Weekly Graphic

Nov. 17, 2017 Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s revolutionary vision for his country’s future bears little resemblance to its present, yet polls suggest that a strong majority of Indian society may have bought into that vision. According to a Pew survey released this week, 88 percent of Indians hold a favorable view of Modi, and 83 percent are satisfied with the state of the economy. Most notably, 70 percent said they were satisfied with the direction their country is moving in. Just 29 percent felt this way in 2013 – the year before Modi took office – which means there has been a seismic shift in public sentiment in India.

Modi’s vision can be boiled down to three elements: strengthening the central government, strengthening the military and strengthening Indian society. The third element is in many ways the most daunting. India is a vast collection of religions, ethnicities and languages. Modi doesn’t view this diversity as an advantage. He is a Hindu nationalist, and he wants India to be a nation-state with a uniquely Hindu identity.

Nov. 10, 2017 Last month, the Chinese Communist Party held its 19th National Congress in which Chinese President Xi Jinping ushered in a new political era for the country. Xi’s first term was a period of profound transition that laid the groundwork for what was formalized in the congress in October. In the current state of play, Xi and his allies now have control over at least four fundamental sources of power in the Chinese system.

The first is the Politburo and its Standing Committee, where most Chinese policy is made. Three of the committee’s seven members are now loyal to Xi. (Xi occupies the seventh spot.) Notably, none of the new appointments are younger than 60. Since party secretaries serve five-year terms, and since 68 is the semi-formal retirement age of Chinese politicians, none would be able to serve two terms as Xi’s successor following the next congress in 2022. (Xi was anointed by his predecessor, Hu Jintao, five years out. Hu was picked a full decade before he took power.) In other words, Xi has laid the groundwork for his rule to extend beyond the next five years. As for the Politburo, more than half of its 25 members are considered Xi associates. Xi had already replaced 23 of the party’s 31 provincial party secretaries – some of whom are now Politburo members – even before the congress started. With so many officials beholden to Xi, his orders are that much more likely to be executed.

Nov. 3, 2017 Geography affects the development of all nations in profound ways, but rarely has it done so more strikingly than in Spain. Today the country is renowned for its beaches, but its defining geographic feature is its mountains. It is the existence – and more important, the location – of these mountains that has fostered the distinct, regional communities that make Spain so difficult to govern.

Though mountains are Spain’s most conspicuous geographic feature, they are not the only one to impede government efforts to unify the country. The weather patterns in Spain differ profoundly from region to region. Northwestern Spain gets a great deal of rain each year – sometimes as much as 80 inches a year. Compare that to the Southern Meseta, which sometimes sees as little as 10 inches of rain per year. Central and southern Spain are much dryer, though the Guadalquivir River Valley is a notable exception. Northeastern Spain has comparatively less rainfall too, but Catalonia has the Ebro River (and Valencia the Turia River) for irrigation.

Oct. 28, 2017 The North Caucasus stretches from the Caspian Sea in the southeast to the Sea of Azov in the northwest. The westernmost part of the area, composed of Krasnodar region and the enclave of Adygea, lies within the Southern district. Krasnodar consists mainly of flat lands, which allowed Russia to more easily slavicize the territory after the forced exodus of its Circassian inhabitants in the late 19th century.

The rest of the North Caucasus region – the North Caucasian district – has maintained its distinct Muslim identity and hence was configured into a single federal district. This district runs from Krasnodar to the Caspian Sea and consists of the republics of Karachay-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Chechnya and Dagestan. The region of Stavropol – sandwiched between Krasnodar in the west and Dagestan in the east, and sharing borders with each of the other republics in the south – and North Ossetia are the only majority ethnic Russian and Orthodox Christian units within the North Caucasian district.

Oct. 20, 2017 Were it not for its mountains, the Caucasus would be a 300-mile-wide (480-kilometer-wide) land bridge between the Caspian and Black seas leading directly into the heart of Russia. Mountains, however, are the Caucasus’ defining geographical feature. Two ranges run through it. The Greater Caucasus, as the name implies, is the taller and more rugged mountain range. It spans nearly the entire length of the land bridge from the northeastern shores of the Black Sea to the Caspian, giving way to a low-lying plain only slightly west of Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital. Effectively, the Greater Caucasus is a nearly impassable barrier between Russia and the countries of the South Caucasus. To the south are the Lesser Caucasus, beginning in southern Georgia and curving southeast into Armenia, around Lake Sevan, and into the contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Oct. 13, 2017 As Islamist militant groups attempt to expand their operations into new areas, some have looked to the Sahel region in western and central Africa and seen opportunity. The militant groups exist in pockets throughout the western Sahel and Lake Chad basin. Some, like Boko Haram, which has holdings in northern Nigeria and parts of Niger, Chad and Cameroon, are expansive and relatively well-defined. Others, like the numerous groups in Mali, are smaller and more scattered. The Sahara separates these local groups in and near the Sahel from territory dominated by al-Qaida and IS in North Africa – particularly Libya and Algeria.

This part of the Sahel can provide revenue sources for groups able to access and control key territory. Trade in illicit activities passes through the region, as traffickers try to get their goods into Europe. The region also holds valuable deposits of uranium, gold and other metals that can be sold on the black market. Jihadist groups like al-Qaida and IS also see this part of the Sahel as a fertile recruitment ground.

Oct. 6, 2017 Mexico is a country with a booming, high-value manufacturing sector and sophisticated business class. But it’s also a country with extreme poverty and dependence on subsistence farming in some areas. The coexistence of these two realities gave rise to the phrase “Two Mexicos” – and raises questions about geopolitics’ role in Mexico’s development.

Often, the disparity found within a dual economy is not a temporary phenomenon or transitional phase of economic development but an enduring quality born of geopolitics. Such is the case with Mexico, which has struggled with economic inequality since it was a Spanish colony in the 1520s. After the Mexican revolution and its subsequent reconstruction, Mexican governments more openly acknowledged their country’s discrepancies, enacting policy reforms meant to harmonize the economy’s most important areas: land ownership, social welfare, infrastructure development and industrial development. Sometimes they were successful, but they never fully reconciled the differences between the Two Mexicos.

Sept. 29, 2017 Eastern Europe has exhibited some impressive growth rates over the past decade.

But despite making up roughly 20 percent of the total population of the EU, the region accounts for only about 7.4 percent of the EU’s gross domestic product. There are many factors that explain why, but among the most important is that these countries spent decades behind the Soviet Union’s Iron Curtain. That Eastern Europe makes up only 7.4 percent of the EU’s GDP is not an indictment of its recent economic performance; it is an indicator of just how much of a head start the West had over the East.

But this lack of development has been in some ways a blessing for Eastern European countries. These countries have an abundance of skilled and cheap labor, which has fueled much of the economic activity in the region. For example, in the 1990s and 2000s, as German manufacturers were trying to make their exports more competitive, they found countries on their doorstep – particularly the Visegrad Four countries (Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic) – with low labor costs, favorable tax environments, and a productive and educated workforce.

Sept. 22, 2017 Turkish forces recently began massing on the southwestern border with Syria. As many as 80 military vehicles, including an unknown number of tanks and medical aid trucks, were dispatched to a part of Hatay province that’s approximately 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the border. Another convoy of an unspecified number of military vehicles was reportedly sent to another area of Hatay, just 2 miles from Syria’s border, and a third collection of 20 army vehicles was seen close to the border near Bab al-Hawa in Syria, about 7 miles from Reyhanli.

By themselves, these movements might seem innocuous – it is, after all, normal for Turkey to move soldiers and materiel around its borders depending on where it believes threats could arise. But context is everything, and the context of these deployments is not routine. On Sept. 15, Turkey, Iran and Russia agreed in Astana to set up a safe zone in Syria’s Idlib province, just west of Aleppo. They reportedly agreed to divide the province into three zones, each controlled by a different country. That same day, a pro-government Turkish newspaper reported that 25,000 Turkish soldiers were preparing for deployment into Idlib province, with the goal of taking control of a roughly 2,000-square-mile (5,000-square-kilometer) area with over 2 million inhabitants.

Sept. 15, 2017 The prospect that North Korea could fire missiles at its enemies has, perhaps unsurprisingly, shone a spotlight on the ways in which potential targets could defend themselves. And when it comes to missiles, some say the best defense is more missiles. Ballistic missile defense indeed seems like a natural antidote, and though these systems have been in use for some time – and some have even intercepted their targets – the security they promise could hardly be considered absolute.

The U.S. began to pour money into missile defense systems as soon as it showed the destructive power of nuclear weapons at the end of World War II. BMD became a fixture of U.S. defense planning throughout the Cold War, with investment peaking under President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative during the mid-1980s. Eventually, the amount of money needed to counter advanced arsenals from countries like Russia and China was deemed unsustainable. So after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the focus on missile defense shifted to emerging, more limited threats from so-called rogue states like Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Since 2002, the U.S. has spent between $8 billion and $10 billion annually on research, testing and deployment of BMD systems – almost all of it under the watchful eye of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.

Sept. 8, 2017 Lebanon’s recent history provides valuable insights into what we can expect from Syria’s civil war and future. Lebanon is much smaller than Syria, and its ethnic groups were more evenly proportioned before its civil war. Even so, in 1975, it went to war – and at war it stayed for more than 15 years. We expect Syria’s civil war – which is already midway through its sixth year – to last at least as long.

Lebanon’s post-war years haven’t exactly been peaceful either. Syria’s will be worse. Syria is a broken country, and no amount of diplomatic handwringing or bombing is going to put it back together. The reason is simple: ethnic and sectarian chaos.

Sept. 1, 2017 Natural disasters like Hurricane Harvey are unpredictable. They come quickly and, compared to great plains and mountain chains, leave just as quickly. No matter how diligent or rigorous we of GPF are, there are circumstances we will not be able to anticipate, and the only antidote for that is to be quick to recognize when those circumstances are upon us and to correct our course accordingly. Hurricane Harvey, and the concurrent storms of southern China, are serious enough to consider whether they qualify.

Harvey hit the heart of the U.S. oil industry. So far, it has shut down 11.2 percent of U.S. refining capacity (about one-third of all U.S. refining capacity is in Texas’ Gulf Coast) and roughly 25 percent of U.S. oil production from the Gulf of Mexico (accounting for about 20 percent of U.S. crude production). It has also closed all ports along the Texas coast.