If China's economy collapsed if there was a really deep economic collapse in China the impact on the rest of the world or the West would be incalculable. The other thing I think is important is that a non-binary world order a world order not justified it as it was in the Cold War with some non-aligned powers which however were not major power players then. We don't have a world government and we don't even have world governance to a great extent but we do have a world system united by technology to a much greater extent than ever before.
The great dilemmas of geopolitics are not battles of good against evil, where the choices are clear. They are contests of good against good, where the choices are often painful, incompatible and fraught with consequence. That’s the argument that political scientist Robert Kaplan who's joined here in conversation by political philosopher John Gray. Together they discuss how the insights of the Greek tragedians – Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides – as well as Shakespeare and modern philosophers and classic authors can help us understand the central subjects of international politics: order, disorder, rebellion, ambition, loyalty to family and state, violence, and the mistakes of power. And they explored how viewing events through a tragic lens could guide the West’s strategy for dealing with Russia and China today.
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