Wisdom from 2006 with a lesson for today’s times:
The United States willingness to forfeit the Panama Canal it built, shows America and Britain’s irrational desire to yield. (RODRIGO ARANGUA/AFP/Getty Images)
Any world power with vast overseas commitments must control the seaways necessary for safe passage of its goods, its citizens and its military forces. Why then have Britain and America so casually yielded up this power they once guarded so jealously?
Geography is the most stable factor on which the power of a nation depends.
Two thirds of the Earth’s surface is ocean. Two thirds of its inhabited land embraces the great land mass of Eurasia and Africa. The remainder, which we call the Western Hemisphere, is, by comparison, an island in the midst of the oceans.
Global Geopolitics 