Planning, then, has to proceed on the firm foundation of historic geopolitics, not the sands of sentiment and aspiration. Modern technology would seem to have reduced geopolitics almost to irrelevance. Air power and long-range missiles would appear to have telescoped, if not canceled out, time and distance. Not so, I say. Someday space science may well produce the ultimate weapon.
Territorial integrity is nonnegotiable.
The cases of Bosnia, Palestine, Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, the West Bank and the Golan, Kashmir and Cambodia all remind us of the bitter fighting over scraps of real estate, over shards of broken empires. New and old factors are also emerging and reemerging as critical. For example, as many have pointed out, future wars in the Middle East are going to be fought over water. And the three percent population growth rate and the failure of economic development from Morocco to Iran makes North Africa and the Middle East a ticking time bomb. In other words, there is more to the Middle East peace process than Palestine, as the Gulf War should have reminded everyone.