肥食谱：有大量地缘政治和军事分析的红肉，却没有什么比较清淡的食物——其他言论或者实地报告。
Nor is the book free from error or inexplicable claims, such as the assertion that a target for unemployment was part of the Maastricht criteria to qualify for the euro or the notion that Germany has a “Plan B” to team up with Russia should co-operation with France flag.
这本书也并非不含错误或者令人费解的主张，比如断言失业率目标是《马斯特里赫特条约》(Maastricht treaty)为想要进入欧元区的国家设定的标准之一，或者如果德国与法国的合作不顺利，德国有与俄罗斯合作的“B计划”。
But the real question is whether, in his bid to establish the importance of geography, Marshall leaves enough space for ideas.
然而，真正的问题在于，在试图证明地理的重要性时，马歇尔是否为思想留下了足够的空间。
Geopolitics does not explain everything. The recent repressive and anti-western behaviour of the likes of Mr Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, and Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, is due not just to the physical attributes of the lands they rule but also to a cluster of other factors, chiefly the west’s diminished power of attraction.
地缘政治并不能解释一切。普京、土耳其总统雷杰普吠伊普埃尔多安(Recep Tayyip Erdogan)以及匈牙利总理维克托欧尔班(Viktor Orban)之流近年在国内压制、在国际上反西方的行为，不仅仅是他们统治的土地的地理特性，还包含一组其他因素，其中主要是西方的吸引力减弱了。
A decade ago, the allure of the US and the EU was strong enough to tempt such authoritarian-minded leaders to co-operate much more closely. The Iraq war, the Great Recession and EU crises have put paid to that. Meanwhile, any serious discussion of Isis surely has to deal with the appeal of the jihadis’ twisted ideas in both the Middle East and the west.
10年前，美国和欧盟(EU)的吸引力很强，足以诱使这些威权意识的领导人更为紧密地合作。伊拉克战争、金融危机期间的“大衰退”，以及欧盟危机终结了这种局面。另外，任何有关ISIS的严肃讨论，当然都得针对圣战分子的扭曲思想在中东乃至西方的吸引力。
