Friday, January 28, 2011

Arabia

24-8-30 [Potential Impacts of Iraq-Turkey 'Development Road'] - Caspian > .

The Arabian Peninsula ("Island of the Arabs") is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plate. At 3,237,500 km2 (1,250,000 sq mi), the Arabian Peninsula is the largest peninsula in the world.

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 > .

Australia

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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 > .
22-3-1 Tim Harcourt | Russia's Commodity-Heavy Sanctions & Australia - rh > .
22-1-6 Australia & Japan sign security cooperation treaty - Focus > .
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Thursday, January 27, 2011

Balkans

23-1-18 Serbia & Kosovo: Europe’s Next Flashpoint? - gtbt > .Bosnia and Herzegovina: an ethnically divided country | DW Doc > .

Historians classify Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia. as "The Balkans".
  
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 Western Balkans is a political neologism coined to refer to Albania and the territory of the former Yugoslavia, except Slovenia, since the early 1990s. The region of the Western Balkans, a coinage exclusively used in Pan-European parlance, roughly corresponds to the Dinaric Alps territory.

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 CEFTACroatia, considered part of the Western Balkans, joined the EU in July 2013.

Baltic Sea



Baltic Sea 



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...