Book Review: Peter Frankopan's "The New Silk Roads"

There is no shortage of literature and media coverage out there about China's astonishing rise and the shift of economic and political gravity to the East. It was a staple of my undergraduate international relations curriculum, reviewing such works as Martin Jacques's When China Rules the World (2012)--imagining a scenario in which China has changed the rules of the game by virtue of being the new economic superpower of the world--to Charles Kupchan's No One's World (2012)--heralding a coming multipolar world in which the current powers of the West, especially the unipolar power many would argue the United States has been for most of the post-WWII era, must reconcile and power-share with the rising powers of the East, like China and India.

Peter Frankopan, professor of global history at Oxford, joined this debate with works like The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (2015) and continues this story in his latest, The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World (2018), reframing the conversation by showing the East and not the West has historically been the power-center of the world, perhaps explaining the latest power transition.

Reading more like an epilogue to The Silk Roads--or as a more updated edition to the latter--The New Silk Roads provides an Eastern perspective to events shaping geopolitics since its predecessor's 2015 publication, focusing on headlines showing China's increasing rapprochement with its neighbors in the "One Belt, One Road" initiative in contrast with the West's rising isolationism, inconsistent foreign policy, Trump, diplomatic brain drain, and Brexit problems (Frankopan, 2018, p. 17).

This ambitious economic and infrastructure development plan treads the old land and sea routes of the ancient Silk Roads connecting West-East, but also seeks to make new ones in areas like Africa and Latin America, the latest chapter in a larger discussion of the forces of globalization shaping the 21st century, but also the latest entry in the saga of the Great Games of history, calling to mind American and European imperial strategy in the 17th-20th centuries (Frankopan, 2015). In addition to ports, rail lines, oil pipelines, data sharing, and more, China is also building up military outposts to safeguard its investments and engaging in various bilateral trade talks with its neighbors.

Instead of the silk and spices of old, the eponymous New Silk Roads today are trade routes of people, ideas, natural resources (oil and mineral wealth), arms, data, and modern technology (AI, drones, missile defense systems, etc.). With the West going through the convulsions of Brexit and Trump, developing nations in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East (even some of the US's erstwhile allies in Europe and Australia) are viewing Beijing with increasing favor and as a potentially more reliable, stable alternative to Washington and London, with the capital to back up its ambitious vision for a prosperous and harmonious new world.

Notwithstanding the rivalries that will need to be dealt with--that of India and Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia, Russia and China, to name a few--pragmatists of all parties have realized that a new strategy is needed to secure their prosperity and national security against the disguised flailing of the West--see the "controlled unpredictability" strategy of the U.S.-- and other threats, such as poverty and climate change (Frankopan, 2018, p. 127). It seems that the pressure applied by US sanctions on Iran and Russia and tariffs against China are doing more to push unlikely parties together to serve as bulwarks against Western influence, and China and friends are taking advantage of the gaps left by the political and economic flux of the West by cementing existing and new channels of engagement that circumvent established Western ones.

All in all, while critics may assail The New Silk Roads as being overly optimistic about the sustainability of China's and other Eastern diplomatic and infrastructure projects, Frankopan balances out the rosy visions of prosperity promised by the One Belt, One Road investments with an aside about the real issues standing in the way of realizing this vision and testing newfound alliances: China's debt load, some instances of predatory lending practices imposed on African nations in exchange for foreign investment, and the larger issues of climate change and environmental degradation, the migration crises, and the looming threat of automation in the public and private sectors. Not to mention many of the countries of the Silk Roads are not democratic by any means, discouraging dissent, controlling media, and limiting other human and political rights.

While the changes underway cannot be easily halted and the array of forces driving geopolitics are many and seemingly magnified, Frankopan concludes that along with the "fragilities and dangers" of our current moment, there are just as many opportunities for "cooperation and collaboration" on the part of the West with the East to aid a peaceful transition to the future (Frankopan, 2018, p. 194). Will we rise to the occasion?


Works Cited:

BBC News. (2019, May 10). A Quick Guide to the US-China Trade War. Retrieved May 12, 2019, from https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45899310.

Frankopan, Peter. (2018). The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World. London: Bloomsbury.

Frankopan, Peter. (2015). The Silk Roads: A New History of the World. New York: Vintage Books.

Jacques, Martin. (2012). When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order. New York: Penguin Books.

Kupchan, Charles. A. (2012). No One’s World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.