Skip to main content

Tim Marshall - Five Way Interview

Tim Marshall is a leading authority on foreign affairs with more than 30 years of reporting experience. He was diplomatic editor at Sky News, and before that was working for the BBC and LBC/IRN radio. He has reported from 40 countries and covered conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Israel. He is the author of the No. 1 Sunday Times bestsellers Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps that Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics (which has sold over 2 million copies worldwide) and The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World. His latest book is The Future of Geography.

Why geography?  

After World War 2 the ‘geo’ in geopolitics fell out of fashion, but as a foreign correspondent, I always made sure to explain not just what was going on, but why it was going on – and I found that so often where it was going on played a big part. Geography often remains an overlooked factor in reporting on international affairs despite being one – I emphasize one – of the determining factors in what's happening. It’s important to remember that geography doesn’t just cover the topography of a place, but encompasses things such as demographics, economics, and technology, all of which can be key issues in global events.

Why this book? 

The blindingly obvious finally became apparent to me. I'd been covering international relations for thirty years, and then I noticed that so much of it was increasingly happening in space. The more I looked at it the more I realised that the technological advances allowing the new space race were converging with the economic and military imperatives driving Space 2.0. What was taking place in space was reflective of our conflicts and alliances on Earth – and ultimately what happens up there is going to have a fundamental impact on us down here. So I believe it’s becoming more and more important that people are made aware of how this is all going to affect them.

Do you hold out any hope for things not going horribly wrong (in an astropolitical sense) in space?  

Yes! It’s true that humans have a history of using new inventions for terrible acts. The printing press fuelled the witch-hunting craze by enabling the mass circulation of negative propaganda about them, contributing to many deaths. Planes were used to bomb cities. The internet led to social media… So while there are many accelerating negative effects that will be caused by competition in space, including militarisation, there are many positive opportunities that will arise, including potentially helping us to reverse climate change. There is an arms race in space, there will be 'incidents' but we will also reach a stage where the great powers realise they need new treaties to govern everyone’s activities and mitigate the risks, just as they did after a few years of the nuclear arms race. 

What’s next?  

Support the paperback version of The Future of Geography in the near future . . . I do have two possible new two projects in mind, so watch this space. 

What’s exciting you at the moment?  

The attacking formation of Leeds United FC! But in the realm of space, there are constant new developments that are worth getting excited about. The recent race to see whether Russia or India would be the next to land a craft on the moon was an interesting one, with all sorts of implications for international relations on Earth. The fact that Russia failed and India did not speaks volumes about their roles in the future of space exploration. The Caltech team that managed to wirelessly transfer energy from a solar panel in space down to earth is a significant breakthrough. These are events that have the potential to have huge ramifications for the future of humanity. 


 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Target Earth – Govert Schilling *****

I was biased in favour of this great little book even before I started to read it, simply because it’s so short. I’m sure that a lot of people who buy popular science books just want an overview and taster of a subject that’s brand new to them – and that’s likely to work best if the author keeps it short and to the point. Of course, you may want to dig deeper in areas that really interest you, but that’s what Google is for. That basic principle aside, I’m still in awe at how much substance Govert Schilling has managed to cram into this tiny book. It’s essentially about all the things (natural things, I mean, not UFOs or space junk) that can end up on Earth after coming down from outer space. That ranges from the microscopically small particles of cosmic dust that accumulate in our gutters, all the way up to the ten kilometre wide asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Between these extremes are two topics that we’ve reviewed entire books about recently: meteorites ( The Meteorite Hunt...

Free Agents - Kevin Mitchell ****

Free will is one of those subjects that you have to be brave to take on: Kevin Mitchell makes an impressive job of defending a concept that some feel is incompatible with science. We start by taking a look at the common reasoning against free will - that because everything that happens is deterministically based on the interactions of particles (fields if you prefer), then there is no actual ability to 'choose' - everything simply follows on from its previous state in a mechanical fashion. Admittedly when we then add in quantum physics, there is an element of randomness introduced, but that does not appear to provide any room for agents to select what will happen next. So far, so common a view. But Mitchell argues that this is too limited an approach. While there are indubitably structural limitations on our ability to act with agency, whether down to nature or nurture, he still suggests that we (and other organisms) have the opportunity to make choices, in part due to being ca...

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...