We were told geography was dead. The internet, container ships, and jet travel would flatten the world, making physical location irrelevant. A programmer in Lagos could compete with one in San Francisco. A factory in landlocked Rwanda could export as easily as one in coastal China.

The twenty-first century has proven this spectacularly wrong. Geography hasn't surrendered to technology—it has weaponized it. The countries controlling shipping lanes, sitting at favorable latitudes, and blessed with coastlines aren't just doing well. They're pulling away from everyone else, and climate change is about to make this divide even more brutal.

Here's a number that should trouble you: landlocked developing countries have average incomes 57% lower than their coastal neighbors. This isn't coincidence or bad governance—it's geometry. Getting goods from Kampala, Uganda to any major port requires crossing at least one international border, negotiating foreign infrastructure, and paying someone else's fees. The same journey in Vietnam? Straight to the sea.

But geography compounds unfairly. Being landlocked in Europe—think Switzerland or Austria—means accessing German autobahns and Rotterdam's ports. Being landlocked in Africa means depending on neighbors who might be at war, whose roads wash away in rainy season, and whose ports lack the cranes to load your containers. Botswana, one of Africa's success stories, still pays roughly three times more per container to reach global markets than Thailand does.

This creates a vicious cycle that no amount of foreign aid can break. High transport costs mean businesses can't export competitively. Without exports, countries can't earn the foreign currency to improve infrastructure. Without infrastructure, transport costs stay high. Rwanda has world-class governance and ambitious plans—but physics and borders don't care about ambition. Every laptop exported from Kigali carries an invisible tax that laptops from Shenzhen never pay.

Takeaway

When evaluating why some countries remain poor despite good policies, ask first: how many borders must their products cross to reach the ocean? The answer often explains more than any corruption index.

Roughly 20% of global oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway narrower than many lakes. The Suez Canal handles 12% of world trade through a channel ships traverse in single file. The Malacca Strait—between Malaysia and Indonesia—carries more cargo annually than every American port combined. Control these chokepoints, and you control the global economy's jugular.

This gives tiny nations extraordinary power. Singapore, a city-state smaller than most counties, became one of Earth's wealthiest places largely by sitting at Malacca's southern exit. Egypt extracts billions in canal fees despite its struggling economy. When Houthi rebels started attacking ships in the Red Sea in 2024, they—a militia controlling part of impoverished Yemen—managed to disrupt trade flows that trillion-dollar navies couldn't fully protect.

The strategic implications reshape everything from military alliances to infrastructure investment. China's Belt and Road Initiative is partly an attempt to build around chokepoints it doesn't control, creating overland routes to bypass straits where American allies dominate. Meanwhile, the melting Arctic is opening new shipping lanes that could eventually let cargo bypass Suez entirely—transforming which nations matter and which become geographic afterthoughts.

Takeaway

Global power isn't just about military strength or economic size—it's about controlling the narrow places where everything must pass. Watch the chokepoints to understand tomorrow's conflicts.

Climate change will devastate many regions—but it will also create winners. Canada holds 20% of the world's fresh water and vast territories becoming newly farmable as temperatures rise. Russia's frozen Siberian ports are approaching year-round viability. Greenland, long a frozen afterthought, suddenly interests superpowers eyeing its melting resources and strategic position.

The math is grimly straightforward. Countries between the Tropics face intensifying droughts, crop failures, and eventually uninhabitable heat. Countries in northern latitudes gain longer growing seasons, accessible resources, and more temperate climates as the global average temperature shifts. This doesn't mean Canada or Scandinavia will be unaffected—but relatively, they're positioned to benefit while others collapse.

This geographic reshuffling will trigger massive consequences beyond economics. Where will 200 million climate refugees go? Northward, toward cooler temperatures and available land. Which nations will control newly ice-free Arctic shipping routes? Russia and Canada, mostly. Who holds the lithium, rare earths, and minerals needed for green energy transitions? Often, countries in currently unstable regions. The climate crisis isn't just an environmental story—it's a geographic redistribution of global power happening in real time.

Takeaway

Climate change isn't affecting everyone equally—it's rewriting the map of prosperity. The countries that inherit the 22nd century may look very different from those that dominated the 20th.

The flat world was always a fantasy sold by people who already lived in the right places. Technology amplifies geographic advantages rather than erasing them. Coastal nations with stable neighbors and favorable climates aren't just lucky—they're positioned to compound their advantages for generations.

Understanding geography won't change the map. But it explains why development efforts fail, why certain conflicts persist, and why climate change threatens far more than coastlines. Location isn't everything—but it's far more than we pretend.