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This article was originally published at Stratfor.com.
Editor's Note: The Global Affairs column is curated by Stratfor's editorial board, a diverse group of thinkers whose expertise inspires rigorous and innovative thought in our analyses. Though their opinions are their own, they inform and sometimes even challenge our beliefs. We welcome that challenge, and we hope our readers do too.
By Jay Ogilvy
Parag Khanna contributed a column to this space earlier this month. His column was excerpted from his book, Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization, published April 19. Containing so much more than one piece could relay, the publication of Khanna's book excites me, and in this week's Global Affairs I'd like to share my enthusiasm and the reasons for it.
Khanna's content in genuinely innovative. He connects old dots in new ways, quite literally. He asks us to remap the world in terms of its connections rather than its borders. Connective infrastructure trumps separatist nationalism. The economics of supply lines moves into the foreground as politics and ideology fade into the background.
Channeling Khanna requires a form as innovative as his content. Because he is such a good writer — a master of the ringing cadence — I'll experiment in this column with a form that's different from the usual book review. Rather than trying to digest Khanna's thinking through the filter of my own pallid prose, I'll simply cut and paste his more vivid prose at some length.
My work consists not so much in interpreting Khanna as in distilling the essence of his argument. Through a process of successive titrations, I've compressed his 400 pages in a ratio that runs roughly 50-to-1 to save you, the reader, the effort of reading all 400 pages. Or, if you are as thrilled as I am by what you read here, perhaps you will be moved to buy his book and absorb its full impact. If you do, you'll see dozens of stunning maps we cannot reproduce here.
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In any case, please let us know whether you find this format to your liking.
"Geography matters intensely, but it does not follow that borders do. We should never confuse geography, which is paramount, with political geography, which is transient. Unfortunately, maps today present natural or political geography — or both — as permanent constraints. Yet there is nothing more numbing than unyielding circular logic: Something must be because it is. Reading maps is not like reading palms, as if each line presents an immutable destiny. I am a deep believer in the profound influence of geography but not in its caricature as a monolithic and immovable force. Geography may be the most fundamental thing we see, but understanding cause and effect requires complex thinking about the interplay of demographics and politics, ecology and technology. It is precisely the great geographic thinkers such as Sir Halford Mackinder who a century ago urged statesmen to appreciate geography and factor it into their strategies but not to become slaves to it. Geographic determinism runs no deeper than blind faith in religion...
Mega-infrastructures overcome the hurdles of both natural and political geography, and mapping them reveals that the era of organizing the world according to political space (how we legally subdivide the globe) is giving way to organizing it according to functional space (how we actually use it). In this new era, the de jure world of political borders is giving way to the de facto world of functional connections. Borders tell us who is divided from whom by political geography. Infrastructure tells us who is connected to whom via functional geography. As the lines that connect us supersede the borders that divide us, functional geography is becoming more important than political geography...
Yet today many scholars still hold political boundaries to be the most fundamental man-made lines on the map out of a bias toward territory as the basis of power, the state as the unit of political organization, an assumption that only governments can order life within those states, and a belief that national identity is the primary source of people's loyalty. The march of connectivity will bring all these beliefs to collapse. Forces such as devolution (the fragmentation of authority toward provinces), urbanization (the growing size and power of cities), dilution (the genetic blending of populations through mass migration), mega-infrastructures (new pipelines, railways, and canals that morph geography), and digital connectivity (enabling new forms of community) will demand that we produce maps far more complex..."
