The Geography of Rage
By Darrell Lee
On a humid day in July 1972, an American ornithologist named Jared Diamond walked along a beach in New Guinea with a local politician named Yali. As they strolled, Yali asked a question that would haunt Diamond for twenty-five years and eventually birth a Pulitzer Prize-winning work of popular history. He asked, "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?"
Yali’s question was deceptively simple. It cut through the veneer of modern politics to the raw bone of global inequality. Why did wealth and power concentrate in Europe and North America, while Africa, Australia, and New Guinea lagged? In 1997, Diamond published his answer: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. His thesis demolished the racist biological explanations that had plagued Western thought for centuries. He argued that the distribution of power was not a matter of ingenuity or biology, but of geography. It was a matter of real estate.
However, reading Guns, Germs, and Steel today, nearly three decades after its publication, reveals a darker narrative than Diamond intended. While the book serves as a brilliant retrospective on how we got here, it also functions as a terrifying roadmap for our current hostile geopolitical environment. The same geographical lotteries that enabled Pizarro to capture the Inca emperor Atahualpa in 1532 are currently fueling the Russian-Ukrainian war in Eastern Europe, the rise of a unified China, and simmering resentment in the Global South. We are not just living in the wake of Diamond’s history; we are trapped in its violent sequel.
Diamond’s central argument is a masterclass in materialist history. He asserts that the trajectory of human civilization was set in motion around 11,000 BCE, at the end of the last Ice Age. The decisive factor was not culture, but the availability of domesticable crops and animals. The Fertile Crescent, a boomerang-shaped landmass in the Middle East, possessed a unique abundance of high-protein wild grasses (the ancestors of wheat and barley) and docile, herd-dwelling mammals (the ancestors of cows, pigs, sheep, and goats).
This biological jackpot allowed hunter-gatherers to settle down. Surpluses of food led to population explosions. Dense populations bred two things: specialized classes of people (bureaucrats, soldiers, inventors) and deadly crowd diseases (smallpox, measles, influenza). Here, Diamond introduces his most compelling concept: the East-West Axis. Because Eurasia is oriented horizontally, crops and animals domesticated in the Fertile Crescent could spread thousands of miles to the east and west without encountering significant changes in day length or climate. Wheat from the Middle East could feed a Roman legionnaire or a Han dynasty peasant with equal efficiency.
Contrast this with Central and South America or Africa, which are oriented along a North-South axis. To move corn from Mexico to the Andes, or cattle from the Serengeti to the Cape of Good Hope, a farmer must cross radical shifts in climate, desert barriers, and disease zones. This geographical friction slowed the diffusion of technology and agriculture in the Global South, while Eurasia accelerated into a feedback loop of guns and steel.
This ancient disparity is not merely academic; it is the foundational architecture of modern inequality. In the hostile geopolitical environment of the 2020s, we are seeing the continued weaponization of the East-West axis. The economic sanctions led by the United States and the European Union against Russia following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 represent the consolidated power of that same Eurasian technological corridor. The "cargo" that Yali envied has evolved into semiconductors, SWIFT banking codes, and HIMARS rocket systems, but it remains concentrated in the hands of those who inherited the geographical advantage.
The dramatic centerpiece of Diamond’s book is the collision between the Old World and the New in 1532, at the Peruvian highland town of Cajamarca. Francisco Pizarro, leading a ragtag band of 168 Spaniards, faced the Inca Emperor Atahualpa, who commanded an army of 80,000. Within hours, Pizarro massacred thousands of Incas without losing a single man and captured the Emperor.
Pizarro won not because he was smarter or braver, but because he possessed the proximate factors—guns, steel swords, and horses—military technologies honed by thousands of years of Eurasian warfare. More importantly, he possessed the "germs." Smallpox had arrived in the Americas before Pizarro, traveling down the trade routes from Panama, killing the previous Inca emperor and plunging the empire into a civil war that Pizarro exploited. Finally, Pizarro possessed the "writing" advantage. He had access to a history of military tactics and deception compiled by his predecessors, whereas Atahualpa was unaware of the Spaniards’ existence or intent.
Today, the spirit of Cajamarca defines the hostility between the Global North and the Global South. The cargo disparity has morphed into an agency disparity. When nations in the Global South—from Mali to Venezuela—express anti-Western sentiment or align themselves with revisionist powers like Russia or China, they are reacting against the centuries-old trauma of being on the receiving end of the guns and steel. The vote in the United Nations General Assembly in March 2022, condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, revealed this fracture. While the West voted largely in unison, many nations in Africa and South Asia abstained. This was not necessarily an endorsement of Putin, but a rejection of the moral authority of Pizarro’s heirs. They view the current international order not as a neutral system of law, but as a mechanism designed to maintain the advantages Diamond described.
One of Diamond’s most interesting theories attempts to explain the divergence between Europe and China. By 1400 CE, China was technologically superior to Europe, possessing the world’s largest naval fleets. Yet, it was Europe that colonized the globe. Diamond attributes this to geography. Europe is a fractured continent, carved up by mountain ranges (the Alps, the Pyrenees) and indented coastlines. This geography prevented any single tyrant from unifying the entire continent. It created a hyper-competitive environment where dozens of small states fought constantly, driving military innovation. If the King of Portugal rejected Columbus, he could go to the Queen of Spain.
China, by contrast, has a geography that favors unity. Its heartland is dominated by two great river systems (the Yellow and the Yangtze) that facilitate internal transport, and it lacks significant internal barriers. This allowed China to unify early. However, unity came with a cost. In 1433, a political faction in the Chinese court decided to end the treasure fleet voyages of Admiral Zheng He. Because the emperor ruled the entire unified domain, a single bad decision halted exploration across the region. In fractured Europe, no single king could stop the tide of progress.
This specific historical analysis is crucial for understanding the single greatest geopolitical friction of our time: the rivalry between the United States and the People's Republic of China. We are witnessing the return of the "Unified State." The very unity that Diamond argued caused China’s stagnation in the 15th century has now been weaponized into a superpower asset. In a world of globalized supply chains and massive infrastructure projects (like the Belt and Road Initiative), the ability of a central authority to command resources without the friction of democratic dissent is a formidable advantage.
The current hostility in the Taiwan Strait is a direct legacy of this geographic imperative. The Chinese Communist Party views the unification of the Chinese geography as a historical mandate, a restoration of the natural order that Diamond described. Conversely, the Western strategy relies on the old European model: a coalition of fractured, independent states (NATO) attempting to contain a monolithic giant. The tension is palpable. When Nancy Pelosi landed in Taipei in August 2022, it was a clash between the Western tradition of fragmented, independent diplomacy and the Chinese tradition of geographic absolutism—a "clash of civilizational geometries," meaning fundamentally different ways of organizing societies shaped by geography. Diamond’s analysis suggests this is not just a political dispute; it is a clash of civilizational geometries.
Diamond’s framework also sheds light on the tragedy of the Russo-Ukrainian war. The "Eurasian Steppe" is a vast, flat grassland stretching from Mongolia to Hungary. For thousands of years, this geography facilitated the movement of horses, language, and technology (the "Steel" in Diamond's title). However, for Russia, this geography is a nightmare. It means there are no natural borders to the west—no mountains or oceans to stop an invader.
Russia’s foreign policy for three centuries has been driven by a desperate need to plug the gap in the North European Plain. The invasion that began in February 2022 can be read as a violent attempt to re-establish the strategic depth that geography denied them. Putin is fighting a war against the very flatness that facilitated the Mongol invasions of the 13th century and the Nazi Germany invasions of the 20th century.
Diamond teaches us that societies adapt to their environments. The Russian state evolved into a militaristic, centralized state because its geography demanded it for survival against constant threats from the steppe. The hostile environment of today is partly the result of a nuclear-armed state acting on the ancient impulses of a geography that offers no shelter. The wheat fields of Ukraine—the same fertile soil that Diamond identifies as a cradle of civilization—are now the battlefield where this geographic paranoia is playing out in a bloodbath.
This geographic paranoia is mirrored in the explosive conflict that erupted in the Middle East in early 2026. The very region Diamond identified as the biological jackpot of human civilization—the Fertile Crescent and its peripheries—has been transformed from the cradle of agriculture into the crucible of modern fossil-fuel warfare. In "Operation Epic Fury," the massive joint strike campaign pitting the United States and Israel against Iran, geography is once again the primary weapon. The U.S. and Israel are using a high-tech air campaign to degrade their nuclear infrastructure and decapitate its leadership, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the opening salvos. In response, the newly appointed leadership under Mojtaba Khamenei has weaponized the ultimate geographic chokepoint: the Strait of Hormuz. By launching drone strikes on Gulf energy infrastructure and threatening this narrow maritime corridor, Iran leverages its map to send oil prices skyrocketing and hold the global economy hostage. The "cargo" that powers the modern world must pass through this ancient geographic bottleneck, proving that while our technology has evolved from steel swords to stealth bombers, we are still completely bound by the contours of the earth.
Diamond’s title includes "Germs," and the relevance of this factor resurfaced in March 2020, when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Diamond argued that the "killer crowd diseases" were a byproduct of the Eurasian agricultural package—humans living in proximity to domesticated animals like pigs and cows allowed viruses to jump species.
In the 16th century, these germs worked to the advantage of the colonizers, wiping out indigenous populations who had no immunity. In the 21st century, the dynamic has inverted. The hyper-connectivity of the globalized world—the ultimate expression of the East-West trade routes—turned a local outbreak in Wuhan into a global catastrophe in weeks. The "germs" no longer serve the conqueror; they threaten the entire system.
Moreover, the pandemic exposed the fragility of the "Steel" component of Diamond’s triad. The global supply chains that distribute the modern world’s cargo froze. The semiconductor shortage, the shipping container crisis, and the vaccine apartheid that followed demonstrated that the inequalities Diamond described are still lethal. The Global North hoarded vaccines (the modern equivalent of the Spaniard's steel armor), while the Global South waited. This disparity has fueled deep diplomatic resentment, making international cooperation on climate change and security increasingly difficult. The "germs" did not just kill millions; they infected the geopolitical body with mistrust.
Finally, we must consider the epilogue to Diamond’s history: the environmental collapse. Guns, Germs, and Steel is fundamentally about how the environment shaped humanity. Today, humanity is reshaping the environment, and the feedback loop is vicious. The favorable climate zones that allowed the Fertile Crescent and China to flourish are shifting.
Climate change is acting as a threat multiplier, destabilizing the very societies that geography once blessed. The severe droughts in Syria preceding the civil war that began in 2011, the drying of the Yangtze River in August 2022, and the heatwaves scorching Europe are signs that the geographical advantages are fragile. We are entering an era where the "Haves" can no longer rely on their latitude to save them.
The hostility we see today over energy transition, carbon taxes, and climate reparations is the latest iteration of Yali’s question. The nations that got the guns and steel first used them to burn the carbon that is now drowning the nations that got the cargo last. This is the ultimate geopolitical hostility: an atmospheric debt that the Global South demands the North pay, and which the North is politically paralyzed to address.
Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel was celebrated as a book that explained the past. But viewed through the lens of the 2020s, it is a prophecy of our current predicament. The current hostile geopolitical environment is not a temporary aberration; it is the inevitable result of thousands of years of unequal development, calcified into nuclear standoffs and trade wars.
When Vladimir Putin looks at the map of Ukraine, he sees the same undefendable steppe that haunted the Tsars. When Xi Jinping looks at the Taiwan Strait, he sees the mandate of a unified geography that has defined China for millennia. When the Global South looks at the West, it sees the descendants of Pizarro, still holding the keys to the bank and the armory.
Diamond proved that we are the products of our geography. The tragedy of our time is that we have armed our geography with nuclear weapons. We have taken the ancient accidents of latitude and domesticated animals and turned them into existential threats. Yali’s question has been answered, but the answer has not brought peace. It has revealed that the steel has not been beaten into plowshares; it has been forged into a cage, and we are all locked inside with the ghosts of 1532.
Darrell Lee is the founder and editor of The Long Views, he has written two science fiction novels exploring themes of technological influence, science and religion, historical patterns, and the future of society. His essays draw on these long-standing interests and apply a similar analytical lens to politics, literature, art, culture, and historical events. After retiring from a 36-year career as a software and systems engineer on the Space Shuttle and then the Space Station programs, he now splits his time between rural east Texas and Florida’s west coast, where he spends his days performing variable star photometry, dabbling in astrophotography, hunting, thinking, napping, fishing, scuba diving, and writing, not necessarily in that order. He is a member of the American Astronomical Society, American Radio Relay League, the American Association of Variable Star Observers, and the US Chess Federation.