"zombie empires" Topic

Interesting analysis by someone I have come to respect:

link

"Overall it's a whole new world for all the players on the planet. The old Security Council members aren't what they used to be. The only question is: who can adapt most effectively to the changed situation when they all have legacy baggage? In a manner of speaking the present is dominated by zombie empires run by ossified elites committed to 20th-century agendas. Moreover, the U.S, Europe, Russia, and China are all in demographic freefall by comparison to the global South. With things falling apart, how quickly can they reinvent themselves?"

Fwiw, my money is on the west to figure things out first and fastest. Not that the US is not terribly encrusted and afflicted with both old and new pathologies, but there are sources of rebirth in both capitalism and Christianity (and to an extent in democracy) that the authoritarian regimes cannot match.