Ahead: Our Most Important 40 Years

The next 40 years will be the most important in human history. Don’t underestimate the significance of China’s rise. We are living through the biggest shift in wealth, power, and prestige since the Industrial Revolution catapulted Western Europe to global dominance. The force driving the rise of the East is exactly the same: the interaction of geography with economics and technology. How can the West can manage the East’s rise? Paying off the West’s huge debts is one obvious instance. Encouraging immigration to balance the West’s aging populations is another. Unless more is done, Europe faces demographic disaster by the 2020s.