What a great title! But…
This is a muddled regurgitation of Mackinder’s 1904 geopolitical theory about dominating either the seas or the eurasian landmass to create an empire. Loses the big picture to focus on intelligence services and personal experience. Lacks structured thinking on whether this early 20th century theory remains valid or whether it’s just the shared subjective reality of world leaders. Whichever the answer, neither would be convincing.
DNF at 5 chapters in, there are better uses of time.