The Paris Agreement marked a rare moment of global alignment on climate change. For the first time, nearly all states, including the United States and China committed to a common framework aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and limiting global warming. The agreement established a shared direction focus on the gradual transition toward low-carbon economies, emissions reductions, net-zero targets, and sustained multilateral cooperation.

This article argues instead that the conflict unfolds within a multi-layered strategic system in which regional warfare, great-power competition, and geoeconomic restructuring intersect and continuously shape one another. Within this framework, the Middle East is not merely a site of instability, but a convergent arena of overlapping strategic projects in which multiple actors pursue partially competing objectives across military, economic, technological, and normative domains.

Sci-fi has never really aimed to tell us when we might reach other planets or develop new technologies or meet aliens. Sci-fi speculates about why we might want to do these things – and how their consequences might affect our lives and our planet. Some sci-fi projects were wildly off the mark so that they look laughable today, others look surprisingly close to reality.