Category Archives: International Relations

The Road to Faroese Independence: A Peripheral European Nation’s Pursuit of Statehood

Posted on October 12, 2026 by nathanalbright

Preliminary Question: Is the Evidence Sufficient? The evidence is sufficient. The Faroese pursuit of greater autonomy is not an inference drawn from scattered gestures; it is a stated, cross-party policy pursued over decades through institutions, treaties, and public declarations. Four … Continue reading →

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Autonomy Within the Danish Realm: A Comparative Study of the Faroe Islands and Greenland

Posted on October 12, 2026 by nathanalbright

Executive Summary The Kingdom of Denmark is a single sovereign state made up of three parts: Denmark proper, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland. Danish usage calls this arrangement Rigsfællesskabet, the Unity of the Realm. Both North Atlantic territories govern most … Continue reading →

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Divided by Borders, Joined by Heritage: The Comparative Fate and Prospects of Inuit and Yupik Peoples in Russia, the United States, Canada, and Greenland

Posted on October 10, 2026 by nathanalbright

Executive Summary The Inuit and Yupik peoples share a common ancestry, closely related languages, and a way of life built on the sea, the ice, and the animals of the far north. Over the past three centuries, however, their homeland … Continue reading →

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Rival Blocs on the Red Sea: Alignment, Hot Spots, and the Escalation of Local Crises into Regional Wars

Posted on October 8, 2026 by nathanalbright

Executive Summary Over the past several years, separate conflicts in Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Ethiopia have increasingly come to be organized around a single regional rivalry. On one side stands a loose coalition built around Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and … Continue reading →

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Eritrean Forces in Tigray and the Widening Ethiopian Conflict: A Strategic Assessment

Posted on October 7, 2026 by nathanalbright

Executive Summary Ethiopia’s renewed northern war changed in two ways during the first week of October 2026. Federal forces retook Mekelle, and Eritrean troops appear to have crossed into Tigray. If the Eritrean presence is confirmed and sustained, the conflict … Continue reading →

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The Sufi Vatican That Has Not Yet Been Built: A White Paper on the Bektashi Sovereign State Project, the Divergence Between Tirana’s Design and the Order’s Preparations, and the Constitutional Questions Neither Party Has Answered

Posted on September 12, 2026 by nathanalbright

As of 11 September 2026 Executive Summary Two years after Albania’s prime minister announced at the United Nations that his government would transform the Bektashi World Headquarters in Tirana into a sovereign state, no enabling legislation has been enacted, no … Continue reading →

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The Long Bargain: Tlaxcala from Independent Polity to Mexican State

Posted on September 11, 2026 by nathanalbright

Introduction In the autumn of 1520, Hernán Cortés sent Charles V a long letter. In it he stopped his account of the march inland to describe a city he judged larger and stronger than Granada, with busier markets and more … Continue reading →

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Introduction: The Type and the State

Posted on September 7, 2026 by nathanalbright

1. The problem this collection addresses Most contemporary analysis of empire is organized around states. It asks which polities were empires, when they began, how they were administered, and when they ended. The categories are territorial and institutional: extent of … Continue reading →

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The Governable Interval: A Typology of the Conditions Under Which Afghanistan Governs Itself, and Why Their Conjunction Is Rare

Posted on August 15, 2026 by nathanalbright

I. The Question Stated Properly The familiar phrase “graveyard of empires” gets the problem backward. Afghanistan has been conquered often and successfully — by Cyrus, Alexander, the Mauryas, the Kushans, the Sasanians, the Hephthalites, the Arabs, the Samanids, the Ghaznavids, … Continue reading →

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The Unmarked Case: North America Revisited — Span, Cohesion, and the Completed Typology

Posted on August 7, 2026 by nathanalbright

I. Why the First Region Has to Be Done Twice Ten papers ago this series began with North America because that is where the concept began. Gottmann named Megalopolis on the Northeastern seaboard, the Regional Plan Association’s America 2050 project … Continue reading →

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