Has the West Lost it?

That’s the question the experienced Singaporian diplomat and expert on public policies Kishore Mahbubani asks in a little book – an essay really – with the addition A Provocation in its title.

The issues are – as I read him – that the West on the one hand doesn’t seem to realise how the gift of western wisdom – reasoning – has come to dominate the Asian minds. On the other hand, the same West – due to its arrogance – does not understand that history changed direction at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and that the western domination is coming to an end.

He argues that western forms of reasoning – to think (something) through, work out in a logical manner – have seeped into Asian minds gradually. The application of scientific methods provided solutions to seemingly insoluble problems Asians had experienced for millennia (floods, famines, pandemics and poverty).

Reasoning triggered three silent revolutions in Asia, he says: political, psychological, and governance. As the Dean of a School of Public Policy he saw daily how the appetite and capacity for functional governance has spread globally.

After the great victory over the Soviet Union, the West switched off the signal. Their sense of superiority was massive. The West could afford to relax and enjoy its good fortune. Three major errors were made: It underestimated the religion of Islam, it further humiliated the already humiliated Russia, and it made thoughtless interventions in the internal affairs of a number of countries (from Yugoslavia to Iraq to Ukraine, and others).

The West was the first civilization to break out of the clutches of superstition and ignorance that dominated the feudal eras of human history. The West also deserves the credit for carrying humanity to our current eras of unprecedented peace and prosperity, he argues. Yet, instead of celebrating these achievements, western populations are pessimistic and despondent.

But a naïve and ideological West is dangerous. The West must be more cunning. Mahbubani calls for more strategic thinking, and proposes a new grand strategy for the West towards the Rest:

• Minimalist: Do less rather than more. The Rest does not need bombs. The Rest will continue to learn from the West in many areas. ASEAN is trying to replicate EU. The Nordic countries continue to excel. The Nordic model will gradually be universalized. The world will copy American best practices. A minimalist global strategy will promote even greater learning.
• Multilateral: a relegitimization of the UN is another simple step, based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Election of Gutteres (who Mahbubani admires greatly) as Secretary General of the UN is a miraculous move.
• Machiavellian: Know yourself! Few in the West are aware of how quickly the Western share of global power has shrunk. Europe and US do not share the same strategic challenges. For America, it is China. For Europe, it is the Islamic world. For Europe, Russia is now a secondary challenge. No Russian tanks threaten Europe. Nor is Europe threatened by Chinese missiles, Europe benefits from Chinese growth.

Europe’s primary threat is spillover instability from the Islamic world. It is now in Europe’s strategic interest to import the East Asian economic success story into North Africa. Europe should work with China, not against, to build up North Africa.

For America, the Islamic world is a secondary challenge. The US should make peace with the Islamic World. The big danger that America faces if it wakes up and begins to deal with China is that it will make the same mistakes that the Soviet Union made when it dealt with the US. The Soviet Union saw America as a military competitor. But America was its economic competitor, and it was the collapse of the Soviet economy that led to America’s victory. China is an economic competitor for America, not a military one.

The West can accelerate a two-way street of learning between Western and Eastern Muslims by quietly terminating its two-century policy of interfering in Islamic societies. Europe’s shining example of the culture of peace, which has been replicated in the more diverse Southeast Asia, will slowly seep into the Middle East too.

The good news are that China, for its own reasons, is happy to live in a world dominated by multilateral rules and processes. China, unlike America, does not have a messianic impulse to change the world.

It is not inevitable that China will lead the world, though it is inevitable that China will have the world’s largest economy. But it is inevitable that the world will face a troubled future if the West can’t shake its interventionist impulses, refuses to recognize its new position, or decides to become isolationist and protectionist.

My view

I do not agree with everything in Mahbubani’s arguments. I am more worried by the gradual – and sometimes almost silent – growth of Chinese influence (economic, primarily, yes, but also military and politically) around the world, now even threatening the freedom of speech at universities in the West. If you see that influence in light of the silencing of almost any opposition in China, and the ruthless oppression of the Uighur people, there is not much reason for relaxing.

Mahbubani may be right in acknowledging the influence of reasoning and logical thinking in Asian countries, which may have contributed to more efficient governance. At the moment, however, one may question whether better and more efficient government leads to more democratic rule. Basically, I believe so, and South Korea and Taiwan are good examples of this being the case in the long term. Other more recent economic success countries, however, point in the opposite direction.

I agree with Richard Jolly of the Institute of Development Studies, who some may remember at no 2 and the “thinker” in Unicef in the 1990s. He says he shares much of Mahbubani’s optimism, but feels that Mahbubani underplays some other major challenges, among them the need to avoid the instabilities and return to rising poverty in many developed countries, and the challenges of the non-state economic and financial forces that sustain the rising inequalities and make many political changes difficult.

Finally, will the Asian powers still be supporters of a strong multilateralism the moment their strategic national interests are touched? For instance for China in the conflict in the China Sea? Not to mention human rights. I am sceptical.

The book is, however, is refreshing and stimulating reading, with a different perspective from what we are used to.

Kishore Mahbubani, Has the West Lost it?  (Allen Lane Penguin, London) 2018