"Geography and War" or "Why the Bosporus is almost as Bad as Organized Religion"
It is a well-known truth that geography is a critical factor in the military strategy in any war. Control of high ground, waterways, and general knowledge of the terrain are known to be instrumental to success, but what I propose is that such things can be the very cause of a war, and not just points of use in the actual fighting. My example shall be the straight between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, known as the Dardanelles or the Bosporus straight. To understand the signifigance of this strip of water and the land on either side of it, we must look at the territory immediately around it, as well as the larger region. To the South is the Turkish pennisula, and the Balkans to the North. The Western mouth of the straight opens to the Aegean and the Mediterranean proper, while the Eastern mouth flows to the Black Sea. The only other exit in the Eastern Mediterranean is at Sinai, and even that was not an open waterway until the British had it dredged in the 1890's. So what's the point of this geography lesson, you ask? Everything in history comes back to money, sex, or power, and the story of the Bosporus has all three. First I'll talk about the Trojan War. Much of this story is myth, but there was a city Troy, and they did have a war with Greece some time aroud 1200 BC. The city sat on the Turkish coast, right on the Western edge of this straight. The Trojan navy, therefore, controlled all traffic going in and out of the Black Sea towards the then rich lands of the Causasus Mountains, what is now Armenia and Georgia, and Eastern Turkey, and of course the land route to Asia. That means if the Greeks wanted to trade with any of those people, they had to go through Troy. Any time that happens, you're bound to get a war sooner or later when people figure out they're getting a raw deal. Because somebody's always going to get a raw deal with that kind of power imbalance. The whole bit about Paris stealing Helen out of her bed in Mycenae, pissing off Menelaus to fight is irrelevant. It could have happened, sure, but the real reason for the war was economic and had to do with control over this strategic trade route. A few hundred years later, Greece would again take an interest in the Bosporus when the Macedonian Alexander swept South from his homeland in what is now Bulgaria, using the straight as his means to persuade the Greeks to his cause. He seized the straight and choked the Greek islands of the Aegean until they joined him, convinced of the economic benefits to be gained, and then the same Troy became his launching point for his march through to the Ganges. Rome, too, would eventually see the use of this region, and go about whomping whatever unsuspecting and pathetic civilization may have been living there by that time. Simply by the very existence of the geography, whoever was living there is just asking for a war. Now I will jump ahead to the age of the crusades, when Instanbul, then Constantinople, which sits on the very Eastern point of the straight on a small jutting penninsula on the Northern side, would be the focus of every major advance for both the European Christians and the Turkish and Middle-Eastern Muslims. I propose that the reason for fighting here, however, was not religious. The crusades themselves were religious in nature, but it would make more sense for the Europeans to sail straight to Jerusalem from Italy, Greece, or even France rather than march across the Balkans to Constantinople. Everybody knows it takes way longer to march that far, especially up and around those mountains. I'd say the crusades were just an excuse for the pope to send troops to conquer this strategic point. Especially at that time when the papacy was
the institution running Europe, you know he had his stake in the affairs of economy and power. Again, the very existence of this geography was what provoked war, and holy war was just something to get the people willing to fight. I will discuss one last thing, but it is the most significant and relevant to modern politics. The Dardanelles were the reason for World War I, and, as we know, WWI was the initial point which created the havoc wrought throughout the 20th century. Nobody wanted WWI, and nobody had a real reason to want to go to war except Russia. Even after the assassination of Ferdinand, nobody really thought war was necessary. It was Russia who convinced the Serbs to start everything. Why? The Bosporus. If Russia could start a world war in which the Ottomans, who controlled Turkey and much of the Balkan territory, would be forced to fight and lose, then they could create pro-Russian states in those ethnically Slavic areas and be able to access trade in the Mediterranean and beyond without having to go from St Petersburg all the way around Europe or over land. Russia started World War I because they wanted to take from the Ottoman Empire political control over the Balkans and the Dardanelles, under the guise of pan-Slavism and supporting their fellow Slavic peoples. Indeed this small straight has caused much greif for those who inhabit it.
So geography not only plays a role in determining military strategy in battle, but can also be a reason and a cause of war in the first place. Therefore, I was previously mistaken, and I shall change my statement to say "The combination of organized religion
and the Bosporus Straight are the bane of human existence and will be the ruin of the Earth."
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