Timothy Heath: Are we entering a ‘neomedieval era’

The world is regressing to a norm closer to the average experience of humankind, a US defence expert says.

Weaker states, fragmented societies, stagnant economies and intrastate conflicts are all hallmarks of pre-industrial societies, Timothy Heath says.

Heath is a senior international defence researcher at the RAND Corporation.

In a recent paper, he argued that to understand the risks involved in superpower competition between the US and China, we must understand that we now live in a “neomedieval era.”

“I define that near medieval world in five ways. First, there is a weakening of states. Second, societies are fragmenting. Third, economies are growing slowly. Fourth, threats are pervasive and last warfare is becoming informalised, which is to say it’s experiencing a shift back to features of warfare that are more commonly seen in the developing world and pre-industrial societies – such as the reliance on private armies or contractors,” he told Sunday Morning.

He believes the modern industrial period is an anomaly in human history.

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Article URL : https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/audio/2018928484/timothy-heath-are-we-entering-a-neomedieval-era