Got a new globe recently, the countries of the world all etched out in different pastel shades, their borders in bold, permanent-looking black. Hah! The last globe I had was about twenty five years ago, the one before that when I was a kid back around the time of the last Ice Age. The three globes might as well be maps of three different planets if it wasn't for the fact that the land masses these countries occupy are still the same. There are lots of new nations these days, some so small that their printed name is out in the ocean rather than emblazoned across its real estate.
Makes you wonder if they have room to make a U-turn when the country isn't even big enough to contain its title on a world map. But that's nonsense, really. I've been in Rhode Island, our tiniest state, like a hundred times smaller than Texas or something, and it seems pretty big when you're there, plenty of wide open spaces, baseball fields for the kids, forests and farms and whatnot. Which tells me that the world is a pretty big joint. What maps tell me is that it's a pretty restless joint, too.
Seems a lot of people are unhappy a lot of the time when a certain flag flies over their Capitol, one not of their own choosing. I can see where that would rankle, especially if the government it represents is actively killing some of the folks who live under that flag, or merely stealing the wealth of the so-called nation. Either way, the borders don't seem so permanent when you piss off a large population. Even the world's largest standing army can't prevent people from leaving the fold when this happens. Check out the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, emphasis on the former.
While Russia itself remains the largest piece of pastel on the globe, there's a good dozen or so sizeable independent nations with their own soothing map colors all around the Big Bear. I remember when that happened. It was a huge shock to everybody in the world, including the Soviets themselves and the vast intelligence community in Western Nations whose only job was to monitor these things. Makes you wonder exactly how they got the title"Intelligence Operatives." Seems they're just as clueless as the rest of us when it comes to predicting what next year's Rand-McNally World Atlas will look like.
Russia itself was mighty pissed off about it but did nothing but seethe about lost glory. Oh sure, they attacked a few of her former member nations, condemned a whole bunch more but eventually it dawned on them that they were the Spain, Britain and France of today losing their ill-gotten empires. Maybe that's why one Mr. Vladimir Putin, their ex-KGB Intelligence Operative who is their president recently claimed the North Pole in the name of Russia, maybe figuring that'll make up for the lost square kilometers of the Soviet breakup. Yeah, sure, like Santa's gonna give it up that easy! Good luck to you, Mr. Putin. If you could not subdue the various Ikstans that make up your new southern flank, what makes you think you can defeat Clauseikstan and his minions of industrious elves? You don’t want Santa ordering his toy assembly lines to be converted into munitions factories (Guess he never saw the documentary "The March of The Wooden Soldiers.").
Back to the maps. South America has remained remarkably stable, border-wise, in a region long renowned for its volatility. Europe, however, that reputed bastion of long-settled borders, has taken on a lot of different little patches of paste and melded the two Germany swatches back into one bluish-green garden of harmony. The Balkans borders, however, have been completely re-drawn yet again. It seems that every fifty years or so that region gets a makeover. The same people remain living there, it’s just that they occupy different nations every couple of generations without ever re-locating. Maybe it’s a flag-fetish thing, and all that ethnic-cleansing and bloodshed just a clever cover for this embarrassing obsession.
Africa and Asia get the most points for map-redrawing, mostly due to the demise of European Empires. To their credit, however, the governments who replaced their former oppressors and occupiers have for the most part been equally tyrannical, larcenous and bloodthirsty. (No sense confusing the people who are used to a certain way of life.) Some of these countries possess within their borders everything it takes to become a successful world class nation; an abundance of natural resources, farmland, seaports, navigable rivers and plentiful water supplies, great cities and an industrious population. For various reasons (Tribal warfare, corrupt regimes, religious intolerance to name but a few.) only a handful of these new nations have made strides in those directions, prompting the watercolorists at Rand-McNally to start mixing up some new and attractive pastel shades for next year’s World Atlas.
