Colonial Legacy
No Ugandan leader has ever lost power in an election since Uganda gained independence in 1962, and the military that decides who’s in charge has become so useful to Western partners that they rarely challenge what it does at home. So how did Uganda become so volatile and militarized, and what impact does it have on geopolitics?
Read MoreGuatemala claims about half the land in neighboring Belize, plus all of its islands, in one of the few live territorial disputes in Latin America today. The International Court of Justice is scheduled to hear oral arguments on the case in February 2027, the last stage before a ruling that could result in dramatic border changes. But why does Guatemala claim so much of Belize to begin with, and how does it shape the region's geopolitics?
Read MoreIf we look at a map of modern Thailand, we’ll see that it’s wedged between former French and British colonies. But if nearly all of southeast Asia was dominated by foreign powers, why is Thailand the exception, and how does this influence its geopolitical dynamics?
Read MoreAbout 72k people in Ireland speak the Irish language daily outside a classroom. In Wales, a country with half the population, the number speaking Welsh daily runs into the hundreds of thousands, and in Gwynedd it is still the majority language. Both languages have been shrinking for a century, but only one of them still has places where it is simply what people speak. So why did Welsh hold onto its communities when Irish didn't, and what does that have to do with geopolitics?
Read MoreThe border between India and Bangladesh is a mess. At first glance, it looks basically random, but when we dig into the history and geography of the region, we can find some really fascinating answers. So why are India and Bangladesh divided up like this?
Read MoreEswatini, formerly known as Swaziland, is a small absolute monarchy that has looked stable for decades, but it's also one of the most externally dependent countries in all of Africa. It's landlocked, surrounded on three sides by South Africa, and without South Africa it would struggle to exist at all. So why has Eswatini managed to stay independent when it needs so much external support?
Read MoreCameroon is often described as a former French colony with a substantial English-speaking minority. But that’s not completely true. It was a German colony before being split between France and Britain. And while the Anglophone divide has produced real conflict, it is a misconception that the fight between English and French speakers is the source of the country's problems. In fact, Cameroon is a country full of misconceptions. So how are Cameroon’s geopolitical dynamics misunderstood?
Read MoreMadagascar is not a place people know much about. I’d bet money that most people’s only exposure to it is those animated movies from the 2000s, its diverse wildlife, and the vanilla the country produces. But Madagascar faces severe political unrest and natural disasters that increasingly threaten its stability and are arguably far more interesting. So why should we be paying attention to Madagascar?
Read MoreSouth Africa controls 83% of the world’s platinum, metals your phone and your car can’t work without. It sits on minerals valued at over 2.5 trillion USD, and yet it has the world’s worst inequality, unemployment over 30%, and until recently, it couldn’t even keep the lights on. None of this is bad luck. South Africa was built piece by piece over nearly 400 years. So how does South Africa’s history feed into its geopolitical dynamics today?
Read MoreYou’ve probably heard that the Cayman Islands are a tax haven for the rich, and there’s a strong chance you’ve never heard anything else about them. But the Cayman Islands are far more important to geopolitics than you’re probably aware because they are the tax-neutral legal plumbing for the global financial system, with funds reporting roughly 16 trillion USD in total assets under management. So what impact do the Cayman Islands really have on the world around us?
Read MoreWhen most of us think of Jamaica, we think of beach resorts and reggae, but Jamaica is actually a perfect example of how geopolitics works in practice. It’s a small island of just 2.8m whose modern politics were forged by a plantation-slavery economy, whose geography as a small Caribbean island influences everything about its dynamics, and whose government has to operate within those constraints. So how did Jamaica come to be, and what can it tell us about geopolitics?
Read MoreMalawi is one of the world’s poorest countries. It depends heavily on foreign aid and a colonial-era economy anchored on declining tobacco exports, and it’s wedged between Tanzania, Zambia, and Mozambique, making it completely dependent on ports in other countries for trade with the rest of the world to occur at all. This also means that it is extremely vulnerable to those countries’ political volatility. So why is Malawi a country at all, and how has it managed to survive?
Read MoreIf you zoom in on West Africa, you might notice that Senegal completely surrounds another country, a tiny sliver of land called The Gambia. This is the smallest country on mainland Africa at just over 11000 square kilometers, but it has over 2.4m people, and its history is fascinating. So why does The Gambia exist in the first place, and what place does it have in geopolitics?
Read MoreJust 3600 people live on these islands today, but in the 1980s they were the site of a war that killed 255 British military members and 649 Argentine troops and fundamentally changed modern naval doctrine. The Falkland Islands are famous for this namesake war, but you’re probably not aware of the rest of their dynamics. So how do the Falklands influence geopolitics?
Read MoreIf you zoom in on a map of east Africa, you might notice two little countries tucked between Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, and Uganda. Beyond being surrounded by far larger countries, Rwanda and Burundi also look like a single country that’s been split in half. So why are Rwanda and Burundi small, separate, and surrounded?
Read MoreDid you know that for over 500 years, Spain has technically been an African country? Obviously most of Spain is in Europe, but just like French Guiana makes France a South American country, the territories of Ceuta and Melilla in north Africa give Spain a very different geopolitical footprint than any other state in Europe, and they are a key player in Spain’s heated dynamic with Morocco. So how exactly do Ceuta and Melilla play into geopolitics?
Read MoreIn 1667, the Dutch and the English signed a treaty that traded one piece of land for another. The English kept a swampy little outpost we now call Manhattan. The Dutch kept a sliver of South American coast that they considered the better deal. It’s called Suriname, and 350 years later that piece of land hosts roughly 750m barrels of recoverable oil, a Chinese-owned gold mine, the highest proportion of Muslims of any country in the Americas, and the political afterlife of a criminal dictator. So with all that in mind, how does Suriname fit into geopolitics today?
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