The Empire of Excess

Belt and Road is often presented as the blueprint of a rising empire. I increasingly suspect the opposite. It looks less like the confident expansion of surplus strength and more like the outward projection of an economy that built far more industrial capacity than either its domestic market or the wider world could realistically absorb.
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A bruised and partially decayed red apple sits on a stone surface, its skin split open and collapsing inward, revealing rot beneath an otherwise intact exterior.
The Ponzi Empire
For two decades, China was presented as the inevitable future. The dragon would rise, the West would decline, and history itself…
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Close-up of striped popcorn containers filled with popcorn at a cinema snack stand, symbolizing entertainment culture, distraction, and mass consumption.
The Luxury of Victimhood
Civilizations rarely collapse because solutions are unavailable. They collapse because comfort becomes more important than truth, victimhood becomes social currency, and…
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Person falling through a foggy sky, symbolizing the collapse of political illusions and the return of geopolitical reality.
The Return of Gravity
For decades we lived inside comforting abstractions: sovereign equality, rules-based order, democratic virtue, and political unions presumed eternal. But illusions age…
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The Arctic Trap

Russia obviously has a problem. Sanctions have hurt. The war has hurt. Capital has become more expensive, technology more difficult…

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