Reading Tracks
Curated sequences that guide you through connected topics — from first principles to the present day.
Why Nations Compete
Thucydides watched Athens and Sparta sleepwalk into war and wrote down why. Twenty-four centuries later, the logic hasn'…
Geography as Destiny
Before ideology, before economics, before Twitter — there was terrain. Mackinder saw it first: the layout of continents …
How the World Was Made
The international order didn't fall from the sky — it was hammered together in specific rooms, after specific catastroph…
The US-China Collision Course
One power built the global order; the other wants to revise it. This is the rivalry that will define your lifetime, and …
Economic Weapons
Sanctions, export controls, dollar weaponisation, rare-earth leverage — the 21st century discovered you can ruin a count…
The New Battlefields
Clausewitz said war is politics by other means. He didn't know the half of it. Modern conflict happens below the thresho…
Energy Is Everything
Every geopolitical crisis you've ever heard of is, at bottom, an energy story. The Persian Gulf holds half the world's o…
Information as Weapon
Control the narrative, control the outcome. From Clausewitz's 'fog of war' to AI-generated disinformation, information h…
Small Places, Global Consequences
Block the Taiwan Strait and the semiconductor industry collapses. Close Hormuz and oil hits $200. Shut the Suez and Euro…
The Map That Broke the Middle East
In 1916, two diplomats drew lines on a map of the Ottoman ruins. A century of war followed. This track is a single causa…
Borders Drawn in Blood
Westphalia invented the nation-state. Then Europe exported it to places it didn't fit — carving Africa at a conference i…
- The Treaty of Westphalia
- Sovereignty
- The Scramble for Africa
- The Ottoman Empire
- The Sykes-Picot Agreement
The Paranoid Superpower
Russia has no natural borders. Let that sink in. The North European Plain is a highway for invaders, and every Russian l…
When Superpowers Stumble
Containment theory sounded elegant in George Kennan's memo. Then came Korea (a draw), Vietnam (a disaster), Afghanistan …
The Next Wars
Water scarcity, climate-driven migration, melting Arctic shipping lanes, the scramble for rare earths, the weaponisation…
The German Question
Germany is the weight at the centre of European geopolitics. Every European order since Napoleon has been, at bottom, an…
The Iran Crisis
A revolution in 1979 created the Middle East's most persistent disruptor. For forty-five years, the Islamic Republic bui…
The Nuclear Age
In 1945, a single bomb flattened a city and split history in two. The logic that followed — mutually assured destruction…
Africa's Century
Europe carved it up at a conference in Berlin. Independence came with borders designed to fail. But the story doesn't en…
Water, Food & the Climate Weapon
The next wars won't start over ideology or territory — they'll start over water tables, crop failures, and coastlines. C…
- Water Geopolitics
- Climate Geopolitics
- The Geopolitics of Energy Transition
- Migration Geopolitics
- The Arctic
The Chain Reaction
Israel destroyed three Arab air forces in six days in 1967. The humiliation produced the 1973 war. The 1973 war produced…
650 Million People, One Doctrine
In 1823, a president nobody remembers well declared that the entire Western Hemisphere was America's sphere of influence…
The Forty Miles That Run the World
The Strait of Hormuz is 21 miles wide at its narrowest. Twenty percent of the world's oil passes through it every day. T…
Too Small to Afford Mistakes
Taiwan has been one Chinese decision away from invasion for seventy-five years and has spent that time building the worl…
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