We all know that wars cost money and damage economies. But you probably don’t know that insurance has a shocking amount of influence on conflicts. Imagine if your car insurance charged you extra every time you drove through a dangerous neighborhood, and could raise that charge overnight or refuse to cover you there at all. That’s roughly how ships are insured in war zones, and it can decide whether a shipping company sails through a conflict or goes around it. But how exactly does this influence geopolitics?
Read MoreUkraine is not the only country under Russian occupation. Nearly a fifth of the country of Georgia is under Russian control. But why would Russia care about a small country buried in the Caucasus Mountains?
Read MoreYou might not realize it, but Iraq and Iran share a lot more than just similar names. They are so geopolitically intertwined that it is very difficult to talk about one without eventually needing to talk about the other. But other than being neighbors, why are Iraq and Iran so tethered together?
Read MoreCrimea has been a focal point of the Ukraine war since Russia seized and annexed it in 2014. But why does Russia care so much about Crimea to begin with?
Read MoreSri Lanka is one of those places that most people have heard of but know next to nothing about. But the country is a fascinating place with a bloody history, and it’s disproportionately important to geopolitics. So what makes Sri Lanka more important than you might expect?
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 MoreColombia may be a single country on paper, but in reality its geography makes it extremely difficult to govern as one. Notoriously, the country is full of militant groups, gangs, drugs, and a polarized political environment, and geography can explain why this is the case more than almost anything else. So how exactly does Colombia’s geography dictate its fate?
Read MoreEgypt has been a recognizable geopolitical entity for about 5000 years. You’d think from its geographical position and its history that it would be far more powerful than it is. But Egypt today faces constraints that have made stability very difficult to achieve. So why hasn’t modern Egypt been able to achieve the power Ancient Egypt once had?
Read MoreAfghanistan has changed a lot in the five years since the US pulled out and the Taliban returned to power, but there’s a good chance you’ve barely heard anything about it. In many ways, Afghanistan has actually stabilized, but it faces some serious humanitarian issues that should be on everyone’s radar. So how is Afghanistan different than it was under US control?
Read MoreIreland has been split into separate parts since 1921, but after over 100 years of political strife and public violence aiming to bring Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland together again, the prospect could actually be on the table in a matter of years. But why are the two parts separate to begin with, and how would their reunification influence geopolitics?
Read MoreRussia’s economy hasn’t collapsed yet, but more than four years after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, things are not looking good. Russia, it appears, is not immune to the effects of international sanctions, and even with the country fully migrated to a wartime economy, economic growth has stalled to roughly zero amid collapsing oil and gas revenue and declining cash reserves, despite a brief windfall from this year's war in Iran. Still, how has Russia managed to stay afloat for so long, and how does their economic reorientation away from the West influence geopolitics?
Read MoreSouth Sudan became an independent state in 2011, and since then it has experienced a violent civil war, persistent ethnic violence, and rampant human rights abuses that you might have heard about. But you probably haven’t heard about the fact that South Sudan is collapsing. The 2018 power-sharing agreement between the government and the opposition is falling apart, putting the country on the brink of relapsing into widespread conflict. But why?
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 MoreFrom 2019 to 2025, Ecuador went from one of Latin America’s safest countries to one of its most violent, with roughly 8x more homicides now than there were before. It’s seen one of the sharpest upticks in kidnapping and extortion, and even with US security support the country has not managed to stabilize. So what exactly happened to make Ecuador so dangerous, and what impact has this had on Latin America’s geopolitical dynamics?
Read MoreThere’s a country in the middle of Africa whose sprawling, jungle-covered territory produces about 73% of the world’s cobalt, without which your phone, your laptop, and your car wouldn’t be able to exist. But the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or DRC, has also experienced the deadliest wars ever on African soil. So how are these two facts connected, and what impact does the DRC ultimately have on geopolitics?
Read MoreIn the pre-dawn hours of 3 January 2026, the US launched a military strike on Venezuela, bombing the country’s air defenses and ultimately capturing President Nicolas Maduro and his wife on narco-terrorism and drug charges. Shortly after, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez was publicly sworn in as acting president, and US oil companies began moving in. But what exactly is going on in Venezuela today, and how has the country changed since Maduro was removed from office?
Read MoreIn 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 MoreThe regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad collapsed in December 2024. Since then, Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, the man who led the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham to victory against Assad, has led the country into uncharted territory. Without Assad, Syria is a fundamentally different place. But how exactly has Syria changed since his regime fell?
Read MoreThere’s a family in Russia that has been credibly tied to political assassinations on European soil, and Vladimir Putin uses them as his preferred subcontractor for dangerous work. The Kadyrov family has ruled Chechnya since 2000, and though they haven’t always had a positive relationship with the rest of Russia, they have repeatedly done Putin’s dirty work in exchange for money and independence. In many ways, this one family is the case study for how Putin runs Russia.
Read MoreYou probably never heard that on Christmas Day 2025, US Tomahawk missiles hit Islamic extremist targets in the state of Sokoto in northwestern Nigeria. These were the first ever direct US missile strikes against Nigeria’s insurgencies, but the more interesting aspect of this is that it’s a symptom of the fact that the Nigerian government doesn’t have oversight of the country’s security. Today, Nigeria relies on many different security architectures that vary in effectiveness from region to region and often barely speak the same language, making coordination difficult at best. So why is Nigeria’s security architecture so scattered?
Read More