were an extraterrestrial adversary, it would not have to fear a diplomatically unified Earth. The past decade of climate summits in Copenhagen, Bali, Cancun, and Paris have only nudged us towards the limp goal of business as usual until 2050. One wonders how much ice will be left in Greenland by then, and how many billions will have died from the ecocide of rising sea levels, endless droughts, and other climate-change-related catastrophes, to say nothing of the already tragic effects of natural disasters such as the wildfires burning with ever greater intensity in California. Even in the...…were an extraterrestrial adversary, it would not have to fear a diplomatically unified Earth. The past decade of climate summits in Copenhagen, Bali, Cancun, and Paris have only nudged us towards the limp goal of business as usual until 2050. One wonders how much ice will be left in Greenland by then, and how many billions will have died from the ecocide of rising sea levels, endless droughts, and other climate-change-related catastrophes, to say nothing of the already tragic effects of natural disasters such as the wildfires burning with ever greater intensity in California. Even in the...WW…

View more ago, Marco Polo famously undertook several voyages from Venice across the Mediterranean Sea, overland through Persia and Central Asia to the court of the great Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan and founder of the Yuan dynasty, which presided over perhaps the largest empire in world history. The Mongols nurtured the Silk Roads of commerce that spanned the medieval world from China to Italy—until the Black Death spread along them in the same direction, wiping out nearly half the world’s population.ABOUTParag Khanna () is the author of Connectography (2016) and The Future is...…View more ago, Marco Polo famously undertook several voyages from Venice across the Mediterranean Sea, overland through Persia and Central Asia to the court of the great Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan and founder of the Yuan dynasty, which presided over perhaps the largest empire in world history. The Mongols nurtured the Silk Roads of commerce that spanned the medieval world from China to Italy—until the Black Death spread along them in the same direction, wiping out nearly half the world’s population.ABOUTParag Khanna () is the author of Connectography (2016) and The Future is...WW…

advertisementadvertisementBy Parag Khanna and Karan Khemka In chaos theory, the butterfly effect describes a small change that can have massive, unpredictable consequences. An insect flaps its wings and, weeks later, causes a tornado.advertisementadvertisementThe is more like an earthquake, with aftershocks that will permanently reshape the world.If we are lucky, the world will pass “peak virus” within the next six months. But the economy, governments, and social institutions will take years to recover in the best-case scenario. Indeed, rather than even speak of “recovery,” which implies a...…advertisementadvertisementBy Parag Khanna and Karan Khemka In chaos theory, the butterfly effect describes a small change that can have massive, unpredictable consequences. An insect flaps its wings and, weeks later, causes a tornado.advertisementadvertisementThe is more like an earthquake, with aftershocks that will permanently reshape the world.If we are lucky, the world will pass “peak virus” within the next six months. But the economy, governments, and social institutions will take years to recover in the best-case scenario. Indeed, rather than even speak of “recovery,” which implies a...WW…