Published in United Kingdom - Political debates and analysis - 26 Sep 2016 16:53 - 49
Hello all!
Having recently entered this grand world, it has taken me some time to get used to many aspects of what the past 260 days has wrought. In an effort to make sense of the mud-slinging and war-fighting going on all around me, I delved into the complicated web of Mutual Protection Pacts (MPPs) that bind the nations of this world together.
I wanted to help visualize the polarities of the world and where common bonds / enmities could be found among our nations. It is difficult to learn much from a single MPP between nations. But when all of the world's MPPs are taken together, they paint a vivid image of the geopolitics of today. Below, I offer a weighted relational web of every MPP in existence as of Day 260.
The purpose of this web is not as a resource to recognize individual MPPs between nations, but rather to see a nation's posiiton in the global political climate. To understand this chart, I would reference a few key points:
Keep in mind that this web was created expressly without any conventional knowledge of the global political climate. This is purely what the MPP data suggests, without any editorializing. I understand there are blocs of power out there, which I intend on visiting in a later article, but for now take the MPPs for face value and see if it challenges any beliefs you may have.
Disclaimer: There are a lot of countries with a lot of MPPs in this world. It may be that a mistake or two was made in collecting the data. But a handful of missing MPPs is unlikely to change the narrative of the web unless they cross through wide sections of the map. If you see any glaring mistakes, please feel free to inform me.
Disclaimer #2: I have identified nations according to what fits in the designated space and how this world generally identifies them. However, if any of those labels are offensive to the citizens of those countries, please let me know so that I might change it.
Having recently entered this grand world, it has taken me some time to get used to many aspects of what the past 260 days has wrought. In an effort to make sense of the mud-slinging and war-fighting going on all around me, I delved into the complicated web of Mutual Protection Pacts (MPPs) that bind the nations of this world together.
I wanted to help visualize the polarities of the world and where common bonds / enmities could be found among our nations. It is difficult to learn much from a single MPP between nations. But when all of the world's MPPs are taken together, they paint a vivid image of the geopolitics of today. Below, I offer a weighted relational web of every MPP in existence as of Day 260.
The purpose of this web is not as a resource to recognize individual MPPs between nations, but rather to see a nation's posiiton in the global political climate. To understand this chart, I would reference a few key points:
- Each nation is colored according to their lation rank - a good, though not perfect, indicator of political strength.
- There are two clear and distinct spheres of influence in the web - the Iran / Turkey sphere and the Serbia sphere.
- Nations found on the extremities of the two spheres are either politically isolated (few MPPs e.g. Belgium, Nigeria) or politically extreme (mostly or only MPPs with their sphere e.g. Bulgaria, Croatia).
- Nations that are on the center-facing side of a sphere retain a few political options (a few MPPs with non-sphere nations e.g. France, Germany).
- Nations that are in the dead center of the web are politically divided or, perhaps, politically practical (more than a few MPPs with nations in both spheres e.g. Georgia, South Korea, MKD).
Keep in mind that this web was created expressly without any conventional knowledge of the global political climate. This is purely what the MPP data suggests, without any editorializing. I understand there are blocs of power out there, which I intend on visiting in a later article, but for now take the MPPs for face value and see if it challenges any beliefs you may have.
Disclaimer: There are a lot of countries with a lot of MPPs in this world. It may be that a mistake or two was made in collecting the data. But a handful of missing MPPs is unlikely to change the narrative of the web unless they cross through wide sections of the map. If you see any glaring mistakes, please feel free to inform me.
Disclaimer #2: I have identified nations according to what fits in the designated space and how this world generally identifies them. However, if any of those labels are offensive to the citizens of those countries, please let me know so that I might change it.
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vooztrollinAjkeNKinyasEl tucumanoThe FenixEl Tito HelamanWilfieItsColourvariola veraTyraelGhostringrad88rad88JeffTwpno0bsailbotdreeHi i am a simple multiDaltonicDUnknown3StrangersComments (49)
OMG its great work *-*
spier pig, spider pig 
great work! o/
great work! o/
Great article, good job!
wooow!!! excellent!
Excellent...
nice 
fyrom is insult for my country... another time write it just MKD... thanks for understanding
very good article!
@chento: I wasn t sure which was the correct form, so I went with this world s designation. I ll correct it right now.
vote!
Very nice! o7
Cooooool
This is helpful for a player like me who has no understanding of alliances and rivalries yet. Thanks.
@Wilfie: That was exactly my purpose! I ll be looking to do a lot of content specifically aimed at folks like us who don t really know what s going on in the global political climate!
unbelievable! How did you manage to do it? Just great!
@Angel: I used draw.io diagrams to map the countries of the world then cross-referenced the MPP lists. A fair bit of work, much of which I m going to try to automatize, but worth the effort!
Hi Yonai! You still have newspaper named Jeju Gungjeon hahah XD
@Dongsal: A memento from a long time ago. Didn t think anyone would notice. 
GJ !
well done Yonai, keep up the good work
Well Done, this is great! Thanks Yonai! Keep the good work, vcs done!
dude are you ok ?
wowowowo
GEORGIA !!!
great article
Great work man
Mexico has no MPP with Peru
cooooooool
V 44 S 17
@Lalo: Bound to happen! I m working on a streamline to cut down on what few errors we have.
Good catch, though. Without the Peru tie, Mexico could well be on the other side of the web.
that s an awesome article. good job @yonay keiko
Edited to address the Mexico / Peru tie. Interestingly enough, Mexico s position didn t move all that much as a result. It seems firmly anchored by its ties to other center-facing countries.
v+s
WOW GJ o7
wow
colour code the lines next time ^^ not so easy to see when they bunch up
That is a hell of job! Nicely done... GL!
wow!! V+S+Support
This is so so so so so good man! I had to comment twice ^^ I love the way the MPPs show the country s position so clearly, I didnt think it would be this obvious. Such a good job! Wow!
You should change FYROMs name back to FYROM. Check the UNs webite, that is their official name under which they represent their country in diplomacy, sports or any international events. Macedonia is their wishfull thinking, but they were given the name FYROM to clarify their difference from the Greek region of Macedonia, and prevent them from stealing their history. FYROM just has 25 years of history, and their ethnicity is a mixture of mainly bulgarians with serbs, albanians and gypsies. Because of this, they decided to try stealing the history of ancient greek state of macedonia just because it happened so that they were located on a small part of the named country s territory (the largest part remains in greece). So FYROM is the way to go in this one.
@essenin: I am not interested in re-hashing this age old dispute that has relatively little to do with this world and even less to do with the articles I am writing.
My policy is simple and applies equally to all countries - I will assume that whatever designation this world gives a country is a correct one unless and until citizens of that country express a desire otherwise.
Hmmm so how the rest of the world agreed doesn t matter, what matters what the country says? Based on that logic, its perfectly fine that Serbia changes its name to England, and we start calling ourselves English, while denying the English people the right to do so, while the whole world disagrees and while there are 10 times more English people than there are Serbs? Interesting way to look at things mate.
Also if you are calculating it by the people getting triggered about this, there are 2.7M actual Macedonians in north Greece that you insult with this compared to 700k brainwashed Bulgarians Nice going
http://prntscr.com/cnjtd7
http://prntscr.com/cnjtxd
Nice going
http://prntscr.com/cnjtd7
http://prntscr.com/cnjtxd@essenin: If Serbia is interested in calling itself England for the purpose my web, please let me know. Otherwise, I refer you to my previous comment.
don t mix real life with a game, stats or decisions made there have no effect in here... this is a virtual world essenin
No problem, you can insult greeks all you want if you want, not my problem, I just responded because you said this world designation, and both in this and RL they are referenced with FYROM so there is no confusion with this https://www.erevollution.com/en/country/region/27/Greece/196/Macedonia
You can just say, I call them what I want to, not what their official name is, and all good
@essenin: Due to the nature of the work that I do here, I rely heavily on URLs. I direct you to the URL of the military page in question: https://www.erevollution.com/en/country/military/53/Macedonia
So to say there is one official way of referring to this country within this world is inane. In any case, yes, I label them whatever I want to and so may any person who decides to put the effort into making such an article. It just so happens that whatever I want is whatever the citizens of each country wants for their label.
I haven t sent you the URL for the sake of reading the URL but for the sake of whats on that URL. On the one you sent there is this: http://prntscr.com/cnkb5j
You are right, there is a naming dispute that is going on, and the official RL name is FYROM, here both names are included so no one gets triggered, you included just the unofficial name which is ok aswell. I have no issue if you use imaginary names, its completely up to you to decide if you will do so in your own newspaper, but you refered to your decision as something that is designated by this world, which was a lie, both the imaginary and real name are whats designated by this world, and you chose the one which insults greeks and favours FYROM. That is my case, and my first comment was in hope that you are acting out of not being sure which is correct way to call them, in which case I offered you the information needed to make such a decision.