Listening to this podcast reminded me that the world is a complicated place; in the 45-minute piece, I learned about the importance of the Caspian Sea the events that led Sweden to ask to join NATO. I’m not going to summarize everything that was included in the discussion, but if you can spare 45 minutes, you could do worse than listen to the podcast yourself. Here’s the link to the podcast on Spotify.
But there are three high points I’d like to emphasize. One, the important geographic features of the war in Ukraine. I’m like pretty much everyone else, I think: I hadn’t thought much about the geographic features of Ukraine before the Russian invasion in March of 2022. Then, for a few weeks, earnest Western journalists reported from within the country, often speaking against a backdrop of cities under attack or troops moving down a road. The first 10 minutes or so of the podcast focused on where Russian forces were and where they had been, and where civilian populations were under greatest threat. I didn’t have a map with me while I was walking, so I couldn’t reference anything easily. I came back and looked at this map to understand things just a little better.
The, the discussion shifted to focus on the strategic importance of the Caspian Sea. I didn’t have this map handy either, but it helped orient me when I got back to my desk.
The Caspian Sea is the largest fresh-water lake in the world, and is strategically located in Central Asia. Most importantly (at least for this podcast), it offers a way for both Russia and Iran to circumvent sanctions imposed on both nations, thus prolonging the Ukraine war and weaking the impact of sanctions. One surprising thing I learned was that there is little international law governing what nations do at sea. The most important countries so far as international maritime law is concerned are Panama, Liberia, and the Marshall Islands – three nations that are not superpowers by any stretch of the imagination but have the largest number of ships engaging in international trade. Who knew?
The third issue this podcast focused on was Sweden’s decision to ask to join NATO. The host of the podcast interviewed a Swedish woman (I didn’t catch whether she was a journalist or an academic) to talk about how Sweden came to this decision. In a fairly short but wide-ranging discussion, they touched on the international climate that led Sweden to reverse its long-standing neutrality within Europe and the impact of Islamophobia in Sweden that led Turkish President Erdogan to oppose Sweden’s application before rather suddenly supporting it in recent months. All of this was taking place against the backdrop of a change in Sweden’s government, as a left-of-center government was replaced by a right-of-center coalition.
The discussion included references to this conflict’s impact on international trade, generally addressing the impact of the war on global supply chains for grain and oil/gas. They mentioned the connection of these issues both to famine (and coup) in Niger and to the growing strategic scope of China’s influence in the world, but the mention was only glancing.
I can’t claim that I now “understand” these complex issues after 45 minutes. But now I know a little more about the issues, and how they relate to larger questions of international policy. This will give me just a little more context to interpret the next evolution of world events.
Thanks for the link to the podcast, and also for the map of Ukraine, which I have emailed to myself! My husband's son has gone recently to Ukraine to volunteer - not in the military, as he is 60+ - to to feed, repair, work wherever they might need an extra pair of hands. Obviously, that has led to our increased interest in the war and this is the best map I have seen. It's so easy to think that it is all happening "over there" until we think about gasoline and bread prices and the reasons they rise.