4.3 Political Power and Territoriality

Neocolonialism is when powerful countries, companies or institutions influence a less powerful country through economic and political pressure rather than direct rule. Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah, popularized the term in a 1965 book. Examples include foreign companies controlling a country's mines or oil, trade relationships in which a former colony exports raw materials and imports finished goods, and loans with strict conditions attached.

In the 1980s and 1990s, many indebted countries had to cut government spending and open their markets in exchange for loans from the IMF and World Bank. More recently, some critics describe China's Belt and Road lending as a debt trap, pointing to Sri Lanka leasing its Hambantota port to a Chinese company for 99 years in 2017. Other researchers argue that the debt-trap label is overstated and that borrowing countries make their own choices. Present such cases as debated.

A shatterbelt is a region divided by internal conflicts, such as ethnic or religious rivalries, and also caught between competing outside powers, which makes it unstable. Eastern Europe, squeezed between Germany and Russia, has been one for much of history. The Balkans were another before and during the breakup of Yugoslavia. During the Cold War, the Middle East and parts of Southeast Asia and Africa became shatterbelts as the U.S. and the Soviet Union backed rival sides. Central Africa's Second Congo War (1998–2003) drew in armies from several neighboring countries.

A choke point is a narrow passage, usually at sea, that a large share of traffic must pass through. Whoever controls or threatens a choke point gains leverage, and a disruption there affects prices worldwide.

Territoriality is the connection people, their culture and their economy have to land, and their efforts to control it. It shows up at every scale: a family fencing its yard, a gang claiming turf, an Indigenous nation asserting land rights, or a country patrolling its borders.

Territoriality also drives disputes over resources. In the South China Sea, China claims most of the sea, while Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have overlapping claims. In 2016 an international tribunal, in a case brought by the Philippines, ruled that China's broad historic claim had no legal basis under the Law of the Sea; China rejected the ruling and continues to build and patrol in the area.