Weekly Graphic

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.

Aug. 25, 2017 Terrorism is a phenomenon with which Europe is all too familiar. Consider World War I. The proximate cause of the conflict was an act of terrorism – the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Consider the year 1972, when, in Munich, Black September, a secular Palestinian militant group, killed members of the Israeli Olympic team. That same year was also among the bloodiest of the Troubles of Northern Ireland.

Just 13 years later, terrorist organizations carried out multiple attacks on civilian targets: TWA Flight 847, an Italian cruise ship, airports in Vienna and in Rome. In 1986, the Libyan government, led by Moammar Gadhafi, sponsored an attack at a club in West Berlin. Ronald Reagan said 1986 was the year “the world, at long last, came to grips with the plague of terrorism.” Two years later was the Lockerbie bombing.

The times we live in are not special. Terrorism has long been a part of European life. In fact, more people died from terrorist attacks in the 1970s and 1980s than in any recent decade.

Aug. 18, 2017  Before Islam, Arabs were confined largely to the Arabian Peninsula. They were nomads, warring and leaderless. To the north of the peninsula lay the Byzantine Empire. Across the Persian Gulf lay the Sassanid Empire, which stretched from Mesopotamia to the South Caucasus. The two empires had fought each other intermittently for more than three centuries. It was under these circumstances that their fortunes changed as Islam emerged and became the founding philosophy of a new government in Medina. Ten years later, when the Prophet Muhammad died and a new leader replaced him – ushering in the first Arab empire, known as the Rashidun Caliphate – Arab Muslims had assumed control of the entire Arabian Peninsula.

But the Arabs embraced Persian culture faster than the Persians converted to Islam. In fact, so great was the Persians’ influence that when Islam spread to Central Asia, the Turkic people who lived there converted to the Persianized version of Islam. Stunningly, the traditions of Persian subjects were adopted by Arab overlords – and not the other way around.

Aug. 11, 2017 Energy sales are an important source of revenue, of course, but for Russia they are more than that: They are an instrument of geopolitical power. They give Moscow considerable influence over the countries whose energy needs are met by Russian exports.

France and Germany – the de facto, if often irreconcilable, leaders of the European Union – illustrate how Russian energy can shape foreign policy. France may rely heavily on foreign energy, but most of its oil and natural gas comes from Algeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Libya – not Russia. France can therefore afford to be more aggressive and supportive of sanctions against Russia.

Not so with Germany, which receives 57 percent of its natural gas and 35 percent of its crude oil from Russia. Berlin must therefore tread lightly between its primary security benefactor, the U.S., and its primary source of energy, Russia.

This is one reason Germany has been such an outspoken critic of the recent U.S. sanctions, which penalize businesses in any country that collaborate or participate in joint ventures with Russian energy firms. Germany supports the construction of Nord Stream 2, a pipeline that would run through the Baltic Sea, circumventing Ukraine – the transit state through which Germany currently receives much of its energy imports. The pipeline would help to safeguard German energy procurement, since it would allow Russia to punish Ukraine by withholding shipments of natural gas without punishing countries such as Germany further downstream.

Aug. 4, 2017 Russia and Canada are the most important countries in the Arctic. Russia holds the most Arctic territory by far. Accounting for the 200-nautical-mile limit that the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea grants Russia the right to claim, Russia occupies approximately 40 percent of the Arctic’s territory.

More important, the two major sea routes that permit ships to traverse the Arctic run along the Russian and Canadian coasts: the Northern Sea Route and the Northwest Passage. The Northern Sea Route is a more reliable maritime trade route than the Northwest Passage, which the Arctic Institute noted last year was impossible to traverse even at the peak of summer because of ice conditions.