Where Trouble Is Lurking Around the World in 2022
In places like Russia and Ukraine, the threat of cross-border conflict is obvious. Elsewhere, such as the Balkans and West Africa, there is a threat of surprise.
Will good fences make Greece and Turkey good neighbors?
Photographer: Sakis Mitrolidis/AFP/Getty Images
After the Cold War ended, it sometimes seemed that the world was becoming borderless, as globalization raced forward and geopolitical divisions fell away. Yet that was an illusion. Today, an increasing number of borders have turned bloody, as conflicts erupt along them, or spill over them, in multiple regions of the world.
Such conflicts are driven by many factors. Some are fights over resources and strategic terrain. Others are caused by terrorism, refugee crises and the associated upheaval. In some cases, civil wars spread across borders into neighboring countries; in others, borders are challenged by old-fashioned geopolitical aggrandizement and aggression.