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I think the narrative of a Eurasian world order is a Russian fantasy. The world order of the next century goes through the Pacific. It's a Pacific Woeld Order now being born. Eurasia, including Western Europe and the North Atlantic, are now part of the historical past. Ever since the sixteenth century the wold-system has been moving Westward from Eurasia. The crossing of the Atlantic was the phenomenon that defined the nineteenth and twentieth century, but history kept moving Westward. The twenty-first and twenty-second century are now moving Westward from San Francisco Bay and Los Angeles County to Beijing, Singapore, New Delhi and eventually to Addis Ababa, Lagos, Johannesburg. The twenty-first century will not be Eurasian but Afro-Asian. Human history began in Africa and it has moved sp far westward that it has completed the cycle. The future is Afro-Asian. Russia is stuck in the Eurasian landmass and is nothing except a junior partner of China, India, South Africa. The war in Ukraine is not a contest over Eurasia. What does America care about Eurasia? Stalin won Eurasia but America won the Pacific. World history is now centered in the Pacific. Russia is not a Pacific power and never will be.

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The 21st century may well be Afro-Asian though they are likely to feel the effects of the climate crisis first and most severely and will possibly have to migrate north, by as early as 2070, to the luckier latitudes (in both Russia and North America).

https://jowaller.substack.com/p/burning-fossil-fuels-is-the-plan

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Migration is a given regardless of ecological catastrophe. In America the future depends on migration. It's already happening, America is no longer a European country. The reactionary xenophobia sweeping the European world is an attempt to maintain the borders and boundaries of a world that no longer exists. Even this idea of Eurasia reflects a fantasy of what Putin describes in terms of civilization-states. The human species is on the cusp of a transformation we can't even imagine, and you and I will be dead before we even know what it means. And if, as you say there is some ecological catastrophe that drives people north, then it will transform what the north is altogether. Just because Russians settled Russia and made it into an empire doesn't mean the human species can be contained in some Russian (or European, or American) fantasy of itself. We have 8 billion members of the species. BRICS is an ephemeral fad, but its real significance is that it represents the renegotiation of planet earth by the human species which will eventually top around 10 billion members. History will never be the same, the entire species is shifting.

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Yes, the xenophobia of the old world will accelerate as about a billion brown and black people migrate north. I imagine they will be shot at the borders, though it could also transform northern populations.

There is no 'if'.

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I think the most concise way to put what I’m trying to convey is that in order to try to wrap your mind around where we’re headed and where we should be trying to head as a species you need to have not just one, but a set of simple theories.

You need to analyze what we want (or what we could be striving for) which is happiness, and what we want to avoid (which is suffering).

And if you can figure all of that out in a rational, logical way that is both achievable and good for everyone why not pay it some attention?

It’s amazing to me that we can succeed at making the trains run on time but when it comes to much simpler things, like avoiding war, we’re failing miserably.

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I think the most concise way to put what I’m trying to convey is that in order to try to wrap your mind around where we’re headed and where we should be trying to head as a species you need to have not just one, but a set of simple theories.

You need to analyze what we want (or what we could be striving for) which is happiness, and what we want to avoid (which is suffering).

And if you can figure all of that out in a rational, logical way that is both achievable and good for everyone why not pay it some attention?

It’s amazing to me that we can succeed at making the trains run on time but when it comes to much simpler things, like avoiding war, we’re failing miserably.

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The illiberal world order and its chief advocates can't die soon enough.

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6 hrs ago·edited 6 hrs ago

It is interesting to read books like Zbigniew Brzezinski's "The Grand Chessboard", written in the late 1990s, and compare its post-Cold War vision with what we now see has transpired in its place. I can see what his original vision for a new global order was, and it seemed to envision exercising the US's momentary unipolar moment to manage our way to eventual multi-polarity, including a place for Russia. But the US and Western leadership in general have horribly mismanaged things since then. Instead of being well on our way to some kind of global harmony in which we in the West are full participants, we have united most of the rest of the world against us by what seems to be a power/resource grab. Many of the dangers Brzezinski warned against have nevertheless come to pass.

Your own recent book excellently covers much of the ground regarding what has more recently transpired.

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Glenn,

Your simple yet extremely perceptive analysis of the dynamics and mechanisms as to how the world’s international power structure system is changing is excellent.

As you’ve stated, this power struggle will result in a situation that will be very dangerous.

Although I’m a fan of both you and John Mearsheimer when it comes to your analysis, I would argue that, in addition to this being somewhat of a fixed structural problem that was somewhat inevitable, a great deal of the blame for the calamity that we’re now confronted with is the fault of extremely bad leadership in the United States.

If over the last 50 years the president of the United States had followed the suggestions I’ve outlined in my “course” we probably would not be staring at quite as many very dark clouds on the horizon.

It’s probably not too late to rectify the situation but time is running out.

I need help with both the presentation and distribution of my course, so if anyone is interested in helping me, and thereby helping humanity at large, please email me at kevincflynn1@gmail.com

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The problems USA have are not something that cropped up the last 50 years, but have evolved from a pretty miserable start about 250 years ago, and never been addressed in a serious manner. Too many Europeans in America were always evil and greedy in addition to being self-righteous (something they learnt from the British) so to hope for improvements without a major catastrophy is just wasted.

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Very interesting. However, even though Eurasia is diversifying away from fossil fuels alittle, the climate crisis and climate migration will have a profound effect on the development of the next world order.

I don't believe that nuclear weapons exist in the way that we've been told, however, whether they exist or not, the self-annihilation of human society as we know it is only decades away.

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