Chartbook #153: The South Asian Polycrisis - by Adam Tooze

In deciphering the global polycrisis it can be helpful to break down the interplay of crisis dynamics into regional systems. The EU and its neighborhood, for instance, is one such region, tied together by political institutions, economics and geopolitics.

Geography matters because regions are tied together by the gravitational pull of trade, through flows of migration, or cross-border cultural and political currents, through the friendships and antagonisms of neighbors, by proximity to particular geographic features - major rivers or canals (in Central America), choke points (like the Horn of Africa) - and by relations to major external powers (Russia, China, USA).

South East Asia is more insulated from great power rivalry and is, comparatively speaking, a zone of rapid development. Indonesia, notably, has emerged as a success story of the moment.

In Chartbook #56, I picked out Western Asia, stretching from Lebanon to Afghanistan, as a zone of regional polycrisis. I was delighted to see Esfandyar Batmanghelidj developing this theme in a recent twitter thread.

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