Chapters XII-XIII, India's Geographical Dilemma, The Iranian Pivot Summary and Analysis

The United States and China will gradually become power rivals in Eurasia. India is the ultimate "pivot" state required to control the area, and Americans do not understand their geographical and geopolitical situation. To begin, India is rooted in the Indian subcontinent and is divided by a great many rivers and hemmed in by the Bay of Bengal, the Murmere and Himalayan mountains and the Hindu Cush. It is internally vast but it lacks a single core of demographic organization. For these reasons, there is an entire civilization all India's own. And it lacks China's political unity.

India's quest for twenty-first century power is, like so many others, greatly affected by geography. Its main geographical factor is that despite its geographical coherence, its boundaries are quite weak...