A Geopolitical Tour of the World

hello and welcome to a geopolitical tour of the world in this video I'm going to take you on a gated journey around the globe talking to you about some disputes oddities complexities or just some things are good to be aware of and this complicated planet we live on some of the things I'll be talking about I already have entire videos on if you want a deeper understanding we'll start at the centre of the world the prime meridian which goes through Greenwich England this is because that's where the British invented time in 1884 here we have two independent countries the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland the country of Ireland comprises the majority of the island of Ireland while the northern part called Northern Ireland as one of the four constituent countries of the United Kingdom Northern Ireland doesn't really have an official flag because it's population doesn't exactly agree on whether they should remain British or unite with the rest of Ireland the other three constituent countries are in Great Britain and surrounding Manor Islands Scotland England and Wales some people use the terms Great Britain United Kingdom and England interchangeably but please don't as a Scottish really don't appreciate it in fact many Scots don't want to be part of the UK despite an unsuccessful referendum in 2014 there's still a very sizable independence movement even more so since breaks it so just remember Great Britain and England the UK and independent country made up of four non independent countries and England one of those four countries oh and there's also the ale of mine Jersey and Guernsey which are British but not part of the UK for some reason they're referred to as chrome dependencies okay we really need to move on lots to cover if we go into the AC north we find the Faroe Islands and Greenland two places that you wouldn't think have much in common but they do they're both Danish they're both autonomous territories of Denmark and despite the immense difference in size between the two they actually both have a similar population of around 50,000 unsurprisingly Greenland is one of the least densely populated parts of the world the åland is literally three-quarters ace now moving on to line with more hospitable climate mainland Europe first thing to talk about is probably the European Union an economic and political union of 27 European states it used to be 28 but you know breaks it and the EU has what's called the Schengen area an area of free travel in which participating countries have abolished border controls not all members of the EU are part of this area and also some non EU members are same with the euro zone a monetary union in which all countries use a shared currency the Euro 19 of the 27 members are part of the euro zone four countries have agreements with the EU to officially use the euro despite not being part of the EU and then two others just sort of to say that they wanted it to without any agreement in place they're given how much Europeans loved conquering the world for a few centuries that are plenty of parts of European countries outside of Europe like the large part of France and South America are smaller islands just off the coast of Madagascar of course I won't be able to cover up them all just a quick mention about the Vatican City which is considered a country the smallest in the world entirely strange by Attlee but is not a member of the United Nations although as an observer state okay to Spain next this region here is called Catalonia it's one of the 17 autonomous communities of Spain many Catalans have been fighting for independence from Spain over the last century with things really picking up over the last decade Catalonia saw permission from Madrid to hold an independence referendum spin said no Catalonia said they'll do it anyway spin said we know that's illegal but they did it anyway the result was 92 percent in favour of Independence but everyone who wanted to remain parts being just boycotted the vote so it doesn't really count the president of Catalonia later declared independence soare of it was all very confusing and nobody really knows what happened Catalonia is still popping though and the former president is currently living in self-imposed exile and Belgium on the southern coast the Iberian Peninsula there's Gibraltar an overseas British territory which was ceded from Spain about three hundred years ago and just across the Mediterranean there's a couple of parts of Africa they're still part of Spain arrey what's next is the Balkans this is a part of Europe in which everyone hates each other probably the biggest point of contention as the self-declared partially recognized state of Kosovo or the autonomous Serbian province of Kosovo depending on your viewpoint the prophets declared its independence in 2008 after a war with Serbia a few years earlier in which Kosovo received military support from NATO the population of kosovo is predominantly albanian as well as this there is also the near three-decade naming dispute between Greece and massa North Macedonia as it's now called basically Macedonia is a large geographic region much of which is in Greece and was named as such after an ancient Greek kingdom of macedon so Greece wasn't too happy in 1981 when their neighbor declared independence from Yugoslavia as the Republic of Macedonia due to Greek objections the country was referred to as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and diplomatic organizations like the UN after 28 years the insanity was finally ended and the country was renamed the Republic of North Macedonia but I'm pretty sure neither side was really happy without calm and they both still hate each other on to Russia now this is the Crimean Peninsula it was an expelled from Ukraine and 2014 after a referendum of questionable legitimacy it was only actually part of Ukraine for about a half a century since was transferred to Ukraine while both were Soviet republics Western governments and the UN do not recognize the annexation and still considered the peninsula to be part of Ukraine nothing has actually been done about it though one more part of Russia that's good to be aware of is the small aids clade here called the Kaliningrad Oblast it was originally part of the German state of Prussia but the Soviet Union cleaned it after the Allies victory in world war ii and then after the fall of the soviet union that became completely cut off from the rest of russia traveling to Russia's southern border with Georgia Georgia has a somewhat precarious political situation as it has not one but two parts of the country that have declared their independence of cassia and South Ossetia both states have control over the ADHD claim however they very much lack international recognition both states declared during the payment in the 1990s with backing from Russia there was even a brief war over the dispute between Georgia and Russia in 2008 no prizes for guessing how that turned out next we'll take a trip down to the Mediterranean to the beautiful summer getaway of Cyprus the political situation here though as a bear ugly the Ale it is currently divided between the country of Cyprus and the unrecognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus the zun buffer zone separating the two political entities that was established after the inter-ethnic violence between the Greeks and the Turks of the åland erupted in the 1960s shortly after Cyprus gained independence from the UK there was a Greek who followed by a Turkish invasion and they all got very messy oh and there's also some British bases in Ireland I guess the strategic location was just too valuable to give up moving further south and on to Africa probably the most noticeable geopolitical dispute in Africa is the area known as Western Sahara the region is claimed and mostly controlled by Morocco but the region has also been proclaimed as the independent country of the Sirah we out of democratic republic by the indigenous rebel group of the Polisario Front were started off by fighting against Spanish colonial rule in the 1970s in 1976 Spain just sort of knocked over the whole situation and debated the region between Morocco and another neighboring country Mauritania who also claimed the region a latane but not anymore on the opposite coast of Africa we have a Somalia at which once again is a dispute caused by the Europeans Somaliland was controlled by the British while the rest of why's today the country of Somalia was controlled by Attlee in 1960 the two were joined to make a new independent country Somaliland declared independence in 1991 and a civil war has been ongoing ever since now moving on to the metal alpha okay so it's quite literally impossible to give any kind of explanation of what the hell is going on here in just a couple of minutes so just keep in mind that everything I say is going to be way over simplified before the beginning of the currently ongoing situation there is an area called Palestine which was under British administration in 1948 the United Nations passed a resolution to partition between Jewish and Arab communities the descendants of these out of communities in this region and refugee camps nearby are what we today call Palestinians after the resolution was passed the State of Israel was declared this led to the first of several wars with its neighbors in which Israel was often fighting against most or all of them at once territory in this region has bounced back and forth between different countries and organizations many times today Israel's also in control of the Golan Heights where she'd captured from Syria in 1967 now as well as Israel we also have the state of Palestine declared in 1988 which is a partially recognized state with observer status at the United Nations his claimed territory as the West Bank in which an interim division agreement was reached with Israel and the 90s as well as the Gaza Strip which has actually been controlled by Hamas since 2007 a Palestinian political party and variously described as a terrorist organization things are even more complicated in Jerusalem an ancient city with profound significance to Jews Muslims and Christians the city is fully controlled by Israel but claimed by both groups as their capital though with different parts the city being claimed by each group on top of all of this there's also the issue of Israeli settlements which we don't have time to get to and I'd really like to move on that please staying in the Middle East there's the situation in Syria in which a devastating multi-sided Civil War has been ongoing for nearly 10 years now this began with a series of anti-government protests part of a broader movement known as the Arab Spring which was violently suppressed the conflict is one of the bloodiest of the 21st century and has spilled over to several neighboring countries there's also the situation in Iraq that is still ongoing conflict that stemmed from the us-led invasion in 2003 to topple the government of Saddam Hussein with Isis having mostly lost their territory in Iraq the violence is continued in the form of an insurgency featuring several rebel groups Isis was defeated in the Civil War with help from the Kurds a distinct ethnic group in northern Iraq that is seeking independence the people overwhelmingly voted in favour of independence spot the Iraqi government in the referendum illegal all right let's move east of the metal east and on to the Indian subcontinent where we found the disputed region of Jammu and cashmere basically this idea was a princely state of India while under British control and in 1947 when India was divided into India and Pakistan disagreements about which country to join caused conflict and a de facto partition of the region that remains unresolved this day around here is also several territorial disputes between India and China along their extensive border all of which are controlled by China and speaking of China there's plenty here to talk about - we've got today it's Hong Kong Taiwan and probably much more we don't have time for so Tibet Tibet is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China the Tibetan people are ethnically distinct from the Han Chinese majority but the area has been under Chinese control for three hundred years however when in pedia rule in China came to an end with the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912 today experienced a few decades of the facto independence this is when China became a republic for the first time however when a civil war broke out between the government and the Communist rebellion the Communist won and proclaimed the People's Republic of China the new communist government annexed Abed in 1951 albeit with resistance from Tibet a thousand strong army now that civil war that was won by the communists the losing saved the Republic of China didn't just disappear in fact this brings us on to our next stop Taiwan this is where the Republican / Nationalist government fled to in 1949 while this country is commonly referred to as Taiwan it's name is actually unchanged this day the Republic of China China's stove used haiwan as part of its territory despite the People's Republic never having any jurisdiction over the åland in their history Taiwan has its own government president militarily etc etc and is just like any other country in most ways however given how powerful China as officially acknowledged in Taiwan means China cutting all ties both diplomatic and more importantly economic Taiwan is not a member of the UN but plenty of countries have unofficial relations with Taipei there's also Hong Kong which is part of China but has a special administrative status under the so called one China two systems policy mass protests took place throughout much of 2019 when a controversial extradition bill was proposed even after the bail was withdrawn protests continued for fill democracy with a list of five demands protesters were often subject to police brutality and arrest Hong Kong used to be British until 1997 when it was transferred back to China with a 50-year agreement the Hong Kong would not be subject to mainland China's economic system literally no one knows what happened in 2047 witness agreement expires close by there's also North and South Korea Korea had been annexed by Japan in 1910 but with the Japanese defeat in world war ii the peninsula was to be temporarily divided the Soviet Union controlled North and the United States the south with the plan to unified Korea into one country but then the Cold War happened and suddenly the two countries controlling Korea hated each other and were less willing to cooperate there was a three-year war which didn't really accomplish much except massive casualties on both sides North Korea is the most isolated country in the world with its population unable to leave on with little knowledge of the outside world North Korea has nuclear weapons though paints the lack of intervention elsewhere in Asia to be aware of there's a country that nobody really knows what to call it Burma or Myanmar and there's also the South China Sea which is the most disputed part of the entire planet cleaned by like 40 countries or something probably where do we go from here we can probably just skip over Australia and all that down there they're pretty chill not too much to talk about licensed dads go all the way across the Pacific Ocean which is mostly empty except for Hawaii which is part of the United States but has a Union Jack on its flag for some reason so now around the Americas North and South America although some people especially from Latin America refer to them as one continent America singular her English speakers generally used this word to refer to the country the United States there's plenty going on in the Caribbean there are 13 independent nations most of which no one has ever heard of as well as European colonies and territories and also abandoned part of Colombia kill flag though oh and Puerto Rico that wants to awkwardly add a 51st star to the American flag a particularly peculiar case as with a bunch of Dutch islands Aruba curaçao and Sint Maarten which are actually countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands making up for constituent countries along with the Netherlands itself somewhat similar to the UK both in the constituent country of the Netherlands there are three more Caribbean islands Bonaire Sint Eustatius and Saba here's a Venn diagram to help you elsewhere in the Americas there's the Falkland Islands British islands with British people who nearly unanimously voted to remain a British territory but for some reason Argentina claims the master own they even fought a brief war in 1982 when Argentina invaded the islands but this only happened because the dictator was trying to distract his people from the country's failing economy let's see what else well there's Antarctica which is mostly just ice and snow but he is land so countries will try and stick a flag in and claim as their own because why not at this point their various claims the continent some of which overlap as well some unclaimed land but it's mostly irrelevant because of the Antarctic Treaty the treaty has suspended all new claims guarantees freedom for scientific exploration and a ban of all military activity sometimes when we look at the world the lanes on a map don't fully do justice to the situation on the ground you often have to look beyond the borders to see what lies beneath geopolitics can be both complicated and fascinating in equal measure and it's always good to know what's going on in the world a great way to keep yourself informed as by watching documentaries on curiosity stream an online streaming service with thousands of titles on science technology history lifestyle and so much more I recently watched a great documentary about tsunamis and how scientists are trying to learn more and more about in help better prepare for future disasters you can start watching for just $2.99 a month by signing up by curiosity stream comm forward slash wonder why with your subscription you'll also get access to nebula a streaming service for independent creators nebula has a lot of original content such as the multi creator series working titles a series dedicated to TV shows with great opening title sequences recently I made an episode about the greatest sitcoms of all time go check it out again that's curiosity stream comm forward slash wonder why thanks so much for watching and I'll see you next time

Channel: WonderWhy

Views: 2,768,238

Keywords: geopolitics, taiwan, israel-palestine, western sahara, somaliland, crimea, catalonia

Id: zZJFozFsnIU

Length: 18min 17sec (1097 seconds)

Published: Sun May 31 2020