From Cold War to Hot Peace: The Inside Story of Russia and America
by Michael McFaul (Allen Lane, £25)
When Europeans first mapped the world, there was a lot they didn’t know. Not wanting to admit their ignorance, they made stuff up. Some of their inventions were impressively ambitious. The fictional Mountains of Kong stretched from Mali to Sudan, and adorned maps of Africa for most of the 19th century. Lake Apalachy sat happily in South Carolina for more than 200 years, and was apparently even visited by one traveller, despite not existing. These inventions always had one thing in common: they said nothing about the place being described, and a lot about the person doing the describing. Mapmakers hate having to leave their maps blank.
This same reluctance to admit ignorance, and the same compulsion to fill blank spaces, helps to explain Vladimir Putin’s extraordinary ability to intrigue people right across the political spectrum. He is the great uncharted continent of geopolitics. He produces unpredictable weather systems that bring ruin on some and lavish money on others, yet we know almost nothing about his internal geography.