The Future of Empires

As part of my leadership journey in the last 6 years, I have gotten more interested in human nature. The correlation is not a hard puzzle to crack, because as human beings, we are either leading ourselves or responsible for someone else. Both sides of the coin require an understanding of who we are, why we do the things we do, and how we do it.

When we understand that human nature has almost remained unchained over the last 6000 years, we begin to judge history from a different light. When we read about the Battle of Troy, the conquests of Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Chengis Khan, etc we then understand that had we lived in those times we would most likely act the same way or have been part of a picture that looks normal - the struggle for survival.

In our more developed world today, we often think we are more empathetic, modern, or too educated to indulge in the kinds of carnage that happened in the past. But in the not-too-distant past, we singlehandedly massacred more people in two world wars than most of mankind's wars put together.

A quote famously attributed to Albert Einstein quotes:

I do not know with what weapons we will fight the third world war, but I can certainly say that fourth world war would be fought with sticks and stones.

It is our default nature to compete for scarce and limited resources as a species, hence whether we like it or not empires would crumble and new ones will rise. But what does this mean for us as a civilization?

Background

In the last couple of months with war happening in Ukraine, there has been an invisible split of some sort. One school of thought argues against United States Imperialism, another views Russia and China as rising hegemonies. The former views the West and NATO as a force for no good. The latter sees the rise of Russia, China and the BRICS alliance as the birth of a more multipolar world where power is shared. But what is the future of empires? Is China taking over or something?

One thing we do know for sure is that empires do not go down without a fight, in fact, they always do. These can be seen in the recent sanctions, some sort of economic warfare with brewing tensions. Our hopes are that no matter what happens we don't ever get to see the use of nukes - but for how long would we keep hanging on the shoestring of hope?

The Future of Earth's Empires

I listened to a TedTalk last week on empires, and the speaker concluded that we are going to become a more leaderless world. The argument was brilliant but I found some missing pieces which inspired me to consider where we are currently headed as a civilization.

If we consider it from a different perspective, the idea of a more multipolar world sounds pretty close to making sense - But can the world survive such tensions for long? Even if the world becomes more multi-polar we cannot stop tensions and aggravations to mount into a tipping point that can morph into actual combat.

After the second world war, most of Europe and Asia had been decimated. Leaving the United States as the only standing modern civilization unscathed. With fast reforms and leadership, the United States positioned itself as a global superpower both politically and economically.

But, since the close of the 1940s, most of the world has been back on its feet with enough military strength for another war. China rose out of the ashes of years of internal wars to become a thriving economic beast on the foundations laid by President Deng Xiaoping. China at the moment is a major economic superpower, but it is not standalone. Other countries have increased wealth and hence wealth has meant there are more economic hubs now other than the United States. With regard to military strength, the United Nations Security Council acknowledges countries with nuclear stockpiles - this means even though the United States still leads it by no means has total autonomy.

But that is just, an analysis that focuses on the multi-polarity of military and economic powers. There is a rising 3rd force, technological power. This time the powers wielded here are not just limited to nations alone but individuals and corporations - Apple, Tesla, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Nvidia, OpenAI etc

These corporations can be viewed as network states, with each of its users as citizen. These multinational corporations generate even more revenue than some of the biggest nations in the world. It is thus safe to say, that Tech giants are a third force.

That being said, at least in the next decade we are going to see a more multi-polar world with power dynamics that fall under 3 broad categories: Military powers, Economic powers, and Technological Powers. This overlap would keep the world in check at least for the next decade but what happens next is highly unpredictable. We have hardly ever seen a totally multipolar world in history, especially because most of the world has never been this interconnected.

My belief is that we will see more of the kind of Ukraine-Russia tensions scattered across geographies leading to alliances to shift more and more till we reach a tipping point, that totally shifts the base of leadership to a single entity assuming we do not nuke the planet out of existence. That said, we will not be a leaderless world - but rather a world where the base of leadership would become more multi-polar.