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In 2018, renowned international relations author Robert Kaplan proclaimed that Eurasia was entering an era of weakened state power and fading empires.1Close Borders were receding, and the Westphalian model of states in competition was becoming less relevant. In the coming decades, Kaplan argued, the political map of the region will look more like “medieval times,” such that we are witnessing the “return of Marco Polo’s world.” More specifically, he cited Laurence Bergreen’s description of Polo’s travels across a “complex, tumultuous, and menacing, but nonetheless porous” Eurasia as the precise lens through which we should interpret the region’s geopolitical future.2Close The essay was first written for the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment before being republished in book form two years later. For Kaplan, Marco Polo represents Asia seen through Western eyes and thus a figure to which his readership can relate. But this also allows further historical parallels to be drawn, including the intersecting power structures of Persia, described as “history’s first superpower in antiquity,” and Pax Mongolica and the conquests of Kublai Khan:
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