Trying to assess a Khanna book is something of a challenge. Four years ago in The New Republic, Evgeny Morozov wrote the most scathing review I have ever read. It was of an e-book written by Parag Khanna and his wife, Ayesha Khanna. Morozov devoted thousands of words eviscerating the Khannas’ approach as the apotheosis of “slick ahistorical jeremiads on geopolitics.” Rereading Morozov, I still wince at the venom. And yet Khanna’s brand of globaloney, with phrases like “It’s time to reimagine how human life is organized on Earth,” seems to invite this kind of response. He describes himself as a “leading global strategist” on his website, which is one of those cool-­sounding titles that don’t mean much when you think about them.

To be more charitable than Morozov, I would say there is a thin and interesting essay nestled inside the enormous pile of fluff that is “Connectography.” In that essay, Khanna could have honed his case for continued economic openness at a time when tribalism is on the rise. In a world of super-low interest rates, Khanna correctly infers that it is in every government’s interest to invest more heavily in the infrastructure that enhances connectivity. This could take the form of physical infrastructure like roads and airports, or online infrastructure to facilitate data flows, or financial hubs to coax cross-­border investment. Developed countries facing demographic crunches should be far more welcoming of migration flows from the developing world. Khanna might even be on to something in talking about the enhanced role that cities will play in 21st-century governance.

But the fluff is voluminous. Khanna and his editors clearly believe that his prose style is a winning one, but for this reader it was like struggling through the transcription of a TED talk on a recursive loop. Take, for example, what he means by “connectivity.” It’s not the most elegant of words, but an intelligent reader can quickly divine its meaning. Khanna does not leave the term alone, however. He describes connectivity as a “mega-pattern,” a “world-historical idea” and “an impulse” — all in the span of a single paragraph.

Once you get past the prose, the inchoate nature of Khanna’s ideas is even more troubling. When he writes about international relations, he makes much of the “Great Supply Chain War that will redraw 21st-century maps as much as the Thirty Years’ War did in the 17th century.” Khanna argues that the more embedded a country is in these global supply chains, the more power and influence it exercises. In his words, “today power derives from leverage exercised through connective reach.”

As China discovered when it tried to use its near monopoly of rare earths to pressure Japan six years ago, however, producer leverage is extremely limited. China was able to employ this form of belligerent statecraft once. Ever since, its share of that market has dwindled. The same is true of other commodity exporters that Khanna extols. In a world where commodity prices are sagging and governments are falling over each other to improve their connectivity, the strategic value of any individual connection or source of supply erodes. The more China expands its Silk Road initiatives, the less the Strait of Malacca matters. Khanna himself acknowledges this point. Indeed, Khanna demonstrates the rare ability in “Connectography” to contradict himself in the span of a single sentence: ­“Devolution-aggregation is how the world comes together by falling apart.”