Parag Khanna’s book “Move – The Age of Migration” – Culture

Perhaps one has to think of Parag Khanna as a kind of modern Moses: He has the right vision – rapidly deteriorating conditions make a great hike essential – and he knows where it should go. There is only one thing he does not seem to know exactly like Moses: which path actually leads to this promised land.

While the biblical prophet wanted to lead a single people out of slavery, the Indian-American political scientist and strategy consultant, born in 1977, foresees far broader migratory movements: he estimates that around half of the world’s population could set off in the coming decades – around to settle in their own country in a more favorable place in order to move to a neighboring country or to cross entire continents and oceans. Or to stay mobile and keep moving, similar to the ancient people of Israel, who wandered over Sinai for 40 years – Khanna calls the new nomads of today “quantum people”.

The area around the Jordan eventually reached by Moses’ followers will, however, by no means be the destination of the migratory movements of the present. If climate change continues like this, the biblical river will soon run out of water and the region will continue to dry up and devastate.

“It would be suicide for billions of people if they stayed in their traditional place.”

“Currently, nature is striking back and forcing us to return from a sedentary life to a nomadic way of life,” writes Khanna in “Move: The Age of Migration”. His fans, including the former American President Barack Obama, who made Khanna the foreign policy advisor of his first “change”-soaked election campaign – appreciate Khanna as someone who can predict the future. Less because he has a reliably burning bush in the front yard, but because he can read maps and data correctly and relate them to one another. Those he has read in recent years in relation to climate change, demographics and the economy seem to allow only one conclusion: if large parts of the earth are barely inhabited because of rising temperatures and sea levels, large parts of the earth’s population will be on the move put. “It would be suicide for billions of people if they stayed in their traditional place.”

Of course, in Khanna’s vision, Europe and North America will continue to be the target of migration. And both the confederation and the federal state will have to open up if their current societies do not want to languish at some point completely old – although surrounded by perhaps still more secure borders, but also by completely outdated infrastructure. “Europe faces the choice of accepting and integrating migrants or falling from a demographic cliff,” says Khanna. And he is confident that the continent, which is currently sealed off behind razor-sharp fences, will make the right choice.

The decisive mental boundary, as Khanna knows or perhaps he just hopes, does not run between north and south, but between young and old. In case of doubt, two people from different regions of the world who grew up in the Whatsapp era would have more in common than the members two generations from the same country, he writes – and deduces from this that the young Europeans who grew up in times of Erasmus programs and globalization will make a very rational decision in favor of a more enlightened migration policy.

In view of the successes of the PiS party in Poland, Fidesz in Hungary, the migration enemies of AfD, Lega and Rassemblement National, the madness of Donald Trump and Brexit, this may sound like the pious optimism of a cosmopolitan. Khanna was born in India, grew up in the Emirates, USA and Germany, went back to the United States and Great Britain to study and teach, today he has settled in Singapore.

It is understandable that as a global citizen he sees opportunities when it comes to migration – but this may not necessarily be of interest to the many people who see immigration as a threat. But Khanna is certain that the wave of populist-nationalist migration enemies will soon run out. They have “largely reached an older generation who already have one foot in the grave – and will follow them there too.”

To think of migration movements of a hitherto unknown extent exclusively in the direction of the current islands of prosperity, the USA and Europe, would in a certain way only follow the narratives of those who believe they are defending the Christian West against people with darker skin. But Khanna thinks much further here, he sees the future promised countries more where permafrost will give way to mild temperatures, where today at most grasses and birches, but tomorrow fine wines could grow.

Siberia could become a kind of fruit and vegetable garden in Eurasia

Just as the covered wagons once rolled west in the USA, he soon believes that it will be possible for settlers to move towards the pole. In order to make land arable in Canada and the Scandinavian countries, and not only there: Kazakhstan, which today has around 20 million inhabitants, could change climatically favorably – is it ready for another 200 million inhabitants? And Russia! Siberia, previously clichéd associated with prison camps and death from frostbite and thus the epitome of hostility to life, could become a kind of fruit and vegetable garden in Eurasia when the temperature rises, which is cultivated by millions of migrated Asians, Indians and also southern Europeans. Khanna even demands: “Russia must become a Eurasian Canada.”

Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian Russia – a Eurasian haven of liberality and multiculturalism? Khanna knows that he is painting a complete reversal of the existing political situation here, and he even titled the corresponding chapter tellingly: “The next Russian revolution”. Climate change will cause disruptions of unimaginable proportions, no question about it – and most people assume that these changes will be painful to cruel.

However, Khanna seems to believe in mankind’s ability to make decisions that ultimately benefit everyone – and as desirable as his vision of an enlightened consensus on gigantic and just relocation plans would be, it sounds a bit like science fiction. The idea is good, but the world is not ready yet. At the same time, and there Khanna is again Moses without a plan, he in no way describes in detail how the huge changes he forecast could take place, which are necessary to make his visions not only technologically but also politically possible. The fact that when it comes to post-national societies that use technology intelligently, he mostly refers to authoritarian city-states such as Singapore or the United Arab Emirates, should give Khanna something to think about.

And as many of his thoughts are worth considering, he sometimes just seems to be gripped by the desire for the very steep thesis. Out of sheer enthusiasm for the future, he then forgets the human factor, which has already slowed down many visions and innovations. Social and family ties only appear marginally in the almost 420 pages, but technology all the more often. “In France,” writes Khanna, for example, small village bakeries will soon be replaced by semi-automated grocery stores “and even baguette vending machines”. Baguette from the machine? Mais non, jamais.