The Future of "Strategic Terrain"

Geographic locations acquire strategic importance based on how humans use these locations. Locations in and of themselves have little value. Rivers, mountain passes, canals, straits, overflight routes, and air and sea points of debarkation become important to nations and groups as they serve as avenues to travel and choke points to be blocked. Nations have fought for control of key geographic features for easily-defended borders, or to cut off the growth or expansion of a rival. Two oceans have shielded the United States from invasion for nearly 200 years and the highest mountain ranges on earth have caused India to be shielded from sustained invasion by China, but open to invasion from the West. The seas protected England and Japan from invasion for most of their history, but did not afford their colonial subjects similar protection.The importance of locations changes over time and can is dependent on the interests of particular actors. Egypt, for example, was significant to England for its investments and inasmuch as it blocked French ambitions in the area. As the Suez Canal was opened to traffic in 1869 the area between Cairo and the Sinai became the main artery for the British Empire connecting the homeland with the Indian subcontinent. The centrality of this geographic feature to the English resulted in a further extension of a chain of bases throughout the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean to further protect it. During the Cold War, a stretch of windswept ocean, known as the GIUK Gap (for Greenland-Iceland-U.K.) was a central focus of U.S. strategy to contain the Soviet Navy, prevent ballistic missile submarines from accessing the Atlantic, and to ensure that the Army could reinforce Germany in case of conflict with the Warsaw Pact.Strategic terrain remains an important element in any understanding of the international environment. Transnational terrorist organizations encourage ungoverned or ungovernable spaces as sanctuary from which to operate. In spite of the “death of distance” in the information age, servers, computers, and content generation must be located or take place somewhere on earth. The geometry of these activities such as the topology and location of network resources can be important. Furthermore, strategic “terrain” is moving off-world as specific locations in outer space become important to a variety of actors. Geostationary orbital slots are limited and give owners the ability to communicate over wide areas of the earth. Low-earth orbit is important for observation and is becoming cluttered with debris. Lagrange points, areas of gravitational equilibrium may be important stepping stones to the moon and beyond, and represent the ultimate “high ground” in the earth’s gravity well. Even the south pole of the Moon might be considered “key terrain” as abundant, continuous sunlight and the potential availability of frozen water may be the key to establishing control over Earth’s natural satellite.