Brunei is a tiny absolute monarchy split into two halves on the island of Borneo, bordered on land entirely by Malaysia with its only open frontier facing the South China Sea. It’s the surviving piece of a once vast maritime empire, but today it is approaching a serious economic and political crisis. So why did Brunei shrink to a fraction of its former self, and what is putting its remaining future at risk?
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 MoreThere’s a good chance you’re familiar with the Chinese government’s oppressive treatment of ethnic minorities in places like Tibet and Xinjiang. But if we look far to the south we’ll find the Guangxi Autonomous Region, which hosts the country’s largest ethnic minority and is actively showcased by the Chinese government to exemplify what successful minority integration looks like. So why is Guangxi’s fate different from places like Tibet and Xinjiang, and what does China consider to be successful integration to begin with?
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 MoreThis Southeast Asian country has two names, and using either of them means that you are taking a side. Myanmar is the name most people use for it, but most maps also call it Burma in parentheses. This country is the site of one of the longest and most fragmented civil wars on the planet, and the fight over what to call it is really a part of that war itself. So why does Myanmar, or Burma, have two names, and what can this dynamic tell us about the country’s role in geopolitics?
Read MoreIf you look at a map of North Korea’s nuclear facilities, you might notice that they’re mostly clustered in the west-central part of the country, north of Pyongyang, and along the east coast. But if you look a little closer near the border with China and Russia, you’ll see some unique infrastructure, including a nuclear test site and several undeclared bases that operate intercontinental ballistic missiles. So why would North Korea be putting some of their most sensitive nuclear infrastructure so close to China and Russia?
Read MoreSince 2015, Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS for short, has consolidated power almost completely in the country. He’s launched an overhaul of the country’s economy, initiated unprecedented and controversial megaprojects, and dramatically liberalized Saudi society in general, while also intensifying authoritarian repression. But all of that is domestic. So how has MBS changed Saudi Arabia’s geopolitical dynamics?
Read MoreThe Western image of Buddhism as a completely serene and apolitical religion is not really accurate. Buddhist monks have blessed armies. Buddhists have run nationalist political parties and helped commit crimes against humanity. Today, Buddhism is a dominant religion across much of Asia, but how does it actually influence geopolitics?
Read MoreTucked inside Italy is a tiny country of about 34000 people that claims to be the oldest republic on Earth. San Marino has two heads of state and more cars than people, but it has outlived the Roman Empire’s successors, the Papal States, Napoleon, Mussolini, and every modern European war, all without an army of its own. So how has the world’s oldest republic survived over 1700 years, and what does its survival depend on today?
Read MoreFor about 60 years, Tanzania was one of the most stable and peaceful African countries. But since late 2025, a wave of state violence against protesters has upended the established order. Meanwhile, Tanzania occupies a unique geopolitical position as the ocean gateway for six landlocked states, the terminus of a 1.4b dollar Chinese railway, and the export point for massive oil and gas projects. So why is Tanzania experiencing such dangerous upheaval, and how might this affect its role in 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 MoreVatican City is the smallest country in the world, with just half a square kilometer of land and under a thousand residents, and it’s the only country in the world that is fully surrounded by another country’s capital. Consequently, Vatican City and Italy share a really complex and fascinating history together, particularly when it comes to the way they engage with the rest of the world. So how do the Vatican and Italy coexist when it comes to geopolitics?
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