Contents
Introduction
The Stats, Maps, and Figures
2023 – My Favourite Pieces and Series
Israel-Palestine Series
The Global Questions Series: Russia-Ukraine
Game Theory and Geopolitics Series
Self-Sufficiency and Geopolitics Series
Looking Towards 2024
2024 Upcoming Posts
New 2024 Geopolitics Explained Features
Concluding Remarks
Introduction
Today, to close out the year for Geopolitics Explained, aside from one post on Sunday, I’m going to explore the work I’ve done this year, and what I have planned for the upcoming year. We’ll use all my favourite things to do this: stats, maps, and figures.
The Stats, Maps, and Figures
Geopolitics Explained is read in 39 US states and 72 countries. An aim for next year is to get a reader in every US state. Somebody tell South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, and the others that I exist!
Geopolitics Explained is also read in 72 countries! It will never fail to amaze me that what I write is read by anybody, never mind 72 countries. Thank you to all my readers for this.
We started the year with 20 readers, and now Geopolitics Explained has 636 readers and 6 paid subscribers.
That’s a 3080% increase in readers!
We had a sharp boost in April when Substack Notes launched, and I received a lot of likes on the following comment:
And notes have certainly helped to achieve just that. The trajectory change in October aligned with when I started my series on Israel and Palestine, which is detailed below for those interested in revisiting those posts or reading the series for the first time. It was also aided by many wonderful writers on Substack who have supported my work.
2023 – My Favourite Pieces and Series
Most would determine their best work as the work that received the most interaction from others. This is a part of this, but I also take weight towards the series and individual pieces I enjoyed writing the most. Any piece in bold is one I consider my best work this year.
Israel-Palestine Series
Russia-Ukraine Global Questions Series
Global Questions Series – Number 1: The Russia-Ukraine War – Part 1
Global Questions Series – Number 1: The Russia-Ukraine War – Part 2
Game Theory and Geopolitics Series
Self-Sufficiency and Geopolitics Series
Looking Towards 2024
All the content I currently produce will remain. The Geopolitics and Markets Review posted every Monday will always remain the staple of Geopolitics Explained and will always be free of charge.
The series on Thursdays follows a framework of trends that I believe will drive geopolitics over the coming years and decades.
Game Theory
Self-Sufficiency
Connectivity
Cycles
We are currently discussing self-sufficiency, which is set to be the biggest section of my framework. After energy, there are other vital necessities for human life that control is being sought after. The global elite is acquiring land from farmers on the cheap after rising climate change emission costs and reduced government grants render farmers' business models unable to function successfully. We see an increasing number of water shortages and desalination efforts, especially in the Middle East to attempt to prevent this. Shelter costs are becoming more unaffordable for younger generations. This all contributes to the drive to have us own nothing. To be slaves to debt and subscriptions.
The Global Questions series will continue monthly for paid subscribers. I seek to address the biggest problems facing us as a planet today. These problems require coverage and attention from us all to address, and I hope the work in this series will incite valuable discussion on the large problems we face heading into 2024 and beyond.
Early 2024 Posts
The Yearly Shifts in Geopolitics: 2024 – The Year of Elections (And Other Predictions)
A Decade of Wars: Azerbaijan-Armenia
The Decade of Wars: The Iran Axis
The Decade of Wars: The Balkans
The Decade of Wars: The Korean Peninsula
The Decade of Wars: The Western Sahara
The Decade of Wars: Taiwan.
The Global Questions Series: The Nine Realms (The Industrialisation of Space)
The Circular Battery Economy
The Future of Batteries
A Renewables Deep Dive: Wind, Solar, Tidal, Wave, Hydro
New 2024 Geopolitics Explained Features
The 2024 Geopolitics Explained Timeline – This year, I read The Asian Financial Crisis by Russell Napier. It’s a brilliant book for a detailed history of the Asian Financial Crisis as it unfolded at the time. The reason it's so detailed is the book comes from Russell’s journal entries at the time. It’s a brilliantly creative way to write a book and to put the reader in the shoes of the writer at the time the events were unfolding. I’ve decided over the next year and future years, I will do a similar thing with the Geopolitics Explained Timeline. This will be for paid subscribers to look back on the year and reflect. Over time, we’ll collect many of these annual timelines and they’ll tell the story of this period of higher geopolitical tension.
Geopolitics Database: War – How states fight wars is changing. Proxy wars have been the main method used by the superpowers since the end of World War Two. This is changing and will continue to in 2024. Space warfare, infrastructure warfare against pipelines and fibre optic cables. We are heavily reliant on satellites and the internet for how modern society works. We need to diversify. I hope by raising awareness of the variety of methods of modern-day war, we can become aware of them and limit some of the impacts. Cyberwar, financial war, trade war, resource war, or the classic historical territorial war. This section will be for paid subscribers only.
Geopolitics Database: Countries – The Countries section will eventually include every country. Recently, the Israel-Palestine series can be tracked there through the relevant country profiles, as well as my new work on the Essequibo region crisis between Venezuela and Guyana.
Geopolitics Database: Commodities – The Commodities section of the Geopolitics Database has been updated every week when posting about lithium. If you want to revisit this entire series, head over there. The Commodities section will continue to expand over time.
The Geopolitics Explained Podcast - According to a recent survey, the Yorkshire accent is the 8th least pleasant accent to listen to in the world. As a Yorkshireman, I decided if I have to listen to my voice, so does everyone else. Weekly Geopolitics Explained Podcast episodes started last Saturday with an episode covering the conflict between Venezuela and Guyana over the disputed Essequibo region.
Connectivity and Cycles – This year, I became much more interested in time. Is time itself a dimension? If we travel length, width, and depth, can we travel time? Many interesting questions I’ll never answer. One in which I can work towards answering is cycles that repeat throughout history and affect geopolitics. These cycles have stood the test of time and continuously repeat until they don’t. It’s said in financial markets, everything is repeating the same processes and cycles of fear and greed, until it isn’t. Most disagreements in financial markets are between those who believe things will stay the same, and those who believe things are going to change. A sea change, or paradigm shift. These are rare and difficult to predict. The advent of mutually assured destruction has seen the last four rising powers challenging ruling powers that did not result in a hot war. Will innovation one day make nuclear weapons obsolete? Will the trend of devolution in connectivity lead to paradigm shifts, or does power transition theory remain the same as it ever has?
Concluding Remarks
I have another 2023 review coming out on Sunday. This piece has reviewed the physical aspects of Geopolitics Explained with stats, maps, and upcoming features. My piece on Sunday will explore more of the psychological. I’ve learnt more this year than I ever have in my life. On Sunday, I'll provide the most important elements I’ve learned in the past year to close out 2023 for Geopolitics Explained as I’ll be taking next week off.
Thank you again for all the support this year. I hope you enjoyed this year’s content and are looking forward to my plans for next year. I’m excited to see where we’ll find ourselves at the end of 2024. I’m glad you’re along for the ride.
Just discovered your substack. Remarkable stuff!! Hoping to read everything you write
Congrats on the growth, Dylan! Talking geopolitics often involves walking a thin line and I love how you balance perspectives.