The Western Mediterranean was long one of Europe’s most stable external frontiers. There was a time when the region produced powerful centers that projected power into Europe, from Carthage to the Umayyad and Almohad states. In more recent centuries, however, regional states were oriented toward Europe, and no local power could seriously challenge European dominance. That balance is changing. GPF's Ridvan Bari Urcosta has this analysis of Europe's frontiers, Part 2 breaks down why Europe is worried about a new global order. geopoliticalfutures.com/euro…

There are roughly 28,500 U.S. military personnel stationed in South Korea. For the U.S., the appeal of a military presence on the Korean Peninsula is obvious. Preventing China from dominating the Indo-Pacific and restricting U.S. military and commercial access is a major U.S. imperative. U.S. Forces Korea commander Gen. Xavier Brunson has used an “East-Up Map” to emphasize Korea’s value to U.S. regional operations. U.S. bases in South Korea provide a position across the Yellow Sea from China’s northern naval infrastructure. Qingdao, on the Shandong coast, hosts the headquarters of China’s Northern Theater Command Navy. Farther north, the Bohai Strait connects the Yellow Sea to the Bohai Sea, where China’s Huludao shipyard builds nuclear-powered submarines. And to the northeast of Korea lies Vladivostok, which hosts Russia’s Pacific Fleet headquarters and nearby naval facilities, placing the peninsula close to both Chinese and Russian maritime forces. Faced with a variety of challenges, the U.S.-South Korea alliance is likely to make faster progress on maintenance and logistics cooperation than on shifting additional responsibility for peninsula defense to Seoul. Over the next 12 to 24 months, South Korea is likely to expand maintenance and logistics cooperation with the United States through additional repair agreements and support arrangements for regional operations. - Andrew Davidson geopoliticalfutures.com/the-…

The United States and Israel are set to resume airstrikes on Iran after their respective domestic elections, leaving Mecca accord signatories Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to manage the outcome. It was the very thing they wanted to avoid. Full analysis by Kamran Bokhari: geopoliticalfutures.com/mecc…

Talks with Putin: Some European leaders are reopening direct dialogue with the Russian president.

➤ The U.S. and Israel are poised to strike Iran again, and the region’s three main stakeholders are now tasked with containing the fallout. ➤ The bloc’s first joint engagement with Iran brought a top Saudi prince, Pakistan’s military chief and Turkey’s spymaster to Tehran. ➤ At its core, the Mecca Accord brings two major non-Arab powers, Turkey and Pakistan, into efforts to shield the Arab world from Iran and its proxies. ➤ The pact is years from becoming a functioning security bloc, so its members must build the plane while flying it. ➤ Their trap: they need American firepower against Iran but have little say in how Washington uses it. ➤ Israel is another blind spot, since none of the three has meaningful sway over its war plans. ➤ Their hidden card: an increasingly isolated Iran has fewer regional channels for managing the crisis. ➤ If they pull this off, Washington’s burden-sharing strategy gains credibility, and the Iran war could become a catalyst for a more self-reliant regional security order. My latest: geopoliticalfutures.com/mecc…

Ukraine and Russia have agreed to halt combat operations in the city of Oleshky, a Russian-held town, in the Kherson region. Starting today, it will allow food and other humanitarian goods into the town and give residents an opportunity to leave. Ukrainian and Russian civilian officials directly negotiated the details of the agreement. This is not the first such #ceasefire of the war. What makes this one more interesting than the others is that it was said to have been initiated by President Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, who was in direct contact with Russian officials on the matter. My full analysis is available to read and share here at @GPFutures: geopoliticalfutures.com/poss…

The International Monetary Fund’s October 2026 outlook shows a world economy that is holding steady overall but pulling apart underneath. #IMF Details in our new Weekly Graphic: geopoliticalfutures.com/week…

For centuries, European security depended on control not only of the Continent but also of its periphery. The defeat of the Ottomans, Russia’s expansion into Crimea and Poland, and the rise of European colonial empires consolidated that position. Between 1917 and 1945, the Continent entered an era of military and strategic dependence on the trans-Atlantic relationship. Today, Europe retains much of its territory but is losing dominance over its periphery. Europe faces a question once faced by empires of the past: Can a large political entity retain its agency and compel others to recognize it after its dominance has passed? Subscribers sign in for Part 1 of Ridvan Bari Urcosta's analysis of Europe and the new global order: geopoliticalfutures.com/can-…

Recently a subscriber pointed out China's vast refining capacity, and that they use their oil reserves as a tool, drawing them down and waiting things out. They asked if I felt that with the U.S. midterm elections coming up, wouldn't hobbling the Trump administration be in their long-term interest. China has the world’s second largest economy. The World Bank says that 21 percent of China’s gross domestic product comes from exports, and the International Monetary Fund says that 11 percent of those exports go directly to the U.S. (This excludes indirect exports.) If there were a global recession based on the economic crisis triggered by the Iran war and oil prices, China would have a major domestic economic problem. The danger to China of losing up to 21 percent of its income far outweighs any short- or long-term impact it could have on the U.S. midterms.

What makes the current wave of European protests particularly striking is the timing, shared grievances and methodology. To be sure, every European country has its own political traditions, economic structures and institutional challenges. France's political crisis is not Italy's. Spain's housing crisis has different origins than Portugal's. Still, there is an increasingly recognizable pattern: dissatisfaction with public services, rising living costs, insufficient economic opportunities and, perhaps most importantly, the growing difficulty young people experience in becoming economically independent adults. - GPF’s Antonia Colibasanu geopoliticalfutures.com/what…

🌐 The European Parliament approved a resolution calling on the EU to launch a naval operation in the Black Sea amid Russian attacks on commercial vessels there. It condemns the recent strikes allegedly conducted by Russia off the coast of Bulgaria and Romania and calls on EU states, in cooperation with NATO, to support the two countries in the early detection and tracking of hostile drones in the region. The resolution also expresses concern about the Bulgarian government’s “ambiguous handling” of the Russian threat and calls on it to “stop delaying” participation in NATO’s anti-drone initiative. Why it matters: Russia’s actions in the Black Sea are becoming bolder each month. Its goal is to disrupt Ukraine’s maritime trade to provoke an economic collapse. The situation is forcing the EU and NATO to formulate an effective deterrence strategy – which is still unlikely to deter Moscow.

Is the US-Ukraine relationship at a breaking point, or is this just the next page in Trump’s negotiation playbook? Tune in for our latest episode of Talking Geopolitics with George Friedman and Christian Smith. And be sure to like and subscribe to the channel, we truly appreciate your support. youtube.com/watch?v=rVlZpBWh…

The latest battleground in the escalating battle against Yemen's Houthi rebels is the city of Taiz, a key government stronghold in Yemen’s southern highlands. Taiz is Yemen’s third-largest city and a gateway to both the port city of Aden and the strategic Bab el-Mandeb strait. Holding the city supports government operations toward Bab el-Mandeb and the defense of approaches to Aden. Given that roughly 70 percent of Yemeni people in 2025 lived in Houthi-controlled areas, losing Taiz would also further reduce the government’s reach among the population. In recent days, government forces and Houthi rebels have claimed new gains in and around Taiz. Houthi advances along the road between Taiz and Aden have severed the city’s main supply route, while government forces backed by Saudi-led coalition airstrikes lost some ground in mid-October as they tried to reopen it. If Taiz falls, recovering it would require reopening supply routes through the surrounding hills and an on-the-ground presence to counter Houthi fighters inside the city. - GPF's Andrew Davidson GPF is 100% subscriber supported. Subscribe for the full analysis: geopoliticalfutures.com/saud…

India’s massive youth population is a key element of the recent unrest sweeping the country. However, the more immediate problem is the growing gap between aspirations and access to secure employment. When Supreme Court Chief Justice Surya Kant compared in open court young people without jobs or professions to “cockroaches,” a new protest movement was born. Details in our new Weekly Graphic: geopoliticalfutures.com/week…

🌐 The European Union must prevent Russia and China from dominating the Arctic, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said following the release on Tuesday of the bloc’s updated Arctic strategy. The plan includes investment in the construction of new icebreakers, the establishment of a military center to monitor Russian activity, and the easing of restrictions on oil and gas extraction on the Arctic shelf. Brussels is particularly concerned about the Northern Sea Route, which is already in use by Russia and China. According to Kallas, the EU should engage with Canada and the United States to prevent Moscow and Beijing from gaining “full control” over this route. The Kremlin has accused Western countries in the past of pursuing militarization of the Arctic.

As hostilities continue, the war in Ukraine has expanded to include infrastructure as a target. Digital infrastructure, which underpins the modern economy, government and military operations, is a logical extension. In the military sector, data centers are fundamental to modern intelligence. To disable a data center, then, is to deprive Russia of the ability to quickly receive and analyze data from electronic warfare signals, video from drones, sensor readings and information from various surveillance systems. No surprise, then, that the Russian military is also targeting Ukrainian data centers and port infrastructure. These incidents create an urgent need across the country to secure their infrastructure as ongoing drone attacks threaten to expand the list of targeted facilities. - GPF's Ekaterina Zolotova geopoliticalfutures.com/data… Photo credit REUTERS / Anastasia Barashkova

China’s gig economy has become a structural feature of the country’s labor market, prompting the government to propose its first nationwide regulations specifically designed to establish minimum labor protections for platform workers. The draft rules mean to address persistent problems involving payment, working hours, workplace safety and occupational injury protection. The nation’s gig economy has expanded rapidly amid persistent weaknesses in conventional employment. According to the China New Employment Forms Research Center, the “flexible” workforce grew from approximately 200 million people in 2021 to 240 million in 2024 and 280 million in 2025, with a projection of 320 million in 2026, equivalent to roughly 44 percent of the workforce. Read the full analysis from GPF's Victoria Herczegh: geopoliticalfutures.com/chin… Photo credit © chartphoto/stock.adobe.com

India’s massive youth population is a key element of the recent unrest sweeping the country. However, the more immediate problem is the growing gap between aspirations and access to secure employment. When Supreme Court Chief Justice Surya Kant compared in open court young people without jobs or professions to “cockroaches,” a new protest movement was born. Details in our new Weekly Graphic: geopoliticalfutures.com/week…

Is the U.S. being diplomatically outmaneuvered, or is it part of Trump’s strategic foreign policy shift? Taking subscriber questions in our latest episode of Talking Geopolitics, with @George_Friedman: youtube.com/watch?v=4xhaOtr1…