A harsh look at U.S. policy

In 1999, the Wall Street Journal published a map that erroneously identified Afghanistan as Iraq. Conspiracy theorists might say they knew something the rest of us didn’t, but that seems unlikely. More sober souls rolled their eyes and lamented the well-documented geographical ignorance of the American populace. Had they had the opportunity to read Derek Gregory’s “The Colonial Present,” they might have concluded that, the erroneous cartographic transposition of Iraq and Afghanistan notwithstanding, the violent displacement of countries is not an oddity but a staple of the world’s political geography.

In the 19th century, geography was the language of power par excellence, but in 20th century America, the power of geography vaporized in the white heat of technology, rapid transportation, universal computer access and the wizardry of globalization. Even the U.S. military, which may have the world’s most sophisticated system of geographical intelligence, has been geographically challenged: For want of an updated map, it bombed Belgrade’s Chinese embassy in 1999, and in Afghanistan and Iraq there have been “precision” bombings of village weddings. Americans may have felt until recently that geography protects us from danger, yet elsewhere, the world knows that geography is danger.

British-Canadian geographer Gregory has written a book entwining global geography with social danger. “The Colonial Present” takes us through the contemporary wars in Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories and Iraq as connected projects of imperial ambition. Gregory’s central point is that the colonial past, the bad old days of brutal administration of the natives, are still with us but now have an American more than British accent. He isn’t kidding about brutality. He quotes Winston Churchill, that Billy Goat Gruff of the British empire, who after World War I thought he had a solution for “recalcitrant Arabs”: “I am strongly in favor of using poisonous gas against uncivilized tribes.” Saddam Hussein’s gassing of the Kurds and the vicious torture in Abu Ghraib and parallel charges in Guantanamo Bay, Bagram and Basra clearly had their precedents.

“The Colonial Present” is a refreshingly angry book with all the geographical and historical scholarship to buttress its indictment of American, Israeli and British behavior around the world. It is exquisitely written. Writing before the revelations about the torture and deaths of detainees, Gregory notes that Bush administration indictments of Hussein -- that he possessed weapons of mass destruction and was “involved in transnational terrorism” -- have not only proved false or dubious but also may have applied more fully to the government making the allegations.

The power of this book comes from its geographical focus. It would be an obvious move to treat the warfare in Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories and Iraq as classic geopolitical conflicts. Afghanistan has always been seen as a geopolitical crossroads, some believe that the Israeli wall weaving through the Palestinian territories is about claiming and defending territory, and many antiwar activists see Iraq as a “war for oil.” This argument can be taken to an extreme, as when geographical determinists -- usually not themselves geographers -- attribute global inequalities to a simple case of “bad latitude.”

Yet as Queen Victoria, French philosopher Michel Foucault and generations of geographers have understood, geography is power, and one of the most striking achievements of this book is the mapping of Israel as it expanded from a figment of British mandate imagination in 1920, through the Peel Commission plan of the ‘30s, its founding as an independent nation in 1948, the 1967 annexations and so on to the present. Yet Gregory adheres to no simple geopolitics. Rather he sees the present conflicts in the Middle East as a reassertion of global territorial power, not just by the United States but by elites around the world committed to an American-centered globalism from which they too can benefit. There is a delicate geometry, algebra and calculus to geography.

A quick look at the map of the Middle East reveals this truth. “Jiggery-pokery” is a fine Scottish word for deceptive goings-on. When one looks at the straight lines of the national boundaries that dominate the Middle East, the geographical jiggery-pokery of European colonialism at Versailles in 1919, which amalgamated Iraq out of three Ottoman protectorates, becomes transparent. Today, however, it may be less appropiate to think in terms of colonialism. Condemned as we are to deal with the geographical remnants of empire, geopolitics has nonetheless given way to a more geo-economic calculus. Empire, in a broader sense, has supplanted the narrower intent of colonialism. This may be a difficult argument to make as U.S. forces swarm across the Iraqi landscape and the Bush administration sets its sights on Iran, but the powerful continuity Gregory perceptively discerns with 1919 “The Colonial Present” -- also harbors a vital discontinuity: This is certainly an imperial present, but traditional “colonialism” has moved on. Whatever the importance of oil in Iraq, the larger strategy is aimed at wider economic dominance, not colonial occupation.

“A screaming comes across the sky,” wrote Thomas Pynchon in “Gravity’s Rainbow.” Outside the United States, the message of this book may not be so startling. Inside the new wall of American identity protectionism, this book’s screaming truths are must-read heresy.

Neil Smith, director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at the City University of New York Graduate Center, was a 2003 Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner (biography) for “American Empire” and is author of the forthcoming “The Endgame of Globalization.”