Submitted by shockingdevelopment t3_z6br25 in explainlikeimfive
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Comments
TheLuminary t1_iy0gyhw wrote
Because we live in a world that is effectively wide, and not tall. Most of the human population lives in the Northern Hemisphere, and Most of the human capital exists in the Northern Hemisphere. It will be very unlikely that a band of northern countries would say, start to posture on Argentina and Australia.
That being said, there were some Pan American actions that the US took in South America that may be considered to be North vs South geopolitics.
jordgm t1_iy0h6ys wrote
All major powers are located laterally on the planet from one another, thus north/south alliances do not reflect most conflicts between nations
DarkAlman t1_iy0i7k0 wrote
TLDR: World War 2
Many geopolitical problems in the 20th and 21st centuries can be directly traced back to the aftermath of WW1, WW2, and the Cold War.
Prior to WW2 the superpowers of the World were the European Empires like the British, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.
Having risen up during the Industrial Revolution, they controlled significant foreign territory, had big fleets of ships and armies, and even powerful independent nations like the US were loosely aligned with the European powers through trade.
After WW2 the European Empires (which were already in decline) started to collapse. The two World Wars had crippled the European economies and devastated the Continent. The Japanese and German Empires had been defeated and were taken over by the powers that defeated them. While the Former European colonies like India, Africa, IndoChina, and China started to gain independence. The Middle East meanwhile which was once the Ottoman Empire had been defeated in WW1 and taken over by the Europeans, was now being broken up into the smaller independent nations that we know today.
The Worlds superpowers became the United States and the Soviet Union.
With the two locked in a Cold War (due to the threat of Nuclear annihilation) different nations started to ally themselves with the now so called Eastern or Western powers out of a need for mutual preservation. The Soviet Bloc or Warsaw pact in the East, and NATO in the West.
This extended to the former European colonies far east (India, China, IndoChina, Japan), the Middle east (Syria, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq), Africa (South Africa, Zaire, Egypt), Middle America (Cuba), and the Dictatorships in South America (Argentina, Columbia). Many of which having governments that were propped up by the CIA or KGB to create Western or Eastern aligned governments.
shockingdevelopment OP t1_iy0kcuh wrote
It seems to be fading due to the China Threat*. Countries like Japan and Australia are joining the UK and US in an economic group to fight its growth.
*the threat being China's... existence, since they don't do whatever the US says
DarkAlman t1_iy0uvty wrote
It still all leads back to WW2
China was in the midst of a Civil War during WW2 while also under occupation by the Japanese and being a British colony.
The Capitalist and Western aligned Kuomintang were fighting against the Chinese Communists.
Afterwards the Communist faction took over and it became a State loosely allied with the Eastern Bloc. While the remains of the Kuomintang ran off to Taiwan.
During the 80s while the Soviet Union collapsed China started becoming more capitalist while maintaining state control of everything. It's economic prosperity is what caused to be reach it's current near super power status.
The new Cold War is economics. The Chinese are doing a bunch of stuff that is Morally and Politically counter to the West but the West doesn't want to do anything about it because they are so economically dependent on China at the moment.
shockingdevelopment OP t1_iy0vq81 wrote
What do you mean by morally opposed and doing anything about it?
DarkAlman t1_iy177vj wrote
The Chinese regime is extremely authoritarian, spies on it's own citizens, implemented a social credit system, arrests people without warrants, makes people disappear for going against the government, and there's a possible active genocide happening against the Uyghurs right now just to name a few.
The West typically wouldn't want to do business with a country like that but tolerates China and doesn't denounce them as much as they normally would because they are too afraid to lose the economic benefits.
shockingdevelopment OP t1_iy2pel3 wrote
Yknow, the US is best friends with Saudi Arabia.
And were And is avoiding Chinese technology even though it'd help them, as a move against China
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tafor83 t1_iy0gqvn wrote
Because generally speaking the Southern hemisphere is fairly low-output compared to the Northern Hemisphere.
This is pretty reasonable considering about 90% of people live in the Northern hemisphere.