George Orwell completed his most famous novel 1984 in 1948, shortly before his early death at 46. A few years earlier, in a remarkable short 1945 essay, Orwell foresaw a future world order overseen by America, Russia and China.

In 1943, Eric Blair became, under his pen name, George Orwell, literary editor of the Tribune, a democratic-socialist newspaper, which was established in London in 1937. In that role, Orwell penned a series of columns under the title: “As I Please”. One of these, entitled You and The Atomic Bomb, prompted by the dropping of the atomic bombs in Japan in August 1945, was published in the Tribune in October 1945.

Orwell drew significantly, in this essay, on the work of the American political theorist, James Burnham, the author of The Managerial Revolution published in 1941.

Burnham helped organise the American Workers Party in 1933. He was allied with the Trotskyist wing of that party and became a friend of Leon Trotsky. He was later associated with other communist groups in the US. By 1941, he had severed these ties, eventually calling for an aggressive American strategy against the USSR. During the war he worked for the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA. He chaired the New York University Department of Philosophy. Burnham helped found the leading conservative journal, The National Review and his principal books urged the US to take an adamant position as the Cold War began.

Orwell begins his 1945 essay on the atomic bomb with customary acuity:

“Considering how likely we all are to be blown to pieces by it within the next five years, the atomic bomb has not roused so much discussion as might have been expected.”

After noting how, at that time, only the US had the bomb and how exceptionally difficult and fantastically expensive such weapons were to manufacture (still true today) Orwell then argued:

• That, prior to 1939 only five states were capable of waging war “on a grand scale” (America, Britain, the USSR, Germany and Japan).
• But, by 1945 (after the introduction of atomic weapons) only two could wage war on such a scale (America and the USSR).
• Given that, the USSR would discover the secret of making the bomb within a few years (this happened in 1949).

Orwell next summarised what Burnham’s new book illuminated:

“When James Burnham wrote The Managerial Revolution [in 1941] it seemed probable to many Americans that the Germans would win the European end of the war, and it was therefore natural to assume that Germany and not Russia would dominate the Eurasian land mass, while Japan would remain master of East Asia. This was a miscalculation, but it does not affect the main argument. For Burnham’s geographical picture of the new world has turned out to be correct. More and more obviously, the surface of the earth is being parcelled off into three great empires, each self-contained and cut off from contact with the outer world, and each ruled, under one disguise or another, by a self-elected oligarchy. The haggling as to where the frontiers are to be drawn is still going on, and will continue for some years, and the third of the three super-states — East Asia, dominated by China — is still potential rather than actual. But the general drift is unmistakable, and every scientific discovery of recent years has accelerated it.”

Here Orwell provides an outline of his acutely focused, post-war geopolitical expectations, combined with an advance rendering of the foundational global political framework within which his ground-breaking novel, 1984, is set.

Orwell was right about Russia getting the bomb, though he did not discuss how others, including the UK and France, might come to do this. However, perhaps the most extraordinary prediction is how Orwell envisaged in 1945 — four years prior to the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 — the clear potential for a China-dominated East Asian super-state to emerge. In fact, as he wrote, the Chinese Civil War was recommencing.

Note, too, how in 1945 he assumed all super-states discussed, including America, would be “ruled, under one disguise or another, by a self-elected oligarchy". Orwell thus revealed the foundational US political direction leading to 2025, where the second Trump administration is advancing confirmation of his expectations with uncommon enthusiasm.

However, early on in the essay, Orwell also argued that:

“It is a commonplace that the history of civilisation is largely the history of weapons. In particular, the connection between the discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie has been pointed out over and over again. “

This is certainly true of Western civilisation, but this trajectory has been far less pivotal in the development of Chinese civilisation, where, as Jeffrey Sachs explains, avoidance of far off imperial wars has been consistently far more dominant over China’s exceptionally long history.

Moreover, the governance aspect of feudalism was already being superseded over 2000 years ago, in China, by professional; bureaucratic governance, which was consolidated about 1000 years ago during the Song Dynasty.

Finally, another crucial feature of Chinese civilisation has been the ability — drawing on a vast, exceptional high-understanding culture — to work together for the common good. This has been conspicuously apparent over the last four decades, where, according to Adam Tooze, China has produced “the greatest success story in developmental history”.

This has not, of course, prevented many instances of massively destructive civil conflict in China including the Tai Ping revolution, the Boxer rebellion, the Chinese Civil War and, in the PRC era, the terrible famine triggered by the Great Leap Forward plus the Cultural Revolution.

However, the extended successful eras in China’s very long history have affirmed that communal stability and prosperity stand on the shoulders of intelligent, collective hard work. In fact, the terrible consequences of the Cultural Revolution confirmed the fundamental importance of this principle. Believing in the state is, for the Chinese, “an expression and embodiment of Chinese civilisation”, according to Martin Jacques.

Orwell did not turn his mind to whether his aptly envisaged Chinese/East Asian super-state might craft a power-growth pathway that broke away from the inflexible template described by Burnham and developed in 1984. He was, though, critical of Burnham’s insistence that, “politics is essentially the same in all ages”. Orwell remained open to the possibility that a ruling group in such a state could perceive that “it will probably stay in power longer if it behaves decently”.

Recently, the distinguished author and commentator, Pankaj Mishra, observed that “there is much that is imperfect about China”, while also noting that China is “a very different kind of late modernising power that is setting an example that there are other ways of being a powerful country in the world”.

Orwell published two later articles that investigated the work of Burnham: Second Thoughts on James Burnham in 1946 and Burnham’s View of the Contemporary World Struggle in 1947. Both repay careful reading.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.