While no-one really knows whether this storm will create chaos or full-scale national catastrophe, the political effects are already being felt.

BBC: Hurricane Sandy: Growing seriousness of storm threat

Unlike the Balkans, however, Indonesia contains 220m people, and is far and away the world's largest Muslim country: this would be chaos on an epic scale.

ECONOMIST: Indonesia

In recent months, though, Georgia and Azerbaijan have faced another serious challenge: deepening chaos, and declining Russian authority, on the northern side of the Caucasus mountains, on a scale which could wreck their own fragile and hard-won stability.

ECONOMIST: The dark side of the Caucasus