Geo-Strategy Update #7: When Eschatologies Converge

• Professor Jiang presents a geopolitical forecast for the next 10–20 years built on the thesis that eschatology drives geopolitics — that end-times narratives across major religious traditions unconsciously coordinate collective action and shape the behavior of states and elites. He argues these traditions are converging on a shared script that makes a specific chain of events highly probable.

Why eschatologies are powerful

• Eschatologies are compelling because they answer three fundamental human questions: where we come from, what we are doing here, and where we are going. They function as scripts with their own momentum, allowing for unconscious coordination among participants.
• According to the universal law of game theory (mass × energy × coordination), eschatologies enable secrecy, plausible deniability, and frictionless cooperation — far more effective than conscious conspiracies, which collapse under ego and self-interest.
• Eschatology and individual self-interest reinforce each other: committing to an eschatological narrative attracts allies who help the individual achieve wealth and power, so participation is both spiritually and materially rewarding.

Six major eschatological traditions and their convergence

• Jiang stresses three caveats before outlining the traditions: (1) eschatology is a minority extreme view within each religion, (2) there is tremendous internal diversity in interpretation (allegorical vs. literal, different sequencing), and (3) eschatologies are dynamic — they borrow from and adapt to each other in competition for believers’ imagination.
• He focuses on the most extreme version of each tradition because, per game theory, fanatics are the most energetic and committed actors.

Zoroastrianism — the original eschatology: the world is divided between good and evil, light and darkness; a final battle ends with the triumph of good and a day of judgment. This dualistic structure heavily influenced all later Abrahamic traditions.

Judaic tradition: after millennia of persecution, a warlike Messiah will come, reconstitute the nation of Israel, gather Jews from the diaspora, build the Third Temple, and usher in the Messianic age of peace, truth, and justice.

Christian Zionist / Protestant tradition: the Messiah is Jesus, who already came; his second coming requires specific preconditions — reconstitution of Israel (fulfilled in 1948), construction of the Third Temple, a war of Gog and Magog, and the appearance of the Antichrist. Jesus will then descend, destroy his enemies, rapture all Christians to heaven, and inaugurate a millennium of peace before final judgment.

Islamic tradition: after an age of tribulation when the world has turned its back on God, a great leader (the Mahdi) will unify the people and lead them to victory in the war of Gog and Magog — interpreted as the Antichrist or Western materialism (possibly symbolized by the city of London).

Orthodox tradition: Moscow is the Third Rome, destined to restore the Byzantine Empire. Moscow will fight and destroy Turkey, return the Greeks to Constantinople, and unify the Orthodox Christian world. This eschatology has been turned into a concrete geopolitical master plan by Alexander Dugin, Russia’s most influential geopolitical thinker.

• Dugin’s master plan (from his 1997 book Foundations of Geopolitics): to unite the Eurasian heartland and negate Anglo-American sea power, Moscow must build three axes — Berlin–Moscow (reconciliation with Europe), Moscow–Tokyo (reach into Southeast Asia), and Moscow–Tehran (control of Middle East resources). This restores both the Byzantine Empire and the Pax Mongolica.
• Dugin believes Iran, Japan, and Germany all feel humiliated by the Anglo-American Empire and would join a Russian-led confederation offering greater freedom. The Anglo-American Empire’s counter-strategy is to maintain naval supremacy and prevent any Eurasian hegemon from arising — which is why Britain provoked World War I against Germany and now fears Russia.
• Dugin is not worried about Turkey, which he sees as unstable and likely to collapse into ethnic and economic fragmentation once Erdogan is gone. He is also not worried about China, which is too economically dependent on the Anglo-American Empire to ally with Russia, and which faces severe internal contradictions — overpopulation, resource scarcity, importing one-third of its food and most of its oil, and ecological destruction driven by its EV, AI, and rare minerals industries.
• In Dugin’s framework, Putin is the Katacon — a Greek term meaning the force that restrains the Antichrist. Moscow’s role is to be the force for civilization, good, and God.

Catholic eschatology: officially, the Church itself is the millennium — the embodiment of the Messianic age (per Augustine’s City of God). The mainstream position emphasizes personal eschatology: individual transformation and salvation through the Church. However, Jiang argues that elements within the Church harbor a radical global transformation agenda for three reasons:

• The Church originated as a secret conspiracy against the Roman Empire and succeeded; it developed the world’s first global intelligence agency. Organizations like the Jesuits and Opus Dei are famous for their strategic effectiveness, yet the Church is conspicuously absent from public conspiracy discourse.

• Before the Anglo-American Empire, the Church was the dominant world power for a thousand years (from the fall of Rome to the rise of Britain). Many within the Church view that era as the true Messianic age and seek to restore it.

• The Church is the most powerful non-state organization in the world — 1 billion followers, a global network, and the best-positioned institution to rebuild after a global catastrophe.

• Jiang sees signs that the Catholic Church has a plan in motion: US Vice President JD Vance is a recent Catholic convert; the new pope is American; six of nine US Supreme Court justices are Catholic; the CIA was founded with Vatican help and has been nicknamed “Catholics in Action” due to the number of Catholic directors; the CIA and Vatican formed a “holy alliance” against communism using the Vatican’s global intelligence network.

• Catholicism is growing rapidly in America (~22% of the population), driven by immigration (half of legal immigrants are Catholic, plus majority-Catholic illegal immigrants) and higher birth rates than Protestant families. If a second American civil war destroys existing institutions, American Catholics are best positioned to capture the state — and thus control the world.

• The Church’s three enemies are the Anglo-American Empire (Protestantism, neoliberalism, materialism, capitalism), the nation-state (which claims authority above the Church, originating in the French Revolution), and modernity itself (the cult of the individual, hedonism, multiculturalism).

Convergence points across all traditions

• All six eschatological traditions converge on several key predictions:
  • A major conflict in the Middle East that draws in the entire world — World War III.
  • America will not be involved in this war (possibly because a failed ground invasion of Iran forced retreat, or because of civil war at home).
  • China will not be involved either (likely facing ecological catastrophe — water and food shortages — and internal disintegration).
  • The Antichrist will emerge — a charismatic, powerful force that unifies the world (interpreted differently by each tradition).
  • Israel becomes the dominant power in the Middle East after America withdraws, absorbing US military infrastructure (CENTCOM) into a “Greater Israel” project.
  • Anti-Semitism grows worldwide, compelling Jews to return to Israel.
  • The Dome of the Rock is destroyed to make way for the Third Temple, provoking the Muslim world to take up arms — initiating the war of Gog and Magog.
  • An age of tribulation: cascading economic, ecological, and geopolitical catastrophes that test faith, during which the Antichrist deceives people with false prophecies, magic, superstition, and denial of God’s authority.

Jiang’s predicted scenario for the next 10–20 years

• The United States launches a ground invasion of Iran, which is heavily supported by Russia. After years of fighting, America gives up and retreats to the Western Hemisphere, triggering a civil war in America.
• In Ukraine, NATO makes its last stand at Odessa. Russia encircles and besieges the city. France, Britain, Romania, Poland, and Turkey are all drawn in. The war becomes a stalemate, and European publics — not understanding why they are fighting — revolt. This causes civil wars in France and Britain, political upheaval in Germany, and revolution in Turkey.
• After these upheavals, Europe becomes pro-Russian, allowing reconciliation between Putin and Europe. Turkey is destroyed in the process. Putin allows the Greeks to return to Constantinople, restoring the Byzantine Empire and unifying the Orthodox world.
• After the US leaves the Middle East, the Greater Israel project becomes the Empire of Israel. To restore the Davidic Kingdom and usher in the Messianic age, Israel destroys the Dome of the Rock to build the Third Temple.
• Anti-Semitism explodes worldwide, compelling Jews to return to Israel. The entire Islamic world seeks vengeance, but their political elites have been co-opted by the Anglo-American and Israeli empires, forcing revolutions and civil conflict across the Islamic world. People beg for the Mahdi to return.
• Elements within the Islamic world see Putin as the great savior — in Islamic eschatology his role is called Dhu al-Qarnayn, equivalent to the Orthodox concept of the Katacon (the one who restrains the Antichrist).
• Putin initiates reconciliation between the Islamic and Orthodox worlds, forming an alliance. He then seeks reconciliation between the Islamic world and Israel, and between the Orthodox and Catholic worlds, unifying the world under his leadership.

Why this grand unification will ultimately fail

• Jiang does not believe Putin will succeed in replacing the Anglo-American Empire permanently. Putin is human; once he dies, civil conflict will erupt within the grand alliance, leading to catastrophe after catastrophe — the true age of tribulation — with massive loss of life.
• He draws a parallel to Muhammad, who was supposed to unite the entire world but died before completing the mission, triggering civil conflict within the Muslim world.

Why the Anglo-American Empire does not respond

• Jiang argues that Dugin’s plan is public domain knowledge — laid out coherently in his books and interviews — yet the Anglo-American Empire has no counter-strategy. The reason: the people who control the Empire today are baby boomers who will be dead in 10–30 years. They enjoy their lives and do not care what happens to the world after their death. That is why the West is dying.

Current conflict context

• Jiang opens by addressing why open war between the US and Iran has not yet started: modern warfare is 90% hybrid — informational, cyber, psychological, economic sabotage, sanctions, and covert operations. The US and Israeli strategy is regime change in Iran, ideally by assassinating Ayatollah Khamenei to trigger a succession crisis.
• The current strategy is to undermine the regime’s legitimacy by degrading basic services — especially water. Tehran (population 10 million) faces water shortages from heat, sanctions, and overpopulation. Jiang predicts the US and Israel will sabotage Iran’s water infrastructure to create drought and famine, though this may backfire by strengthening Iranian resolve.
• If Iranian resolve hardens enough, Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz, compelling an American ground invasion — which Jiang says America would lose.