This episode is the second part of an article - The Triple Faces of Inner Asia, which was written and published in early 2015.

“...The export of the Roman order is not free of cost. It must be at the cost of consuming the domestic political resources of the United States. The conditions and procedures for the purchase of the Roman order by the nations will inevitably constitute an important constitutional issue for the future world...Today Moscow during Eid feels more Bagdad than Bagdad itself, or rather, it feels more Istanbul than its precursor Constantinople before its eventual fall to the Ottomans. The Muslims in Russia are different from those in Europe. ”

This episode is the first part of an article - The Triple Faces of Inner Asia (內亞的三重面相), which was written and published in early 2015. 

"...Pakistan maximally demonstrates the dilemma that Inner Asia presents to the United States. Other than the hatred against India, this country does not have any natural and genuine ties to unite its communities... Afghanistan is another country without natural bonds. Her borders and existence were to meet the needs of being a buffer country between Britain and Russia. They are totally inconsistent with the needs of the local residents to establish a community if they do have such needs..

"...Most of the fund has to be used to feed the troops and there is no cash left to buy oil. Yet Iran has already sent the oil to Kabul. Who is advancing this money? Surely not the US. Iran is extremely short of dollars and it can only be deduced that China has advanced this money to Iran. This is very similar to the practices of Chinese espionage in Ethiopia, Burma, and indeed around the world in the last two years."

“China is an inexperienced neo-imperialist, so almost everywhere it has pursued neo-imperialism, going beyond the US framework and building its own framework, there have been serious political crises. Three typical examples are Afghanistan, Myanmar, and Ethiopia...But at least in the Obama era, China was only an ancillary among the various players in Afghanistan - a humble wage earner... All these endeavors are without exception economically unprofitable, even loss-making, but they will provide China with a large and solid backstop outside the US system.”

"The Taliban can be converted, integrated, and disbanded while the Islamic State is a lifelong vowed professional revolutionary organization that cannot be disbanded but only annihilated... Judging from IS documents seized by the US, the Islamic State exhibits, contrary to prevailing impressions, striking similarities to the Communist International and the Soviet Union... History shows the Taliban is likely to be a transitory phenomenon that shall gradually be swallowed up by the Islamic State. "

"In order to counter the American-trained security forces, the Taliban also had to break from the beyond tribal traditions by training their own elite soldiers, the so-called Red Unit... The Taliban cannot possibly afford a large troop like this. But every time there is a key battle, against ISIS or the Afghan government forces, or at a critical location like Kunduz to support an important warlord ally, the Red Unit is deployed. This was the state of the Taliban's military in the later stages...Whereas, even after losing territorial control, the Islamic State with tens of thousands of permanent troops, is still much more powerful than the Taliban. As they welcomed Al Qaeda before, the Taliban welcomed the Islamic State coming with money and weapons. But there is no free lunch."

"...In fact, an impoverished Afghanistan governed by tribal alliances formed by warlords would be more stable, thanks to the lack of money. What problems did the unprecedented influx of money bring? It brought with it modernization, a new order, hence a serious threat to the old order and its elite class with vested interests... The Taliban is an organization of students of traditional Islamic schools who cannot afford to attend a western-style school..."

"...In the competition between man and nature, man will always be the loser. Every partial success prepares the ground for a larger collapse in the future. It is, therefore, wiser not to be really able to cope with epidemics or any future challenges, but to know what was still very familiar to the primitive tribesmen and those of the early medieval Christians in the time of the English Civil War and Cromwell: that humans need to be familiar with dealing with death and with risk... "

"...This is a typical human mentality. At first you are afraid to die a miserable death without vaccination. You consider yourself mistreated if you don't get the vaccine, and those who do are privileged. A few decades later, you take it for granted that you're still alive, and that the society and the world as a whole are obliged to keep you alive up to a ripe old age. Then when you realise others don’t suffer from side effects but you do, you start to blame the government, the society and the world for having wronged you..."

“...What is meant by the divine will? The divine will is that the forces that oppose you will eventually work for you. Although FDR and his New Deal allies did not want to make America an empire, although McCarthy and the opponents of the New Deal did not want to make America an empire, and although neither the supporters nor the opponents of the Vietnam War thought of America as an empire, the combined force of their actions pushed America step by step on the path to becoming an empire. When the New Deal pushed America to the left, it brought America one step closer to be an empire; when Cold-War liberalism pushed America to the right, it brought America one step closer to be an empire; when the neoconservatives pushed America even further to the right, it made this America more of an empire than ever before.”