“[Roger Kaplan] wants to reintroduce geography, via notions of “natural borders” and of the limits imposed on human action by unchanging topographical features, into the production of foreign policy: “mountains and the men who grow out of them are the first order of reality; ideas, however uplifting and fortifying, only the second.” This elevation of the material world over political ideals, while not dismissing the latter, is an intervention into the long-running debate among international relations theorists as to whether the world can be improved and conflict eradicated, or whether such idealistic notions only lead to more conflict—conflict that could be reduced if we accepted so-called realities about human nature.”

-Geographer’s Revenge, by Jason Dittmer