Independence & Autonomy
Tucked between Finland and Sweden is an archipelago called Aland. It belongs to Finland and is strategically critical because it commands the entrance to the Gulf of Bothnia, but it is autonomous and unexpectedly demilitarized. So why aren’t there military forces in Aland, and will that change amid threats from Russia?
Read MoreMacao is like the Las Vegas of Asia, and China is very happy with it because while it’s a Special Administrative Region just like nearby Hong Kong, Macao has no mass democracy movement. So why is Macao so different from Hong Kong, and how did it become such a hub for gambling?
Read MoreCorsica may be part of France, but it wasn’t always that way, and now the island is on the verge of gaining autonomy. But how would autonomy even work for a place that’s so reliant on mainland France?
Read MoreThe 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 MoreThe Scottish independence movement has been pushing for Scotland to split from the United Kingdom for literally centuries. But these days, the picture is a bit more complicated than it was hundreds of years ago, thanks to a tangle of issues including political strife, Brexit, and nuclear weapons. So what exactly is preventing Scotland from gaining independence, and what impact would a Scottish departure have on geopolitics?
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 MoreThe 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 MoreThe country of Timor-Leste is Asia’s youngest state, having restored its independence in 2002 after 24 years of Indonesian occupation. But Timor-Leste is increasingly being courted by Indonesia, China, Australia, Japan, and the US despite occupying only half of a single island. So what makes Timor-Leste so interesting to the region’s far more powerful stakeholders?
Read MoreThe Basque Country of Spain is best known for being incredibly distinct from the rest of the country. Its language is the only living language in its family, its culture is very different, and its people are genetically descended from those who lived on the Iberian Peninsula during the Iron Age, despite having intermingled with other groups for thousands of years. The natural question is how does a region that’s so different from the rest of its own country play into Spain’s broader geopolitical dynamics?
Read MoreIn 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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