This stuff is going to dominate the next 30y as completely as the rise of the internet dominated the last 30. It’s going to get uglier faster.
Conversation
Moore’s law of geopolitical unraveling: the total length of activated geopolitical fault lines (measured literally in km of stressed borders) doubles every 18mo.
3
3
27
Somebody want to help me quantify this with historical data on conflicts and Google maps wizardry?
6
15
Selfishly, kinda horrified about how awful it would be if this happened in India or the US, the two geographies I have high personal exposure to, and also the 2nd and 3rd largest countries by population.
3
19
And China at #1 has way more faultlines than we’re admitting I suspect.
The next 30y worldwide might make the India-Pakistan partition look like a picnic.
4
22
The Trump years made the stress lines glow blue-red, fractally down to gerrymandered county lines and city/suburb/exurb/country boundaries. I’d guess 2016 added a million miles worth of US domestic and international borders to the “slightly stressed” category.
2
1
19
The Soviet zone I think is exhibiting relatively familiar fracture patterns, but democracies are either going to be better or worse since the faultlines are mostly at the lowest fractal levels, due to population mobility and Schelling sorting effects.
1
10
I suspect this is wishful thinking/planning/prep on CCPs part. They’ve just been enjoying the dividend of growth during the Chimerica trade-vortex years and a contented population pleased at being lifted wholesale from poverty to middle class.
Quote Tweet
Replying to @vgr
The CCP seems pretty capable of learning and adapting. They scrutinized the fall of the USSR very carefully to avoid the same fate, and are probably paying very close attention to mistakes Russia is making now, too.
1
16
When that Dengian growth era finally flatlines or turns into decline, no Russian history lessons will save the CCP. Bigger is different. And China is 10x Russia. Even if they were culturally identical it would be different.
2
14
Sadly history suggests otherwise at least for India. I’d guess about 10% of “Indian” history by time exhibits even the nominal level of political integration of today’s maps.
Quote Tweet
Replying to @vgr
I just don’t think that India, China or the US blows up like this. Nor Russia. They might have a civil war, but none of these places are going to end up splitting imho. Iraq? Maybe! Ukraine ending up cut apart! Happened! But India? Unlikely (Kashmir leaves? Don’t think so)
2
5
I’ve owned this excellent atlas for 20y. At one point I graphed the area-frequency distribution over time of political entities over ~2500 years. You get maybe 500 years with an entity the size of modern India peak Mauryan, Gupta, Mughal, and British eras. amazon.com/Atlas-Survey-H
Replying to
Moral of the story… political maps are radically unstable relative to the perceived stability from the perspective of fortunate single lifetimes. True of all parts of the world. Even the US (civil war).
3
2
17
At a small, relatively nonviolent scale, my own life features such boundary instability (I was born in Bihar state but my hometown is now in Jharkhand state that emerged from a mostly non-violent but stressful separatist movement)
2
5
Yikes. Imagine missing this target significantly
Quote Tweet
Replying to @vgr
You can Xi's fear. He has to create 1 million jobs a *month* to employ non-coastal migrants who are streaming to the coastal provinces. Hence, 'zombie' cities, etc.
1
8
Bright side, geopolitical plate tectonics and volcanism are probably as necessary for civilization as the geological variety is for biology.
Quote Tweet
Wonder what is the most politically stable geography in the world. As in a city or region that has been caught up in the fewest geopolitical upheavals, boundary redrawings, or migrations.
It’s like trying to find the most seismically stable part of earth, with fewest earthquakes
1
10
Replying to
As a counter argument, any large country you see today would not have 500 years like that as you described. China may have a little more but I doubt a whole lot.




