GeoMaps: Charting the Determinants of Global Power

The world is a highly unequal place. Across borders and continents, there are massive disparities in wealth and power. This includes military power, with some countries fielding larger armies and superior armaments. It also includes economic power, with markets and trade relationships acting as levers of pressure. While some nations employ these tools to their advantage, others lack them, setting the patterns of global and regional power that we see today.

In everyday life, it can be easy to forget these stark differences - to forget that the 190+ countries that share the planet do not share it on equal terms. The standard world map does little to help, portraying only (a distorted version of) the geographic size of countries and their relative position. In this rendering, the United States and Canada are equally large countries, Singapore is a very small country, and the European Union is dwarfed by Russia and Africa. This map will not tell you that the United States' economy is 13 times larger than that of Canada, nor that Singapore accounts for 13% of Southeast Asia GDP with only 0.9% of its population. Similarly, Africa's large size on the map belies the sheer economic disparity that spans the Mediterranean. Africa contains twice the population of Europe, but only a tenth of its GDP, highlighting its enormous potential for future growth.

The GeoMaps project aims to reveal these global inequalities in a visceral way that makes them impossible to ignore. In each map, countries are scaled such that their new area is proportional to one of four national attributes: nominal GDP, military expenditure, population, and external trade in goods and services. To give a sense of regional and global patterns, the relative positions of countries are maintained to the maximum degree possible, although of course there are significant distortions necessitated by the re-scaling.

My hope is that such maps will reveal stories about regional or global development, or how economic imbalances can affect geopolitics. As such, I aim to create a set of "vignettes" that each focus on a certain curiosity in the maps and attempt to place it in its proper historical and geopolitical context. Two exist so far, and I hope to create more whenever I have free time.

Vignettes

1. Little Red Dot, Great Influence: Singapore in Southeast Asia

2. Forward Defence: Iran's Asymmetric Strategy of Resistance

   
   

Note: The figures do not render properly in dark mode, and the zoom/scroll functionality in full-view might be a little strange on mobile devices. I'm working to patch that.

GDP Map

Full-view here.

This map shows familiar patterns of global economic heft, with the United States and China as heavyweights, and Western Europe and East Asia playing significant roles as well. In comparison, Africa and South America are under-weighted, highlighting their lower levels of economic development.

Population Map

Full-view here.

This map highlights the enormous populations of India and China, which together constitute 35% of all of humanity. If you were to pick 100 of the world's people completely at random, you could expect to get 17 Chinese, 18 Indians, 18 Africans and 9 Europeans (including Russians). Asians comprise no less than 58 of this sample (excluding Russians). Out of the 100, only 15 come from countries classified as "high income" by the World Bank. The 4 Americans match the GDP of 26 sample members picked at random, and the military spending of 36.

Military Expenditure Map

Full-view here.

This map shows the unsurprising dominance of the United States in military spending. However, some other interesting features appear. For example, both North Korea and Ukraine manage high military budgets with relatively small GDP, emphasising the militarisation of both societies (of course, Ukraine is in a war).

Trade Map

Full-view here.

This map highlights certain trade hubs that serve important roles in the global economy. In particular, Singapore and Hong Kong stand out as vital nodes in both shipping and financial services, despite their very small size. Moreover, the large trade volumes in Western Europe speak to the success of European integration, with goods flowing freely across borders.

Data Collection

• Geographical: Country shape data was acquired from the public Natural Earth database. Where borders are contested, I have simply followed the geography defined by this database. I omitted most overseas territories (e.g., Gibraltar) and all disputed territories, with the exception of the West Bank and Gaza.

• GDP: These data were acquired from the World Bank (2023 calendar year). Where certain national figures were missing, I filled in the blanks using data from other sources (see the Extended Notes).

• Military expenditure: These data were acquired from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) (2024 calendar year). Where countries are omitted, they are either missing from the SIPRI database or simply have zero military spending (e.g., Iceland, which has no standing military).

• Population: These data were acquired from the World Bank (2023 calendar year), with the exception of Taiwan, where I used data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

• Trade: These data were acquired from the World Bank (2023 calendar year). Where certain national figures were missing, I filled in the blanks using data from other sources (see Extended Notes).

Data Collection (Extended Notes)

• Geographical

  • Certain overseas territories (e.g., the UK's Gibraltar or France's Saint-Martin) have been omitted.

  • Disputed territories, such as Western Sahara, were omitted, with the exception of the Palestinian territories.

  • For Israel/Palestine, the territory marked as "Israel" covers the area controlled by the State of Israel from 1949-1967 (i.e., the area behind the "Green Line"). The West Bank and Gaza have been aggregated into a separate entity.

  • Hong Kong and Macao are portrayed separately from the People's Republic of China, even though they are Special Administrative Regions of the PRC.

  • Taiwan is included as a separate entity, notwithstanding territorial disputes, since it is governed separately from the People's Republic of China.

  • Antarctica has been omitted, due to its lack of political status.

  • Greenland is portrayed separately to the rest of Denmark.

  • Vatican City has been omitted due to the lack of GDP data from either the World Bank or IMF. In any case, the figures are likely to be so small, the country would barely register on the maps.

  • The Cook Islands have been omitted due to a lack of data.

  • French Guyana has been placed next to metropolitan France (L'Hexagone) rather than in South America. This was judged the best way to avoid under-representing France's figures alongside its European neighbours.

• GDP: Alternative Sources

  • IMF: Bhutan (2024), Eritrea (2019), South Sudan (2024), Taiwan (2024), Venezuela (2024), Yemen (2023)

  • World Bank: Cuba (2020), Lebanon (2022), Liechtenstein (2022), San Marino (2022), Syria (2022), Tonga (2022)

  • Bank of Korea: North Korea (2023)

• Military expenditure

  • Sub-national units, such as Hong Kong or Greenland, are omitted.

  • Countries are omitted where they have no standing armed forces and therefore no "military expenditure" as such; this includes Andorra, Iceland, and Costa Rica.

  • North Korean figure is estimated from the CIA World Factbook. It says “between 2010 and 2020 ... spending estimates ranged from $7 billion to $11 billion annually”. As a rough estimate, I took $11 billion as my figure.

  • World Bank alternative sources: Libya (2023), Qatar (2022), Venezuela (2023).

  • Syria and Yemen are omitted, latest data are from before their respective civil wars.

  • International Institute for Strategic Studies as an alternative source: United Arab Emirates (2024), Vietnam (2024).

  • No reliable data for Comoros, Suriname, São Tomé & Principe, the Maldives, Cabo Verde, Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan.

  • No data for Laos since 2013. The CIA World Factbook estimated military spending at 0.2% of GDP from 2015-2019, so I used this percentage to estimate the figure for 2024 from concurrent GDP data.

• Trade

  • Taiwan's trade has been estimated from figures provided by CEIC, an economic data firm. They provide quarterly estimates of trade as a percentage of GDP, so I averaged across quarters to get a mean percentage for the year, then relied on the concurrent GDP figure.

  • No data for Andorra, Barbados, Eritrea, Grenada, Guyana, St. Kitts & Nevis, Liberia, St. Lucia, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Myanmar, Malawi, Nigeria (since 1960), North Korea, Qatar, São Tomé & Principe, Suriname (since 2010), Eswatini, Trinidad & Tobago, Tuvalu, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, or Papua New Guinea (since 2004).

  • World Bank alternative sources: Antigua & Barbuda (2022), Bhutan (2022), Cuba (2020), Dominica (2018), Fiji (2022), Greenland (2021), Iraq (2022), Jamaica (2019), Laos (2016), Lebanon (2022), Oman (2022), Palau (2022), Solomon Islands (2022), San Marino (2022), South Sudan (2015), Syria (2022), Tajikistan (2022), Venezuela (2014), Vanuatu (2022), Yemen (2019) and Kuwait (2022).