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
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forward slash wonder why thanks so much
for watching and I'll see you next time