Read the full transcript of Kishore Mahbubani’s talk titled “How The West Can Adapt To A Rising Asia” at TED Talks conference on Sep 22, 2019.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
KISHORE MAHBUBANI: About 200 years ago, Napoleon famously said, “Let China sleep, because when she wakes, she will shake the world.” Despite this early warning, the West chose to sleep at the precise moment when China, India, and all of Asia awoke. Why did this happen? I’m here to answer this great mystery.
What do I mean when I say the West chose to sleep? I’m referring to the West’s failure to act intelligently and adapt to the new world order created by Asia’s resurgence. As a friend of the West, I find this frustrating. So my purpose today is to try to help the West. But I need to start this story by talking about how the West actually awakened the entire world.
The Historical Context
Look at chart one. From year one until 1820, the two largest economies in the world were always China and India. Only in the last 200 years did Europe take over, followed by the Western Americas. So, the last 200 years of world history have been a major historical aberration. All aberrations naturally end, and this is what we’re seeing now. If we look at chart two, you’ll see how quickly and powerfully China and India are returning.
The big question is: who awakened China and India? The honest answer is that it was the West that did it. We all know that the West was the first to successfully modernize and transform itself, initially using its power to colonize and dominate the world. But with time, it shared the gifts of Western wisdom with the entire world.
Let me add that I personally benefited from this sharing of Western wisdom.
When I was born in Singapore, then a British colony in 1948, I experienced extreme poverty. In fact, on my first day of school at age six, I was put in a feeding program because I was technically undernourished. Now, as you can see, I’m over-nourished. But the greatest gift I received was a Western education.
Having personally journeyed from third-world poverty to comfortable middle-class existence, I can speak with great confidence about the impact of Western wisdom and the sharing of that wisdom with the world.
The Gift of Critical Thinking
One of the greatest gifts shared by the West is the art of critical thinking. Critical thinking wasn’t invented by the West—it originated from all cultures and civilizations. Ahmad Chiasan has explained how deeply it existed in Indian civilization. However, there’s no denying that it was the West that brought the art of critical thinking to a much higher level.
Through the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment, and the industrial revolution, the West truly developed it powerfully and, just as importantly, applied it to solve many practical problems. The West then shared this art of critical thinking with the entire world, causing what I call three silent revolutions.
As an Asian, I can describe how these silent revolutions transformed Asia:
The first revolution was in economics. The main reason why many Asian economies, including communist societies like China and Vietnam, have succeeded so remarkably in economic development is because they finally understood, accepted, and implemented free market economics. A gift from the West. Adam Smith was right—if you let markets decide, productivity rises.
The second gift was psychological. Again, I can speak from personal experience. When I was young, my mother and her generation believed that life was determined by fate. You couldn’t do anything about it. My generation and subsequent Asian generations believe that we can take responsibility and we can improve our lives. This explains, for example, the entrepreneurial dynamism you see throughout Asia today.
If you walk through Asia today, you’ll also see the results of the third revolution, the good governance revolution. As a result of better governance, walking through Asia, you’ll see better healthcare, better education, better infrastructure, better social policies. It’s a different world.
The West’s Missed Opportunity
Having transformed the world by sharing Western wisdom globally, the logical and rational response from the West should have been to say, “We need to adapt and adjust to this new world.” Instead, the West chose to sleepwalk. Why did this happen?
I believe it happened because the West became distracted by two major events:
The first event was the end of the Cold War. Yes, the end of the Cold War was a great victory. The West defeated the mighty Soviet Union without firing a shot. Amazing. But when you have such a great victory, it also causes hubris and complacency. This complacency was captured in Francis Fukuyama’s famous essay called “The End of History.” Fukuyama included a very nuanced message, but all that was heard from his essay was: “We, liberal democracies, have succeeded. We don’t need to change. We don’t need to adapt. Only others in the world need to change and adapt.”
Unfortunately, like a dangerous opiate, this narrative caused a lot of brain damage to the West because it made them sleepwalk at the precise moment when China and India were waking up, and the West failed to adapt and adjust.
The second significant event was 9/11, which happened in 2001. As we know, 9/11 caused tremendous shock and grief. I personally experienced this shock and grief because I was in Manhattan when 9/11 happened. In this shock, the US decided to invade Afghanistan and then Iraq.
Unfortunately, partly as a result of this trauma, the West didn’t notice another significant event that happened in 2001: China joined the World Trade Organization. When you suddenly introduce 900 million new workers into the global capitalist system, it will cause what economist Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction.” Western workers lost their jobs, they saw their wages fall. Clearly, people needed to think about new competitive policies, workers needed retraining, workers needed new skills. Nothing was done.
As a result, the US became the only developed society where median incomes—yes, median incomes—fell for 30 years from 1980 to 2010. This eventually led to Donald Trump’s election in 2016, which indulged the anger of the mostly white working class. It also led to the rise of populism in Europe. One wonders, could this populism have been avoided if the West hadn’t been distracted by the end of the Cold War and by 9/11?
A Way Forward: The 3M Strategy
But the big question we face today is: is it too late? Has the West lost everything? And my answer is that it’s not too late. It’s possible for the West to recover and return to strength. Using the Western art of critical thinking, I suggest that the West adopt a new 3M strategy: minimalist, multilateral, and Machiavellian.
Why minimalist? Even though Western dominance has ended, the West continues to intervene and interfere in the affairs of many other societies. This is unwise. It causes anger and resentment, especially in Islamic societies. It also causes exhaustion and fatigue in Western societies.
I know the Islamic world is struggling to modernize. It needs to find its way. But it’s more likely to do so if it’s left to do it on its own. I can state this with some knowledge because I come from Southeast Asia, which has almost as many Muslims as the Arab world—266 million Muslims. Southeast Asia is also one of the most diverse parts of the planet with 146 million Christians, 149 million Buddhists (both Mahayana and Theravada), and also millions of Taoists, Confucians, Hindus, and even communists.
Once known as the “Balkans of Asia,” Southeast Asia today should be experiencing a clash of civilizations. Instead, what you see in Southeast Asia is one of the most peaceful corners of planet Earth with one of the most successful multilateral organizations, ASEAN. So clearly minimalism can work. The West should try it.
But I’m also aware that minimalism cannot solve all problems. Some problems need to be addressed. Al-Qaeda, ISIS—they remain dangerous threats. They must be confronted, they must be defeated. The question is, is it wise for the West, which represents 12% of the world’s population—yes, 12%—to fight these threats alone, or to fight with the remaining 88% of the world’s population?
The logical and rational answer is that you should work with the remaining 88%. Now, where does one go if you want to get global support? There’s only one place—the United Nations.
I’ve been an ambassador to the UN twice. That may make me somewhat biased. But I can tell you that working with the UN can lead to success. Why did the first Iraq War led by President George H.W. Bush succeed, while the second Iraq War led by his son, President George W. Bush, fail? One important reason is that the senior Bush went to the UN to get the support of the global community before fighting the war in Iraq. So United Nations support works.
That’s another reason why we need to work with the UN. The world is shrinking. We’re becoming an interdependent global village. All villages need a village council. And the only global village council we have, as former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said, is the UN.
As a geopolitical analyst, I know it’s often considered naive to work with the UN. So now, let me make my Machiavellian point. Machiavelli is a figure often maligned in the West. But, as liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin reminded us, Machiavelli’s purpose was to promote good, not evil.
So what is this Machiavellian point? What’s the best way for the West to constrain the newly emerging powers? The answer is that the best way to constrain them is through multilateral rules and norms, institutions, and processes.
A Message of Hope
Let me conclude with one final big message. As a long-time friend of the West, I’m deeply aware how pessimistic Western societies have become. Many people in the West don’t believe that a great future lies ahead, that their children won’t have better lives.
Please don’t believe that the future of the West or the whole world is pessimistic. I can say this with confidence because, as a global citizen, I truly feel cultural connections with different societies, cultures, and civilizations from Tehran to Tokyo. More than half of humanity lives in this space.
With these diverse cultural connections, I can state with great confidence that if the West chooses to adopt a wiser strategy of being minimalist, multilateral, and Machiavellian, the whole world would be happy to work with the West. A great future lies ahead for humanity. Let’s embrace it together.
