Jalal al-Din Davani on friendship as the path to perfection, on the danger of scattering oneself across different crafts, and on the discipline of silence, with an account of the Persian philosopher who served three dynasties.
For a long time the world's population grew very slowly, passing 1 billion only in 1804; two centuries later it reached 8 billion. UN forecasts now expect growth to level off after the 2050s.
This infographic maps the complex operational picture in the INDOPACOM area of responsibility, where the United States confronts China.
Ahmad Donish on contentment, the regimen of eating and drinking, and the price of freedom from earthly burdens.
The International North–South Transport Corridor is an ambitious 7,200-km multimodal route from St Petersburg to Mumbai. Because every branch of it runs through Iran, the country has become the corridor's pivotal link.
In my view, though I may be mistaken, the Great Temur ranks first among the greatest commanders in all history, followed by Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great and Hannibal Barca.
Churchill's famous tribute to Stalin as an extraordinary, ruthless and uniquely capable leader who took Russia with a wooden plough and left it with atomic weapons.
Abdulla Avloniy on raising a child from the first day of life, and on the Jadid movement that set out to modernise education in the Muslim world.
Zbigniew Brzezinski on Ukraine as the geopolitical pivot of Eurasia, and on how the West should deal with China.
Rudolf Kjellén (1864–1922) was a Swedish geographer and political figure who considered himself a pupil of Friedrich Ratzel. His doctrine treated the state as a living organism and defined the great powers by three spatial factors.
Karl Haushofer (1869–1946) was born in Munich, Germany, into a professor's family. He served in the army for more than 20 years and became the author of an original theory of the continental bloc and of pan-regions.
This map shows the territories countries hold in the Arctic, a region now at the centre of economic and geopolitical competition between the United States, Russia and China.
According to an IMF report, artificial intelligence affects occupations differently: some face a high risk of replacement, others are safe.
After Germany abandoned its nuclear programme and closed its plants, German imports of nuclear-generated electricity hit a record in 2024.
In response to the 10% tariffs the United States imposed on imports from China, Beijing introduced additional duties of 15% on US coal and liquefied natural gas (LNG), and 10% on American oil, agricultural machinery, large-engine cars and pickups.
This chart shows that China produces eight times as many STEM graduates each year as the United States, according to 2016 data from Statista.
The China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a flagship of Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative, linking Pakistan's Gwadar and Karachi ports to China's Xinjiang region. Its cost has risen from an initial $46 billion to $65 billion.
Pakistan's location makes it a natural bridge between landlocked Central Asia and the Arabian Sea, according to The News on Sunday. Regional trade integration could add up to 1.7% to Pakistan's GDP.
Work on the multimodal Belarus–Russia–Kazakhstan–Uzbekistan–Afghanistan–Pakistan corridor to Indian Ocean ports began in August 2022. Pakistan signed up in September 2024, and the route is meant to give landlocked Central Asia access to the sea.
The eastern sea corridor linking the Indian port city of Chennai with Vladivostok, Russia's largest Pacific port, is back in service. It cuts cargo delivery times from 40 to 24 days compared with the Suez Canal route.
Kazakhstan declined full membership of BRICS at the bloc's October summit in Kazan, choosing instead to watch how the group develops while diversifying its foreign-policy ties and keeping close engagement with the West, The Diplomat reports.
In September 2023, on the sidelines of the G20 summit in New Delhi, India, the United States, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the EU announced plans for the India–Middle East–Europe Corridor (IMEC). It is meant to speed up trade and deepen economic integration between Asia, the Gulf and Europe — but war in the Middle East now threatens it.
Russia and Iran are preparing to sign a Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership during the Iranian president's visit to Moscow within one or two months, Iran's foreign ministry says. The treaty would cover energy, transport, industry, agriculture, science, technology and defence.
Iran's foreign minister says Tehran and Moscow will sign a comprehensive cooperation agreement within one or two months, during the Iranian president's visit to Moscow. A deal planned for the BRICS summit in Kazan in October 2024 was not signed.
A further instalment on the thinkers of the German school of geopolitics, this time Friedrich Naumann's wartime vision of a German-led Mitteleuropa.
A genuine gas revolution is under way in US energy, marking a shift to a new technological order in the economy — one in which natural gas is becoming America's main primary energy source.
Rudolf Kjellén (1864–1922) was a Swedish geographer and political figure who coined the term geopolitics. His doctrine treated the state as a living organism and ranked the great powers by space, cohesion and freedom of movement.
According to the International Federation of Robotics, 545,000 industrial robots were installed at factories worldwide in 2022. Asia took 74% of them and China alone 53%.
On 9 September this year former ECB president Mario Draghi presented the European Commission with a report on the future of the European economy, arguing that the EU must mobilise €750–800 billion a year to stay competitive.
Friedrich Ratzel is regarded as the founder of geopolitics as a scientific discipline. His doctrine of the state as a living organism that must expand its living space justified German territorial expansion.
The 16th BRICS summit ran in Kazan from 22 to 24 October this year under Russia's chairmanship. No new members were admitted, and the group ruled out a single currency.
An aircraft carrier is a floating airbase that projects a country's military and economic power at sea. Eleven countries operate carriers today, and NATO members together with Japan have 20 between them.
This chart shows the countries that dominated shipbuilding by gross tonnage of merchant ships built in 2023, led by China, South Korea and Japan, which together account for 94% of the industry.
Halford John Mackinder (1861–1947) was one of the great figures in the history of geopolitics, whose 1904 paper set out the Heartland theory that would shape the field for a century.
According to the American analytics and engineering firm BryceTech, SpaceX has tripled its rocket launches over the past two years and leads the world, while China, Russia and India are all stepping up their programmes.
The fastest-growing economies now lie in Latin America, Africa and Asia, the regions known together as the Global South. Guyana's GDP doubled between 2021 and 2022, and African countries are set for average growth of 6–8% through 2028.
The Cold War divided the planet into three worlds; after the Soviet bloc collapsed, the concepts of the Global North and the Global South took shape.
The Wakhan Corridor is a narrow strip of land in the Wakhan region of Badakhshan Province in eastern Afghanistan.
According to the US Geological Survey (USGS), identified lithium resources worldwide grew significantly in 2023, to about 98 million tonnes.
A fable by the Georgian writer Sulhan-Saba Orbeliani in which two brothers live side by side, each secretly pouring his own grain into the other's pit.
On 12 September 2000, at the second Euro-Asian Transport Conference in St Petersburg, Russia, India and Iran signed an intergovernmental agreement to create the International North–South Transport Corridor.
On 27 May 2024 Russia and Uzbekistan signed a contract for a six-unit small nuclear power plant in the Jizzakh region. The first reactor is due to start up within five years, with full commissioning no earlier than 2033.
According to the US Department of Energy, the United States is the world's largest crude oil producer, pumping almost 13 million barrels a day. This article looks at Texas, the country's energy heartland and second most populous state.
A World Bank chart tracing the growth of the world economy over the past two thousand years. World GDP grew by just 20% in the first millennium but has doubled every 20–25 years in recent decades.
On 13 September 2024 the Bank of Russia raised its key rate to 19%, even as other major central banks were cutting. The increase is feeding through to mortgage rates, which have climbed above 21%.
India has enormous long-term potential for industrial development. Nearly half its working population is still employed in agriculture, and mechanisation will push that labour into the cities and into industry.
According to the IMF, the combined GDP of the G7 reached $45.9 trillion in 2023, one and a half times the size of the BRICS economies.
Defence spending rose at its fastest rate in a decade in 2023, reaching $2.443 trillion worldwide, with NATO accounting for 55% of the total.
Saudi Arabia's decision not to renew its era-defining security agreement with the United States, the sale of oil for dollars, reflects both America's declining global influence and where most Saudi oil is now sold.
Bloomberg and IMF forecasts put China first for contributions to global growth in 2024–2029, ahead of the G7 combined, with India second and Indonesia third.
China's outward foreign direct investment by country: the distribution based on fDi Markets data.
Saudi Arabia has yet to pick a builder for its planned reactors, with Rosatom, Westinghouse, KEPCO and CNNC in contention — and it has let the 1974 petrodollar pact with Washington lapse.
Saudi Arabia plans up to 16 nuclear reactors worth more than $100 billion under Vision 2030, following the example of Türkiye, Egypt, Iran and the UAE.
Saudi Arabia is OPEC's most important member and a top-three crude producer. Together, OPEC and OPEC+ pump some 46% of the world's oil, which gives them real power over prices.
Saudi Arabia is the largest regional power on the Arabian Peninsula and the birthplace of Islam, which arose in Mecca and Medina in the 7th century.
Poland spends the most on defence of any NATO member, at 3.9% of GDP, while the US is the main beneficiary of rising allied defence budgets.
Japan's Sixth Energy Plan targets 38% renewables and 20% nuclear by 2030, while coal and gas lose ground. Yet total power generation has been falling since 2010.
