The perils of proximity: What maps teach us

When war returned to Gaza, and earlier when the Russia–Ukraine conflict erupted into full-scale war, I found myself returning with my GUtech students to the first axiom of our study of culture and civilisation: History is a function of geography. Simply put, look at the map.
These crises did not arise from geography alone, nor were the particular decisions that produced them unavoidable. Yet neither did they emerge from nowhere. Geography creates enduring pressures—proximity, contested borders, access to seas, strategic depth, demographic concentration and control over resources—that politics may manage for a time but can rarely abolish. Events may not be predetermined, but the conditions that make them recurrent are often written into the landscape.
Maps appear merely to describe the world. In reality, they also reveal its pressures. They place a small country beside a continental power, a narrow kingdom between rival empires, or an island opposite a great naval state. From that arrangement alone, history can appear predetermined: the larger state will dominate, the smaller one will submit, and geography will eventually overcome sovereignty.
Yet maps teach a more complicated lesson.
The first mistake is to think of neighbourly relations only in terms of war or peace. Between the two lies a long spectrum. There may be coexistence, where borders are accepted and disputes are managed. There may be partnership, where trade and institutions make cooperation more valuable than domination. There may be constrained autonomy, where a smaller state remains sovereign but carefully adjusts its choices to the interests of a stronger neighbour.
Beyond that lies the sphere of influence, where formal independence survives but real freedom of action narrows. But not every powerful neighbour seeks the same thing. A status quo power may want predictability and secure borders. A revisionist power may want to alter borders or regional order. An imperial power may prefer influence to annexation. An ideological power may view the neighbour’s political system as a threat. An insecure power may interpret ordinary acts of sovereignty as hostile moves.
This distinction matters greatly. Reassurance may work with a defensive neighbour. It may embolden an expansionist one. A concession may settle a limited dispute. It may also signal that pressure succeeds.
The smaller state’s first defence, therefore, is not only military. It is the quality of the state itself. Cohesive societies, legitimate institutions, trusted administration and disciplined political elites reduce the opportunity for external penetration. Divided states often invite intervention before they are invaded. Foreign influence usually enters through domestic cracks.
The strategic value of territory is another decisive factor. Ports, straits, mountain passes, trade corridors, energy routes and water systems may make a country important. But importance is not always protection. It may attract interest, investment and allies. It may also attract pressure and rivalry.
Belgium’s location made it valuable, but also vulnerable. Korean Peninsula’s geography made it a buffer, a prize and a battlefield. Afghanistan’s mountains gave it defensive depth, but its position between empires exposed it repeatedly to intervention. Siam, modern Thailand, survived European imperial rivalry partly because Britain and France preferred it as a buffer, but that survival came with concessions and pressure.
How, then, do smaller states survive powerful neighbours?
Some balance through alliances. This can work when commitments are credible and assistance can arrive in time. But alliances carry risks: abandonment if the ally does not act, and entrapment if the smaller state is dragged into another power’s conflict.
Some accommodate. They recognise the larger neighbour’s security concerns and avoid unnecessary provocation. This may preserve autonomy when the stronger power’s demands are limited. But accommodation fails when each concession leads to another.
Some choose neutrality. Switzerland’s neutrality endured because it was armed, institutionalised and useful to others. But neutrality without defence or external acceptance may become only a declaration of preference.
Some hedge between powers. They diversify relations and avoid exclusive dependence on one patron. But hedging requires discipline. Flexibility must not become confusion.
Here, an old maxim attributed to Imam Ali offers a profound rule of statecraft: love your friend with measure, for he may one day become your adversary; and oppose your adversary with measure, for he may one day become your friend. This is not a call for moral ambiguity. It is a warning against emotional diplomacy. States that live in difficult neighbourhoods cannot afford permanent intoxication with allies or permanent hatred of rivals. Geography may force today’s opponent to become tomorrow’s interlocutor, and today’s partner to become tomorrow’s pressure point.
Others rely on deterrence by denial. They do not seek to defeat the larger neighbour outright. They seek to make conquest slow, costly and politically uncertain. Finland’s resistance in the Winter War did not prevent territorial loss, but it helped preserve Finnish statehood by demonstrating that occupation would not be easy.
There is also a subtler danger: domination without occupation. A state may retain its flag, parliament and ministries while losing real autonomy through debt, elite capture, strategic infrastructure, military dependency or economic overreliance. This is why sovereignty must be defended below the threshold of war. Transparency, institutional discipline, diversified economic links and protection of strategic assets are not administrative luxuries. They are instruments of independence.
History also teaches that smallness is not permanent. Some states that began as vulnerable or peripheral later became empires. Macedon, Rome, Portugal, the Dutch Republic, Prussia, Japan and Oman all show that size alone does not determine historical destiny. Organisation, maritime skill, finance, military innovation, commercial networks and timing can transform the balance of power.
Oman’s own history reminds us that geography can be both peril and opportunity. Exposure to stronger powers did not prevent Oman from becoming a maritime actor across the Indian Ocean and East Africa. Nor does Oman’s contemporary role as a mediator and advocate of dialogue remove the hard facts of proximity. The recent drone attacks targeting sites in Musandam and Al Wusta, and Oman’s decision to summon the Iranian ambassador in formal protest, show precisely the discipline required of a small state in a dangerous neighbourhood: firmness without hysteria, protest without recklessness, and continued commitment to sovereignty, good neighbourliness and non-interference.
The wisdom of measured friendship and measured enmity is therefore not merely ethical advice. It is geopolitical prudence for states whose neighbours cannot be wished away.
Maps show where states stand. They do not tell us what states must become.
The peril of proximity is real. But geography is a condition, not a verdict. The task of statecraft is to ensure that vulnerability does not become destiny—and that power, if it comes, does not become domination.