The similarity he's talking about is a lot more than superficial:
"You have to go back a thousand years to find a time when the world was genuinely western and eastern at the same time.... Now, globalisation is again doing much the same, diffusing power away from the west in particular, but also from states and towards cities, companies, religious groups, humanitarian non-governmental organisations and super-empowered individuals, from terrorists to philanthropists."
Admittedly, my comment itself was superficial and broad-brushed, but I still have a hard time seeing our world, even accepting the truth of the author's premises, becoming anything evenly remoting resembling the 12th century world. So much else is so different.
"You have to go back a thousand years to find a time when the world was genuinely western and eastern at the same time.... Now, globalisation is again doing much the same, diffusing power away from the west in particular, but also from states and towards cities, companies, religious groups, humanitarian non-governmental organisations and super-empowered individuals, from terrorists to philanthropists."