ABSTRACT
THE Western Hemisphere is an enormous insular land mass of approximately I5 million square miles which faces the Old World across three ocean fronts, the Arctic, the Pacific, and the Atlantic. The Americas are, however, as previously suggested, not a single island of continental dimensions but a world of at least three distinct geo-political regions, the northern continent, the southern continent, and the American Mediterranean. North America has the shape of an inverted triangle with the apex at Panama. The Pacific and the Atlantic coasts flare out toward Alaska and Greenland, placing points farther north nearer to Asia and Europe. The third side of the triangle is the Arctic front which runs from the western insular outpost in the Aleutian Islands across the barren coastal zone of Alaska, Canada, and Greenland to the eastern insular outpost in Iceland. South America is also shaped like an inverted triangle with its apex in the south in the vicinity of Cape Horn. One front of this triangle is along the Pacific from Cape Horn to Panama and two sides face the Atlantic. The first, which runs from Panama to Cape San Roque on the bulge of Brazil, turns southeast and the second, which extends from this cape to Cape Horn, turns southwest. The axis of the southern continent lies much farther east than that of North America with the result that the second triangle protrudes farther out into the
Atlantic and approaches the shoulder of Africa. In between the bulk of the continental masses lies the American Mediterranean and the continents themselves divide into the strategic zones mentioned in the previous chapter.
