Afghanistan ..
Yemen ..
Iran ..
Iraq ..
Iraq ..
Middle East ..
Moldova, Romania, Transnistria, Ukraine - Bessarabia ..Mongolia ..
Myanmar ..Saudi Arabia ..
SEA - Southeast Asia ..Singapore ..
South America ..
Monday, January 31, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
Afghanistan - Imminent Descent
2021 Afghanistan staring at the abyss - Caspian > .
> Afghanistan >> >> Afghanistan >>>
24-6-21 [Aghanistan Conflicts: Tribalism, Water Conflict, Georivalry] - Real > .
24-1-2 Stans: Why Central Asia Is So Big Yet So Weak - Versed > .
23-12-1 Khorasan: Taliban vs ISIS K - Afghanistan still at war - Caspian > .
23-11-5 [XIR] Corrupt, Sanctioned Iran's Military, Proxies, Power Projection - Perun > .
23-9-14 Iran and Afghanistan headed to war over water? - Caspian > .
22-8-22 Does Afghanistan have a future? - Caspian Report > .
Afghanistan - Progress to Failed State ..Afghanistan's Mineral Wealth ..
Afghanistan ..
Afghanistan - Imminent Descent ..Africa
The Sahel: The most Desolate Region in the World? - VisPol > .
24-6-6 Egypt is a Ticking Time Bomb - gtbt > . skip > .
24-6-1 [Turkey's Defense, Training, Weaponry Pact with Somalia] - CaspianReport > .
24-3-25 Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso to form a confederation - Caspian > .
24-2-10 Borders: Some Countries Are Nearly Impossible to Escape - Map > .
24-1-12 Ethiopia could trigger Africa's deadliest conflict - Caspian > .
23-7-21 LIBYA | A Foreign Policy Disaster? - J K-L > .
23-4-26 Why powerful nations want bases in tiny Djibouti - Real > .
22-12-28 Too many people? Challenges of demographic change | DW > .
22-10-20 How Libya Built Brand-New Rivers Across the Sahara - Real > .
22-10-20 U.S. vs. China: Djibouti, Military Bases, Ports, Global Reach | WSJ > .
22-9-8 Real reason Egypt is moving its capital - Vox > .
22-6-14 Why Yemen is Dying (and Nobody Cares) - Nova Lectio International > .
2022 How the UN Doomed Somalia into Becoming a Warzone - Front > .
22-3-18 "Myth" of the Chinese Debt Trap in Africa - Bloomberg > .
22-2-22 World's Pirate Capitals - Angola, Somalia - PolyMatter > .
22-2-16 Somaliland: Tragedy of Africa's Secret State - Geographics > . skip ad > .
2021 War coming in Sahara? Algeria, Morocco, role of gas - VisPol > .Sahel How France Fought a Lightning War in Mali (Op Serval) - Battle Order > .
Africa - MENA & "Dark Continent" - Graydations >> .
North Africa or Northern Africa (MENA = "Middle East and North Africa") region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in the west, to Egypt's Suez Canal and the Red Sea in the east. Varying sources have limited it to the countries of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia, a region that was known by the French during colonial times as "Afrique du Nord" and is known by Arabs as the Maghreb ("West", The western part of Arab World). The most commonly accepted definition includes Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Sudan, the 6 countries that shape the top North of the African continent. Meanwhile, "North Africa", particularly when used in the term Middle East and North Africa (MENA), often refers only to the countries of the Maghreb. North Africa also includes the disputed territory of Western Sahara between Morocco and the Saharawi Republic.
Since probably 3500 BCE, the Saharan and sub-Saharan regions of Africa have been separated by the extremely harsh climate of the sparsely populated Sahara, forming an effective barrier interrupted by only the Nile in Sudan, though navigation on the Nile was blocked by the river's cataracts. The Sahara pump theory explains how flora and fauna (including Homo sapiens) left Africa to penetrate the Middle East and beyond. African pluvial periods are associated with a Wet Sahara phase, during which larger lakes and more rivers existed.
The desert comprises much of North Africa, excluding the fertile region on the Mediterranean Sea coast, the Atlas Mountains of the Maghreb, and the Nile Valley in Egypt and Sudan. It stretches from the Red Sea in the east and the Mediterranean in the north to the Atlantic Ocean in the west, where the landscape gradually changes from desert to coastal plains. To the south, it is bounded by the Sahel, a belt of semi-arid tropical savanna around the Niger River valley and the Sudan Region of Sub-Saharan Africa. The Sahara can be divided into several regions, including the western Sahara, the central Ahaggar Mountains, the Tibesti Mountains, the Aïr Mountains, the Ténéré desert, and the Libyan Desert.
For several hundred thousand years, the Sahara has alternated between desert and savanna grassland in a 20,000 year cycle caused by the precession of the Earth's axis as it rotates around the Sun, which changes the location of the North African Monsoon. The area is next expected to become green in about 15,000 years (17,000 CE).
The Sahel ("coast, shore") is the ecoclimatic and biogeographic realm of transition in Africa between the Sahara to the north and the Sudanian savanna to the south. Having a semi-arid climate, it stretches across the south-central latitudes of Northern Africa between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea.
The Sahel part of Africa includes from west to east parts of northern Senegal, southern Mauritania, central Mali, northern Burkina Faso, the extreme south of Algeria, Niger, the extreme north of Nigeria, the extreme north of Cameroon and Central African Republic, central Chad, central and southern Sudan, the extreme north of South Sudan, Eritrea and the extreme north of Ethiopia.
Historically, the western part of the Sahel was sometimes known as the Sudan region ("lands of the Sudan"). This belt was roughly located between the Sahara and the coastal areas of West Africa.
Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically and ethnoculturally, the area of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara. According to the United Nations, it consists of all African countries and territories that are fully or partially south of the Sahara. While the United Nations geoscheme for Africa excludes Sudan from its definition of sub-Saharan Africa, the African Union's definition includes Sudan but instead excludes Mauritania.
It contrasts with North Africa, which is frequently grouped within the MENA ("Middle East and North Africa") region, and most of whose states are members of the Arab League (largely overlapping with the term "Arab world"). The states of Somalia, Djibouti, Comoros, and the Arab-majority Mauritania (and sometimes Sudan) are, however, geographically considered part of sub-Saharan Africa, although they are members of the Arab League as well. The United Nations Development Program lists 46 of Africa's 54 countries as "sub-Saharan", excluding Algeria, Djibouti, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Somalia, Sudan and Tunisia.
The Sahara ('the Greatest Desert') is a desert on the African continent. With an area of 9,200,000 square kilometres (3,600,000 sq mi), it is the largest hot desert in the world and the third largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Arctic.
The desert comprises much of North Africa, excluding the fertile region on the Mediterranean Sea coast, the Atlas Mountains of the Maghreb, and the Nile Valley in Egypt and Sudan. It stretches from the Red Sea in the east and the Mediterranean in the north to the Atlantic Ocean in the west, where the landscape gradually changes from desert to coastal plains. To the south, it is bounded by the Sahel, a belt of semi-arid tropical savanna around the Niger River valley and the Sudan Region of Sub-Saharan Africa. The Sahara can be divided into several regions, including the western Sahara, the central Ahaggar Mountains, the Tibesti Mountains, the Aïr Mountains, the Ténéré desert, and the Libyan Desert.
For several hundred thousand years, the Sahara has alternated between desert and savanna grassland in a 20,000 year cycle caused by the precession of the Earth's axis as it rotates around the Sun, which changes the location of the North African Monsoon. The area is next expected to become green in about 15,000 years (17,000 CE).
The Sahel part of Africa includes from west to east parts of northern Senegal, southern Mauritania, central Mali, northern Burkina Faso, the extreme south of Algeria, Niger, the extreme north of Nigeria, the extreme north of Cameroon and Central African Republic, central Chad, central and southern Sudan, the extreme north of South Sudan, Eritrea and the extreme north of Ethiopia.
Historically, the western part of the Sahel was sometimes known as the Sudan region ("lands of the Sudan"). This belt was roughly located between the Sahara and the coastal areas of West Africa.
Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically and ethnoculturally, the area of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara. According to the United Nations, it consists of all African countries and territories that are fully or partially south of the Sahara. While the United Nations geoscheme for Africa excludes Sudan from its definition of sub-Saharan Africa, the African Union's definition includes Sudan but instead excludes Mauritania.
It contrasts with North Africa, which is frequently grouped within the MENA ("Middle East and North Africa") region, and most of whose states are members of the Arab League (largely overlapping with the term "Arab world"). The states of Somalia, Djibouti, Comoros, and the Arab-majority Mauritania (and sometimes Sudan) are, however, geographically considered part of sub-Saharan Africa, although they are members of the Arab League as well. The United Nations Development Program lists 46 of Africa's 54 countries as "sub-Saharan", excluding Algeria, Djibouti, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Somalia, Sudan and Tunisia.
Arabia
23-8-11 Saudi Arabia's Challenging Geography - Real > .
23-7-22 Saudi Arabia’s Catastrophic “Everything” Problem - Real > .
23-7-22 Saudi Arabia’s Catastrophic “Everything” Problem - Real > .
22-12-14 Xi’s Saudi trip & Sino-Arab relations; X-¥ oil vs petrodollar - Lei > .
22-12-8 Xina seeking Saudi ties - Update > .
22-11-25 Why Saudi Arabia is Gladly Helping Russia - T&P > .22-3-25 Neom: Saudi Arabia's AI Megacity - Mega > . skip ad > .
Egypt-UAE
24-4-12 Egypt is selling city site to UAE for $35 billion - Caspian > .Somalia ..
Saudi Arabia ..
Geographically, the Arabian Peninsula includes Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Yemen, as well as the southern portions of Iraq and Jordan. The biggest of these is Saudi Arabia. The Peninsula, plus Bahrain, the Socotra Archipelago, and other nearby islands form a geopolitical region called Arabia.
The Arabian Peninsula formed as a result of the rifting of the Red Sea between 56 and 23 million years ago, and is bordered by the Red Sea to the west and southwest, the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman to the northeast, the Levant and Mesopotamia to the north and the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean to the southeast. The peninsula plays a critical geopolitical role in the Arab world and globally due to its vast reserves of oil and natural gas.
Before the modern era, the region was divided into primarily four distinct regions: the Central Plateau (Najd or Al-Yamama), South Arabia, Al-Bahrain (Eastern Arabia or Al-Hassa), and the Hejaz (Tihamah for the western coast), as described by Ibn al-Faqih.
Arctic
2020 Arctic Silk Road - is China Shaping the Future of Maritime Transport? - gtbt > .
24-7-16 (Failed) Race For The Arctic - gtbt > .
24-7-1 P00ti lost Ruscia's Arctic dominance to Xina & Baltic NATO forces | Forces > .24-4-20 Canadian Defense Spending is a Joke | Solutions? - Waro > .
24-2-16 Why Russia is Invading the Arctic (why it matters) - Icarus > .
Antarctic
Australia
.
Australia's Geographic Challenge - Stratfor > .24-2-27 Australia: a middle-power between West and East - STG > .
23-12-2 RNDF 2023: Deepening Defense Cooperation through AUKUS > .
23-8-1 Australian Security: X-T conflict could erupt ‘on accident’ | Treverton > .
22-10-1 Xina Battles US [Aus] for Control of Pacific Islands - Uncensored > .
22-9-24 Xina's and Australia’s power plays in the Pacific - Caspian > .
22-8-26 How Xina wages an unseen war for strategic influence | FT > .
22-7-21 Xina losing international trust, 10 Pacific nations rebuff joint agreement - CR > .
22-3-25 US & World Should Have A 'Coherent, Bipartisan' Strategy For China - Rudd > .
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Balkans
23-1-28 Serbia's U-Turn on Ruscia - TLDR > .
23-1-18 Serbia & Kosovo: Europe’s Next Flashpoint? - gtbt > .22-8-1 Will there be a war in Kosovo? (English subtitles) - Maxim Katz > .
2021 Bosnia in danger of breaking up - CaspianReport > .
2021 Bosnia in danger of breaking up - CaspianReport > .
22-7-6 Balkan Conflict - History! Future? - VisPol > .
22-2-10 Balkan conflict: Bosnia-Herzegovina vs Serb nationalism - BBC > .
Bosnia and Herzegovina: an ethnically divided country | DW Doc > .22-2-10 Balkan conflict: Bosnia-Herzegovina vs Serb nationalism - BBC > .
Why did Yugoslavia Collapse? - Knowledgia > .
Josip Broz ‘Tito’: Too Tough for Stalin - Biog > .
Kosovo triggers a domino effect in the Balkans - CaRe > . skip ad > .
Josip Broz ‘Tito’: Too Tough for Stalin - Biog > .
Kosovo triggers a domino effect in the Balkans - CaRe > . skip ad > .
"Eastern Europe"
2021 Bosnia on verge of becoming 'landlocked' - CaRe > . 21-12-24 Albania and Kosovo move towards a backdoor union - Caspian > .
2021 Why Bosnia & Herzegovina Isn't Actually Landlocked - KhAnubis > .
China's growing influence in Eastern Europe - CaRe > .
COVID-19: China, US, EU and Russia vie for Balkans influence | FT > .
2020 Kosovo triggers a domino effect in the Balkans - CaRe > . skip ad > .China's growing influence in Eastern Europe - CaRe > .
COVID-19: China, US, EU and Russia vie for Balkans influence | FT > .
The term Southeast Europe is also used for the region, with various definitions. Individual Balkan states can also be considered part of other regions, including Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, and Central Europe. Turkey, including its European territory, is generally included in Western Asia or the Middle East. The area figure provided by the Encyclopædia Britannica includes Romania but excludes Greece. If Greece is included, the total area of the Balkans would be 790,011 km.
The institutions of the European Union have generally used the term "Western Balkans" to mean the Balkan area that includes countries that are not (yet?) members of the European Union, while others refer to the geographical aspects. Each of these countries aims to be part of the future enlargement of the European Union and reach democracy and transmission scores but, until then, they will be strongly connected with the pre-EU waiting program CEFTA. Croatia, considered part of the Western Balkans, joined the EU in July 2013.
Bessarabia
22-4-22 Romania-Moldova | Could They Really Unite? - Prof J K-L > .
24-2-2 Romania, After America || Peter Zeihan > .
23-10-31 Worst Economy in Europe: Moldova - Casual Scholar > .
23-9-17 How the Rich Ate Moldova - Asianometry > .
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Canada & Arctic
22-8-3 Stagnating Economy of Canada - EcEx > .
24-7-22 LNG Canada - B1M > .
24-4-20 Canadian Defense Spending is a Joke | Solutions? - Waro > .24-3-8 Alarming state of Canada's military - CBC > .
24-2-24 Canada Can't Solve It's Population Problem with Immigration - EcEx > .
23-9-18 South Korean Factories - Armaments for NATO, Canada | WSJ > .
23-3-1 CSIS & How Xina Bought Canada’s Elections - Uncensored > .
22-12-28 Demographics Part 2: The Canadian Treadmill...Stops - PZ > .
Infrastructure
2021 Economy Of Canada: Northern Powerhouse? - ecas > .
20-12-14 Geopolitics of Canada - CaspianReport > .
History of Canada explained in 10 minutes - Epimetheus > .24-7-16 (Failed) Race For The Arctic - gtbt > .
24-7-1 P00ti lost Ruscia's Arctic dominance to Xina & Baltic NATO forces | Forces > .23-7-23 Arctic is heating fast! - Just > . Arctic Straits > .
1 CE to 2024 Mapping History of the Arctic - Tigerstar > .
24-7-22 LNG Canada - B1M > .
NATO
Caucasus
.
24-11-17 Caucasus Mountains - FactSpark > .
Caucasus - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia - Graydations >> .
Nagorno-Karabakh - Present Tense >> .(Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan - Russia's autonomous mountainous southern rampart.)
Central Asian -Stans
2021 Central Asia on the verge of a water war - Caspian > .
24-4-5 Walls - Strife, Migrant Crises - Present Past > .
24-1-2 Stans: Why Central Asia Is So Big Yet So Weak - Versed > .
23-11-5 [XIR] Corrupt, Sanctioned Iran's Military, Proxies, Power Projection - Perun > .
23-10-14 [Nefarious Hybrid XIR "want to destroy America" Plot] - Versed > .
23-5-2 Why Iran is Helping Ruscia’s Invasion of Ukraine - Real > .
23-3-13 Iran, Xina, Saudi Arabia - Influence Wangling - Update > .
23-1-26 Pan-Turkism & Turkey's Ambitions in Central Asia - gtbt > .
22-12-30 [Kurds] Why Turkey is Preparing to Invade Syria (Again) - Real > .
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sī vīs pācem, parā bellum
igitur quī dēsīderat pācem praeparet bellum therefore, he who desires peace, let him prepare for war sī vīs pācem, parā bellum if you wan...
