Ignorance about Eurasia's two Great Games imperils the West | Asia Times

Ignorance about Eurasia's two Great Games imperils the West | Asia Times
"...While much of the English-language mainstream media is obsessed with alleged Russian interference in Western democracy and with the ancient sexual indiscretions of sad old entertainment celebrities and politicians, the unfolding of these two Great Games — and their inevitable confluence — is largely ignored or, if noticed at all, misunderstood.

• One of these is the politicization of a very old rivalry; 
• the other is the much more recent collusion of two great Eurasian powers. 

Both of these phenomena are reshaping the Asian continent in ways that are already beginning to reshape geopolitics and economics across the world and making American and European imperialist power irrelevant.
...A much newer story is the rise of China
The great schism between Shia and Sunni Islam began centuries ago and has long been the root of violence in the Middle East, and the perpetuation of the backwardness of much of the region. 
From time to time secularism and the need to get rich have intervened and maintained the peace between Sunni and Shiite communities in places like Iraq and Syria, until malevolent external forces got them at each other’s throats again. 
It’s an old story.
A much newer story is the rise of China...
It’s doubtful that Deng foresaw how the West’s disastrous descent into neoliberal economic fundamentalism would play into China’s hands, but it did, and the result is there for all but the most obtuse to see: 
The center of global power is now Beijing, not New York, Washington, London or Berlin...
And so it is that Russia’s vast natural resources and China’s treasury...are remaking much of Eurasia, other than — so far — the Middle East. 
There, the other Great Game is in play...
Some say the blossoming of ignorance in the West, the denigration of science, the impoverishment of education and literacy, the deterioration of thought processes to the point that a leap from 140 to 280 characters is seen as progress, and the self-destructive militarism of former great powers are signs of the imminent collapse of empire. 
The same thing happened to the ancient Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the czars, they argue. Others say we cannot know for sure because history is written by the winners.
But even that adage is now in doubt."
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