The enormous resources being ploughed into the One Belt, One Road vision set out by Xi Jinping in 2013 strongly suggest that China is planning for the future. Elsewhere, the traumas and differences, the challenges and problems, seem to be birthing pains—signs of a new world emerging before our eyes. While we ponder where the next threat might come from, how best to deal with religious extremism, how to negotiate with states that seem willing to disregard international law, and how to build relations with peoples, cultures, and regions about which we have spent little or no time trying to understand, networks and connections are quietly being knitted together across the spine of Asia; or, rather, they are being restored. The Silk Roads are rising again.

From Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2016 (first published in 2015), p. 521.

Addendum I (August 1, 2019)

An alternative title for this piece would be “America is Not Planning for the Future.” Frankopan’s book suggests it in many places, but it fails to mention it in the last and concluding paragraph, which is rendered in full in this quote. Indeed, America is reminiscent of Europe after World War I. History repeats itself over and over again, and there are farces galore along the way. One way or another, humans are not capable of learning anything of importance from their past. History is relegated to a few scholars of marginal interest to the many. Returning to China, World War III is likely to put an end to planning in all its guises for many a century, if not also millennium. Nuclear arms are hardly a joke, and way too many countries around the world have them in their arsenal at present. Pace Frankopan, survival is only survival. After a nuclear apocalypse, planning for the future can reach forward a few months at most. Humans are nothing but humble animals, after all.

Addendum II (August 3, 2019)

Given the fact that I acquire hardly any books at this stage of my life, how did I come across Frankopan’s book? It was lent to me by Daut Hrustanpašić, a Bosnian fellow ten years my junior, who had moved to Australia a few decades ago. About a year ago, he bought a house in Motovun, and it is quite close to my own. Our friendship blossomed this spring, though. Calm but attentive, warm but measured, knowledgeable but unpretentious, he immediately struck me as the best that Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires have left in the heart of Western Balkans. It did not take us long to understand that the books each of us had read over the years matched pretty well. Before he left for Australia a few weeks ago, he brought me this book that centers on the unending interchange between the so-called east and west since times immemorial. I will return it to him the next time he comes around, but I have relished it from the very first page. Given my Venetian roots, I had no choice, anyway. Not surprisingly, Xi Jinping’s vision is also close to my heart. The only fly in the ointment is the growing tension between America and China, not to mention Russia and Iran. Indeed, war is in the air. Returning to my new neighbor, we are likely to exchange many more books in the years ahead. Chances are that not a few of them will stay close to the ancient east-west corridor, as well.