What exactly is funny about empowerment? You have to remmeber that it the votes from rural areas that was behind the removal of the BJP in the last Indian elections. Do you think people in rural areas in other parts of South Asia, barring Nepal, have that much power to be able to change their despotic leaders?

There will always be problems with relation to poor areas – of the UK as well as India, and you’re right Turkey but also the US.

Comparitively-speaking I just meant to imply India was moving in the right direction.

20 YEARS?!! are you kidding me – its going to be a lot sooner than that buddy – have you seen the markets? where is the dollar? at an all time low.

And? They still have the worlds biggest arms dealing, the biggest military budget, huge corporate influence etc. It’ll take longer than a few months to bring that country back down to earth and more than a slowdown in the economy too.

Judging by the exert I would say on the contrary it’s a remarkably complacent and near-sighted persepctive.

Dismiss India if you like, but it remains one of the few emereging beacons of democracy.

Sourcing for this? I’m not being facetious when I ask…

That’s a good assumption to make given that mostly, they do.

and worryingly we’re all interconnected. i wish we’d see the situation with the debt and the banks, and the money system for what it is and see our global economy for the sham that it is, till then, we’re not going to be able to work together to formulate any alternatives any time soon.

Soon Gordon Brown is going to be very sorry ( and the rest of us) that we’re still stuck with the pound. that’s slipping too.

the US economy is built on debt – and the interesting thing is about who has been underwriting that debt.

that’s the real story to the geopolitical situation – of course, economists seem to be too brain-washed for the most part to see the collapse and how our global economy is teeteering around.

and how are they going to survive the energy crisis? given the attitudes towards public transport and the huge lack in many cities. Of course we’re all going to have to think really hard about this one, and we’re going to have to take a leaf out of the Cuban’s books

What is more problematic is the next but one phase of expansion, as the ‘European’ part of the ‘Union’ will have been largely fulfilled. And I’d like to see Turkey getting it’s due.

For it to continue on it’s own terms means that there will be more difficult cases confronting it. I’d suspect, with the possible exception of Russia, that that would be a far slower process.

Or, as I’ve said before, you scrap the European identity and let in anyone that meets the membership criteria. I think that that is the best way forward, but I do realize that many folk would be very very nervous. But a genuine democratic club, with a solid Human Rights Declaration, commitment to democratic institutions – you get chucked out if you become a dictatorship – ought to be attractive to lots of other nations, I think. And it ought to be attractive to us too. For instance, I’d have no problem whatsoever with India seeking admission.

There is the potential for ‘old Europe’ to sort out the world for the better through ‘soft power’. Maybe it will happen, maybe it won’t.

Here are some of the main problems with his piece:

1. Essentialism (for example, “The more we appreciate differences among the American, European, and Chinese worldviews, the more we will see the planetary stakes of the new global game”).

2. Assumption that every single state acts the way the US presumably does (ie realpolitikish)

3. Though he claims that the world currently is fragmented and multi-whatevers, a presumption that seems to be driving his piece is that in fact it IS a zero-sum game (US vs. Europe vs. China).

4. Assumption that in 2016, realpolitik doctrine of the “Great Game” is going to continue in its present form, driven by the same needs, desires, etc which are of course, themselves based on a set of assumptions that are really a result of not hard facts but rather a type of school of thought.

5. Oddly, his article argues for this great change under way, but his piece is based on a statist viewpiont (and state-centric, I might add).

And who knows, maybe “realpolitik” will still rule because everyone, including Khanna, continues with the same kind of analysis, and it doesn’t look like it’s changing anytime soon.

Another quibble:

Attribution of phenomenon to things like the waning power of the US and its supposed binary- that the EU. Many migrants are going to Europe over the US just because it’s freaking closer (and facilitated by human trafficking), and its economy requires and needs migrant labor. People in the Middle East might want parliamentary elections rather than presidential rule not because they loathe America and want to cozy up to European models, but probably because it fits their system better, and it will probably make governance and representation is bit better in light of multiple interests and peoples within one nation state.

Having said that, I feel like it SEEMS to be saying something but in reality, not a whole lot. Apart from a few facts thrown in there (like the EU expanding, pipelines being built, etc)it feels like it’s an opinion based on…well, opinion. It reads like a lot of realpolitik analyses.

Isn’t that the truth. India a new global superpower? Do me a favour.