Author: Maarten Van Den Driessche

The Quixotic Institute for Global Futures In the modern world, ownership is one of our most powerful ideas. We own land, houses, forests, and oceans—at least on paper. Maps divide the planet into borders, and legal systems transform landscapes into property. The language of possession has become so normal that we rarely question it. Yet…

long the Baltic coast of Estonia lies one of Northern Europe’s most fragmented and fascinating shorelines. The country has over 2,000 islands, scattered across the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland. Most are small, forested, and sparsely populated, but together they form a distinct maritime landscape that has shaped Estonian culture for centuries. Geography…

Cabinda is a small but geopolitically significant exclave of Angola located on the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, separated from the rest of Angola by a strip of territory belonging to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Although physically detached, Cabinda remains an official province of Angola and plays an outsized role in the country’s…

A QuixoticGuide Reflection on Highpointing Every country has a highest place. Sometimes it is obvious — a towering volcano or a jagged alpine summit visible from hundreds of kilometers away. Sometimes it is barely noticeable: a grassy hill, a quiet ridge, a plateau where the wind moves through tall grass and nothing marks the altitude…

n the western Pacific, far from the busy shipping lanes and aviation corridors that stitch the modern world together, lies Yap — an island where the most famous form of money cannot fit in your wallet. The island’s capital, Colonia, is small enough that you might walk through it in half an hour. A few…

The Panj River is one of Central Asia’s most remarkable frontier rivers. Flowing for about 1,125 kilometers, it forms the natural border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan, carving its way through the dramatic landscapes of the Pamir Mountains. The river begins where the Wakhan River and Pamir River meet in Afghanistan’s remote Wakhan Corridor, a narrow…

On movement, borders, and the illusion of completion There is a moment — somewhere between passport stamp 37 and 73 — when travel stops being accumulation and becomes something quieter. I crossed that threshold again recently. Ninety-two UN member states. Not as a trophy. Not as a checklist. But as a map of conversations. The…

Where the Earth Turns RedAt the narrow entrance of the Persian Gulf lies an island that looks unreal. Hormuz is small. Dry. Almost vegetation-free.And yet it feels larger than many countries. From above, it resembles a spilled box of pigments — reds bleeding into yellows, purples dissolving into ochre. From the ground, it feels lunar.…

There are places where the wind feels older than the soil. Chaldiran is one of them. On 23 August 1514, on a plateau in what is today northwestern Iran near the modern Turkish border, two empires met — and the Middle East tilted. On one side stood Selim I, the Ottoman sultan: methodical, suspicious, armed…