The end of entitlement: Europe’s problems are not the world’s problems

Dresden after World War II bombing

“Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.” These were the words of External Affairs Minister, Dr. S. Jaishankar, speaking at a global security forum in Slovakia.

The statement lays bare an enduring flaw in the worldview of many European powers—a belief that their own disputes and crises are of universal importance, while the struggles of other nations are peripheral, if not irrelevant. 

This Eurocentric ideology has shaped both history and narrative. It is precisely this mindset that allowed Europe to label the two major wars of the 20th century—World War I and World War II—as “World Wars.” In truth, these were largely European civil wars, born out of rivalries within the continent’s imperial order. The rest of the world had little to do with their origins, but was nonetheless dragged into the conflicts, often at great human and economic cost.

Historically, Europe’s dominance over vast parts of Asia lasted scarcely 100 to 150 years, from the early 19th century until the mid-20th century—a mere blink in the timeline of civilizations that stretches back tens of thousands of years and will extend indefinitely into the future. Yet because this dominance is so recent, the political and intellectual classes in some of the former colonial powers continue to behave as though global leadership is their permanent right, and that others must rally to resolve their crises.

This attitude has bred an unspoken expectation: that non-Western nations should make costly sacrifices for European causes, while Europe is free to ignore, or even exacerbate, the crises of others. Many of these global problems—whether in Africa, Asia, or Latin America—are in fact the result of European interventions, colonial extractions, and political manipulations.

But history is moving on. The brief era of Western dominance is reaching its epilogue. The global order is now irreversibly multipolar, with nations determined to chart independent courses based on their own strategic, economic, and cultural imperatives.

For India, this means safeguarding its resources and decision-making autonomy. Any assistance to Europe—or, for that matter, to the United States—must be grounded in mutual benefit, not inherited obligation. Partnership must replace presumption, and reciprocity must replace entitlement. In the multipolar century, respect will be earned through balance, not demanded through outdated hierarchies.

When the dollar crumbles: The coming mega-debtquake

The United States now staggers under a federal debt exceeding $37 trillion—yet President Trump speaks as though Washington’s coffers are financing the rest of the world. 

Factor in the liabilities of state governments, public institutions, and household debts, and the figure for US debt swells to a staggering $100 trillion—an amount nearly equal to the total annual output of the entire planet.

The gravest threat to global stability today is not the bombast of religious fundamentalists in the Middle East, but the relentless expansion of American debt. A civilization can survive fanaticism; it cannot survive the implosion of its currency. How far can this edifice of paper promises stretch—$150 trillion, $200 trillion—before the dollar’s architecture of confidence crumbles?

It is an illusion to think that such a house of cards will stand forever. When it falls, the collapse will not merely be an American tragedy; it will be an economic extinction event. Western Europe will reel, Asia will stagger, and any nation tethered to the dollar’s mast will be dragged into the depths.

For India, the lesson is plain: diversify trade, dilute dollar dependency, and build buffers. Ironically, the tariffs Washington has so generously imposed may become the very medicine that reduces our exposure. In global finance, as in life, sometimes the insult is the cure.

Democracy came later: The violent birth of Western supremacy

“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”

This line from Samuel P. Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order strikes like a hammer on the glass pane of modern illusions. It forces us to confront a truth that contemporary discourse, in its comfort and self-congratulation, often prefers to ignore.

History, stripped of its moral varnish, is a record not of the triumph of noble ideals but of the calculated, ruthless application of force. From the Akkadian Empire to the Mongol Khanates, from the Ottomans to the British Raj, between fifty and seventy major empires have risen and ruled vast swathes of the earth. Each was forged not in the quiet deliberations of a senate, nor in the tranquil exchanges of commerce, but in the roar of cavalry, the crack of muskets, and the smoke of burning cities. These were polities built by warlike peoples—nations or tribes that possessed not merely the will to conquer, but the organizational genius to turn violence into a disciplined instrument of statecraft.

In our own age, intoxicated by the rhetoric of progressivism, libertarianism, postmodernism, and the newer “woke” ideologies, this reality has receded from public memory. The story now told is that the West ascended because it was more democratic, more committed to free trade, more imbued with universal values. This is a pleasant myth, but a myth nonetheless.

The historical record is unambiguous: when the West was at the height of its imperial expansion in the 18th and 19th centuries, its nations were neither fully democratic nor committed to open markets in any modern sense. Their internal political systems were often oligarchic, their trade policies protectionist, and their diplomacy underwritten by the threat of naval cannon and expeditionary armies. Democracy and free trade became prominent Western virtues only in the 20th century—ironically, during the very century when Western hegemony began to wane.

Huntington’s observation is therefore less a provocation than a reminder: civilizations rise to dominance not by moral persuasion but by their capacity to project power, and to do so with relentless organization. The superiority that matters in the great contests of history is not that of ideals in abstraction, but of the machinery—political, economic, and military—that can transform violence from chaos into conquest.

We may comfort ourselves with the thought that the modern world has outgrown this ancient truth. But the chronicles of empire suggest otherwise. Beneath the thin ice of our contemporary ideals, the dark waters of organized force still move, as cold and irresistible as ever.

Orwell’s slogans, Asimov’s predictions, and America’s imperial present

It is often said that George Orwell’s aphorism from 1984—“War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength”—was a mirror held up to the totalitarian Soviet Union. Yet history, with its taste for irony, has turned the mirror around. 

In the decades since the USSR’s collapse, it is the United States that has come to resemble an Orwellian empire—waging wars in the name of peace, orchestrating coups and “color revolutions” to install compliant dictators in the name of freedom, and manufacturing ignorance as if it were the highest civic virtue.

In the Western world, Washington can tolerate democracy, for there it is contained within familiar cultural and ideological boundaries. But in the non-Western world, democracy is tolerated only if it bends to the American will. It is an uncomfortable truth that the U.S. establishment has often looked askance at India precisely because it is a democracy—one that insists on making its own choices. 

By contrast, it has long embraced Pakistan, a theocratic-militaristic state where democracy is an occasional visitor, swiftly ushered out by generals and clerics. American policy has often ensured that Pakistan’s fragile shoots of popular governance are uprooted before they can take hold, leaving the army and the mullahs in unchallenged command.

The contradictions deepen in the realm of trade and sanctions. Under the banner of the Russia–Ukraine conflict, President Donald Trump’s administration has imposed tariffs on India, even as other major economies—China, Japan, and the European Union—continue to import Russian energy with impunity. The rules of the American game, it seems, are written in disappearing ink: visible only to those meant to obey them, vanishing for those meant to escape them.

This dissonance calls to mind not only Orwell but also Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, where a vast Galactic Empire rules the stars with the complacency of those who believe their reign eternal. In Asimov’s tale, the mathematician Hari Seldon predicts the inevitable decline of the empire—not through rebellion, but through the slow corrosion of its own contradictions. The empire falls, not because it is defeated from without, but because it collapses from within.

Both Orwell and Asimov were writing in the 1940s, worlds apart from today’s geopolitics, and neither could have witnessed America’s imperial overreach firsthand. Yet from the vantage point of the third decade of the 21st century, their visions appear eerily prescient. 

Orwell gave us the moral language to name the inversion of values; Asimov gave us the long view of the empire's decay. Together, they seem to be whispering across time that Trump’s America is less the shining city on a hill than the Galactic Empire in its autumn—still grand, still powerful, yet already shadowed by the mathematics of its own decline.

In the end, the fate of all empires is written in the very logic of their ambition. They teach the world that might is right, only to discover, too late, that history has a deeper arithmetic.

Fatal friendship: Why America can’t be trusted with long-term alliances

"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." ~ Henry Kissinger

In an age where diplomacy is increasingly tethered to spectacle, spectacle often distracts from substance. Nowhere is this more evident than in the art—and artifice—of negotiating with the United States of America. For nations seeking enduring partnerships, the challenge is not merely ideological divergence or geopolitical friction; it is the fundamental impermanence embedded within the very architecture of American democracy.

To negotiate a long-term deal with the United States is to build a palace on shifting sands. Every four years, the tide changes—sometimes violently. Presidents are not just replaced; policies are repudiated, treaties torn, and entire geopolitical visions reversed without apology. What one administration solemnly agrees to, the next might discard with theatrical disdain.

Consider India's recent engagements with the Biden administration. Agreements were inked with all the ceremony due to a rising strategic partnership. But as Donald Trump—now a returning force in American politics—seeks to reclaim the Oval Office, he has made it clear: yesterday’s promises are today’s irrelevance. What he did not honour under Biden, he will not inherit from Biden. He demands not continuity, but rupture—new deals, new alignments, and a clean break with India's traditional ally, Russia.

To mistake American politics for a steady flame is to mistake a bonfire for a hearth.

This pattern of abandonment is not new; it is structural. It is not the exception; it is the rule. From Vietnam to Kabul, from the Kurds to the Shah of Iran, the United States has repeatedly walked away from those who trusted in the durability of its word. Its global conduct is governed less by covenant and more by convenience. There are few constants—only cycles.

In the case of the former Soviet Union, this betrayal assumed epochal dimensions. General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, in an act of profound good faith, agreed to withdraw Soviet forces from Eastern Europe, trusting in the verbal assurances of Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush that NATO would not move "one inch eastward." What followed was not gratitude, but encroachment. Under Clinton, NATO expanded east. Under Bush, it expanded further. Today, NATO’s flirtation with Ukraine has ignited a powder keg. The broken promise echoes through the rubble of Donetsk and the ghost towns of Mariupol.

And what of the Middle East—a region disfigured by the oscillations of American foreign policy? One administration arms a faction; the next bombs it. From the ruins of Iraq to the fragmented sovereignties of Syria and Libya, the United States has demonstrated a tragic incapacity for stewardship. Each new doctrine overwrites the last with the urgency of erasure. Hope is installed one term, only to be deposed the next.

India, therefore, must ask itself: can a civilisation whose statecraft is measured in millennia afford to anchor its future to a polity whose attention span is electoral?

The caution is not anti-American. Rather, it is pro-reason. It is a call to strategic sobriety. India must engage with the United States—vigorously, and on equal terms—but without the illusion of permanence. We can trade, talk, and even temporarily align, but we must never tether our sovereignty to their signatures.

Long-term alliances demand long-term memory. And long-term memory is precisely what American politics lacks. In that sense, Kissinger's mordant quip contains a bitter truth for our times: America is a powerful friend, but a forgetful one—and to be forgotten by a superpower is to be exposed to history’s cruelties.

India must, therefore, be non-aligned not out of nostalgia, but necessity. Our foreign policy must resemble the banyan tree—rooted deeply in strategic autonomy, yet flexible in its embrace of the world. Let the winds of Washington blow as they will. We, on the other hand, must learn to build shelters that do not collapse with every change in weather.

The rise of nations, the decline of dissent: How Tiananmen paved the way for China's global ascendancy

Deng Xiaoping

The rise of China poses an enduring question: Can prosperity flourish without freedom? Can a world-class market economy be engineered not through the expansion of democratic rights, but through their systematic suppression?

Modern China offers a stark and unsettling answer.

In June 1989, the Chinese Communist Party unleashed its military upon its own people. In Tiananmen Square, thousands of pro-democracy protesters—most of them students—were met not with dialogue, but with tanks and assault rifles. The square, which for weeks had pulsed with the hopes of political reform, was reduced overnight to a symbol of crushed dissent. 

The massacre was swift and brutal, but it achieved its intended aim: it extinguished, with cold efficiency, the possibility of political pluralism.

From the standpoint of liberal democratic theory, such an act should have consigned China to pariah status and economic isolation. But history, as always, moves by different laws than moral theory.

In reality, the massacre ushered in a new phase of political stability—one secured by fear and silence. China had already begun to liberalize its economy a decade earlier, under Deng Xiaoping’s market-oriented reforms initiated in 1979. The ideological contradiction was apparent even then: economic openness without political openness, markets without freedoms. 

But foreign investors, ever pragmatic, did not flinch. In the aftermath of Tiananmen, global capital flowed into China with even greater speed. The blood in the square had barely dried when the boardrooms of the West resumed their calculations. Stability, however achieved, was good for business.

For multinational corporations, political repression was no disqualifier. On the contrary, it offered a kind of security—no labor unions, no strikes, no elections, no populist reversals. The Chinese state could promise infrastructure, cheap labor, and docile social conditions, uninterrupted by the turbulence of democratic accountability. The authoritarian state became the perfect incubator for global capital.

By 2010, China had overtaken Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy—a transformation that occurred not in spite of Tiananmen, but in its long shadow.

The historical irony is profound. While the democracy hypothesis often posits that prosperity and freedom are twin virtues—that the flourishing of markets goes hand-in-hand with the flourishing of rights—China charted a different path. It demonstrated that an authoritarian regime, if disciplined and strategic, can harness the engines of capitalism without surrendering control. In Beijing’s model, economic dynamism coexists with political absolutism. The state does not merely permit the market; it orchestrates it.

Philosophically, this forces a reckoning. What is freedom if a people can be enriched but not empowered? Can human development be reduced to GDP? Is prosperity without dignity a success—or merely a gilded cage?

The Tiananmen Square massacre was not just a political event. It was a civilizational marker. It signaled that the 21st century would not necessarily be shaped by free-market triumphalism. The so-called “end of history” thesis, so confidently advanced in the West after the Cold War, failed to anticipate that authoritarian capitalism might not be an aberration—but an enduring model.

Technologies rise, civilizations fall: On the slow decline of modern powers

History does not listen to sermons. It does not genuflect before manifestos on human rights or bow to declarations of moral idealism. These are the ornaments of philosophy, not the engines of destiny. 

What history respects — what it remembers — is strength. The rest is noise, swept into footnotes or ruins.

"Survival of the fittest"— Herbert Spencer's adaptation of Darwinian logic—may limp in the halls of biology, but in the theatre of history, it marches with iron certainty. Civilizations endure not because they are just or enlightened, but because they are strong. The weak do not perish in debates. They simply disappear.

Yet strength is never fixed. Each age invents its own measure.

In the ancient and medieval worlds, strength lay in the raw will of warriors, in the cohesion of tribes forged through blood and belief. Religion was the war drum — it sanctified violence, unified masses, and gave the empire the glow of divine right.

In the modern era, might was married to machinery. Industry, bureaucracy, diplomacy, and ideology became the new weapons of statecraft. Steel was tempered by strategy. The nation-state fought not only for survival, but for meaning — nationalism, liberalism, communism, each a creed that mobilized millions.

Then came 1990, and with it, the digital turn.

The post-Cold War order ushered in a world where victory no longer came through conquest, but through code. Power migrated from factories to networks, from armies to algorithms. But herein lies the paradox of our time: in the digital age, too much technology may be a sign of civilizational fragility, not strength.

Digital technologies, while potent, erode the moral and psychological sinews that bind a people. They foster atomization, ennui, demographic decline, cultural relativism, and a growing aversion to hardship. They enthrone convenience and exile conviction. The result is a society rich in data but poor in destiny.

The high-tech nations of the West — once the undisputed architects of the modern world — now drift in cultural twilight. Their economies totter on speculative excess, their militaries win battles but not wars, and their peoples are divided, distracted, and demoralized. They have the machines—but not the men. The will has withered.

These nations are not being conquered by tanks, but by torpor. Their enemies do not arrive with swords — they seep in through cracks in meaning. Empires do not fall when walls are breached, but when souls grow tired.

India, meanwhile, stands on a razor’s edge. Now the fourth-largest economy in the world, it remains, by per capita metrics, a nation still clawing its way out of poverty. It is not yet a technological originator, but it is a consummate adapter. In digital public infrastructure, no other nation has moved faster or deeper. 

Aadhaar, UPI, Digital India — India has become a laboratory of techno-governance. But what lifts can also erode. Hyper-digitization risks hollowing the social core, breeding dependence, alienation, and the illusion of progress without moral ballast. If India forgets that technology must serve culture—and not the other way around — it too may find itself adrift, a giant in numbers but a dwarf in spirit.

Civilizations do not collapse in a single blow. They fray from within. What appears sudden is often the final snap in a long, silent unraveling. Strength, then, is not the possession of tools, but the possession of will — of memory, meaning, and shared sacrifice. It is not who has the most advanced machines, but who has the deepest roots.

History, unblinking, records only those who endure. And the test of endurance is not how people thrive in comfort, but how they stand when comfort turns against them. The future will not be kind to the tired, the timid, or the technophilic. History moves, always, with the strong.

The digital mirage: Freedom promised, serfdom delivered

The digital revolution, so loudly heralded as humanity’s great leap into the future, may well be remembered as the most sophisticated scam of the last hundred years. 

Sold to us as a gateway to boundless information, seamless convenience, and democratized freedom, it has instead entrenched new hierarchies, deepened old inequalities, and hollowed out the very things it claimed to liberate—privacy, autonomy, wisdom, and the dignity of labour.

Yes, we now have the world at our fingertips. But the price has been the slow forfeiture of our souls.

Far from empowering the individual, digital technologies have become the instruments through which political power and corporate capital consolidate their dominion. The very tools that once whispered the promise of liberation now hum with the cold logic of surveillance, extraction, and behavioral manipulation. Behind the sleek user interfaces and algorithmic charms lie the watchful eyes of modern overlords—politicians, bureaucratic technocrats, and data oligarchs—who govern not through consent, but through metrics, nudges, and invisible chains.

We are not citizens of a digital democracy; we are serfs on a silicon plantation.

Today’s average digital citizen, always online and algorithmically optimized, labors more relentlessly than his analog ancestors, yet owns less, knows less, and feels less free. His world is one of shrinking attention spans, rising taxes, synthetic pleasures, and constant scrutiny. The dream of Silicon Valley—the dream of a connected, creative, liberated human species—has metastasized into a global architecture of control. And like the peasants of medieval feudalism, modern netizens are told they are free even as every action is tracked, taxed, and rated.

This is not progress. It is a return to hierarchy—only this time, the lords rule not with swords or scripture, but with data.

The founders of the digital age once spoke in the tongues of visionaries. They summoned visions of a technological Eden—where knowledge flowed freely, creativity flourished, and the individual stood sovereign amid an abundance of choices. But the 21st century has delivered not Eden, but Panopticon. We are no longer users of technology; we are the used. What was promised as empowerment has become entrapment.

The tragedy is not that we were deceived. It is that we eagerly volunteered for the deception, entrusting our lives to platforms that do not love us, to systems that do not serve us, and to rulers we cannot see.

If this is the future, then it is one that must be resisted—not with nostalgia for the past, but with a renewed demand for genuine freedom: for technologies that serve the human spirit, not commodify it; for systems that protect the private realm, not annihilate it; and for a society that remembers that no code, no algorithm, no network, can ever replace the sacred ambiguity of being human.

The digital age is not yet destiny. But if we do not awaken soon, it may become our cage.

The illusion of originality: On art, authenticity, and authority

Why do we revere an original artwork more than an exact copy—especially when we cannot tell them apart? The preference is not aesthetic. A perfect replica delivers the same visual pleasure. And yet, the original draws the crowds, the hush, the awe. The replica, however precise, feels hollow.

The usual explanation is metaphysical. The original, we are told, carries the touch of the artist’s hand, the memory of its moment of creation. A replica may look the same, but it has no history. It is a ghost without a past, a form without a soul.

But there is another, more unsettling truth: our devotion to originality is often manufactured. Curators, critics, institutions, and media outlets canonize certain artworks and their creators. They tell us which paintings are sacred, which artists divine. And like loyal disciples, we believe. The work becomes iconic not because we see something transcendent in it, but because we are told there is something to see.

Much of what we admire in art is not the image, but the story.

Put a perfect fake in the Louvre, call it authentic, and the world will weep. Call it a forgery, and the spell will break. The eye is passive; the mind is trained. The emotion is not raw—it is rehearsed.

This is not merely a quirk of cultural conditioning. It reveals something deeper: our experience of art is, at heart, religious. We do not just look at art—we believe in it. Like temples and relics, paintings are invested with holiness. Like saints and sages, artists are elevated to mythic stature. We gather before canvases as we once gathered before idols: seeking presence, meaning, and redemption.

Faith is the invisible frame around every masterpiece.

To believe in God requires faith. To believe in art demands the same. The difference is merely liturgical: one faith speaks in silence and incense, the other in velvet ropes and audio guides.

In the end, the original is not just what the artist made. It is what the world has chosen to believe in. The replica shows us an image. The original asks us to kneel.

The heaven on earth that never came: The collapse of capitalist and communist mythologies

For over a century, capitalism and communism have been locked in an ideological war—each claiming to have discovered the unbreakable laws of economics. 

Capitalists extol the invisible hand of the free market, while communists swear by the iron logic of historical materialism. But beneath this clash lies a shared delusion: both claim the authority of physics, while peddling the theology of myth.

Neither ideology has ever existed in pure form. The United States, long hailed as a capitalist utopia, is in fact a sprawling bureaucracy propped up by public spending, subsidies, and corporate bailouts. Silicon Valley owes more to government-funded research than to libertarian genius. 

On the other side, the Soviet Union, the supposed model of command economy, had black markets, informal networks, and enterprise bartering—capitalist impulses simmering beneath a planned surface.

Every economy is a mixed economy. The idea of a "pure" market or a "perfect" plan is a fantasy for the intellectually devout but historically blind.

In truth, capitalism and communism were not just economic systems. They were post-Enlightenment mythologies—secular successors to religious eschatology. Where traditional religions promised paradise in the afterlife, these ideologies promised heaven on earth. Adam Smith and Karl Marx weren’t merely thinkers; they were prophets of rival utopias.

But instead of delivering salvation, both ended in ruin. Capitalism gave us inequality without justice; communism gave us equality without freedom. One built glass towers on the bones of the poor, the other constructed gulags in the name of progress. Both promised light but delivered shadow.

As the Western-led global order unravels, these grand economic doctrines are also losing their grip. The myths of capitalist meritocracy and communist emancipation are no longer shaping the future—they are being shelved with the discarded scriptures of older ages. Capitalism and communism are becoming the Olympus and Asgard of the modern world—abandoned heavens, echoing with broken promises.

Economics was never a hard science. It has always been politics in disguise—a contest over values, priorities, and power. The most influential economists in history were not abstract theorists but advisors to political leaders who dared to imagine and act. Keynes had Roosevelt; Friedman had Reagan. What mattered was not the model, but the moment—and the will to shape it.

“Economic law” is often just political preference with a PhD.

If there is a truth to be salvaged, it is this: There are no economic laws—only economic choices. And every choice is a mirror reflecting the soul of a society.

As the myths of capital and the plan fade into twilight, we may finally begin to ask better questions—not about how to obey economic laws, but about how to build just, humane, and adaptable systems rooted in lived realities, not ideological certainties.

Because in the end, economics doesn’t rule the world—power does. And the sooner we admit that, the better we can wield it.

From Pax Americana to Tax Americana: Debt, Power, and the Fall of American Empire

Empires do not die with a bang—they default. No civilization in history has survived the moment its debts outgrew its power to collect. I first read David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years in 2012, drawn to its anthropological exploration of how debt is interwoven with barter, religion, slavery, law, war, and the very notion of civilization. 

Reading it again in the second decade of the twenty-first century, I find it less a historical study and more a prophetic text—a ledger of civilizational rise and inevitable collapse. This time, one revelation cuts through like a blade: the American empire is not merely an empire of influence or innovation. It is, more profoundly and more precariously, an empire of debt. And that empire now trembles on the edge of implosion.

Graeber, with anthropological precision and revolutionary insight, showed that “markets are founded and usually maintained by systematic state violence.” This is not just a reflection on antiquity—it is an indictment of American-style capitalism, which sustains its market supremacy through global militarism and financial coercion. 

The Pax Americana has not been built by trade alone, but by a peculiar alchemy of aircraft carriers and credit ratings, drone strikes and dollar diplomacy. Its economic order is not based on mutual value creation, but on debt enforcement—enabled, reinforced, and policed by overwhelming military force.

America's global dominance, then, is not the supremacy of a benevolent market, but the coercive apparatus of a creditor-state. In the guise of international institutions and alliances, it has institutionalized an imperial form of usury, where debtor nations dance to the tune of Washington’s debt collectors: the IMF, the World Bank, and even the global bond markets. 

“There’s no better way to justify relations founded on violence,” Graeber wrote, “than by reframing them in the language of debt—above all, because it immediately makes it seem that it’s the victim who’s doing something wrong.”

But the problem with debt as a pillar of an empire is that it works only as long as others believe you’ll be able to collect. The moment you can’t—or worse, the moment you no longer have the appetite to enforce your collections—the illusion shatters.

The United States is now approaching that moment. Its national debt has swollen to an astronomical $36 trillion, more than 124% of its GDP—a burden unseen since the aftermath of World War II. Even more staggering is the annual interest bill: over $1 trillion, a sum that eclipses even its formidable military budget. The empire is now paying more to maintain the illusion of solvency than it does to maintain its soldiers, ships, and satellites.

This isn’t merely a fiscal headache—it’s a civilizational migraine. Interest rates are rising as the Federal Reserve tries to tame inflation. But as rates rise, bond prices fall. Global creditors — China, Japan, and others—are dumping the U.S. Treasuries, wary of the risks and the returns. This forces the U.S. to borrow at ever-higher costs, compounding its debt burden. What emerges is a doom loop: debt begets interest, interest demands more debt, and faith in the dollar—America’s most potent weapon—begins to erode.

Without the ability to militarily enforce debt obligations on other nations, America risks losing its access to cheap, endless capital. And without that capital, the machinery that keeps its domestic politics lubricated—entitlements, subsidies, corporate bailouts, and military largesse—begins to grind and sputter. An empire cannot long survive when it must choose between paying its creditors and pacifying its citizens.

Every empire has its mythology. For Rome, it was the divine order of the Caesars. For Britain, the civilizing mission. For America, it is the sanctity of the dollar and the inevitability of growth under its capitalist system. But myths are fragile things. The moment they are questioned, they unravel. Once the dollar is no longer seen as the world’s ultimate store of value—once its debt instruments are no longer treated as safe havens but as liabilities—the edifice will crack.

India, like most Asian nations, lies within the blast radius of this implosion. As the American empire turns inward to grapple with its own insolvency, the geopolitical space it occupied may fragment into chaos—or opportunity. We must be ready to navigate a world where Washington no longer writes the rules, and where economic sovereignty is earned, not inherited.

In Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Graeber reminded us that debt is not just an economic arrangement—it is a moral narrative. And that narrative is beginning to collapse under its own contradictions. When an empire survives by indebting the world while enriching itself, it eventually loses the credibility to moralize. And when it loses the power to compel, its debts become just numbers—unpaid, unpayable, and unheeded.

This is not the fall of Rome. It is something more insidious: the slow-motion unraveling of an empire that bet its soul on compound interest. The world must now ask: What comes after the empire of IOUs?

Truth and reason didn't build civilizations - Fictions and lies did

“Truth alone triumphs”—Satyameva Jayate—stands enshrined beneath the national emblem of India, echoing an ancient Vedic ideal. But while this maxim has long inspired sages, reformers, and seekers, history often offers a more sobering tale. The triumph of truth, in the political or philosophical domain, is not a guaranteed destiny but a rare anomaly.

Across epochs, the victors of intellectual and political struggles have rarely been those aligned with what may be called “ultimate truth.” Instead, power has tended to favour those who wield illusions with conviction, who package complex realities into consumable myths, who wrap propaganda in the sacred garb of certainty. 

Civilizations rise not on foundations of transparent truths but on carefully woven tapestries of belief—fictions crafted so meticulously that they come to feel more real than reality itself.

This is not an indictment of humanity, but a reflection on its limits. Human beings, bounded by finite cognition, subjective perception, and cultural conditioning, lack the instruments to perceive ultimate truth in its fullness. Our sensory tools filter experience through lenses shaped by language, memory, emotion, and ideology. What we call “truth” is often but a mirror of our fears and desires, polished by history, inherited from myth, and burnished by power.

How then can one fight for truth, if truth itself is inaccessible? What does it mean to defend an idea that remains undefined, ungraspable, and endlessly contested? These are not merely epistemological questions; they are moral, civilizational, and political.

The great political ideologies—monarchism, liberalism, communism, fascism, nationalism—did not emerge from the patient pursuit of objective truth. They emerged from emotional energies, sacred stories, historical grievances, and the persuasive genius of those who could simplify chaos into narrative. The same holds true for many philosophical systems. The so-called “age of reason” did not displace mythology; it rebranded it. The Enlightenment merely replaced religious myth with secular myth—progress, liberty, rational man—as its new articles of faith.

Even the loftiest civilizations, those celebrated for their wisdom, order, and law, have owed more to their ability to construct shared fictions than to the presence of objective truth. Rome was not built on fact, but on virtus. The Chinese Mandate of Heaven was a metaphysical doctrine, not a verifiable contract. Indian civilization, for all its spiritual profundity, transmitted its deepest truths not through philosophical dialectic alone, but through stories—Itihasa, Purana, Katha—where the line between fact and meaning was consciously blurred.

To say that civilization is the product of lies may sound nihilistic. But perhaps the word “lie” is too crude. What we truly inhabit are useful fictions—constructs that provide coherence, continuity, and a sense of collective direction. A fiction becomes civilizational when it is infused with ethical aspiration and metaphysical depth. When these fictions lose their ethical anchor, they decay into propaganda.

The task, then, is not to denounce the role of narrative, mythology, or belief in shaping society, but to become more conscious of their power. In a world where ultimate truth remains elusive, perhaps the higher calling is to craft noble fictions—ones that elevate, rather than manipulate; that harmonize, rather than divide.

In the end, truth may not always prevail. But the stories we choose to believe in will continue to shape the world—more enduringly, perhaps, than truth itself ever could.

The four sons of Shiva: A cosmic symphony of dharma, power & grace

In the vast ocean of Hindu cosmology, where the sacred and the symbolic coalesce, the sons of Shiva emerge as luminous archetypes—divine expressions of human aspiration, cosmic order, and transcendental truth. Kartikeya, Ganesha, Ayyappa, and Hanuman—each born of divine intent, each embodying a facet of dharma, each carving a distinct spiritual path in the complex terrain of Sanatana Dharma.

Drawn from the mythic streams of the Puranas and the Itihasas—texts that are not mere chronicles of the past but living commentaries on existence—these four sons are not simply deities in a pantheon. They are principles. They are mirrors. They are maps of the inner and outer worlds.

Kartikeya: The Eternal Warrior and Youth

Kartikeya, known also as Skanda or Murugan, is the commander of the celestial armies—the youthful god whose sinews carry the strength of tapas, whose eyes blaze with the fire of clarity. He is the archetype of the warrior-philosopher, born not merely to conquer but to uphold dharma in an age of adharma. Associated with the peacock, which subdues the serpent of desire, and the rooster, symbol of valor and vigilance, Kartikeya’s iconography is a metaphysical language in itself.

His six heads—born of his miraculous conception from the sparks of Shiva’s seed—represent not only the six directions but the omniscient vision of one who sees beyond time. He is celibate, not as a denial of life, but as an affirmation of single-pointed focus—a yogic force clad in armor.

Ganesha: The God of Beginnings and Remover of Obstacles

If Kartikeya is the fire of youthful action, Ganesha is the earth of profound wisdom. The elephant-headed god, born of Parvati’s longing and animated by Shiva’s breath, stands at the threshold of all beginnings. He is the guardian of portals, the lord of thresholds—symbolically, of every decision, initiation, and undertaking.

Corpulent yet agile in mind, childlike yet the wisest of the gods, Ganesha wrote the Mahabharata as Vyasa dictated, demanding that the sage speak without pause. Thus, in him, intellect and intuition merge. The serpent girdling his belly and the broken tusk in his hand are not ornaments—they are symbols of restraint and sacrifice. His vehicle, the humble mouse, reminds us that even desire must be guided by discrimination.

Ganesha’s iconography is feminine in its fertility and masculine in its wisdom. He is the one who teaches that prosperity (artha) and pleasure (kama) are not sins if pursued under the guidance of righteousness (dharma) and the aspiration for liberation (moksha).

Ayyappa: The Synthesis of Divine Energies

Ayyappa, the tiger-riding lord of Sabarimala, is the rare deity who arises from the union of Shiva and the demon-slaying feminine energy of Vishnu in his Mohini form. He is the very embodiment of paradox resolved—a child of both masculine asceticism and enchanting illusion.

Worshipped as Hariharaputra, the son of Hari (Vishnu) and Hara (Shiva), Ayyappa is born of union yet remains celibate. He is beautiful, balanced, and unwavering. His austerities are fierce, his dharma is unshakable, and his mission is clear: to slay Mahishi, the demon of ego and chaos. Ayyappa, like Hanuman, shows that the divine is not merely to be adored, but lived through tapas—inner heat, discipline, and sacrifice.

Hanuman: The Devoted Self, the Indestructible Spirit

To speak of Hanuman is to invoke the living ideal of bhakti—devotion that knows no fear, no fatigue, and no failure. The monkey god, born of Vayu, the wind, is not only the most powerful warrior in the Ramayana, he is also the subtlest yogi. His heart beats only to the name of Rama, yet he possesses the might to move mountains—literally and metaphorically.

Celibate by vow and ascetic by nature, Hanuman is also a trickster, a scholar, and a strategist. He does not conquer through pride but through humility. Like Shiva himself, he dwells in liminality—on the boundaries between human and divine, servant and master, form and formlessness.

Tapa and Rasa: Two Streams of One Dharma

Together, Kartikeya, Ganesha, Ayyappa, and Hanuman represent the fullness of human striving—tapa (the discipline of inner fire) and rasa (the taste of life’s pleasures), both embraced without contradiction. The dharmic way is not a rejection of the world, but a harmonisation of the world’s myriad calls.

Kartikeya and Hanuman, the ascetic warriors, guard us from outer threats and inner delusions. They are the kshatriyas of the spirit. Ganesha and Ayyappa, the balancers of prosperity and purity, guide us through the labyrinth of material life with the light of insight. They are the sages of worldly life.

Sons Not Just of Shiva, but of the Self

In a deeper sense, these sons of Shiva are not separate from the aspirant—they are states of being, potentialities of the self. As we move through life, battling our demons, seeking wisdom, managing duties, and yearning for release, we are Kartikeya on the battlefield, Ganesha at the threshold, Ayyappa in penance, and Hanuman in devotion.

Thus, in venerating them, we are not bowing to the material representations of divinity, but awakening the gods within.

In search of worthy adversaries: The strategic poverty of seeing Pakistan as rival

“To be successful, you need friends; and to be very successful, you need enemies.” ~ Sidney Sheldon, The Other Side of Midnight

There is a deep, almost brutal truth in Sidney Sheldon’s aphorism—one that transcends the realm of individual ambition and finds resonance in the destinies of nations. 

History is replete with the paradox that great civilisations, far from rising in tranquil isolation, ascend in the shadow of formidable adversaries. Adversity, when it takes the shape of a worthy rival, becomes not a curse but a crucible of national greatness.

A nation without enemies is like a muscle untested, an idea unchallenged, a spirit untempered. Complacency sets in. Intellectual life becomes decorative rather than generative. Ethics yield to convenience. The dream of permanence lulls the people into an opiate of false security. Culture becomes exhibition rather than essence, and politics devolves into performance rather than purpose. Peace, when prolonged in the absence of threat or tension, does not refine—it decays.

History offers ample testimony. The Roman Republic rose not by idle peace but in fierce contest with Carthage. The American resolve was forged through existential rivalry with the British Empire, later tested by the ideological juggernaut of the Soviet Union. Israel, a nation surrounded by hostility, has survived and innovated because it could never afford to rest. China, in its long civilizational march, has repeatedly redefined itself in the face of foreign domination and internal implosion.

The Nietzschean dictum—“What does not kill me makes me stronger”—rings truer at the scale of nations than it ever could for individuals. Strength is not inherited; it is cultivated, often at great cost, through confrontation with those who threaten to undo you.

And herein lies India’s peculiar predicament.

Seven decades after independence, India continues to define itself against Pakistan—an entity that has steadily slid into a vortex of economic implosion, political instability, and ideological extremism. This fixation, this psychological tethering to a state that has failed in almost every metric of modern governance, limits India’s own self-conception. It’s akin to a scholar obsessing over the envy of an illiterate neighbour.

India’s real challenges lie not in the fires across the western border, but in the shifting tectonics of global power: in China’s muscular expansionism, in America’s shifting strategic calculus, in the weaponization of global trade and technology, and in the race for control over critical resources and AI futures. While we stay transfixed by the chronic nuisance of a collapsed rival, the giants of the world are redrawing the rules of engagement.

To envision itself as a leading power, India must choose adversaries that reflect its potential, not its past. Pakistan is no longer the mirror in which India should see its reflection—it is a relic. The true tests of India’s strength, maturity, and global standing will emerge from how it contends with the economic might of China, the technological dominance of the West, and the turbulence of multipolar competition.

This does not mean inviting conflict—it means embracing complexity. It means recognizing that national greatness is not forged in the echo chamber of self-congratulation, nor in rivalry with the weak, but in difficult negotiations, strategic deterrence, and robust defence against those who possess real power.

A country is never sovereign unless it controls its narrative of threat and ambition. And to do that, it must reframe its enemies—not with belligerence, but with clarity. Greatness requires resistance. Resistance requires adversaries worth respecting. And respect, in geopolitics, is born not in shared history, but in the anticipation of future contests.

India stands at an inflection point. To rise, it must stop shadow-boxing with ghosts and begin grappling with giants. That is the paradox of power: the stronger you grow, the more daunting your enemies must become. Anything less is not worthy of India’s civilizational inheritance—nor its aspirations.

The scum also rises: The dangerous myth of civilizational superiority

It is often said, with culinary simplicity, that the cream rises to the top. But so, invariably, does the scum. This adage—drawn from the behavior of broth—carries a sobering truth when applied to human affairs.

Success does not distinguish the virtuous from the vile. Sometimes the noble ascend to prominence; more often, the cunning and the corrupt claw their way to the summit. Thus, to judge the character of a person merely by the height they have reached in the social or political order is to mistake outcome for essence. The most revered figures of an era may be moral failures in disguise, while those who languish in obscurity may possess the inner life of saints.

The same paradox holds true for civilizations. We are habitually conditioned to associate power with virtue—believing that a civilization that achieved global dominance must have been superior in intellect, moral clarity, or political brilliance. But history offers little support for such optimism. Many civilizations that rose to prominence did so not because they embodied justice, wisdom, or cultural refinement, but because they mastered the brutal logic of conquest, extraction, and domination.

In fact, the world has seen more than one high civilization—deeply ethical, artistically advanced, and intellectually fertile—crushed under the boots of less cultivated but more aggressive invaders.

It is an error, then, to conflate civilizational success with civilizational virtue. Power does not imply wisdom, nor does victory confer value. The Roman Empire, for all its legal, philosophical and engineering brilliance, was built on systemic slavery, blood sports and imperial exploitation. Timur, the scythe-wielding founder of the Timurid Empire, carved his legacy through massacres and terror—his empire vast, but his moral vision void. Nazi Germany achieved swift technical and military advances, yet its moral depravity remains without parallel. 

Success, whether military or economic, must always be measured against the means by which it is attained and the ends toward which it is directed.

Worse still, the historical record is often an unreliable witness. The origins of civilizations are embedded in mythology and nationalistic self-narration. Every civilization seeks to enshrine its past in tales of divine favor, civilizing missions, and righteous triumphs. But these stories are rarely neutral. They are embroidered by victors, censored by regimes, and propagated through generations until they ossify into orthodoxy. What is remembered is what serves power; what is forgotten is often what mattered most.

The truth, therefore, lies not in outcomes, but in essence. To understand a civilization, we must look not at the size of its armies, the scale of its monuments, the size of its economy, but at its metaphysical compass—its conception of justice, its ability to self-criticize, its vision of the place of humanity in the universe, and its openness to transcendental truths. These are harder to measure, harder still to preserve, and almost impossible to resurrect once lost. But they are the true indicators of a civilization’s soul.

To believe otherwise is to mistake surface for substance—a perennial error in the reading of history. It is to applaud the ascent of scum while mistaking it for cream. In our time, as in times past, discernment—not triumph—is the mark of wisdom.

The illusion of greatness: How Kissinger’s chosen leaders served American power, not their own nations

In Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy, Henry Kissinger offers a meditation on political power through the lives of six leaders he deems exemplary: Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Anwar Sadat, Lee Kuan Yew, Margaret Thatcher, and Richard Nixon.

“Leaders think and act at the intersection of two axes,” Kissinger writes with characteristic gravitas, “between the past and the future; and between the abiding values and aspirations of those they lead. They must balance what they know—drawn from the past—with what they intuit about the future, which is necessarily conjectural.” Leadership, then, in his view, is a strategic act of navigation—part memory, part foresight, and wholly attuned to power.

And yet, as one traces the arc of these six careers, an unsettling irony emerges. Kissinger extols them as visionaries, yet their actions, far from realizing national resurgence, arguably facilitated the erosion of their own countries’ sovereignty and influence—often in ways that benefited the United States more than their homelands.

Under Adenauer, West Germany relinquished the hope of strategic autonomy, aligning itself firmly with the Atlantic bloc and embracing a tutelary role under American and British influence. De Gaulle, for all his rhetoric of “grandeur” and independence, laid the foundations of a France increasingly beholden to liberal internationalism and domestic progressivism—a far cry from the civilizational confidence he sought to restore.

Anwar Sadat’s strategic pivot to the United States—sealed by the Camp David Accords—recast Egypt’s foreign policy and won him Western acclaim. But in abandoning Soviet alignment and pan-Arab nationalism, he entrenched economic dependence and eroded Egypt’s regional stature. The liberalization that followed brought instability without real reform. His assassination in 1981 marked not just the end of his rule, but the eclipse of Egypt’s postcolonial sovereignty.

Lee Kuan Yew is the outlier—a leader who resisted Western ideological imposition. Yet, in aligning Singapore closely with global capital and, later, with China’s rise, he created a tightly controlled but externally entangled city-state—prosperous, stable, but geopolitically vulnerable. Yew’s Singapore is not sovereign in the full civilizational sense.

Margaret Thatcher is hailed as the architect of modern British conservatism, yet her legacy reveals a stark inversion. By embracing market absolutism, she dismantled the industrial backbone of the nation—coal, steel, manufacturing—leaving vast regions hollowed out. Her war on organised labour fractured the working class, not to restore national strength but to usher in an era of financial dominance dictated by transatlantic capital. Far from reclaiming British sovereignty, Thatcher bound the UK more tightly to the American imperium. By the close of her tenure, Britain had ceased to act as a sovereign power and was reduced to a “vassal state” within a US-led global order—a nation trading its civilisational agency for economic orthodoxy.

Nixon, of course, is the anomaly—a patriot by Kissinger’s own standard. His boldest move, the abolition of the gold standard in 1971, severed the dollar from material backing, allowing the U.S. to export inflation while importing real goods. In doing so, he laid the foundation for the dollar’s ascendancy as the world’s default reserve currency—transforming it into America’s most effective instrument of global hegemony. Henceforth, the dollar was no longer just a currency—it became the United States' primary export and its most potent geopolitical weapon.

The subtext of Kissinger’s analysis thus becomes more legible: leadership, in his moral universe, is measured not by the fulfilment of national destinies but by the ability to integrate one's country into the architecture of American-led order. The statesman, in Kissinger’s telling, is great not when he preserves national civilizational integrity, but when he serves—wittingly or otherwise—the imperatives of the Pax Americana.

History, in this light, is less a source of wisdom than a convenient stage. For Kissinger, the true statesman is not the one who liberates his people from decline, but the one who—knowingly or not—facilitates the consolidation of American power. His “studies in strategy” are less about global leadership than about the architecture of the empire.

Vedic wisdom, the Gita, the eternal quest for truth and the permanence of doubt

The Vedic sages harbored no illusions about the finality of knowledge. For them, certainty was not a privilege granted to mortals, but a mirage—a temptation to be resisted. 

They understood that truth, far from being a fixed possession, is an ever-evolving revelation: not a monument to be guarded, but a path to be walked.

In this spirit, they rejected dogma and embraced inquiry. Truth, they believed, is not the domain of the rigid, the alienated, or the misanthropic. Rather, it belongs to the free-spirited, to those who engage life with joy, curiosity, and openness. The true seeker is not one who clings to answers, but one who dares to examine all sides of a question, who listens before asserting, and who holds belief lightly—like a song, not a sword.

The Vedic tradition, profoundly aware of the impermanence of language and the limits of writing, preserved its wisdom through an oral lineage. Knowledge was sung—not carved in stone, but carried in breath. Truth was performed aloud, in the presence of others, under the sky, where it could be tested, challenged, and understood collectively. Only that which could be spoken clearly and heard by all had the legitimacy to be considered truth.

This ethos reaches its dramatic apogee in the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna’s ultimate teaching to Arjuna unfolds not in a temple or monastery, but in the liminal space between two massive armies, poised for slaughter on the fields of Kurukshetra. The battlefield, with its clash of duties and its moral ambiguities, becomes the ideal setting for the revelation of truth—not despite its violence, but because it reflects the human condition in all its complexity.

Here, truth is not divorced from action. It is discovered in the midst of responsibility, in the act of engagement with the world. Krishna does not offer Arjuna a metaphysical escape from conflict; instead, he helps him see through his confusion, dissolve his paralysis, and reclaim his agency. It is in this moment—neither peaceful nor abstract, but charged with consequence—that Arjuna attains clarity.

His response, recorded in verse 73 of the Gita, is quiet yet momentous:

“By your grace, my delusion is gone; I have recognized my true self. O Acyuta, I am free from doubt. I shall act according to your word.”

This is the recognition that matters—not a sudden acquisition of omniscience, but the gentle lifting of fog. The truth, for Arjuna, is not a set of doctrines; it is the inner alignment that allows him to act with conviction, freed from fear and inner contradiction.

In a world too often marked by absolutism and ideological rigidity, the Vedic insight remains strikingly modern. Truth is not a prize for the loudest or the most certain. It is something more fragile, more sacred: a process of articulation, of listening, of emergence. It lives in dialogue, not monologue. It thrives in uncertainty, not closure.

The sages sang their truths under the open sky—and in the Gita, we are reminded why. Truth must be spoken, heard, and lived. It must be earned, again and again, in the thick of life—not away from it.

The Myth of the Civilizational Clash: Why Huntington’s Civilizational Thesis Falls Short

Samuel P. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations offers a seductive but fundamentally flawed lens through which to view global conflict. 

While his thesis resonates emotionally—inviting people to externalize blame by identifying threats in cultural or religious “Others”—it does so at the expense of historical accuracy and analytical depth. In truth, the most violent and transformative conflicts in human history have occurred not between civilizations, but within them.

Take Europe, for instance—the cradle of modernity and a continent Huntington classifies as a single civilization. From the British massacres of the Irish, the Napoleonic Wars to the two World Wars, Europe tore itself apart through internecine conflict. World War I and World War II—commonly labeled as global conflicts—were in essence European civil wars that spilled across borders. A more accurate naming convention might be European War I and European War II. These wars were fought not against alien civilizations but among nations that shared language families, religions, and philosophical traditions.

The Holocaust further underscores this internal descent into brutality. Nazi Germany, a supposed pinnacle of Western advancement, built industrial mechanisms to annihilate millions of fellow Europeans. This genocidal project was born not from a clash with an external civilization, but from a political agenda within the West itself.

Terrorism, too, has often originated internally. The United Kingdom’s most persistent security threat until the late 20th century came not from foreign jihadists, but from the Irish Republican Army. In 1984, the IRA nearly assassinated Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Their campaign was rooted in historical, political, and religious disputes within the British Isles—not in a civilizational divide.

The Cold War, long seen as a binary confrontation between East and West, also fails Huntington’s test. Both the United States and the Soviet Union drew from the same intellectual lineage of Enlightenment rationalism and industrial modernity. Marx, the father of communism, was German and did most of his work in London. Lenin was steeped in European political theory. The Cold War was a geopolitical sibling rivalry—not a civilizational standoff.

Religious schisms within civilizations have also fueled centuries of violence. The Catholic–Protestant conflicts in Europe, including the Thirty Years’ War and the English Civil War, were devastating and long-lasting. These were not clashes of civilizations but internecine wars waged over authority, theology, and political control.

A similar pattern is visible in the Middle East. The Sunni–Shia divide has been the root of many of the region’s bloodiest conflicts, from the Iran-Iraq War to the contemporary civil wars in Syria and Yemen. These are fratricidal struggles within Islam, not confrontations with external civilizations.

Even the United States, often framed as a monolithic representative of Western civilization, was nearly torn apart by its own Civil War—a domestic conflict between Americans of European descent. More than 600,000 lives were lost, not to foreign armies, but to an internal reckoning over slavery, state sovereignty, and national identity.

The ongoing tensions between the United States, Israel, and Iran are also mischaracterized when framed as a civilizational clash. If this were truly a confrontation between Western and Islamic civilizations, the 57 Muslim-majority nations would rally behind Iran. Yet, many key Muslim nations—Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and others—have chosen either neutrality or quiet alignment with the West. This fracture underscores the reality that geopolitical rivalries, regional interests, and ideological divisions within civilizations are far more significant than simplistic civilizational binaries.

The deeper historical lesson is clear: the gravest threats to any society often come from within. Conflict is most likely where identities intersect and power is contested among close cultural or political relatives. Civilizations are not monoliths, and their greatest ruptures tend to emerge internally—from ideological, theological, and political fault lines.

Huntington’s framework, though rhetorically powerful, is historically unconvincing. By casting global conflict as a clash of civilizations, it obscures the internal dynamics that truly drive human violence. Understanding the past requires more than fear of the “Other”; it requires confronting the mirror.

The New Triumvirate: America, Europe, China—and Israel’s Wars to Prevent Multipolarity

The United States, Western Europe, and China are not enemies. They are allies masquerading as rivals—co-owners of a global empire that fears no internal division as much as it fears the rise of an outside challenger. The real war is not between them. It is between their triumvirate and the rest of the world.

Bound by intricate economic ties, shared technological ecosystems, and overlapping interests in preserving the current international order, these three powers represent not a fractured geopolitical landscape, but a unified civilizational core determined to uphold its dominance across the globe. Their cohesion is not ideological but structural, based on a shared interest in controlling the narrative, institutions, and flows of global power.

This configuration finds a compelling historical parallel in the First Triumvirate of the late Roman Republic—Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar. Although divided by personal ambition, these three men worked in coordination to suppress the republican institutions that had once defined Rome. The fatal blow to this fragile alliance came not from within but from without: the death of Crassus at the hands of the Parthians in 53 BCE, during the ill-fated campaign at Carrhae. 

Crassus's defeat shattered the balance, ushering in a civil war between Pompey and Caesar. Pompey was eliminated by Caesar’s forces, and Caesar himself was later assassinated by senators who feared his imperial ambitions.

Today’s triumvirate—America, Europe, and China—similarly dreads not one another, but the rise of a fourth force: an external actor that rejects their norms, resists absorption into their system, and potentially reorders global power. This "fourth force" could manifest as a resurgent Russia, an emerging Middle Eastern coalition, or even an unpredictable coalition of developing states—any configuration that escapes the gravitational pull of the current order. What unites the triumvirate is not mutual affection, but a collective imperative to prevent such a force from gaining traction.

In this context, Israel plays a pivotal, if often misunderstood, role. Far from being a solitary actor engaged in regional conflicts for its own survival, Israel has become an indispensable strategic tool in the hands of the triumvirate. It serves as a frontline buffer to contain any fourth force that may rise from the Middle East—a region historically resistant to imperial integration and deeply skeptical of Western frameworks. 

Israel's wars, therefore, are not merely its own; they are waged for the preservation of the triumvirate’s global hegemony. Whether confronting non-state actors or hostile regimes, Israel acts as a surrogate enforcer, a bulwark ensuring that the Middle East does not become a staging ground for a new, unaligned pole of power.

The triumvirate’s true fear, then, is not disorder but independence—not violence, but non-compliance. It is the rise of a geopolitical actor that cannot be co-opted through trade, intimidated through sanctions, or deterred through military posturing. Like the Parthians of antiquity, this actor may emerge suddenly, from beyond the boundaries of acceptable discourse and diplomatic predictability. It may deal a blow to one member of the triumvirate—not necessarily by conquest, but through systemic disruption—and set in motion a collapse that no summit or sanctions regime can reverse.

What we are witnessing today is not the peaceful transition to multipolarity, but a frantic effort to defend an aging world order. The so-called rivalries between America, Europe, and China are less significant than the machinery of collaboration that undergirds them—through supply chains, financial markets, intelligence sharing, and diplomatic alignment. Like the Roman triumvirs, they may clash for precedence, but they remain united in one key objective: to prevent a rupture in the architecture of global control.

The lesson from Rome is clear. Power shared among elites is vulnerable to the shock of the outsider. And just as the Parthians exposed the limits of Roman imperialism, so too might today’s fourth force—wherever it emerges—reveal the fragility of the modern triumvirate.

Kishkindha to Kurukshetra: Vishnu’s Hand in the Cosmic Rivalry Between Surya and Indra

The epic confrontation between Karna and Arjuna in the Mahabharata is more than just a clash between two heroic warriors—it can be interpreted as the continuation of an ancient and symbolic rivalry between two celestial powers: Surya, the solar deity, and Indra, the king of the heavens. 

As the sons of these two deities, Karna and Arjuna embody this cosmic antagonism on the mortal plane. Karna, born of Surya, and Arjuna, son of Indra, are cast into opposing roles in the great war of Kurukshetra. Their destinies culminate in Karna’s death, brought about by Arjuna with the indispensable guidance of Krishna, the eighth avatar of Vishnu.

This divine pattern of conflict, however, has an antecedent in the Ramayana, set in an earlier Yuga. There, the cosmic rivalry between Surya and Indra is mirrored in the fraternal conflict between Vali and Sugriva. Vali, the mighty vanara king and son of Indra, is opposed by his younger brother Sugriva, born of Surya. Once again, Vishnu—this time in his seventh avatar as Rama—intervenes decisively. Siding with Sugriva, Rama slays Vali and restores Sugriva to the throne of Kishkindha.

A striking symmetry emerges from these narratives. In the Ramayana, Surya’s son (Sugriva) triumphs over Indra’s son (Vali) with the help of Vishnu as Rama. In the Mahabharata, Indra’s son (Arjuna) vanquishes Surya’s son (Karna), aided by Vishnu as Krishna. In both epochs, the conflict between the celestial lineages is resolved not through the independent might of either side, but through divine intervention. It is the avatar of Vishnu who tilts the scales of fate, suggesting that dharma, not mere lineage, dictates the course of victory.

These epic patterns invite a deeper reflection: is there a cosmic balance being maintained between the houses of Surya and Indra, mediated by Vishnu across Yugas? Or does the repetition serve to highlight the futility of divine rivalry when set against the larger arc of Vishnu’s dharmic mission?

Ultimately, the question of superiority between Surya and Indra remains unresolved, perhaps deliberately so. For it is not the triumph of one deity over another that the epics foreground, but the recurring centrality of Vishnu—the preserver—whose avatars uphold the moral and cosmic order. The epics suggest that in the theatre of divine drama, power alone is insufficient without dharma, and destiny bows to the will of the divine incarnate.

Churning of Cosmic Ocean

The boundary between medicine and poison, between what heals and what harms, has long been recognised in Indian thought as subtle and deeply contextual. In the Atharva Veda, one of the earliest Indian texts concerned with healing, disease and remedy are treated as forces that can both originate in and be dispelled by divine or natural means. 

The same herb, the same mantra, the same force—ojas or tejas—may bring either vitality or destruction, depending on its application, intention, and measure. This duality is also reflected in the Sanskrit term visha, meaning poison, which is etymologically and symbolically close to amrita, the nectar of immortality—both are born of the same cosmic churning (samudra manthan), the same act that yields the divine and the deadly.

This paradox of opposites—where poison and nectar, good and evil, often emerge from a common source—provides a potent metaphor for the relationship between the intellectual and the so-called barbarian. Much like the Vedic Rishi, who isolates himself to gain higher knowledge and then re-engages with society as a moral guide, the intellectual presumes a role of healing: to shield the body politic from ignorance, chaos, and violence. 

Yet the tradition also warns us against false ascetics and hollow scholars—those who pursue knowledge not for satya (truth) but for svārtha (self-interest). As the Bhagavad Gita cautions, those entrenched in avidya (ignorance) often masquerade under the guise of wisdom, and even tamas, the quality of inertia and decay, can wear the robe of sagacity.

The Mahabharata abounds with such inversions. The Kauravas, educated in the shastras, trained by royal gurus, are heirs to the throne. Yet it is Pandavas with their raw force and naturalistic values, and Krishna, with his cosmic vision, who preserve dharma. It is not the cultivated or the learned who uphold civilization, but often the forgotten, the exiled, the so-called barbarians whose strength lies in their unyielding will and raw power. 

In such texts, it is not always the cultivated or the learned who uphold civilization, but often the forgotten, the dispossessed, the so-called "barbarians" whose strength lies in their unyielding will and clarity of purpose.

The history of empires in India, too, follows this rhythm. From Chandragupta Maurya—who rose from obscurity under the guidance of Chanakya—to the founders of the Gupta and Chola empires, it is often those from outside the sanctified elite who inject new energy into a stagnant polity. The decline of great kingdoms, conversely, is marked by excesses of ritualism, philosophical abstraction, and detachment from the realities of statecraft—a condition vividly described in Kautilya’s Arthashastra and critiqued implicitly by later Bhakti poets, who rejected hollow scholasticism in favour of lived, experiential truth.

The distinction between the intellectual and the barbarian is not absolute but cyclical, even illusory. When intellectualism ossifies into elitism and complacency, it ceases to be a healing force and becomes a poison. Conversely, what is dismissed as barbaric or uncivilized may contain within it the latent energy necessary for renewal. The same cosmic churning that produces poison also yields nectar. The task of any civilization is not to suppress the churning, but to recognize when its medicines have become its poisons—when its savages may be its saviours.

History’s Iron Law: The Fall of Empires to Their Former Colonies

The arc of imperial history is replete with ironies, none more persistent than the recurring phenomenon of great empires being undone by forces once subordinated to their power. This historical inversion—the return of the periphery to challenge and often supplant the core—has played out repeatedly across centuries and civilizations, suggesting a structural dynamic embedded within the very nature of empire.

Consider the fate of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Once the dominant power of the ancient Near East, it fell not to a rival civilization but to a coalition led by its former western vassals—the Macedonians under Alexander the Great. Similarly, the Roman Empire, which extended its control across vast swathes of Europe, North Africa, and the Levant, was ultimately overwhelmed not by a peer polity but by a convergence of Central Asian and Germanic tribes—Visigoths, Vandals, and Huns—many of whom had once served as auxiliary forces or client states within the imperial framework.

The Byzantine Empire offers another poignant example. It once exercised suzerainty over various Turkic and Balkan groups, including the ancestors of the Ottomans. Yet by 1453, it was these very Ottomans—former vassals—that delivered the final blow to Constantinople, signaling the definitive end of Roman imperial continuity. Likewise, the Islamic conquests of the Iberian Peninsula, which lasted nearly 800 years, were initially facilitated by political factions in Italy and Byzantium. These powers supported Arab-Berber incursions into Visigothic Spain in a bid to weaken their rivals—only to see a new Islamic civilization emerge on European soil.

This pattern is not confined to the ancient or medieval world. The Zengid dynasty, instrumental in the rise of the Kurdish commander Saladin, was eclipsed by him as he established the Ayyubid Sultanate. In turn, the Ayyubids were overthrown by the Mamluks—former slave-soldiers of Turkic and Circassian origin—who forged one of the most enduring military regimes in Islamic history. Similarly, the Mongol Empire, which spanned from the Pacific to the Danube, was ultimately supplanted by successor states in Russia and China—regions that had once existed under Mongol dominion.

In the modern period, the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries was not solely the result of European power but also of nationalist movements and regional actors who had once been subordinate to Ottoman rule. From the Balkans to the Levant, former provinces became crucibles of resistance and eventual independence.

These historical precedents point to a cyclical law of reversal: the imperial center, in time, becomes vulnerable to the energies it once harnessed and subordinated. Empires are seldom felled by foreign equals; they are more often eroded from within or overtaken by those they once ruled.

This historical logic may once again assert itself in the decades ahead. The post-World War II Western order—led by the United States and upheld by former colonial powers such as Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain—now faces demographic, economic, and ideological challenges emerging from the very regions they once colonized. Migration flows, capital investments, and technological diffusion from Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Latin America are beginning to reshape the political and cultural landscapes of Europe and North America.

The prospect, then, is not merely one of geopolitical rebalancing but of civilizational inversion. The imperial core—once the agent of global domination—may, within the next fifty years, find itself increasingly subject to the influence, and perhaps even the ascendancy, of forces and populations it once ruled. If history remains a reliable guide, the next wave of transformation may well be led not by the heirs of empire, but by the children of its margins.