New Continent and Old Maps
The ‘Cognitive Restart’ of the Global System through a Thermoeconomics Lens
Preface: this essay draws some threads together from my ongoing work over the past few years, and was penned in response to a request for some reflections on the theme “new continent and old maps: the ‘cognitive restart’ of the global system.” The essay was originally published in Chinese. In it, I draw together many threads that those familiar with my work will be familiar with, and introduce to the Chinese audience the concept of thermoeconomics.
Introduction
The proposition “New Continent and Old Maps: The ‘Cognitive Restart’ of the Global System” (”新大陆与旧地图：全球体系“认知重启””) captures a pivotal moment in international affairs. It evokes the imagery of explorers navigating uncharted territories with outdated cartography, leading to missteps, disorientation and potential catastrophe. In our contemporary world, this metaphor describes the profound structural transformation underway: a shift from the interdependent “global village” envisioned in the post-Cold War era to a fragmented landscape of multi-centres, multi-rules and multi-alliances. This evolution is not a singular cataclysm but a resonant convergence across three interlocking layers – the international order, great power relations, and global supply chains. As the proposition suggests, this demands a “cognitive restart”: a fundamental rewiring of mental models to align with emerging realities.
Drawing on my ongoing reflections on multi-nodality and multipolarity, this essay explores this transformation. Multipolarity, as I have argued in various contexts, is not merely a redistribution of power but a qualitative shift toward de-centred, relational governance where prosperity and security are indivisible. From analyses of North Asian dynamics to the implications of U.S. tariffs and the rise of BRICS, I have consistently highlighted how outdated unipolar assumptions – the “old maps” – fail to navigate the “new continent” of a polycentric world. This cognitive dissonance is evident in the West’s persistent hubris, exemplified by U.S. policies under President Donald Trump, which accelerate fragmentation rather than preserve dominance. Meanwhile, initiatives from China and the Global South demonstrate pragmatic adaptation, fostering networks that prioritise mutual enablement over zero-sum competition.
At stake is not just geopolitical realignment but the very paradigms through which we perceive global order. The old maps, rooted in Western exceptionalism and linear progress, depict a hierarchical world with the U.S. as its apex. The new continent, however, is a mosaic of overlapping sovereignties, digital ecosystems and economic interdependencies that defy such simplicity. This essay dissects the resonance across the three levels, illustrating how the failure to restart cognitively risks isolation for holdouts like the U.S. and Europe, while adaptive actors forge resilient futures. Ultimately, the cognitive restart is an imperative for positive peace – one that weaves prosperity and security symbiotically in ways that are reminiscent of Johan Galtung’s frameworks.
To deepen this analysis, I draw on my work in Thermoeconomics – or Systemic Exchange Value (SEV) – a framework that integrates thermodynamics, information flows and exchange dynamics to reframe economic systems beyond monetary abstractions like GDP. Thermoeconomics views economies as energy transformation networks, where value emerges from efficient matter-energy-information circulation. This lens undergirds the paradigmatic redrawing needed for multipolarity, revealing how unipolar “old maps” ignore entropic inefficiencies, while multipolar adaptations align with thermodynamic imperatives for sustainability and resilience.
The International Order: From Unipolar Illusion to Multipolar Reality
The first layer of resonance lies in the international order, where the post-1945 architecture – dominated by institutions like the United Nations, World Trade Organisation (WTO), and IMF – is fracturing under the weight of multipolar pressures. The old map portrayed this order as a liberal rules-based system, ostensibly universal but in practice a tool of Western hegemony. The U.S. under Trump has weaponised this system through tariffs, sanctions, and selective disengagement, exposing its contradictions. Trump’s threats of 100-150% tariffs on BRICS nations, ostensibly to preserve dollar primacy, instead hastened de-dollarisation. This “America First” pivot, reiterated in the 2025 National Security Strategy, outsources risks to allies while demanding they fund the U.S.-centric defences, fracturing alliances and accelerating multipolarity.
The cognitive restart here involves recognising that the international order is no longer a singular hierarchy but a pluriverse of rules and institutions. BRICS exemplifies this: its Kazan Summit advanced the creation of mechanisms like BRICS Clear for national currency settlements, complementing rather than overthrowing the WTO. By 2025, with Indonesia joining and ASEAN nations as partners, BRICS represents over 45% of global population and 35% of GDP, fostering “multi-rules” through interoperability rather than imposition. This echoes my concept of “Digital Westphalia”, where open-source platforms and distributed ledgers enable sovereignty-preserving collaboration, bypassing U.S.-dominated networks like SWIFT.
Contrast this with Europe’s predicament. Clinging to old maps of NATO centrality, Europe faces energy vassalage to U.S. LNG, costing billions and eroding competitiveness. A cognitive restart would see Europe pivot to Eurasian integration, normalising ties with Russia for affordable gas and partnering with China on renewables. The EU-Mercosur deal (January 2026) signals nascent adaptation, diversifying supply chains and bolstering food security, but Russophobia lingers as a barrier.
Globally, this resonance manifests in the erosion of Western moral authority, shattered by scandals like the Epstein files. Allegations implicating elites from Clinton to Musk undermine the West’s human rights crusades, prompting the Global South to reject NGO-driven interventions. China’s Global Governance Initiative (GGI), launched at the 2025 SCO Summit, offers an alternative: relational multilateralism emphasising outcomes over procedures, revitalising the UN through diverse partnerships.
Without a cognitive restart, holdouts risk irrelevance. The U.S., crossed the “indifference threshold” with capricious tariffs, prompting nations to deepen non-U.S. networks. The post-dollar world, shaped by ASEAN-GCC-China swaps, underscores this: multi-rules emerge not from anarchy but pragmatic sovereignty.
Thermoeconomics and the Redrawing of Institutional Maps
To grasp this shift paradigmatically, Thermoeconomics provides a foundational lens. In my framework, economies are not abstract monetary circuits but thermodynamic systems where value arises from negentropic processes – organising energy, matter and information against entropy’s dissipative pull. Traditional metrics like GDP capture monetary flows but ignore underlying energetic efficiencies, leading to misperceptions of power and sustainability.
In the international order, unipolar “old maps” reflect high-entropy systems: U.S. hegemony relies on extractive dollar recycling, where deficits fund military primacy but generate global imbalances and waste. Trump’s tariffs exacerbate entropy, disrupting flows and inflating costs without addressing structural decay, as U.S. manufacturing atrophies amid financialisation. Multipolar institutions like BRICS, however, align with thermoeconomic principles: by enabling local currency settlements and technology transfers, they reduce frictional losses, enhancing systemic resilience. China’s BRI, for instance, invests in infrastructure that lowers energy barriers for trade, creating low-entropy networks that amplify collective output.
This redrawing demands viewing institutions as value amplifiers, not zero-sum arenas. GDP-centric maps overvalue U.S. “strength” while undervaluing China’s role as an enabler of global negentropy – exporting low-cost renewables to accelerate decarbonisation. A cognitive restart grounded in Thermoeconomics reveals multipolarity as thermodynamically inevitable: diverse centers minimise single-point failures, distributing risks and optimising flows for long-term stability.
Great Power Relations: Beyond Either/Or to Indivisible Security
The second layer resonates in great power relations, where binary Cold War framings – democracy vs. autocracy, West vs. East – clash with multipolar interdependencies. The old map insists on zero-sum rivalry, viewing differences as threats to be contained. This ontological dualism ignores Daoist dialectics of “and,” where opposites unify in perpetual change. China’s statecraft embodies this: facilitating Saudi-Iran détente (2023) and Palestinian reconciliation (2024) through shared interests, not imposed regimes.
Trump’s doctrine exemplifies the old map’s pitfalls. I have previously described it as theological zero-sum, casting China as a “spiritual adversary” amid evangelical prophecies of Armageddon. This led to outsourcing risks in the 2025 NSS, pressuring Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines to frontline against China while U.S. commitments waned. Allies begin to hedge: Japan builds hypersonics, South Korea polls favour nuclear autonomy and Manila multi-aligns with ASEAN peers.
Multipolar relations demand indivisible security, where one nation’s safety enhances another’s. Shifting from deterrence to positive peace on the Korean Peninsula, leveraging DPRK-Russia ties and abandoning reunification preconditions is something that can be imagined, if not as an immediate probability then as a medium term possibility. Similarly we can critique NATO’s Asia expansion as an escalation risk, contrasting it with ASEAN’s consensus-based prosperity-security symbiosis.
China’s role as “enabler not expropriator” redefines great power dynamics. Through Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and new quality productive forces, China exports capacity and know-how, pricing in abundance via low-cost renewables and digital tech. This counters Western scarcity models, fostering multipolar even development. We can consider the parallels: just as Keynes warned against punitive Versailles reparations in the years after the first world war, multipolarity requires magnanimity to avoid instability. China’s GGI and GSI embody this, promoting relational peace over dominance.
The cognitive restart here rejects either/or for symbiotic futures. As U.S. influence wanes, great powers like China and Russia build multi-alliances, from SCO to BRICS, emphasising interoperability. Trump’s tariffs accelerate this, catalyzing substitutions and non-U.S. trade growth.
Thermoeconomic Insights into Relational Dynamics
Thermoeconomics illuminates why indivisible security is not idealistic but thermodynamically sound. Great power relations, viewed thermoeconomically, are energy-information exchanges where entropy minimisation fosters mutual growth. Zero-sum approaches, like U.S. containment, generate dissipative conflicts – wars as high-entropy sinks wasting resources. In contrast, China’s enabling diplomacy reduces barriers, allowing efficient flows: BRI corridors lower transport entropy, amplifying regional negentropy.
Profits aren’t simply extracted surpluses but claims on liquidity expansions enabling circulation. In multipolar relations, “profits” manifest as shared developmental gains, not hegemonic rents. U.S. exceptionalism ignores this, treating alliances as extractive, leading to ally hedging and system entropy. A paradigmatic redrawing via Thermoeconomics sees relations as negentropic networks: China’s hypersonic tech sharing with Russia enhances collective security without dominance, aligning with thermodynamic efficiency.
This framework critiques Western dualism as entropic: “either/or” creates wasteful oppositions, while “and” synthesises for lower-entropy harmony. Daoist influences in my thinking reinforce this, positioning multipolarity as a natural state of balanced flows.
Global Supply Chains: Decentered Networks and Economic Sovereignty
The third layer vibrates in global supply chains, transitioning from integrated just-in-time models to resilient, de-centred networks prioritising sovereignty. The old map idealised frictionless globalisation, but disruptions – from COVID-19 to U.S. sanctions – exposed vulnerabilities. Chile’s RCEP bid and Chancay port’s role in transpacific trade bypassing U.S. hubs, signals multipolar reconfiguration just as U.S. weaponisation – freezing Russian assets, imposing tariffs among other actions – prompts diversification. ASEAN-GCC-China swaps enable local currency trade, reducing dollar dependence. BRICS enlargement in Asia boosts resilience: Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam integrate with BRI, enhancing infrastructure and trade complementarities.
China’s model, as in “Enabler Not Expropriator,” decentralises value-adding via overseas investments in minerals and manufacturing. This contrasts U.S. protectionism, which, shifts deficits without rejuvenating industry due to skills gaps and financialisation.
The cognitive restart recognises supply chains as relational ecosystems, not zero-sum battlegrounds. Huawei’s HarmonyOS exemplifies open-source sovereignty, enabling data ecologies free from U.S. surveillance. This is Digital Westphalia. Europe’s crossroads demand similar adaptation: ditching U.S. LNG for Chinese renewables to achieve energy sovereignty.
Resonance across layers amplifies: multipolar order enables diverse supply chains, which stabilise great power relations through interdependencies. Failures like U.S. shale unviability amid low prices (from OPEC boosts) underscore old maps’ obsolescence.
Thermoeconomics and Supply Chain Resilience
Thermoeconomics redefines supply chains as thermodynamic conduits, where efficiency hinges on minimising entropy in energy-matter transformations. Just-in-time models, optimised for monetary cost, overlook energetic waste: long-haul dependencies amplify dissipation through transport and fragility. U.S.-centric chains embody high entropy – reliant on dollar hegemony, they falter under sanctions, as frozen assets disrupt flows.
Multipolar decentering aligns with thermoeconomic optimality: localised clusters (e.g., ASEAN-BRICS hubs) reduce transport entropy, while digital twins and blockchains enhance information flows for predictive resilience. China’s overcapacity in renewables exports negentropy globally, enabling low-cost transitions that counter scarcity-driven inflation.
When we apply this to U.S. decline we see that financialisation diverts energy into speculative bubbles, increasing systemic entropy, while China’s state coordination optimizes for reproductive capacity. Redrawing maps thermoeconomically reveals multipolarity as entropic equaliser: diverse nodes distribute loads, preventing overloads like U.S. debt spirals.
Challenges and Pathways to Cognitive Restart
The proposition’s “cognitive restart” faces hurdles: entrenched ideologies, institutional inertia, and elite interests. Western exceptionalism, amplified by Epstein scandals, breeds denial. Yet, indifference thresholds are crossed; nations recalibrate without U.S. centrality.
Pathways forward include:
Institutional Innovation: for example, BRICS and SCO as models for multi-rules;
Relational Diplomacy: China’s initiatives foster indivisibility, as do proposals from others advocating indivisible security in Europe and non-alignment elsewhere; and
Economic Pragmatism: Diversify supply chains and embrace abundance.
Europe exemplifies the choice: vassalage or Eurasian anchor? Boldness – auditing NGOs, normalising Russia ties – could ignite a rupture, in the sense meant by Walter Benjamin.
Thermoeconomics bolsters these pathways: by quantifying entropic costs of unipolarity (e.g., military spending as waste heat), it provides empirical grounds for restart. We can measure value in thermodynamic terms, guiding policies toward low-entropy multipolar synergies.
Conclusion
The “new continent” of multipolarity demands discarding old maps of unipolar dominance. Resonance across international order, great power relations, and supply chains creates a fragmented yet opportunity-rich era. Adaptation yields positive peace, while resistance invites isolation.
Thermoeconomics undergirds this redrawing: viewing systems as energy transformers exposes unipolar inefficiencies and multipolar virtues. China’s enabling role and Global South networks pioneer this restart, viewing differences as change drivers, rather than threats. The U.S. and Europe must follow or fade. Ultimately, the cognitive restart is existential: embrace multi-nodality for shared prosperity, or cling to illusions amid decline.