In the face of an unknown future …

In the face of an unknown future, we tend to fall back on the conventional understandings of the past. Zakaria's book, for example, reads the future as an extension of the past, as a question of hegemonic cycles and the challenges faced by a declining hegemon as it attempts to manage the situation to its advantage. Although Zakaria does recognize the potential of climate change to affect things in the future, he fails to think through both its logic and the crucial question as to whether or not it may change how geopolitics works in the future.