The New Cold War: Arctic Geopolitics
As the planet warms, the once-impenetrable ice cap of the Arctic is vanishing, revealing a new ocean of opportunity. This great thaw is triggering a high-stakes geopolitical rush among global…
Tag: choke points
The Amber Road: An Ancient Gemstone Highway
Long before the Silk Road, a more ancient network connected the continents. The Amber Road was a series of river and land routes that ferried precious Baltic amber from the…
The Strait of Hormuz: A Global Oil Chokepoint
A tiny strip of water separating Iran and Oman, the Strait of Hormuz is the world's most important oil chokepoint. With nearly a third of all seaborne oil passing through…
Defensive Urbanism: The Anatomy of a Fortress City
Before modern warfare, survival dictated urban design, creating fortress cities where geography and architecture merged into masterpieces of defense. This post explores how strategic locations, from hilltops to riverbends, combined…
The Geopolitics of Mountain Water Towers
Mountains are the planet's natural "water towers", storing and distributing fresh water to nearly half the global population through the great river systems they create. This critical role places mountain…
Law of the Sea: Carving Up the World’s Oceans
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is the "constitution for the oceans", an invisible framework that carves up over 70% of the globe into zones…
The Logistics of a Single Amazon Package
From a bustling factory in Shenzhen, across the vast Pacific Ocean, and through the American heartland, we trace the incredible geographical odyssey of a single Amazon package. The simple click…
The Logistics of a Single Amazon Package
From a bustling factory in Shenzhen, across the vast Pacific Ocean, and through the American heartland, we trace the incredible geographical odyssey of a single Amazon package. The simple click…
Geopolitics of Undersea Cables
The internet is not a "cloud"; it's a physical network of over a million kilometers of fiber optic cables lying on the ocean floor. This hidden geography of undersea cables…