YEMEN
Can it overcome the perfect storm of geographic pressures?
For the most part, Yemen's geography is working against it. Although it is about a third as large as Saudi Arabia, the country has only about 2 million fewer people, contributing to overpopulation and severe poverty. With a rapidly diminishing water table, Yemen is also internally divided by mountains, such that it has been near impossible to establish a point of central authority since ancient times. Poor governance in turn leaves Yemen vulnerable to the spillover of piracy in Somalia, which sits just across the Gulf of Aden. If political development in Yemen continues to falter, Kaplan warns, the country could end up more like Somalia -- an unquestionably failed state with a virtually nonfunctional government. "Since antiquity Yemen has often been defined by a multiplicity of political power centers within it," Kaplan says.
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