The New Silk Roads

What if the world you knew—where the West was the dominant force shaping global affairs—was slipping away right before your eyes? In The New Silk Roads, historian Peter Frankopan argues that the twenty-first century marks a decisive turning point: global power, wealth, and influence are shifting eastward along the ancient routes linking the Mediterranean to the Pacific. The Silk Roads, once arteries of trade and exchange connecting civilizations, are now re-emerging—not as a nostalgic echo of history, but as the living framework of a new world order.

Frankopan contends that the rise of Asia—anchored by China’s Belt and Road Initiative, India’s rapid expansion, and resource-rich Central Asia—represents not just economic revival but a rebalancing of geopolitical power. He examines how nations across Eurasia, the Middle East, and Africa are weaving themselves together through trade, technology, and infrastructure, creating new alliances and rivalries that will define our century. At the same time, while the East is consolidating influence, the West faces fragmentation—from Brexit and U.S. isolationism to internal divisions within the EU and the decline of trust in democratic institutions.

From History to Modern Network

Frankopan opens by reminding readers that the Silk Roads have always been central to world history. The routes described by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen were never just about silk—they connected cultures, religions, and economies across continents. Today, that same geography—stretching from Istanbul to Beijing—has become the axis around which modern geopolitics turns. Research from satellite imagery and archaeology in China, Iran, and Afghanistan reveals both how connected ancient societies were and how modern collaboration mirrors those patterns of exchange.

The Reversal of Global Power

Since The Silk Roads (2015), events have accelerated. Frankopan emphasizes how tangible this transformation now is: energy pipelines, railways, and trade networks are reshaping continents, while Asian economies capture a rising share of global GDP. He cites forecasts that by 2050 Asia could account for more than half of global gross domestic product—restoring a dominance unseen since before the Industrial Revolution. China’s Belt and Road Initiative, valued at over $1 trillion, exemplifies this ambition, knitting countries from Africa to Eastern Europe into Beijing’s economic orbit.

The Crisis of the West

Meanwhile, Frankopan paints the West as beset by inward-looking politics. Brexit represents “fiddling while Rome burns”—a Europe so consumed by its own identity crises that it overlooks transformations elsewhere. In the U.S., the election of Donald Trump marked a retreat from global cooperation, symbolized by withdrawals from the Paris Climate Accord and the Iran nuclear deal. Frankopan shows how these decisions have weakened Western influence and emboldened Eastern powers like Russia and China to reassert leadership in global decision-making.

Why This Shift Matters to You

Frankopan writes for readers who want to understand why headlines—from trade wars to Middle Eastern realignments—are symptoms of a larger historical moment. He argues that we are already living in the “Asian century,” where economic growth, resource control, and technological innovation in the East will dictate the future of global politics, economics, and even culture. This interconnected world doesn’t simply challenge Western dominance—it invites a new model of shared development, cooperation, and sometimes uneasy competition across borders.

Ultimately, The New Silk Roads is a call to recognize that the world's center of gravity has shifted for good. The road to understanding the future, Frankopan insists, runs through the heart of Asia. The old world is giving way to the new—woven together by the threads of connectivity, ambition, and transformation that span the modern Silk Roads.

Frankopan highlights the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as the defining project of our age—China’s blueprint for the twenty-first century. Announced in 2013 by President Xi Jinping during a speech in Astana, Kazakhstan, it mirrors ancient Silk Road routes in scale and purpose but redefines them through global infrastructure, trade, and diplomacy. Through this lens, you can see China not just as a manufacturing hub but as the strategist of an interlinked world economy.

Reconnecting Eurasia

The BRI is both a land-based “belt” across Central Asia and a maritime “road” running through the Indian Ocean to Africa. Projects include the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (worth over $60 billion), rail lines through Laos and Malaysia, energy plants in Iran and Africa, and ports from Sri Lanka’s Hambantota to Kenya’s Mombasa. The scale is staggering—World Bank estimates suggest trade costs could fall globally by 2.5% thanks to these new connections.

Economic and Strategic Motives

Frankopan explains three motives behind the initiative. First, to secure resources—China’s imports of oil and gas from Central Asia, Russia, and the Middle East feed its growing demand. Second, it helps export industrial capacity abroad (steel, cement, and construction expertise). Third, it reinforces domestic stability by developing China’s western provinces, spreading prosperity inward. At the same time, it builds geopolitical leverage, shifting trade routes and dependencies under Beijing’s influence.

Security and Control

BRI projects also serve as strategic footholds. Frankopan points to new military facilities in Djibouti and fortified islands in the South China Sea. This “great wall of iron,” as President Xi calls it, ensures that China’s trade arteries—its lifelines—remain secure. Security fears about Xinjiang and Afghanistan drive Beijing’s repression of Uighurs and its interest in regional stability, revealing how economic and military policies intertwine.

Global Reactions

Western critics, from former U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to the IMF’s Christine Lagarde, warn of “debt traps”: poor nations burdened with loans, forced to cede control of assets like Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port. Yet Frankopan shows that for many nations—from Ethiopia to Kazakhstan—the BRI feels like a lifeline when Western investment is scarce. The appeal lies in China’s combination of cash, speed, and pragmatism: a new model of expansion through infrastructure rather than ideology.

Whether you view it as benevolent globalization or modern empire-building, the Belt and Road embodies the reemergence of the Silk Roads—uniting continents just as they did a thousand years ago, but this time with Chinese railways, data cables, and digital networks as the driving forces.

While China builds bridges—literal and figurative—the West is burning them. Frankopan contrasts the dynamism of Asia with the stagnation and division of Europe and the United States. You live in a time, he says, when old powers are obsessed with nostalgia and isolation instead of adaptation and innovation.

Brexit and European Disunity

The Brexit vote epitomizes Europe’s loss of self-confidence. The idea of reclaiming sovereignty, Frankopan writes, ignores that Britain’s global relevance once stemmed from connectivity—the very thing Brexit rejects. Meanwhile, nationalist movements in Hungary and Poland are eroding EU unity, using rhetoric of cultural defense against migrants while undermining democratic institutions. The “age of optimism,” when Europe pursued integration, has decayed into suspicion and separatism.

America’s Retreat and Uncertainty

In the U.S., Donald Trump’s “America First” policy signals a withdrawal from global leadership. The book lists the exits—the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Paris Climate Accord, and the Iran deal—as evidence of an inward turn. Trump’s trade wars with China show the same pattern of confrontation over cooperation. Frankopan likens the unpredictability of U.S. decision-making to medieval autocracy: power concentrated in one ruler and his circle, often family-based, as demonstrated by Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s elevated roles.

Consequences of Isolationism

These shifts leave a vacuum that others fill. Russia reasserts itself in Syria and Ukraine, while China steps forward with multilateral arrangements like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization or the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. As Frankopan puts it, “the heart of the world is being knitted together while the West unravels.” The EU’s infighting and Washington’s impulsiveness open space for a new global narrative led not from London or Washington, but from Beijing, Ankara, and Tehran.

Frankopan challenges you to see that decline isn’t inevitable but chosen. In turning inward, the West risks irrelevance; its fracture contrasts sharply with the East’s momentum toward integration.

For Frankopan, Central Asia is not a periphery—it’s the beating heart of the new global system. From Kazakhstan to Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan to Afghanistan, nations once marginalized are now vital connectors between East and West. Their geography is destiny: rich in oil, gas, and minerals, poised at the crossroads of trade routes, and increasingly collaborating after decades of isolation.

New Alliances and Cooperation

The book details how regional projects—the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline, the CASA-1000 power project, and rail links between Baku and Tbilisi—create overlapping webs of cooperation. Bilateral trade between countries like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan surged over 30% in 2017, driven by shared visions of prosperity. Summits in Samarkand and agreements over Caspian Sea borders symbolize a region redefining itself around solidarity and self-interest.

Shared Resources, Shared Risks

Yet cooperation comes with stress. Water scarcity in Central Asia—the drying Aral Sea, disputes over river control, and environmental degradation—illustrates the fragility of progress. Frankopan shows that climate change could destabilize entire nations. Still, regional leaders like Uzbekistan’s Shavkat Mirziyoyev are pushing reforms, aiming to make openness and human rights part of modernization, even as endemic censorship and corruption remain hurdles.

Promise and Paradox

Turkmenistan’s expansion plans—glitzy marble cities and record-breaking monuments—show both ambition and absurdity: a mix of real modernization and vanity projects. Central Asia’s abundance of resources may drive growth, but Frankopan warns of its uneven distribution and youth unemployment, potential triggers for unrest. The region’s future, he insists, will hinge on how effectively it transforms natural wealth into stability and connectivity rather than authoritarian excess.

For you as a reader, Central Asia illustrates how geography can become opportunity—and how the forgotten spaces of the map are emerging as the new centers of global influence.

The Silk Roads have always passed through the Middle East, and Frankopan argues that this region remains the pivot between East and West. But today, it’s witnessing another realignment—one that exposes Western inconsistency and new alliances born from necessity.

Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Regional Rivalry

Frankopan frames Saudi Arabia and Iran as twin poles of Middle Eastern politics. The U.S.’s post-2017 embrace of Riyadh—exemplified by the $110 billion weapons deal and Trump’s visit—creates dependency on an authoritarian partner whose rivalry with Tehran drives conflict across the region. In contrast, Iran’s growing ties with Russia and China signal its pivot east: cooperation in Syria, Caspian maritime agreements, and pipeline talks underscore a counterbalance to Western isolation.

Israel and the New Alignments

Meanwhile, Frankopan highlights how Iran’s shadow has united unlikely friends: Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the U.S. now collaborate tacitly against Tehran. Israeli leaders admit that Arab states care less about the Palestinian question and more about curbing Iranian influence. This emerging triangle redefines decades of Middle Eastern diplomacy, replacing ideologies with pragmatism and shared fear.

China’s Entrance

China has exploited the fragmentation: investing billions in Arab infrastructure, pledging $20 billion in loans to reconstruct war-torn economies, and offering a neutral model of engagement divorced from religion or Western moralizing. By emphasizing partnership instead of interference, Beijing becomes the quiet broker, while Western influence wanes. Frankopan captures this perfectly: “Where Washington withdraws, Beijing builds.”

For a reader fascinated by global politics, this chapter shows how the Middle East’s turmoil isn’t isolation—it’s integration into a new web of Eastern-led connections reshaping power from Riyadh to Beijing.

In the book’s later sections, Frankopan moves beyond physical roads into digital ones. Artificial intelligence, blockchain, and data networks are the “new Silk Roads”—tools for influence in a connected world. You are witnessing, he notes, not just competition for goods and trade, but for algorithms, information, and technological sovereignty.

Digital Infrastructure as Geopolitics

China’s plans to build AI parks in Beijing and Xi’an, its dominance in drone technology, and its leadership in cashless payments illustrate how the future Silk Roads will be electronic. Programs like the “Digital Belt and Road Science Plan” use satellite data and big earth analytics to manage resources and urban planning across Eurasia. Meanwhile, Russia develops military robotics and cyberwarfare capabilities, seeing technological mastery as a new form of defense.

The Weaponization of Data

The U.S.-China rivalry now extends online. Frankopan describes how American anxieties over companies like Huawei and ZTE stem from recognition that control of data equals control of people. Facebook’s secret data-sharing and Google’s censored search engine prototype (“Dragonfly”) highlight the moral ambiguities of profit across political divides. What’s emerging is an era where digital borders are as contested as physical ones.

The Artificial Intelligence Arms Race

Frankopan links developments in AI directly to diplomacy and warfare. Chinese research institutes train algorithms to predict global geopolitical shifts; Russia builds autonomous combat robots; the U.S. funds space programs to maintain technology dominance. Each innovation, he warns, reshapes power much like gunpowder or the printing press once did. The future of leadership will belong to those who master both information and imagination.

This perspective helps you see technology not as neutral progress but as the infrastructure of a new geopolitical world—one that mirrors the ancient Silk Roads in complexity, competition, and connectivity.

To conclude, Frankopan reminds readers that these shifts aren’t abstract—they affect your daily life. Prices at the gas pump, access to technology, and even climate policy trace back to decisions made along the Silk Roads. His message: learning to navigate this rebalanced world is essential for citizens, not just diplomats.

A World of Dualities

We’re entering what Chinese strategist Yan Xuetong calls a “bipolar world”—one where nations must choose between U.S. and Chinese systems of power. Frankopan suggests this isn’t a battle to fear but a reality to understand. While some Western commentators lament decline, he sees continuity: the Silk Roads have always linked multiple centers of power through trade, culture, and exchange.

Opportunities and Responsibilities

For individuals and nations alike, the challenge is adaptation. The “Asian century” offers immense potential for prosperity—if managed responsibly. Frankopan cautions that corruption, inequality, and environmental strain could undermine this new order. At the same time, collaboration across boundaries—emphasized by China’s rhetoric of “win-win”—can provide practical answers to shared problems, from infrastructure to climate resilience.

A Moral Lesson from History

Quoting Xi Jinping’s speech at Davos, Frankopan ends on a moral note: “The real enemy is not the neighboring country, but hunger, poverty, ignorance, and prejudice.” Whether this vision of cooperation proves genuine or idealistic, he insists that history will be defined by those willing to engage with others—and not retreat into isolation.

Understanding the Silk Roads isn’t just about economics or politics; it’s about seeing how interconnected humanity already is—and how embracing that connection can help shape a more balanced future for all.