A new book exposes uncertainties around Asia’s future within an alleged bleak landscape of a waste land world of permanent crisis and an era of global cataclysm.
WonkCount: 1,186 words (~5 minutes)
Review: What Asia Future in World Permanent Crisis Claim?
Context
“It’s hard to find a parallel paradigm,” India’s external affairs minister S. Jaishankar said this past week when asked about the need for global regulatory frameworks around advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence relative to analogies of the past1. The remark captures ongoing efforts at play to grapple with components of the current global order and geopolitical and geoeconomic shifts in the Indo-Pacific, including through comparisons with past periods in world history2.
Select Key Recent Global Geopolitical Developments
A new book Waste Land by author Robert D. Kaplan exposes uncertainties around Asia’s future within an alleged bleak landscape of a waste land world of permanent crisis and an era of global cataclysm3. In doing so, it adds to a growing list of books that seek to make sense of the evolving global order and Asia’s place within it, including ones we have reviewed here on ASEAN Wonk. “[W]e find ourselves in an exceedingly fragile phase of technological and political transition,” the book notes before going on to elaborate on some components of this global transition and the implications of trends such as geopolitical and geoeconomic competition between major powers in the 21st century playing out in and beyond Asia4.
Analysis
The book also highlights future datapoints to watch in this respect (see originally-generated ASEAN Wonk table below for a summary of important contours. Paying subscribers can also read the rest of the “Analysis” section and “Implications” section looking at how these dynamics play out in the future).
Notable Datapoints, Along With Stated Major Trends And Key Domains
