Sarah Paine

So, for the English majors among you, I have a metaphor.

For the rest of you, you can just bear with us.

Imagine a game in which every ball can be a cue ball and players can take turns, come, leave, do whatever at will.

Sometimes they'll cooperate some of the time, but they don't necessarily want to put the same ball in the same pocket.

And so if that's the case, there's gonna be no enduring cooperation.

And understand that you wanna have, your goal is gonna be the ultimate shot you wanna take, but as you're taking the intervening shots, people are gonna try to disrupt it.

How on earth do you get through this, Gabe?

So this is what the next section is all about.

So if you look at this map and where Pakistan's located, it's this very strategic location in the center of, not quite center, but of Eurasia, the center of the Soviet's boundary there.

And I'll give you a map.

This is from Halford Mackinder.

He's one of the most famous people to publish on geopolitics.

This is his 1904 map.

It's actually quite famous.

And he talked about how Russia occupies the heartland.

In his day, it was all these railway systems.

He thought that was the prime piece of real estate in the world.

And then it's surrounded by this intermarginal crescent.

You look where Pakistan's located.

It's right in the center there, right up by Russia.