Vox Atlas Season 6
Senior producer Sam Ellis demonstrates where conflicts occur on a map and the ways in which foreign policy shapes a region.
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Vox Atlas
2017Senior producer Sam Ellis demonstrates where conflicts occur on a map and the ways in which foreign policy shapes a region.
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Vox Atlas Season 6 Full Episode Guide
In the spring and summer of 2022, the war between Ukraine and Russia settled into a stalemate. The first phase of the war had been a rapid invasion; the next phase saw the battle lines harden and change very little. But in September, for the first time in several months, Ukraine scored a major victory and won back significant territory from Russia. Ukraine pulled this victory off by taking advantage of a surprising weakness in the Russian army: the difficulty it’s had maintaining its ranks of skilled soldiers, especially compared to the training and resources that Ukraine’s army has received from its allies. Reports suggest that Russia’s army has suffered catastrophic losses in the war, and that it’s attempted to replace those more highly trained forces with large numbers of mercenaries, prisoners, and men over 40. Russia still controls a large amount of territory in southern Ukraine, but Ukraine’s victory outside of Kharkiv signals a new chapter in the war.
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In 2017, Egypt’s government announced it would build a new capital city 45 kilometers outside of Cairo, the current capital. It was a shocking announcement since Cairo, a city of more than 10,000,000 people, has been the capital of Egypt for decades. The government claims that Cairo has become too overcrowded and that moving the capital will give both Cairo’s residents and government workers more space. But this excuse is not new. For decades, Egypt’s rulers have been building brand new cities in the desert. None of them have solved Cairo’s density issue. And based on how construction is going, this new capital won’t be a solution either. So why does Egypt want a new capital? Well, it has a lot to do with the political revolution in 2011.
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The Amazon has always been one of the most mysterious places on earth. When European colonizers arrived in the 16th century, they were captivated by rumors of a golden city, hidden somewhere in the rainforest. Their search for “El Dorado” lasted more than a century, but only resulted in disaster, death, and further conquest of the indigenous people there. Experts thereafter looked at the Amazon and saw only a desolate jungle; too harsh for extensive agriculture and therefore sparsely populated. They believed that it had always been this way. Until recently. Beginning in the late 20th century, archaeologists began looking more closely at the forest floor. Working with the indigenous people who still remained there, they excavated long ditches and mounds. After mapping them, they could see that these were the markings of large settlements; walls, moats, plazas, and roads that connected even more settlements. And they were all over the Amazon.
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Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the EU has sanctioned much of Russia’s economy, but Russia’s natural gas trade remains untouched. The EU gets nearly a quarter of its energy from natural gas, and almost half of that comes from Russia, the world’s largest gas exporter. As the EU’s largest economy, Germany is Russia’s biggest customer, paying Russia’s state-owned gas company 200 million euros. So while Germany has even sent Ukraine weapons, in a historic shift of military policy, through its gas supply Germany is helping to pay for the war it’s trying to stop. It’s inherently hard to pivot away from piped gas. Unlike oil and coal, which can be rerouted, gas pipelines cost billions, take years to build, and physically connect producer and buyer directly, making them long-term commitments. That was the origin of Germany’s dependence on Russian gas, and over time it’s only deepened. Today, as the world tries to punish Russia through sanctions, that dependence is getting in the way.
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On February 24th, Russia launched a military invasion of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin called it a “special military operation,” but the scale of the attack shows this is a full-scale war that has already caused more than 100 casualties and forced more than half a million Ukrainians to flee their homes. Ukraine and Russia’s conflict goes back to 2014, when Russia invaded and annexed Crimea and Russian-backed separatist forces took over parts of southeastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. But to understand the full context behind the invasion, it’s important to go even farther back, to the time when Europe’s current-day divisions began, and see how that shaped Europe’s power balance today.
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In 2002, the US opened a prison at its naval base in Guantánamo bay, Cuba. The 9/11 attacks had occurred just months before, and the US was capturing hundreds of men in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It wanted a place to hold and question them. So the Bush administration opened Guantánamo and claimed that it lay outside of US and international law. The detainees didn’t have to be charged with a crime to be imprisoned and the US could hold them as long as they’d like. By 2003, there were nearly 700 men imprisoned in Guantánamo, but there was backlash from around the world. When Barack Obama took office in 2009, he pledged to close Guantánamo. But politics quickly got in the way. He was able to decrease the population but faced legal challenges. Ultimately, no president has been able to close Guantánamo because once something is created outside the law, its impossible to bring it back inside the law.
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