Prisoners of Geography

World politics is also geopolitics. All governments, all heads of state are subject to the constraints of geography. Mountains and plains, rivers, oceans, deserts, all set the limits... Boundaries. To understand history and politics, of course, you have to know the people, the ideas, the attitudes. But if you don't include geography, you don't get a complete picture. Take Russia, for example: from the Moscow Grand Princes. through Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great and Stalin to Vladimir Putin, every Russian leader faced the same geostrategic problems, whether under tsarism, communism or capitalist nepotism. Most ports still freeze over for six months. Not good for the navy. The northern European lowlands from the North Sea to the Urals are still flat. Anyone can march through. Russia, Ch.