Empires are alive, they move, they grow, they feel, they die. They have a soul that sometimes can be glimpsed, as in this unbelievable scene from "Dragon Blade" (2015). A silly movie but, at some points, it has a force, a presence, -- yes, a soul -- that grips you. The encounter of two great Empires, the Roman and the Chinese, is told as if it were the meeting of two persons, who are diffident at first, then they discover that they like and respect each other. Empires are part of the human adventure, part of the human ways, of what humans are. And nowadays, perhaps, we are beginning to see the birth of something that never existed before: the first true Eurasian Empire.
Then, at some moment during the 2nd century BC, or maybe even earlier, the many local commercial roads that crisscrossed Eurasia became connected, forming a network that crossed the whole continent. It was the Silk Road, an offspring of the domestication of the camel, a new transportation technology that replaced the more expensive wheeled vehicles. 
Vaster than empires and more slow, the Silk Road was to bring enormous changes. The Romans and the Chinese started trading with each other. Silk moved from East to West and, gold moved from West to East. In the long run, the Romans were ruined by their passion for luxury items coming from Asia. Their gold went to China and the empire collapsed with the depletion of their gold mines in Spain.
In time, the Europeans learned how to make silk in their lands, but the Silk Road continued to exist. During the 13th century, the Venetian merchant Marco Polo traveled all the way to China by camel, following overland routes. At about the same time, the Mongol armies swept over Eurasia from their base in the very center of the continent. Their empire was the largest ever seen in history. But they could not expand it all the way to the limits of the Eurasian continent. In the East, they were stopped by the divine wind (the Kamikaze) in Japan. In the South-West, they were stopped by the Mamluk warriors in the Middle East. In Western in Europe, the shores of the Atlantic Ocean were too far even for the nimble Mongol horsemen.
Empires come and go. After that the Mongols were gone, it was the turn of the empire of the man of iron, Timur, also known as Tamerlane. He couldn't conquer the whole Eurasia, either. Timur was the last of the great nomadic conquerors, made obsolete by the development of gunpowder and firearms.
During the 19th century, the coal-based West European states tried more than once to expand into Eurasia. Their armies never managed to do more than march into the East-European plains, to be destroyed there. It was the destiny of Napoleon's Grande Armée in 1812, then of the Germans in two successive, ill-fated attempts. At the same time, the "Great Game" ("bolshoya igra") was being played: The land-based Russian Empire and the seafaring British Empire battled each other for the control of Eurasia, later with Britain replaced by the US. These two Empires never fought each other directly, except for a brief episode during the Crimean War (1853-1856). Neither could occupy Eurasia, and they jockeyed at the edges of the respective borders. Afghanistan was a watershed where one or the other empire tried to establish a foothold. Neither succeeded. The latest attempt by the US empire ignominiously crumbled in 2020.
While all this was happening, China remained the largest Eurasian state, sometimes conquered, sometimes conquering. At the time of admiral Zheng He, in the early 1400s, China tried for the first time to expand beyond its borders. Zheng He's fleet sailed all over the Indian Ocean, reaching Africa and establishing a Chinese influence in the area. Eventually, China abandoned its seafaring power: it remained a land-based power.
The late 19th and the early 20th centuries were a disastrous period for China, besieged and attacked from all directions. But, with the end of World War 2, China started to rebuild its economy. By the 21st century, China was poised to become the world's #1 economic power, and that had strategic implications. At present, the Chinese seem to have decided that they don't want to challenge the U.S. maritime power directly. Instead, for the first time after the reign of Genghis Khan, the prospect of a land-based Eurasian Empire is becoming a real possibility.
What would make the new continental empire possible is the "Belt and Road Initiative", proposed by the Chinese government. It is a "Silk Road 2.0," that would link the Eastern shores of Eurasia with Western Europe and Africa by means of high-speed trains. It includes a maritime network of lanes that follows and expands on where the old Zheng He fleet had sailed. A gigantic project on a timescale of decades, perhaps centuries. The Chinese do think long-term.
But a transport infrastructure is not enough to create an empire: energy is needed to make it function. Up to now, the booming Chinese economy has been functioning mainly on coal, but the Chinese seem to understand that they can't continue for long with that. They are diversifying, expanding their nuclear and renewables industry, at present the largest in the world. Nevertheless, becoming independent of fossil fuels will still take decades. That is pushing China to collaborate with Russia, which can provide oil and gas for the transition phase, as well as mineral resources, food, and timber.
What we are seeing in the world right now is a transient phase of the slow development of an integrated Eurasian Economy. The war in Ukraine is having the effect of decoupling the Central Eurasian economy from the Western economy. It may be seen as part of a strategic design to control the Eurasian resources. No matter who started the war, nor how it will end, the Russian resources that once went to Europe will soon go south, to China. Western Europe will be demoted to a coastal appendage of the Western Maritime Empire, expendable as needed.
It is curious how Western Europe not only accepted to be cut off from the Russian resources they desperately need, but enthusiastically acted for that purpose. The Chinese may have put to work a precept from Sun Tzu that goes as, "the
opportunity to beat your enemy is provided by the enemy
himself." One of the (many) problems Westerners have is that they can't control their own propaganda, and, in this case, they have directed it against themselves. We cannot say whether the Chinese gave a push in that direction, or just exploited a trend. In any case, it happened. Western Europe has locked itself out of Central Eurasia while thinking they were locking the Eurasians in.
At present, the Chinese are working on new financial instruments to decouple the Eurasian financial system from the dominance of the US dollar, and to access the Middle Eastern and African resources directly. India has good reasons to join this effort, just as Iran and many other Asian and African countries do. With this tool, the Chinese can build a Central Asian block of enormous economic power, while Western Europe has been pushed into irrelevance. At least, that gives Europeans a chance to put into practice their idea of the "EnergieWende" -- the transition to renewable energy. So far, it was mostly smoke and mirrors, but now they'll have to work on it for real. They will find that it won't be as easy as it was proposed, especially if they have to do it while their economies are collapsing. But, after all, problems are always opportunities, at least if you can solve them.
The war in Ukraine may die out in the coming weeks, or it may expand, but that matters little. It is just a brief flare in a story that unfolds on a timescale of decades and centuries. The Russian philosopher Alexandr Dugin has been promoting for some time the concept of "Eurasianism" as a new unifying approach to governing Eurasia. In the West, Dugin's ideas are not popular in the mainstream debate. But, if they exist, it means that there exists a current of thought that examines this subject on the basis of the concept that one day Eurasia will exist as a coordinated political entity.
Will the Eurasian Empire be a good thing or a bad thing? We cannot say: empires are not bad and are not good. They are. And they will be.