"History is a wonderful thing, if only it was true"
-Tolstoy

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Geopolitics of New Orleans

From Stratfor - the geography of New Orleans and how it relates to the entire US, from the Rockies to the Appalachians. River shipping is cheap, allowing our crops to reach world marekets, as well as raw materials to reach the midwest.

Stratfor: "New Orleans is not optional for the United States' commercial infrastructure. It is a terrible place for a city to be located, but exactly the place where a city must exist. With that as a given, a city will return there because the alternatives are too devastating. The harvest is coming, and that means that the port will have to be opened soon. As in Iraq, premiums will be paid to people prepared to endure the hardships of working in New Orleans. But in the end, the city will return because it has to.

Geopolitics is the stuff of permanent geographical realities and the way they interact with political life. Geopolitics created New Orleans. Geopolitics caused American presidents to obsess over its safety. And geopolitics will force the city's resurrection, even if it is in the worst imaginable place."

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