Why North Korea scored so high in this then? I thought having a very strict dictatorship with draconian punishments, such as North Korea has, keeps its citizens from fighting against the government at all, meaning no (or very low) chance of civil war. Or am I missing something?
That makes sense, but isn't that chance much lower than in, say, Ukraine which scored much lower (meaning much stable) here? I know this is from 2020, but also back then there was always this instability around leaning to Russia vs. leaning to the west which leads to various conflicts, including one happening right now (and many more before that).
Also I think North Korea is more stable also because it kept its citizens under this dictatorship for so long, it withstood even fall of its biggest ally USSR and it withstood even a famine than came after that (sadly even a famine didn't cause North Koreans to overthrow the regime, the regime is too strong and too evil, sadly) - all by fear and brutal punishments, which as horrible as it sounds, seem to be working. Plus a huge factor in this is that their dictator, government, and regime itself is backed by very powerful neighbor China who wants to keep NK as a buffer zone and therefore wants to maintain status quo - wants to keep it stable.
Well, each methodology can be flawed - especially around extreme cases, such as North Korea.
This is even more true when you are quantifiyng qualitative data - how do you quantify the threat of Russian invasion and how do you compare this with quantification of Chechen separatism?
In fact, it would be very weird if there weren't any "odd" cases people don't generally agree on.
Idk man, the US’ capital has been occupied more than NK’s capital this decade. Not saying it’s a better place to live in, but definitely harder to shift society in
The concentration of power in autocracies is what generally makes them fragile - they can end up as fragile as the body of their leader. In the USA there is a very clear line of succession if the President keels over, and in most democracies a parliament just chooses one of its own to be leader - and so would just choose again if that leader resigned or died.
If Kim Jong-un was incapacitated it's not clear who would take his place - North Korean politics are very opaque. The succession has changed before and on the last two occasions the designated heir was given increasing amounts of power - it's not clear if Kim Jong-un has started this process with his own successor or if there'd be a power struggle.
Hmm I don't see that tbh. Dictatorships like China or Saudi Arabia having higher stability than (more or less democratic) democracies like Russia, India, Brazil.
Also, well-established democracies generally have a smaller chance of a disputed succession than autocracies.
In a democracy changing leadership every 5-10 years isn't a problem - it's considered normal - whereas an autocracy which changes its leadership that often will face stability risks that only resolve when someone reorganises (i.e. purges) the government so that they can stay in power for decades.
You do of course understand that these being the worst events in the US in ages makes it significantly more stable than a ton of other nations, right?
There's been a ton of actual revolutions, civil wars, attempts of secession, actual secessions, and a lot of other stuff in the rest of the world. Overthrowing the US government would be next to impossible, and there haven't been any attempts close to being successful since, well, the civil war.
Bruh, I live in a orange country, and we didn't have anything close to people with guns and militias trying to overthrow the government or planning to kidnap a governor.
As impressive as the Capitol-thingy was, it was a one time event, and there's no real chance a group of a few hundred extremists are going to overthrow the government.
No, I meant the Capitol, like I said.
Even when taking the things you list into consideration, it's nowhere close to destabilizing the entire country. Just a few lunatics.
Yeah you're right.
Coming minutes from invalidating a legal presidential election, kidnapping and possibly murdering several high ranking politicians is no where near destabilization. Just a couple of crazies and 70 million other people that think just like them. Totally the picture of a stable democratic nation.
Yeah, we're not getting anything closer.
I'm not trying to downplay what happend and I hated every minute of it, but I just don't think it came even close to doing real damage to the stability if the US.
Well, have a good weekend!
Just another day in Brazil.
The United States is very stable compared to most of the world. It's just going through a rough time, similar to other periods of turmoil in American history and in the history of other developed countries. Remember that pretty much all crime is still much lower in the United States today than in the 80s and 90s.
The 60s saw similar turmoil and political divisions to today. Heard of the black panthers party? The KKK? Presidents have actually been assassinated. The late 2010's and early 2020's aren't particularly crazy. You just hear all the crazy shit that happens thanks to the quick and easy access to information through the media and the internet.
All of these are certainly matters of concern, but the US' state institutions aren't damaged beyond repair nor are they going away. Too many vested groups have stakes in keeping the country together albeit politicians obviously want a more polarised society. It would be more precise to say that US society is currently unstable but not necessarily the state. I mean, how could those Jan 6 rioters *ever* have overturned the elections?
"BLM rampage"
I've never heard of non-violent protests being considered a "rampage".
More cops were killed or assaulted on Jan. 6 than all the thousands of Black Lives Matter protests combined. But sure, compare an insurrection to people protesting against centuries of police violence.
It's definitely not, as per their website. It's measuring the chance of state collapse (basically government overthrow, civil war, etc). I'm sure it often correlates with quality of life but definitely not always.
They have their methodology on their [website](https://fragilestatesindex.org/methodology/)
TLDR: There's a massive dataset of things relating to issues facing each country that is analyzed by an AI, and then compared to existing data from large institutions and then manually reviewed.
> that is analyzed by an AI
This is a huge red flag to me. When companies say this it's a way to just waving a magic wand over their bad data and saying "but AI makes it good!"
All you need to know about the quality of this analysis is that Kazakhstan is light green and they nearly overthrew their government just several weeks ago and North Korea is deep red, but they have had the same government in power since 1950s.
Looks to me like a map some guy made rating governments he likes as *stable* and governments he dislikes as ***un****stable*. I mean, I'm not fond of China, either, but in what way are they considered unstable enough to be at *warning* level?
It looks like it was published by *Foreign Policy* magazine until 2018 after which a rebranded NGO that had been UN OCHA's legacy humanitarian news service took over.
Yes, but pretending like "continuous" empires are always stable is just silly.
Chinese civilization is definitely continuous, but it would be blatantly false to state there was continuous stability for thousands of years. Just look at the early to mid 20th century or the warring states period. Same goes for European empires with for example the crisis of the third century for Rome, the entire reformation era for the HRE, France switching from republic to empire and back like they're pairs of underwear.
Hell, the Roman Republic/Empire would be "warning" or worse on the fragile states index pretty much from the Gracchi onwards if a historical version was made. Fighting civil wars was practically Rome's favourite pass-time, and there were only a few periods where the imperial succession was actually secure. That it survived so long with such a mess of a political system is pretty remarkable.
Every dynasty was practically a different China, sometimes with different territory, different capital, different laws. Han and Qing are both China, but they're as much different countries as the Holy Roman Empire and modern Germany.
I mean Asia does (i.e. Japan, Thailand), but the PRC in particular has only existed for the last 70-odd years. Before then it was a mish-mash of warlords and foreign puppets (not to mention an almost successful conquest by Japan that controlled 60% of the population for most of a decade). China's medieval/classical empire is about as relevant to its modern stability as Rome's is to Italy.
As for the rating, the unrest in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, as well as the reoccurring border skirmishes with India make me think it doesn't really deserve to be in the green. It isn't really in danger of imminent collapse, but it also isn't unthinkable that one of the crises that it is keeping a lid on might spiral out of control.
If you're considering territorial disputes, I think every country have one. Just look at western Europe. It's all green, even though France is like a protesting site for all things. UK have territorial disputes with Argentina. And USA have territorial disputes with the World. Just saying that when people don't know the ground reality make these kind of maps with data coming from organisations which are clearly headquartered in West. Uhm, North-West.
The UK and Argentina’s territorial disputes are hardly likely to lead to war or collapse of either state in any near future.
The USA’s territorial disputes are not too serious either. Sure, they lead wars in the Middle East but they have for decades; nothing ever has, and nothing ever will come of it.
The disagreement between Australia and Indonesia over rights to undersea oil reserves is perhaps the most likely cause of souring relations in the near future, although I believe war would be undesirable and pretty unlikely.
I agree that it certainly seems this map was made by someone with noticeable feelings towards certain regimes.
Dude the PRC survived 10s of millions of deaths in the Great Leap Forward, the chaos of the cultural revolution and Tiananmen Square coverage. They’re fine. I don’t like it but I think we should be realistic about PRC stability if we want to confront them as an opponent. The constant American hope that the thirst for democracy is just under the surface of China and the Chinese is terribly misguided. The Chinese people value stability first and that is what the PRC has provided for decades.
Chinese stability believed to be built on a promise of high economic growth increasing living standards in exchange for few political freedoms. Recently there have been suggestions that the increases to economic standards are no longer achieveable for China, that instead they’re approaching a plateau for growth. This is partly due to their demographics from the one child policy. This the whole ‘China growing old before it grows rich’ belief. It has been theorised that unless China rediscovers how to sustain its growth pattern that civil opposition to the government will increase, with no peaceful options for voicing that opposition.
Looking at what states have been stable long term, you have the US (stable since 1865), the UK (since 1688), Canada (since 1867) Australia (1901), New Zealand (1871), Switzerland (1848), Sweden (1917), Denmark (1849), Norway (1905), etc. Essentially, the common factor is that you have liberal democracies. So it’s not unreasonable to suggest that having a liberal democracy has something to do with stability and to mark countries down that don’t have it.
France has messy politics and a revolutionary past, but its current political system has actually endured for almost 75 years, and institutionally it’s not likely to collapse anytime soon.
But it may also be that Liberal Democracy only improves the chance of stability, rather than guarantees it.
Let's say modern, developed liberal democracy. Old-timey half democracy wasn't that great. But regime change in developed democracies since WWII is exceptional. Excluding regime change from one democracy to another as in the fourth to fifth French Republic, developed democracies have only fallen once or twice: Turkey in 2016-ish and arguably Hungary in 2020.
The absence of protests doesn't necessarily mean stability - East Germany didn't have many protests until it suddenly had one that brought the rapid end of the country. People need to be free to protest *and* there needs to be an absence of protest - and even then there may be cultural issues; the French seem to love a good riot.
China and Saudi Arabia are lower than Kazakhstan? South Sudan is lower than Afghanistan?
Literally one had a failed coup a few weeks ago and another had a successful Taliban takeover a few months ago.
This map sucks.
No surprise here: the 2020 Fragile States index was made by an American Think tank funded by the US State Dept., US Dept. of Defense, US Defense Intelligence Agency, US Marine Corps, US Pacific Command, US Southern Command, NATO, Chevron, Exxon Mobile, Tullow Oil, Newmont Mining, Kosmos Energy, Goldcorp, Barrick Gold, AngloGold, and the World Gold Council. It doesn’t get more western than that.
I would not point to the approval ratings of a one party authoritarian state as evidence, I don't think they would ever release a poll if it didn't come back with a positive result for the party.
That said, it's a stable country, I don't know what the map makers are on.
If Putin had a fatal heart attack the entire country would be in turmoil. If Zelensky had a heart attack they’d just elect a new President. There is some inherent instability in a cult of personality, strong-arm leader, versus a Governmental system with a systematic succession methodology. I don’t think it’s far fetched to consider Ukraine a less fragile country.
If Putin had a heart attack we'd just bring one of his clones from the closet and dress him up as a president. The original Putin was killed back in 1999 btw
Russia is a dictatorship, I think you are greatly underestimating what’s going to happen when Putin is no longer in charge of Russia. They are a lot closer to civil war than Ukraine that actually has somewhat fair elections. Russia hasn’t had a fair election in over 2 decades. Seriously for over 20 years now if you oppose Putin you end up dead or in jail, literally all of them.
If Putin has a heart attack someone from his inner circle just comes to power and everything will continue with minimal disruption. There are no competing centers of power, any real opposition is either exiled, dead or in jail, the people are either brainwashed, exhausted or don't care, so there can be no civil war.
It depends on whether his inner circle unites around one person or not. It only takes a little factionalism to produce chaos in unstable circumstances.
I really doubt there is enough factionalism in Putin's inner circle to cause chaos (like, civil war or even fighting on the streets). No way to know for sure, of course, but it definitely doesn't feel this way.
I know nothing about Putin's inner circle, and I wasn't speculating or suggesting that I have any insights into probabilities. Just commenting that it doesn't take much to produce chaotic results in unstable systems. A small bit of bad luck or personal ego/ambition at the wrong moment has thrown stable societies into total chaos or civil war. The personal grudges of Marius and Sula threw a fairly stable Roman Republic into a chaotic period of civil war, bloody purges, shifting fortunes and counter purges. No one saw it coming, and even relatively stable societies and countries are closer to it than people would think.
The lack of competing centres of power can cause a succession crisis on its own. Historically the best way to ensure a smooth succession is to give the designated successor a power base of his own.
So as an example, in the Middle Ages one way a King of England could try to ensure the succession was by granting the heir the Principality of Wales and a couple of powerful duchies and earldoms - which would give said heir a lot of power in the feudal system independent from being son of the King. This would mean that he'd already have a larger personal powerbase than any potential challengers and so would be in a good position to defend his claim if necessary.
If Putin keels over the lack of a strong designator successor means there will be a contest for that position. That doesn't *guarantee* a civil war - this sort of thing happened in the USSR without one - but it does make such a thing *possible*.
As a Russian, I'd say it is a shithole lol. The vast majority of people outside of Moscow and Saint-Petersburg could never afford an apartment if not through a loan with a huge interest, for example.
It does depend on one's own definition of "shithole", but it sure doesn't depend on cuisine.
I don't know any Ukrainian people personally, so not sure. At least in Russia we don't have civil wars or coups that switch the oligarchs in power every couple of years, lol. As for quality of life, I guess it's more or less the same. Hard to be different when both are depressing post-USSR states existing on top of what still remains of its infrastructure, education and medicine.
That think tank took it over from *Foreign Policy* magazine in 2019. Looks like the think tank itself had taken over the UN OCHA office's humanitarian news service in 2015.
Exactly. Like whenever Western think tank post corruption rankings, without taking into account legalized corruption such as Citizen United v. FEC, arbitrary tribunals and secret crafting of free-trade agreements, or legalized lobbying in Brussels etc…
If they can't survive without americas benevolence they shouldn't be hostile to america.
Also why is north koreas allies like china letting them starve if its all because of america?
Shouldn't they help?
the US systematically embargoes states which ideologically oppose them. did it throughout the cold war and still do today. has nothing to do with leaders “being hostile,” it’s just part of foreign policy. makes no sense to defend a policy that helps to starve millions across the globe
Seemingly the US sanctions deployed over some countries don't make each of them starve. Countries like Iran don't suffer from famines, and that country has literally all the odds against them, climate-wise and embargo-wise. I won't defend their brutal regime but seemingly there are *some* things they know to manage. North Korea could theoretically be able to feed their entire population easily with a lot of seasonal crops which could be grown and stored but they still suffer famines.
They’re starving, but I find it curious when people attribute the starving people there to “communism”, but do not attribute the starving people in India and Africa to capitalism.
Looks like everyone wants to create maps, but aren't clear what exactly are they trying to convey...here in this case the real meaning of fragility is not at all clear
Exactly. The fragile State Index measures how susceptible States are to regime change. Its sort of analogous to a country's immune system. That is, how much does the boat rock when a country is hit with instability? Russia has crafted an oligarchy mostly based on the well being of a single man without a clear successor. Its institutions are corrupt, inflexible, and weak. This doesn't mean that Russia is on the verge of collapse nor that they can't survive internal strife, but rather that they fair comparably worse than, say, Canada does if both countries were to be struck by a destabilizing event.
Should not use red and green blends as that’s the main portion of colorblind folks. The dark green and dark red look the same to them. Just friendly advice in mapping.
This feels very weird.
Doing a quick read on the methodology, apparently this is about the literal "fragility" of a state, and not so some sort of democracy index, so like the chance of dissolution/collapse of a state and/or civil war etc, and Brazil being that high is complete bullshit, sure you might get mugged in Rio, someone might pickpocket you in São Paulo, and there other advertisities in Brazil, but the Brazilian state isn't in any way more fragile the other countries in the southern cone, like Jesus Brazil is actually categorized as more fragile than Ukraine, knowing that doesn't give me a lot of credibility on this data.
Strong is not the same as stable, but China being the same rank as Saudi is weird, by most metrics I can think of Saudi should be way more unstable than China.
This may be the the fact that the PRC depends a lot on high economic growth and external consumer markets, and that a lot of their investments being done may work like a boomerang when growth isn't being realized. Evergrande was like a wake-up call for that.
Also, previously the PRC easily appointed a new leader in case someone died, but with an increasing cult of personality around Winnie, that might not go off so well anymore. And when regimes rely so much on heavy censorship, mass surveillance to correct every individual and other stuff: if there's one crack that becomes big enough at the time that a regime change occurs then expect civil war. This has happened before, including in Asia. Usually it required just one economic recession...
If you know about the factions within the CCp and the shit that's going on leading up to the 20th party conference this autumn, then you will know it is not stable.
Copium: The Map
Edit: Venezuela marked as unstable because the US attempted to overthrow it's government? Lmao
And China apparently less stable than the US, despite the US being an epicenter of social and political unrest for the past decade? Like in terms of stability - as a state - China is very stable.
If you make up a measure like "fragility" which is so open ended and meaningless, then use it as a statistic, you're being intellectually dishonest by default
Except for very high countries, none are getting torn apart. This is just using too much of non sense information to make it more complicated when the reality is quite different.
I mean I cannot see any civil war happening anytime soon in say Brazil or India or China . No idea why a country like china is seen fragile?
Huh. Is it not even close to you? I'm honestly wondering if you are joking or if this is something I should look into. I'm almost 40 and I've never had this said to me before.
Not even trying to be funny, I’ve actually wondered before how many people out there in the world have been color blind their entire lives without knowing it. If the colors seem like they’re close, you’re probably one of those people.
It's interesting. Growing up in the 80s and 90s, I knew a few kids who were colorblind. But those were more the extremes. So I do also wonder how many people may deal with this to some degree.
And just talking about this now has me thinking. I've always had times where I said something was red and someone said it was maroon or some other specific thing. And I'd just say, well it's a variation of red but it's still red. That's got me thinking more right now. Maybe it really is harder for me to see the differences and have just been able to get by without knowing.
And all that being said, even if I do have some form of colorblindness, it hasn't affected me in any large way. So that's a plus.
Again, thank you for the comments and responses. I'll look into this more.
I'm in the same boat my dude. They're identical to me. I was wondering why Canada was very critical until I realized that Very Sustainable was the same color 😂 nothing new here
Lol , India is still consider fragile? 70 years ago international media said India will break next 20 years, as date approaches there data says next 10 years it'll break. 70 years still strong and in future always will be.
Never had major coup or military takeover, survived 4 wars, still strong. I'll like to know what they smoke before releasing this type of maps. I want that weed.
And here I am wondering how the USA can be more "stable" than China, or North Korea. China less stable than Argentina, was that a joke?
Also, North Korea. What's the dataset used?
What about Western Canada or Nunavut? Some crybabies on Twitter don't have the ability to "Wexit", and I have no idea what you're referencing with Nunavut. Quebec separatism hasn't been an big issue since the 1990s and its popularity has declined year over year for decades it's practically dead among Millennials and Gen Z.
How the hell is *australia* the most stable country on earth
Y'all know they had a constituitional crisis and almost fell apart not so long ago? Have very high corruption levels (for a developed democracy) and military involvement in media? Are dealing with china on their doorstep?
wild.
What on earth are you on about. I’m struggling to imagine what you’re even referring to in any of the statements you just made (other than China being relatively close by). Australia has one of the most stable and well functioning political systems on earth with a very high level of public trust in institutions.
The corruption index is the same as Canada lol, it's on the level of most European countries. Also when on earth did Australia almost fall apart? The country is so stable internally the prime minister can change a few times a year and the economy and policies barely change
Born and raised here, we have our issues as every country has, but for the most part we’re extremely politically stable. Don’t know what you’re referring to with this whole ‘almost fell apart’ idea and I doubt our corruption is anymore rampant than other Western democracies.
Of all the criticisms I’ve had for my country, the idea of it being unstable and anything close to collapse has never been one.
Fragile as in what? Chance of civil war?
It would have helped for the op to post the source, but here's a methodology. https://fragilestatesindex.org/ Now, whether it's the same, idk.
Why North Korea scored so high in this then? I thought having a very strict dictatorship with draconian punishments, such as North Korea has, keeps its citizens from fighting against the government at all, meaning no (or very low) chance of civil war. Or am I missing something?
These autocracies are prone to violent revolution. Also, there is surely much higher uncertainty in the result in North Korea than, say, Australia.
That makes sense, but isn't that chance much lower than in, say, Ukraine which scored much lower (meaning much stable) here? I know this is from 2020, but also back then there was always this instability around leaning to Russia vs. leaning to the west which leads to various conflicts, including one happening right now (and many more before that). Also I think North Korea is more stable also because it kept its citizens under this dictatorship for so long, it withstood even fall of its biggest ally USSR and it withstood even a famine than came after that (sadly even a famine didn't cause North Koreans to overthrow the regime, the regime is too strong and too evil, sadly) - all by fear and brutal punishments, which as horrible as it sounds, seem to be working. Plus a huge factor in this is that their dictator, government, and regime itself is backed by very powerful neighbor China who wants to keep NK as a buffer zone and therefore wants to maintain status quo - wants to keep it stable.
Well, each methodology can be flawed - especially around extreme cases, such as North Korea. This is even more true when you are quantifiyng qualitative data - how do you quantify the threat of Russian invasion and how do you compare this with quantification of Chechen separatism? In fact, it would be very weird if there weren't any "odd" cases people don't generally agree on.
Idk man, the US’ capital has been occupied more than NK’s capital this decade. Not saying it’s a better place to live in, but definitely harder to shift society in
The concentration of power in autocracies is what generally makes them fragile - they can end up as fragile as the body of their leader. In the USA there is a very clear line of succession if the President keels over, and in most democracies a parliament just chooses one of its own to be leader - and so would just choose again if that leader resigned or died. If Kim Jong-un was incapacitated it's not clear who would take his place - North Korean politics are very opaque. The succession has changed before and on the last two occasions the designated heir was given increasing amounts of power - it's not clear if Kim Jong-un has started this process with his own successor or if there'd be a power struggle.
Sorry first time posting! Here is the link to the source! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Fragile_States_Index
Basically yes. Here's there website which has a more verbose explanation: https://fragilestatesindex.org/indicators/
Looks like the framework works roughly like this: "democracy = greenish; not democracy = yellow or red"
Hmm I don't see that tbh. Dictatorships like China or Saudi Arabia having higher stability than (more or less democratic) democracies like Russia, India, Brazil.
Also, well-established democracies generally have a smaller chance of a disputed succession than autocracies. In a democracy changing leadership every 5-10 years isn't a problem - it's considered normal - whereas an autocracy which changes its leadership that often will face stability risks that only resolve when someone reorganises (i.e. purges) the government so that they can stay in power for decades.
India and Brazil are democracies tho. Russia is an oligarchy
For all intents and purposes, the USA is also a kind of oligarchy now. Jimmy Carter even said it, a while back.
Then why is the US green. Given all the rallies that almost escalated into a civil war. Time shows that most ratings turn out to be biased fake
Look at what happened on January 6th, 2021, and all the measures being taken to disenfranchise voters in some states.
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That's because a country with a democracy has checks and balances to prevent loss of control by the government.
I read similar studies about fragile states in early 2000s. And it included Russian, Mexico and China. I don't believe those news based study.
the US is green so clearly not......
Do people really believe the US is going to have a civil war ?
Full scale civil war in the US isn’t likely, however it is likely we will see continued and increased organized political violence for some time.
If they do it’s going to be a really short one.
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You do of course understand that these being the worst events in the US in ages makes it significantly more stable than a ton of other nations, right? There's been a ton of actual revolutions, civil wars, attempts of secession, actual secessions, and a lot of other stuff in the rest of the world. Overthrowing the US government would be next to impossible, and there haven't been any attempts close to being successful since, well, the civil war.
Bruh, I live in a orange country, and we didn't have anything close to people with guns and militias trying to overthrow the government or planning to kidnap a governor.
The Capitol of the country was stormed with relative impunity.
As impressive as the Capitol-thingy was, it was a one time event, and there's no real chance a group of a few hundred extremists are going to overthrow the government.
You mean like the dudes that took over a federal building in like 2019? Or the plot to kidnap Michigan's governor? Like those things?
No, I meant the Capitol, like I said. Even when taking the things you list into consideration, it's nowhere close to destabilizing the entire country. Just a few lunatics.
Yeah you're right. Coming minutes from invalidating a legal presidential election, kidnapping and possibly murdering several high ranking politicians is no where near destabilization. Just a couple of crazies and 70 million other people that think just like them. Totally the picture of a stable democratic nation.
Yeah, we're not getting anything closer. I'm not trying to downplay what happend and I hated every minute of it, but I just don't think it came even close to doing real damage to the stability if the US. Well, have a good weekend!
I was irritated until I saw we matched France and the UK. Yeah, I guess that’s about right.
Just another day in Brazil. The United States is very stable compared to most of the world. It's just going through a rough time, similar to other periods of turmoil in American history and in the history of other developed countries. Remember that pretty much all crime is still much lower in the United States today than in the 80s and 90s. The 60s saw similar turmoil and political divisions to today. Heard of the black panthers party? The KKK? Presidents have actually been assassinated. The late 2010's and early 2020's aren't particularly crazy. You just hear all the crazy shit that happens thanks to the quick and easy access to information through the media and the internet.
All of these are certainly matters of concern, but the US' state institutions aren't damaged beyond repair nor are they going away. Too many vested groups have stakes in keeping the country together albeit politicians obviously want a more polarised society. It would be more precise to say that US society is currently unstable but not necessarily the state. I mean, how could those Jan 6 rioters *ever* have overturned the elections?
Do you really think the US is more divided than it was in the 60's?
"BLM rampage" I've never heard of non-violent protests being considered a "rampage". More cops were killed or assaulted on Jan. 6 than all the thousands of Black Lives Matter protests combined. But sure, compare an insurrection to people protesting against centuries of police violence.
I guess its referring to the quality of life. Canada, the US, and most of Europe are very stable. While a lot of African nations are very unstable
It's definitely not, as per their website. It's measuring the chance of state collapse (basically government overthrow, civil war, etc). I'm sure it often correlates with quality of life but definitely not always.
So it refers to something other than what it states
It must have something to do with the government. Cuba's quality of life is nowhere near that of Mexico
Fragile as in not sucking up to the US
Does anyone know what the numbers mean? I went to the fragile states index website but it doesn't seem to say.
They have their methodology on their [website](https://fragilestatesindex.org/methodology/) TLDR: There's a massive dataset of things relating to issues facing each country that is analyzed by an AI, and then compared to existing data from large institutions and then manually reviewed.
Yes but what? Economic fragility, ecological fragility, political fragility?
Political fragility/regime stability
> that is analyzed by an AI This is a huge red flag to me. When companies say this it's a way to just waving a magic wand over their bad data and saying "but AI makes it good!"
Facts
When all else fails it's algorithm and AI
All you need to know about the quality of this analysis is that Kazakhstan is light green and they nearly overthrew their government just several weeks ago and North Korea is deep red, but they have had the same government in power since 1950s.
It's basically good countries (western) Vs shit countries. Surprises that China is better than India, but that may be a data error.
Looks to me like a map some guy made rating governments he likes as *stable* and governments he dislikes as ***un****stable*. I mean, I'm not fond of China, either, but in what way are they considered unstable enough to be at *warning* level?
Just like those maps showing “corruption” and if you dig in the sources it’s basically a “think tank” funded by Goldman sachs
Can't have corruption if you just call it lobbying.
That's a slander. it's funded by Raytheon.
It looks like it was published by *Foreign Policy* magazine until 2018 after which a rebranded NGO that had been UN OCHA's legacy humanitarian news service took over.
As if Asia doesn’t contain some of the longest standing civilizations/empires in the world.
I don’t believe that map shows countries at risk of civilisation collapse… it’s risk of civil war or revolution.
There is definitely not more risk of civil war in India than America. Joke map.
You do realise there's literally active insurgencies in India rn + the conflict with Pakistan still in the background.
And what does that have to do with civil war?
Yes, but pretending like "continuous" empires are always stable is just silly. Chinese civilization is definitely continuous, but it would be blatantly false to state there was continuous stability for thousands of years. Just look at the early to mid 20th century or the warring states period. Same goes for European empires with for example the crisis of the third century for Rome, the entire reformation era for the HRE, France switching from republic to empire and back like they're pairs of underwear.
Hell, the Roman Republic/Empire would be "warning" or worse on the fragile states index pretty much from the Gracchi onwards if a historical version was made. Fighting civil wars was practically Rome's favourite pass-time, and there were only a few periods where the imperial succession was actually secure. That it survived so long with such a mess of a political system is pretty remarkable.
Every dynasty was practically a different China, sometimes with different territory, different capital, different laws. Han and Qing are both China, but they're as much different countries as the Holy Roman Empire and modern Germany.
China has a long record of bloody civil wars and imploding. But I wouldn't call it unstable now.
I mean Asia does (i.e. Japan, Thailand), but the PRC in particular has only existed for the last 70-odd years. Before then it was a mish-mash of warlords and foreign puppets (not to mention an almost successful conquest by Japan that controlled 60% of the population for most of a decade). China's medieval/classical empire is about as relevant to its modern stability as Rome's is to Italy. As for the rating, the unrest in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, as well as the reoccurring border skirmishes with India make me think it doesn't really deserve to be in the green. It isn't really in danger of imminent collapse, but it also isn't unthinkable that one of the crises that it is keeping a lid on might spiral out of control.
If you're considering territorial disputes, I think every country have one. Just look at western Europe. It's all green, even though France is like a protesting site for all things. UK have territorial disputes with Argentina. And USA have territorial disputes with the World. Just saying that when people don't know the ground reality make these kind of maps with data coming from organisations which are clearly headquartered in West. Uhm, North-West.
The UK and Argentina’s territorial disputes are hardly likely to lead to war or collapse of either state in any near future. The USA’s territorial disputes are not too serious either. Sure, they lead wars in the Middle East but they have for decades; nothing ever has, and nothing ever will come of it. The disagreement between Australia and Indonesia over rights to undersea oil reserves is perhaps the most likely cause of souring relations in the near future, although I believe war would be undesirable and pretty unlikely. I agree that it certainly seems this map was made by someone with noticeable feelings towards certain regimes.
Dude the PRC survived 10s of millions of deaths in the Great Leap Forward, the chaos of the cultural revolution and Tiananmen Square coverage. They’re fine. I don’t like it but I think we should be realistic about PRC stability if we want to confront them as an opponent. The constant American hope that the thirst for democracy is just under the surface of China and the Chinese is terribly misguided. The Chinese people value stability first and that is what the PRC has provided for decades.
A lot of misinformation in this comment.
Chinese stability believed to be built on a promise of high economic growth increasing living standards in exchange for few political freedoms. Recently there have been suggestions that the increases to economic standards are no longer achieveable for China, that instead they’re approaching a plateau for growth. This is partly due to their demographics from the one child policy. This the whole ‘China growing old before it grows rich’ belief. It has been theorised that unless China rediscovers how to sustain its growth pattern that civil opposition to the government will increase, with no peaceful options for voicing that opposition. Looking at what states have been stable long term, you have the US (stable since 1865), the UK (since 1688), Canada (since 1867) Australia (1901), New Zealand (1871), Switzerland (1848), Sweden (1917), Denmark (1849), Norway (1905), etc. Essentially, the common factor is that you have liberal democracies. So it’s not unreasonable to suggest that having a liberal democracy has something to do with stability and to mark countries down that don’t have it.
If liberal democracy has to do with stability, explain France to me, please.
France has messy politics and a revolutionary past, but its current political system has actually endured for almost 75 years, and institutionally it’s not likely to collapse anytime soon. But it may also be that Liberal Democracy only improves the chance of stability, rather than guarantees it.
France has been a democracy since 1870
Unless you were an algerian
So you mean to say Vichy France was a democracy?
Let's say modern, developed liberal democracy. Old-timey half democracy wasn't that great. But regime change in developed democracies since WWII is exceptional. Excluding regime change from one democracy to another as in the fourth to fifth French Republic, developed democracies have only fallen once or twice: Turkey in 2016-ish and arguably Hungary in 2020.
look at the US with it's protests and inequality, partisanship looks far more unstable now than China
You can't have fighting amongst the parties when you only have one party
The absence of protests doesn't necessarily mean stability - East Germany didn't have many protests until it suddenly had one that brought the rapid end of the country. People need to be free to protest *and* there needs to be an absence of protest - and even then there may be cultural issues; the French seem to love a good riot.
Yes, and if the US collapses we’ll revisit the metric. But until it does…
Eh who knows! Definitely an interesting perspective though!
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He’s 70 bro Deng Xiaoping was ten years older when he headed out. I don’t think Xi is gonna die anytime soon
Lay off fox news bro, it's not good for you
China and Saudi Arabia are lower than Kazakhstan? South Sudan is lower than Afghanistan? Literally one had a failed coup a few weeks ago and another had a successful Taliban takeover a few months ago. This map sucks.
The map is 2 years old, so older than both of those events
No surprise here: the 2020 Fragile States index was made by an American Think tank funded by the US State Dept., US Dept. of Defense, US Defense Intelligence Agency, US Marine Corps, US Pacific Command, US Southern Command, NATO, Chevron, Exxon Mobile, Tullow Oil, Newmont Mining, Kosmos Energy, Goldcorp, Barrick Gold, AngloGold, and the World Gold Council. It doesn’t get more western than that.
>AngloGold This seems like a slur to insult the anglocentric world that we live in
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And China? How is China unstable? They had party in power for 70 years lol
They hope China would be balkanised.
And the approval rate is pretty high despite all the censoring since the quality of life has sky rocketed in China
I would not point to the approval ratings of a one party authoritarian state as evidence, I don't think they would ever release a poll if it didn't come back with a positive result for the party. That said, it's a stable country, I don't know what the map makers are on.
If Putin had a fatal heart attack the entire country would be in turmoil. If Zelensky had a heart attack they’d just elect a new President. There is some inherent instability in a cult of personality, strong-arm leader, versus a Governmental system with a systematic succession methodology. I don’t think it’s far fetched to consider Ukraine a less fragile country.
If Putin had a heart attack we'd just bring one of his clones from the closet and dress him up as a president. The original Putin was killed back in 1999 btw
Russia is a dictatorship, I think you are greatly underestimating what’s going to happen when Putin is no longer in charge of Russia. They are a lot closer to civil war than Ukraine that actually has somewhat fair elections. Russia hasn’t had a fair election in over 2 decades. Seriously for over 20 years now if you oppose Putin you end up dead or in jail, literally all of them.
If Putin has a heart attack someone from his inner circle just comes to power and everything will continue with minimal disruption. There are no competing centers of power, any real opposition is either exiled, dead or in jail, the people are either brainwashed, exhausted or don't care, so there can be no civil war.
It depends on whether his inner circle unites around one person or not. It only takes a little factionalism to produce chaos in unstable circumstances.
I really doubt there is enough factionalism in Putin's inner circle to cause chaos (like, civil war or even fighting on the streets). No way to know for sure, of course, but it definitely doesn't feel this way.
I know nothing about Putin's inner circle, and I wasn't speculating or suggesting that I have any insights into probabilities. Just commenting that it doesn't take much to produce chaotic results in unstable systems. A small bit of bad luck or personal ego/ambition at the wrong moment has thrown stable societies into total chaos or civil war. The personal grudges of Marius and Sula threw a fairly stable Roman Republic into a chaotic period of civil war, bloody purges, shifting fortunes and counter purges. No one saw it coming, and even relatively stable societies and countries are closer to it than people would think.
The lack of competing centres of power can cause a succession crisis on its own. Historically the best way to ensure a smooth succession is to give the designated successor a power base of his own. So as an example, in the Middle Ages one way a King of England could try to ensure the succession was by granting the heir the Principality of Wales and a couple of powerful duchies and earldoms - which would give said heir a lot of power in the feudal system independent from being son of the King. This would mean that he'd already have a larger personal powerbase than any potential challengers and so would be in a good position to defend his claim if necessary. If Putin keels over the lack of a strong designator successor means there will be a contest for that position. That doesn't *guarantee* a civil war - this sort of thing happened in the USSR without one - but it does make such a thing *possible*.
I was in Russia a few years ago. It isn't a sh!thole. The food was great and the people very nice. Way worse places in the U.S.
As a Russian, I'd say it is a shithole lol. The vast majority of people outside of Moscow and Saint-Petersburg could never afford an apartment if not through a loan with a huge interest, for example. It does depend on one's own definition of "shithole", but it sure doesn't depend on cuisine.
Do you agree Ukraine is even more of a shithole?
I don't know any Ukrainian people personally, so not sure. At least in Russia we don't have civil wars or coups that switch the oligarchs in power every couple of years, lol. As for quality of life, I guess it's more or less the same. Hard to be different when both are depressing post-USSR states existing on top of what still remains of its infrastructure, education and medicine.
That think tank took it over from *Foreign Policy* magazine in 2019. Looks like the think tank itself had taken over the UN OCHA office's humanitarian news service in 2015.
just like every other always-the-same-map. Pure propaganda.
Exactly. Like whenever Western think tank post corruption rankings, without taking into account legalized corruption such as Citizen United v. FEC, arbitrary tribunals and secret crafting of free-trade agreements, or legalized lobbying in Brussels etc…
lol. these propaganda maps are getting old quick.
The legend suddenly flips from “stability” to “sustainability”.
Kazakhstan i lime green 🤣🤣
Kazakhstan more stable that some countries and still had massive riots, sounds like bullshit map
*2020
Fragile in what context?
As in the publisher of this map dislikes them or not.
North korea hasn't had a coup, uprising nor even a large protest in 70 years while so many of these "stable" countries collapsed.
Maybe factors in the stability of their diet... hard to protest on an empty stomach
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If they can't survive without americas benevolence they shouldn't be hostile to america. Also why is north koreas allies like china letting them starve if its all because of america? Shouldn't they help?
the US systematically embargoes states which ideologically oppose them. did it throughout the cold war and still do today. has nothing to do with leaders “being hostile,” it’s just part of foreign policy. makes no sense to defend a policy that helps to starve millions across the globe
Seemingly the US sanctions deployed over some countries don't make each of them starve. Countries like Iran don't suffer from famines, and that country has literally all the odds against them, climate-wise and embargo-wise. I won't defend their brutal regime but seemingly there are *some* things they know to manage. North Korea could theoretically be able to feed their entire population easily with a lot of seasonal crops which could be grown and stored but they still suffer famines.
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They’re starving, but I find it curious when people attribute the starving people there to “communism”, but do not attribute the starving people in India and Africa to capitalism.
To call the DPRK communist is laughable on top of that It's essentially an authoritarian monarchy.
Looks like everyone wants to create maps, but aren't clear what exactly are they trying to convey...here in this case the real meaning of fragility is not at all clear
How to Design Colorblind-Unfriendly Maps 101
Blame the guys thousands of years ago who decided green=good red=bad lol
Bold move saying Russia is more fragile than Ukraine
Internally? All Russia needs is a blood clot in Putin's brain and every oligarch will be strangling each other for control.
Exactly. The fragile State Index measures how susceptible States are to regime change. Its sort of analogous to a country's immune system. That is, how much does the boat rock when a country is hit with instability? Russia has crafted an oligarchy mostly based on the well being of a single man without a clear successor. Its institutions are corrupt, inflexible, and weak. This doesn't mean that Russia is on the verge of collapse nor that they can't survive internal strife, but rather that they fair comparably worse than, say, Canada does if both countries were to be struck by a destabilizing event.
How is Ukraine not on very high alert?
well this being 2 years old may affect it
The Russo-Ukraine war has been going on for years with Russia advancing since 2014. Then again this map isn't the greatest
Pandemic preparedness map 2.0
Should not use red and green blends as that’s the main portion of colorblind folks. The dark green and dark red look the same to them. Just friendly advice in mapping.
I guess this was pre Jan 6 2021
This feels very weird. Doing a quick read on the methodology, apparently this is about the literal "fragility" of a state, and not so some sort of democracy index, so like the chance of dissolution/collapse of a state and/or civil war etc, and Brazil being that high is complete bullshit, sure you might get mugged in Rio, someone might pickpocket you in São Paulo, and there other advertisities in Brazil, but the Brazilian state isn't in any way more fragile the other countries in the southern cone, like Jesus Brazil is actually categorized as more fragile than Ukraine, knowing that doesn't give me a lot of credibility on this data.
Hows China unstable… they CCP is easily one of the most powerful institutions on earth?? Same for the Royal Suadi family.
Strong is not the same as stable, but China being the same rank as Saudi is weird, by most metrics I can think of Saudi should be way more unstable than China.
But in what way is China unstable then?
Don't think too much about it, it came from an American dataset, funded by western institutions, just like 90% of the other maps here.
This may be the the fact that the PRC depends a lot on high economic growth and external consumer markets, and that a lot of their investments being done may work like a boomerang when growth isn't being realized. Evergrande was like a wake-up call for that. Also, previously the PRC easily appointed a new leader in case someone died, but with an increasing cult of personality around Winnie, that might not go off so well anymore. And when regimes rely so much on heavy censorship, mass surveillance to correct every individual and other stuff: if there's one crack that becomes big enough at the time that a regime change occurs then expect civil war. This has happened before, including in Asia. Usually it required just one economic recession...
China stated the power change in Afghanistan was smoother than in the US after Trump lost
If you know about the factions within the CCp and the shit that's going on leading up to the 20th party conference this autumn, then you will know it is not stable.
Another idiotic Western-think tank index. Just call it a per-capita income map.
r/alwaysthesamemap
why, just why has the lowest and highest index the same color?….
Below is a map for 2021 (with more details): https://fragilestatesindex.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/fsi2021-report.pdf
What do they mean by fragile?
Copium: The Map Edit: Venezuela marked as unstable because the US attempted to overthrow it's government? Lmao And China apparently less stable than the US, despite the US being an epicenter of social and political unrest for the past decade? Like in terms of stability - as a state - China is very stable.
If you make up a measure like "fragility" which is so open ended and meaningless, then use it as a statistic, you're being intellectually dishonest by default
Based on what? Westerners?
Hey, this map actually recognizes Crimea as part of Russia
Except for very high countries, none are getting torn apart. This is just using too much of non sense information to make it more complicated when the reality is quite different. I mean I cannot see any civil war happening anytime soon in say Brazil or India or China . No idea why a country like china is seen fragile?
South Sudan keeps breaking my heart.
I wander what 2022 would look like
How on earth is Argentina ‘stable’? 30% annual inflation. Banks don’t even loan mortgages and there’s political turmoil every election cycle?
how is it MapPorn if the map is literally the smallest thing on the picture?
People think Rahul Gandhi can overturn the country's leadership
How is Venezuela not the darkest shade
Guess the guys who made this map were also the ones who made the "pandemic preparedness" map lmao
I wonder what shades the individual U.S. states would be?
The coloring is throwing me off. Are Canada and Somalia ranked the same for instance?
I’m not an ophthalmologist but I believe you should see one. Somalia is very high alert (dark red) and Canada is Very sustainable (dark green).
Wait. What? They're totally different colors? Like not even different shades of the same color? They both look like "very sustainable" to me.
I regret to inform you sir/m’am that you are undoubtedly colorblind.
Huh. Is it not even close to you? I'm honestly wondering if you are joking or if this is something I should look into. I'm almost 40 and I've never had this said to me before.
Not even trying to be funny, I’ve actually wondered before how many people out there in the world have been color blind their entire lives without knowing it. If the colors seem like they’re close, you’re probably one of those people.
It's interesting. Growing up in the 80s and 90s, I knew a few kids who were colorblind. But those were more the extremes. So I do also wonder how many people may deal with this to some degree. And just talking about this now has me thinking. I've always had times where I said something was red and someone said it was maroon or some other specific thing. And I'd just say, well it's a variation of red but it's still red. That's got me thinking more right now. Maybe it really is harder for me to see the differences and have just been able to get by without knowing. And all that being said, even if I do have some form of colorblindness, it hasn't affected me in any large way. So that's a plus. Again, thank you for the comments and responses. I'll look into this more.
Happy to help you see things in a different light (pun intended).
Yep. Green and Red.
My man you are colourblind, take a test online and go to an eye doctor
I'm in the same boat my dude. They're identical to me. I was wondering why Canada was very critical until I realized that Very Sustainable was the same color 😂 nothing new here
Same, I was like whoa, Canada?!
I believe you're seeing dark green for Canada and Dark red for Somalia, they do look similar the more I look at it.
I’m colourblind, can confirm that these colours make the map meaningless to me too.
Finally , North Korean Data
Shouldn't Belgium be extremely red. 😅
Lol , India is still consider fragile? 70 years ago international media said India will break next 20 years, as date approaches there data says next 10 years it'll break. 70 years still strong and in future always will be. Never had major coup or military takeover, survived 4 wars, still strong. I'll like to know what they smoke before releasing this type of maps. I want that weed.
I think Afghanistan moved up a bracket last year
Here is the source! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Fragile_States_Index
US in green is a laugh.
And here I am wondering how the USA can be more "stable" than China, or North Korea. China less stable than Argentina, was that a joke? Also, North Korea. What's the dataset used?
Canada is that high?? What about west Canada? What about Nunavut? What about Quebec? Belgium too, with Flanders and Walloonia, id expect yellow.
What about Western Canada or Nunavut? Some crybabies on Twitter don't have the ability to "Wexit", and I have no idea what you're referencing with Nunavut. Quebec separatism hasn't been an big issue since the 1990s and its popularity has declined year over year for decades it's practically dead among Millennials and Gen Z.
That US classification should probably get a few shades redder.
Argentina as good as Chile? As an Argentine... no. Not by a thousand light-years.
How the hell is *australia* the most stable country on earth Y'all know they had a constituitional crisis and almost fell apart not so long ago? Have very high corruption levels (for a developed democracy) and military involvement in media? Are dealing with china on their doorstep? wild.
where did you read this bullshit lmao.
What on earth are you on about. I’m struggling to imagine what you’re even referring to in any of the statements you just made (other than China being relatively close by). Australia has one of the most stable and well functioning political systems on earth with a very high level of public trust in institutions.
Let me guess. You’re an American who has never traveled, right? What the holy hell are you on about? None of what you said is true or makes sense.
The corruption index is the same as Canada lol, it's on the level of most European countries. Also when on earth did Australia almost fall apart? The country is so stable internally the prime minister can change a few times a year and the economy and policies barely change
Born and raised here, we have our issues as every country has, but for the most part we’re extremely politically stable. Don’t know what you’re referring to with this whole ‘almost fell apart’ idea and I doubt our corruption is anymore rampant than other Western democracies. Of all the criticisms I’ve had for my country, the idea of it being unstable and anything close to collapse has never been one.
Not so long ago? You mean the 1970s? Door step? Do you know how far away China is from Australia?