Megacities with cooling centers and civil wars in the desert – a glimpse into the world of the future

BIf he looks into the future, he’s getting nostalgic all the time, says Parag Khanna. He’s actually too young for nostalgia. The now 45-year-old was a central figure in the global debate from an early age. Born in India, grew up in the Arabian Gulf and in Africa with an exchange year in Hamburg. Studies at Georgetown University in the USA, doctoral thesis at the London School of Economics with a trip to Berlin, research at the Washington Brookings Institution, for the World Economic Forum in Davos and the American Council on Foreign Relations.

The political scientist advised the Pentagon on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and Barak Obama on the election campaign. But a book that he published at the age of 31 made him famous: “The Second World”. Khanna wrote in 2008 that this “second world”, i.e. the many small and medium-sized countries between the power blocs, would determine the future of the earth.

If there will be anything like blocks in the long term. In fact, the world of the future will no longer have to choose between one side or the other, rather there will be many power centers of different strengths. It was called multipolarity back then. Today, at least since the outbreak of the Ukraine war, it seems at first glance that the Cold War is back. But it’s not like that, says Khanna.