Orbis: Learn Geopolitics

🌍Learn Geopolitcs with Orbis

Understand what makes the world move

[Daniel @DannyWestside6]

Today I am offically launching Orbis!

Orbis is like Duolingo, but for Geopolitics.

The idea: News tells you what happened. It rarely tells you why it matters or how it got there. Orbis teaches the layer underneath: geography, resources, history, and how power actually works.

Thats what I've spent the last few months building! Daily news briefings, interactive maps, 600+ lessons, five minutes each, from Ancient Rome to the chip war.

Live on Product Hunt today, would love to get your feedback! 👇
https://t.co/9mudvcoyO6

[Orbis: Learn Geopolitics @learnorbis]

I think the logic here has an issue:

The Arctic routes are super interesting, but the Malacca dilemma is about China's energy imports, most of which come from the Middle East and Africa.

For the arctic route to fix the Malacca dilemma, you would need ships from the Middle East to pass the Mediterranean, go around Europe and Russia to China. On the way it would cross multiple chokepoints.

Also there is the Bering Strait between Russia and Alaska, which could become a new chokepoint right next to US territory

[Orbis: Learn Geopolitics @learnorbis]

@TheGlobal_Index Egypt has not offically joined the Mecca agreeement (Turkiye-Pakistan-Saudi Arabia alliance) yet! Although its leaders invited Egypt and the alliance was designed for more members to join

[Orbis: Learn Geopolitics @learnorbis]

Objectively Augustus was one of the best emperors in Roman history. But sometimes I wonder how much of it is just due to the absolute exhaustion of Roman people at the time. In just a few decades they had gone through the social war, Marius vs Sulla, Caesar vs Pompey, then the civil war against Caesar's assassins, then Octavian vs Anthony.

When Augustus became emperor, most ambitious and competent (or dangerous) people were killed, the people were exhausted and just wanted stability more than anything. It would be interesting to see how Augustus would have done in a more competetive, dangerous period.

[Orbis: Learn Geopolitics @learnorbis]

Rome's Praetorean Guard was an absolute menace and grew into one of the most corrupt institution of its age.

It started as the personal bodyguards of the emperor. But its soldiers were paid far more than ordinary legionaries, enjoyed enormous privileges, and gradually realized they could make, or kill, emperors.

In 193 AD the Praetorian Guard murdered the emperor, then announced from the walls of their camp that the throne would go to the highest bidder.

Two rich men bid against each other. A senator named Didius Julianus won by promising 25,000 sesterces to every soldier. He lasted 66 days before the frontier legions marched on Rome and killed him.

[Orbis: Learn Geopolitics @learnorbis]

People often assume that a multipolar world will be more stable and fair.

But that’s not necessarily true. In fact, it has a much higher chance of wars and chaos.

In the bipolar world, with the US and Soviet Union, there were proxy wars and the countries where this happened suffered (Vietnam, Korea etc). But the countries also kept order in their spheres of influence and they could not fight each other directly.

In the unipolar world, the world we are now leaving, where the US was the unchallenged global superpower, a single power was able to keep order, protect trade and deter regional bullies. The US did overreach and sometimes abuse its power but all in all the world has been very stable.

Now look at a multipolar world, for example Europe in the early 1900s where Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary kept a fragile balance of power. This created a complex web of treaties, alliances and obligations. No one actually knew how each of the other powers would act on a conflict, who they would help etc. So a single event, the assassination of archduke Franz Ferdinand, spiralled into the largest war Europe had seen until that point.

Now we can see similar patterns: Russia is not afraid of the US anymore and invaded Ukraine. China is starting to exert its power in the South China Sea. Countries are more likely to start wars if they are not afraid of a bigger power interfering.

[Orbis: Learn Geopolitics @learnorbis]

Yes the US as an incredible privilege of having the world's reserve currency. I can print and borrow on much, much better terms. And it can use the dollar as a weapon.
But each time it does either one, the tools become weaker. US sanctions in the past years have been pushing countries for alternative solutions, like BRICS Pay. And the more debt the US has, the less desireable it becomes for other countries to hold dollars.

[Orbis: Learn Geopolitics @learnorbis]

@vivoplt Curious to see if this will be a gigantic mistake by the EU, or if it doesn't matter much in the end because they can just adapt Chinese open source models for free?

[Orbis: Learn Geopolitics @learnorbis]

@xruiztru Christianity dominated the Middle East for centuries. Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Anatolia were majority Christian for a long stretch after Rome adopted the religion in the 4th century.

But after the Arab conquests in the 600s Christianity slowly delcined over the centuries.

[Orbis: Learn Geopolitics @learnorbis]

Turkey stayed officially neutral for almost all of World War II, even though both sides wanted it. Turkey was important because it controlled the Bosphorus strait, a major maritime chokepoint and the only route between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.

Turkey didn't actually declare war on Germany until February 1945, and by then it was basically symbolic: the Allies had set a deadline that you had to be at war by March 1, 1945 to be a founding member of the United Nations.

[Orbis: Learn Geopolitics @learnorbis]

@PabloAntonio China invented gunpowder, paper money, the compass and the printing press. It also built the Great Wall.
The Middle East between ~600-1300 was scientifically far ahead of Europe.
Just saying past progress doesn't predict the future.

[Orbis: Learn Geopolitics @learnorbis]

Crazy thing is that this is just 61 years after US Commodore Matthew Perry arrived with gunboats in Japan, forcing the country to open!

The Meiji restauration started in 1868 and within a few decades Japan transformed from a feudal state of samurai to defeating China in 1895, then Russia in 1905 and then building an Asian empire.

[Global Statistics @Globalstats11]

The Empire of Japan as it Stood in 1914 🇯🇵

[Orbis: Learn Geopolitics @learnorbis]

@APompliano It is insane, but federal debt to GDP is still just around 120%. And the US has the privilige of being the world's reserve currency so demand for dollars makes printing and borrowing much easier.

[Orbis: Learn Geopolitics @learnorbis]

Korea was divided by two American colonels who were given thirty minutes to draw a line.

That night, 10 August 1945, they had no detailed map of Korea, just a National Geographic wall map.

They picked the 38th parallel because it kept Seoul on the American side and looked plausible enough that Moscow would accept it. Stalin agreed without argument, even though Korea had been one country for over a thousand years.

It wasn't a geopolitical decision. Two junior staffers were improvising under a hard deadline because Soviet troops were already advancing into Korea and the nearest American forces were still in Okinawa.

Five years later, the two Koreas fought a war largely over that line. The armistice that ended it in 1953 drew a new one, close to the 38th parallel but not the same, and that's the actual DMZ you see on a map today.

North and South Korea are still, officially, at war.

[Orbis: Learn Geopolitics @learnorbis]

GDP vs PPP: is China's economy already bigger than America's?

Measured in GDP, the US economy is 11 trillion dollars larger than China's. In PPP, China became the world's largest economy in 2016.

Both measure the size of the economy, but with some technical differences around exchange rates.

GDP, gross domestic product, adds up the value of everything a country produced in a year: every car, every haircut, every hospital visit, every apartment built. And then it uses the currency exchange rate to convert everything into USD.

The problem: Let's say a haircur costs $30 in the US, and $5 USD in China. If the US produces 10 haircuts, the total value adds up $300. If China produces 50 haircuts, its value is $250. So in these terms, the US economy seems larger. But China actually produced 5x more services!!

PPP, purchasing power parity, is the correction. It takes the same output and re-prices it as if the same thing cost the same amount in every country.

Where does this matter?
> When China needs to get things from abroad, whether its oil, chips or investment, it has to pay in USD. So the GDP matters.
> When China builds domestic industries, or a military, then PPP matters: A shipyard in Shanghai pays local prices for labour, rent and steel
> China's defense budget is around 25% of America's. But the salary for soldiers is much lower, weapons are cheaper to build etc and he money goes much further!

So China leading in PPP basically just says that China produces much more stuff and services than the US. Which is not actually surprising if you consider that China has 4x the population.

Also interesting: Measured by PPP, the world's 3rd and 4th largest economies are India and Russia. Ahead of Japan and Germany.

[Orbis: Learn Geopolitics @learnorbis]

How do you get to the top of the Chinese Communist Party?

You start small and climb for thirty years.

> Join the Party, where about 1 in 10 applicants is accepted
> Run a township
> Then a county
> Then a city
> Then a province, often more than 50 million people
> Central Committee, then Politburo, then the Standing Committee

Each level is appointed by the level above it. You rise by impressing the people above you, never voters.

Xi Jinping became a deputy county party secretary in 1982. He reached the top in 2012.

[Orbis: Learn Geopolitics @learnorbis]

What people often miss: nitrogen fertilizer is made from natural gas, and gas is most of its cost. Qatar's LNG and most Gulf urea exports both leave through the Strait of Hormuz.

The oil story and the fertilizer story are the same.

[Bull Theory @BullTheoryio]

BREAKING: A massive global food supply crisis could start next year because of fertilizer shortages, per JPMorgan.

Unlike oil, there is no strategic reserve for fertilizer.

[Orbis: Learn Geopolitics @learnorbis]

How the CCP is organized:

It's a pyramid. 101 million people at the bottom, seven men at the top.

> 101,000,000 party members
> 2,296 delegates at the National Congress, held every 5 years
> 205 members of the Central Committee
> 24 in the Politburo
> 7 in the Politburo Standing Committee
> 1 General Secretary, Xi Jinping

On paper each level elects the one above it. In practice the decisions come down, not up.

Two things make this different from a normal government:

1) The Party sits beside the state, not inside it. Every ministry, province and city has a party committee, and it outranks the mayor or the governor. There are 5.4 million of these across the country

2) The army answers to the Party, not to the state. Xi chairs the Central Military Commission, which is the job that actually matters

Full article: https://t.co/cRiiuWQm4e

[Orbis: Learn Geopolitics @learnorbis]

What is China's Malacca dilemma? 🇨🇳

Roughly 80% of the oil China imports arrives by sea through a single strait between Malaysia and Indonesia. At its narrowest point it is under 3km wide.

The problem:
• China imports almost all of its oil
• Almost all of it passes through Malacca
• The strait sits thousands of km from China
• The US Navy, India and Singapore are all right there

In 2003 Hu Jintao warned that "certain major powers" were trying to control the passage. China has been trying to escape it ever since:

• Oil and gas pipelines through Myanmar
• Gas pipelines from Central Asia
• A deepwater port at Gwadar in Pakistan
• Crude by pipeline from Russia
• A far bigger navy, and a base in Djibouti

The problem is scale. The Myanmar oil pipeline for example can carry about 440,000 barrels a day. China imports over 10 million daily.

[Orbis: Learn Geopolitics @learnorbis]

@juanbenet China's population is 4x larger the US, so its per-capita generation is still lower.

But yeah looking at the chart its not hard to see that its just a matter of a few years