For 29 straight years, the US kept at least one nuclear command and control aircraft in the sky at all times. Each one carried an Air Force general who could take command of the nation's nuclear bombers and missiles if Washington, DC and Strategic Air Command headquarters were destroyed.
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Why is New York City the unofficial capital of the world?
There is no capital of the planet Earth. But if there were, it would be New York City, the very city the diplomats who founded the United Nations originally tried to avoid. So how did New York become the world’s de facto capital, and what does this mean for geopolitics?
Read MoreWhy is Guam critical to the US?
You might think that Hawaii is as far west as the US goes, but you'd be wrong. Guam is over 6000km west of Hawaii and nearly 10000km from California, making it the most distant populated US soil. So how did the US gain control of Guam to begin with, and how does it change the US’s geopolitical dynamics?
Read MoreWhy do US defense companies influence geopolitics so much?
The US spends about a trillion dollars per year on defense, and more than half of that goes to contracting companies. The five biggest, like Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Lockheed Martin, take a third of all contract dollars on their own. But why does the US rely so much on the military-industrial complex, and what impact does this have on geopolitics?
Read MoreHow long can the US and Canada keep sharing the Great Lakes?
What if the Great Lakes had US and Canadian warships circling each other for control of the largest freshwater system on earth? There's no structural reason they shouldn't. What stops it is a series of agreements that have made these lakes arguably the most successful binational commons on the planet. But you probably don't know that those treaties are now under tremendous stress. So how do the Great Lakes fit into geopolitics, and how are their dynamics evolving?
Read MoreWho actually fights America’s wars?
I’ve never talked about this before, but I’m a big music guy, and there’s a song I really like by this artist from Appalachia called Fey Fili, and she has a song called War Dog whose lyrics basically explore how working class families just like mine join the military for healthcare or school and in pursuit of greater opportunity, and what those people trade for it.
Read MoreHow do Native Americans influence the US?
The US contains 575 federally recognized Native American tribes, and every one of them is a sovereign nation in a limited but very real sense. Federal law calls them domestic dependent nations. They govern themselves, they control natural resources and water on their lands, and they hold treaty rights that are still binding federal law today, which gives them a disproportionate impact on the US's geopolitical dynamics. So how do Native American tribes influence how the US navigates the world?
Read MoreWhy would the US want to take Greenland when it already operates freely there?
in Europe, North America
The US has been openly campaigning to acquire Greenland since 2025, even refusing to rule out the use of force against one of its own NATO allies to obtain it. But what many people don’t know is that the US military has had a substantial presence in Greenland already for decades, including its northernmost permanent military installation. So how is the US allowed to operate in Greenland, what impact has the current administration had on this dynamic, and what role does Pituffik Space Base have on all of this?
Read MoreHow and why would the US invade Cuba?
In January 2026, the US conducted targeted strikes on Venezuela that ultimately decapitated the country’s government, placing President Nicolas Maduro in US custody and providing an avenue for US businesses to expand their operations into a country that has been a key US adversary for decades. Just weeks later, the US launched an even larger operation in Iran to kill the country’s Supreme Leader and degrade its military and nuclear infrastructure. And now reports indicate that the US may be preparing to conduct military operations against Cuba. These events have many similarities that can give us tremendous insight into the current administration’s priorities and strategy, but the question is, knowing what we know now, how and why would the US invade Cuba?
Read MoreHow does Quebec influence Canada’s geopolitical dynamics?
In many ways, there are two Canadas, and they interact with the world in very different ways. There’s the Canada led out of Ottawa, the one most people are familiar with, and then there’s Quebec, which has 35 government offices in 20 countries, signs international treaties on its own, and has a population roughly the same size as Belarus or Switzerland. So just how different is Quebec from the rest of Canada, and what impact does this have on the country’s geopolitical dynamics?
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