The God Emperor and Venezuela

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Britain is known as Airstrip One. Image Source: picssr.

In mid-January 2019, a Wiki user with the handle ZiaLater created a world map of nations according to their support in the country's current presidential crisis of Venezuelan interim president Juan Guaidó.

I was immediately struck by the fact that the Venezuela president recognition map 2019 is almost identical to the map of the world in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).

Venezuela president recognition map 2019 (January 2019). Image Source: Wiki.

Orwell's fictional superstates in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Image Source: Reddit.

Although the similarity between the two maps could confirm yet again that Orwell accurately predicted the future, it might mean instead that big geopolitical alignments don't change as much as we think they do. There are many continuities between Orwell's time and ours. The inchoate superstates Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia were and are always there, waiting to be born. This made me wonder what catalysts really prompt the imperial birth of superstates. In Orwell's novel, the catalyst is a nuclear war.