Most of the world is divided neatly into distinct nations with clearly defined borders. This map is about the locations that do not fit that model, those territories that are claimed by more than one country / occupying force. The conflicts range from major wars whose impacts are felt around world (e.g. Islamic State) to minor disagreements over remote, uninhabited rocks (e.g. Rockall Island).
Mainstream political scientists look slightly askance at the subset of geopolitics. They regard geopoliticians much as mainstream economists regard the so-called “gold bugs,” who persist in believing in the eternal value of gold as a medium of exchange and who place their faith in the old constants which they are sure will inevitably reappear. Similarly, the geopoliticans, an exotic subculture within the expert community, believe that despite lofty principles and progress, the mean — strategic conflict over land — will always prevail. Sometimes, they are right. The Foundations of Geopolitics sold out in four editions, and continues to be assigned as a textbook at the General Staff Academy and other military universities in Russia. “There has probably not been another book published in Russia during the post-communist period which has exerted a comparable influence on Russian military, police, and statist foreign policy elites,” writes historian John Dunlop, a Hoover Institution specialist on the Russian right.
Submitted for your consideration are the Spratly Islands and the South China Sea. The competing territorial claim situation there is just another border dispute in the millennia-long “Land Control Epic.” This one deserves your attention, even if only as an academic exercise because it’s one of the more interesting case studies in political power in recent times. It deserves your consideration economically because of trillions of dollars of trade and natural resources hinging on the outcome. It deserves your attention in a practical sense because if a hot war starts between America and China, this will be the spark.
via https://thearcmag.com/chinese-island-building-and-you-a650baa91b8b
Flandrensis, its flag, its motto and the cheerful personality of its Grand Duke attracted people online and the project became so exciting that Niels decided to make it something bigger. He continued, “I wanted it to be useful. I learned of micronations proclaiming territories in Antarctica so I did it, but as an ecological venture, to raise awareness on ice melting. Flandrensis is the only country that does not want citizens on its territory”.
It was not the individual events that made 2014 so topsy-turvy: after all, what could top the 1991 Soviet collapse for sheer disruption of the status quo? The year instead was remarkable for the number of big, consequential and utterly unforeseen events—Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the rise of ISIL, the diplomatic breakthrough between the US and Cuba, the emergence of US shale oil and the collapse of oil prices, not to mention a clutch of other economic, business and market events. All in all, it has been evident for months that 2014 was a staggering maelstrom of surprises.
http://qz.com/320516/how–2014-played-havoc-with-geopolitical-predictions-including-ours/