TURKEY: Last autumn, MODERN TIMES met two intellectuals in Istanbul regarding today's Turkey – and attended a major conference there on political economy. We look here at the use of force, at freedom of expression, the media, militarization and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's political pragmatism.
GEOPOLITICS: In The Battle for World Power, Tunsjø is guilty of 'mirror imaging'. In recent decades, the United States has started a large number of wars and supported a large number of coup d'états, while in the same period China has actually built up trust in various states in the Third World.
CITIES: Life in the world's cities has always been characterized by epidemics and disease. Occasionally cities have been devastated by waves of infection, but mostly they have risen again and moved on. But what will be the consequences of the pandemic that originated in China in 2019? Can cities in our time handle such challenges again?
AUTHORITARIAN: What happened after the height of freedom ideals, the fall of the Iron Curtain and Bill Clinton's fusion of liberal politics with market forces? Today, the Chinese's mastery of original Western technology and surveillance seems limitless.