Name: Every Time The World Map Has Changed Since 2000
Uploaded: 2025-11-20T16:56:49.000Z
Duration: 53 min 55 s
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31st December, the year that I released this video.

2025 marks the final day of the first quarter of the 21st century, which began on the 1st of January of the year 2001.

様態の副詞

While we all understand that the world map is constantly changing throughout history, it's difficult to view and understand the ebbs and flows of history while you're actually living through the middle of that.

But now that we can look back over these past 25 years, we can clearly see how the forces of geopolitics and history shifted and molded our world map in ways that would have been impossible to have predicted at the start of the century.

And so with that, these are all of the ways in which our world map has changed and evolved over the course of the first quarter of the 21st century.

Between 2001 and 2025 the first major change of the world map in the 21st century took place in March of 2001 between the countries of Qatar and Bahrain.

For decades before this, ever since the 1930s, both of these countries maintained a contentious territorial dispute over the ownership of the Homar Islands and the town of Zubara on the Qatar Peninsula's Mainland.

In the 1990s, both sides agreed that they would take their dispute to the International Court of justice, or the ICJ, for AR arbitration.

And in March of 2001, the ICJ delivered its final result, awarding most of the disputed Hawar Islands to Bahrain in the disputed town of Zubaya on the mainland to Qatar, which both sides recognized and have respected ever since.

Two countries also decided to significantly alter their national flags in 2001 the Comoros and Rwanda, with both countries adopting their new flag designs near the end of the year in December.

Other than that, the only other major geographic change that took place in 2001 started in October when the US and NATO launched a full scale invasion of Afghanistan in order to topple the country's Taliban regime from power following the 911 attacks.

By the middle of December, the Taliban will be forcefully ousted and their name for the country, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, will be no more.

Three years later, in 2004, a US backed democracy will take over power and change the country's name to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan instead, complete with another brand new flag for the country that replaced the Taliban's previous white flag with black text.

Two major geographic changes to the world map took place the next year in 2002.

The first took place within the coveros in March when the country managed to reabsorb the separatist and de facto independent island state Anjouin.

Anjouan had unilaterally declared their independence from the Comoros in 1997, and

after they requested to be reintegrated back into overseas France and were rejected by the French, they operated as a de facto but unrecognized independent state for years.

Until now in March of 2002, when they agreed to rejoin the Comoros again in exchange for a high degree of autonomy.

However, several Years later in 2007, Anjouan would unilaterally declare their independence from the Comoros yet again.

But that time the Comoros decided to quickly launch an amphibious invasion of the island and quickly overran it and restore their control again.

It has remained under the sovereignty of the Comoros ever since.

Only a couple of months after Rajuan lost their independence, another country would gain theirs in May of 2002 over on the other side of the Indian Ocean.

East Timor was originally a Portuguese colony that declared their independence in 1875, but

they were immediately invaded and occupied by Indonesia for decades and subjected to a pre brutal campaign of repression that killed as much as one third of their entire population.

Indonesia's control of the territory was thus overwhelmingly unpopular among East Timor's own population.

And so, under mounting international pressure, the Indonesian government finally allowed a referendum on autonomy for independence to take place at East Timor in 1999 with a huge 99% voter turnout.

A clear majority of 78.5% of voters in the referendum selected independents, which sparked massive levels of violence and upheaval on the island.

Vengeful pro Indonesian militias and soldiers destroyed as much as 80% of the infrastructure in East Timor's largest city before they withdrew, while at least 1400 civilians were also murdered.

A UN authorized intervention force was then deployed East Timor to maintain order and to establish a transitional government.

Indonesia eventually came around to recognizing the referendum's results and so East Timor managed to successfully declare their uncontested independence as the 21st century's first new country a few years later in May of 2002 and adopted its Portuguese language name of Timor Leste.

In February of 2003, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia formally changed its name to the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, finally removing the name of Yugoslavia from the world's maps for good the following month.

In March, the US led an international coalition that carried out a full scale invasion of Iraq that had rapidly toppled the decades long regime of Saddam hussein and the Ba'ath party in the country.

The US occupation forces would help set up a brand new government of the country.

That would lead to Iraq adopting this new, slightly different official flag in 2004 and then this more simplified flag later in 2008 that has remained the official Iraqi flag so far ever since.

In January of 2004, Kazakhstan agreed to a proposed revision on the terms of Russia's territorial lease to the Baikonur Cosmodrome, where all of Russia's crewed spaceflights are launched from.

Originally supposed to expire in 2011, Kazakhstan now agreed to extend Russia's lease to the cosmodrome up until 2050 in exchange for fixed annual payments of $115 million by the Russians.

In March of 2004, NATO completed the fifth enlargement of the alliance by welcoming in seven new members the former Warsaw Pact states of Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia, the former Yugoslav state of Slovenia and the former Soviet republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, all of which was strongly protested against by Russia.

With Lithuania's entrance into NATO, Russia's disconnected exclave of Kaliningrad first became surrounded by NATO territory, while the additions of Latvia and Estonia placed NATO's frontiers on the Russian mainland's borders for the very first time.

Then a couple months later In May of 2004, the European Union would dramatically expand its membership as well with the entrance of 10 new Cyprus, Malta, Slovenia, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania, latvia and Estonia.

2005 was a year of tremendous geopolitical changes in the Levant region of the Middle East.

In April, Syrian troops finally completed their withdrawal out of Lebanon following a peaceful non violent revolution after having occupied parts of the country for the past 29 years.

And then a few months later in September, Israel completed their own full withdrawal out of the Gaza Strip as well, dismantling all 21 of their settlements in the territory and forcefully evicting all 8,000 Israeli settlers who were there back into Israel proper in the process.

Later In November of 2005, Myanmar formally relocated their capital city from the southern city of Yangon to the more central and brand new city of Nevada, which their government only began constructing a few years earlier in 2002 at a cost of billions of dollars.

The following year, in 2006, Uzbekistan rejoined the Russian led CSTO alliance after they had previously withdrawn from it back in 1999 owing to tensions that had developed between them and the United States states.

Then In June of 2006, another huge geographic change took place in Europe with Serbia and Montenegro's divorce.

The state union of Serbia and Montenegro that was established earlier in 2003 enabled either country to voluntarily leave the union following a successful referendum on independence and so In May of 2006, Montenegro hosted that promised independence referendum.

It hit a huge turnout to more than 86% of the voters in Montenegro, with 55.5% of them saying yes to independence, just squeezing past the required threshold of 55% to be considered successful.

Serbia chose not to contest the referendum's legitimacy and honored Montenegro's decision to leave.

And so In June of 2006, Montenegro formally seceded from Serbia and became the second country to achieve an uncontested independence during the 21st century.

The process of Yugoslavia's messy disillusion began in the 1990s continued, while for the first time since the First World War, Serbia was left landlocked without any access to the coast.

Then later on in 2000, in October, the Pacific island country of Palau formally relocated their capital city from Koror to Nagiralmud, away from a small, crowded and overdeveloped island towards the largest island in the country that had way more room and space to expand on.

Finally, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Lesotho both decided to substantially alter their flag designs in 2006 as well.

On New Year's Day in January of 2007, both Bulgaria and Romania being the latest countries to join the European Union and by about the midpoint of the year in June, Hamas had emerged victorious in Gaza after a short lived Palestinian civil war during the 2006 legislative elections in the Palestinian territories, Hamas had unexpectedly emerged victorious with the largest share of the votes and for about the next year neither Hamas nor their rival Fatah could come to a diplomatic agreement on how to share power together.

The tensions finally reached a boiling point in June of 2007 when an impatient Hamas simply seized power in the Gaza Strip through force and evicted Fatah out of the territory.

The since then the Palestinian territories have remained de facto divided between two separate and rival governments, with Fatan power in the west bank and Hamas in power in the Gaza Strip, with each side asserting that they alone are the one true legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.

In response to Hamas's victory, Israel began imposing a full scale land, sea and air blockade over the Gaza Strip shortly afterwards that continues to this day.

In February of 2008, Kosovo finally decided to unilaterally declare their independence from Serbia without Serbia's consent, which unlike Montenegro, Serbia declared to be illegal and refused to recognize.

Kosovo had already been a de facto autonomous region of Serbia for years that was occupied by NATO forces and placed under an interim UN administered government.

Ever since the deadly war in the territory between Kosovar Albanians and Serbs had ended in 1999.

Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008 was thus a further assertion of what was already basically the de facto situation on the ground.

But Serbia's refusal to ever accept or recognize it for nearly two years, who decades ever since has created one of modern Europe's most contentious geopolitical issues.

As of mid-2025, 108 out of the 193 member states of the United nations, or 56% of them, have chosen to recognize Kosovo's independence as legitimate.

However, all five of the original Burke's countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa continue to reject Kosovo's independence and take Serbia's side in the dispute in instead which effectively recognizes Kosovo as nothing but a rebellious territory of Serbia's.

While curiously even a few of the EU member states still reject Kosovo's independence as well, including Spain, Slovakia, Romania, Greece and Cyprus.

Only a few months later, in August of 2008, signing the precedent that they claimed Kosovo's unilateral independence declaration had just set, Russia launched a full scale invasion of Georgia in support of separatists that they decided to back there in South Ossetia at alkazia.

By 11 August, Russian and South Ossetian separatist forces had fully push Georgian forces out of the territory the former Soviet era South Ossetian autonomous had lost and by the next day on the 12th, they and Abkhazi and separatist forces had also managed to completely expel Georgian forces from Upper Abkhazia too, the final territory that was held by the Georgians in Abkhazia following the last war in the 1990s.

Tens of thousands of ethnic Georgians were subsequently expelled from these territories and the day after the war ended on 17 August, Russia formally recognized the unilateral independence of both Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia.

To date, the only other UN member countries that have ever recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia's independence are Venezuela, Nicaragua, Syria and Nauru.

All other countries still recognize them as being temporarily occupied territories of Georgia.

At around the same time as the Russian invasion of Georgia was ongoing In August of 2008, Nigeria also finalized the transfer of the Bakasi Peninsula to Cameroon, a territory that had been disputed between both of these countries for decades that was occupied by the Nigerians but which the ICJ had just recently ruled belonged to Cameroon instead.

Also In October of 2008, China and Russia managed to successfully negotiate an end to their own major long running territorial dispute in the Far east as well.

Their dispute centered upon the riverine islands at the confluence of the Emir and Usuri rivers between the Russian Far east and Manchuria.

The 1860 Treaty of Peking at 17 at the border between Russia and China along the Emir Usuri rivers, which meant that the islets of the two rivers confluence were all understood to be Chinese.

But the Soviets occupied the islands here in 1929 anyway.

And then they and the Russians continued holding onto them for decades against the near constant protests of China, until they finally decided to resolve the dispute over them in the 2000s.

It was finally settled by Russia ceding control over about half of the big main island and several of the smaller surrounding islands to China, totaling up to about 170 square kilometers of land transfer, roughly the same size as the tiny country of Liechtenstag.

In exchange, China agreed to renounce all of their claims to the rest of the big island that was kept by Russia.

But then, many Years later, in 2023, China released a new official map of their country's territory that once again displayed the whole of this island as being Chinese, potentially reviving the dispute here once again.

In April of 2009, NATO expanded again with their sixth enlargement by welcoming the Balkan countries of Albania and Croatia into the Allian.

Later in July, China and Kyrgyzstan managed to successfully demarcate their border that enveloped Kyrgyzstan, agreeing to cede over a small amount of land, about 9 square kilometers all in all over to China.

And then in November, the US and Mexico agreed on another tiny land transfer of a few little islands in the Rio Grande River.

The US transferred six tiny uninhabited islands in the river to Mexico, while Mexico transferred three of their own tiny uninhabited islands in the river over to the US resulting in an almost minuscule net gain of 0.17 square kilometers of land from Mexico out of the deal only about one third the size of Vatican City.

The only event of serious note in terms of the world map changing that happened throughout all of 2010 was in April, when the then more pro Russian Ukrainian government controversially decided to extend the Russian government's lease to the naval facilities at the port of Sevastopol in Crimea for another 25 years beyond when it was originally scheduled to end in 2017, pushing it out towards 2042, with options on further renewals afterwards.

Besides for that, the government of Myanmar also decided to significantly alter their national flag this year, switching from the socialist era flag that had been in use since the 1970s to the current tricolor flag with a big white star in the center.

In January of 2011, China and Tajikistan finally settled their massive border dispute that Tajikistan had inherited from the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire following their independence in the 1990s.

Prior to this, China maintained a huge claim to about 20% of Tajikistan's internationally recognized territory across the Eastern Khmer Mountains.

So in order to settle this dispute in 2011, Tajikistan agreed a cede over 1322 square kilometers of this land over to China, an area roughly the size of Hong Kong.

This area was only about 3.5% of the total area Tajikistan that China had originally claimed.

But China agreed to drop all of the remaining claims to the rest of the territory in exchange for this small gain, that Tajikistan had actually consented to redrawing the border between them in the process.

By March of 2011, mounting unrest in Syria would boil over in a full scale civil war in the country, which would result in significant de facto territorial changes within the country later.

Then In July of 2011, South Sudan seceded from the rest of Sudan and became the third new country to emerge uncontested during the 21st century, following Montenegro and East Timber.

Following the conclusion of the second Sudanese civil war between the north and the south in 2005 that had killed an millions of people, an exhausted Sudan agreed to allow the south to hold an independence referendum six years later in 2011.

And so, when 2011 came around and the referendum was finally hosted across the south, an enormous 97% of the territory's registered voters turned out to the polls, and

nearly 99% of them all voted yes for secession and independence.

And so with that, South Sudan formally declared its independence in July of 2011.

And although it went uncontested by Sudan, a few territorial disputes between them still remain, especially relating to the Abye region between them that both sides continue to claim to this day.

By October of 2011, a civil war in Libya resulted in the collapse and overthrow of the decades long Gaddafi regime in the country, which resulted in the rebels significantly changing the national flag of Libya from the solid green flag of the Gaddafi era back to the old flag that Libya used to use back in the 1950s and 60s before Gaddafi.

Finally, on the last day of the year, In December of 2011, Samoa and Tokelau formally swapped their time zone over to the western side of the international Date line in order to become more closely connected to who had by then become their largest trading partners, Australia and New Zealand.