Comment

Diplomat and scholar, Kishore Mahbubani has been provoking discussion and argument with many of his theses and books for the last three decades. Currently dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, he worked between 1971 and 2004 in the Singaporean Foreign Service, finally becoming Singapore’s Ambassador to the United Nations. He is best known for his books such as Can Asians Think? and Beyond The Age Of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust Between America And The World. His latest, The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift Of Power To The East, which was released this month, argues for a new East-West relationship paradigm. The East is now irretrievably rising, he told Sidharth Bhatia, adding that we need to work towards cooperation, not conflict.

Your thesis rests on the East/West dialectic but are East and West valid as concepts anymore?
This is the biggest question I have been asked, especially in the West. The West is diverse, not a single entity is what they say. That may be true in geo-political terms, but there is an implicit and explicit compact between the United States and the European Union (EU). They may have differences, but on critical issues they always come together. NATO has not been disbanded despite there being no enemy. When the EU wanted to lift the arms embargo on China, America kicked up a fuss; the EU succumbed. On other institutions like the World Bank and the IMF, they have worked out a trade-off, where their nationals head either one or the other. Most of all, they have a deep anxiety over Islam. Of course their cultural similarities, drawn from the Greco-Roman tradition, help a lot.
But then there is no East, as such.
There is no East, at least not yet. But there is a growing amount of common interest. For the first time in about 200 years, the east as we know it is succeeding economically. We are becoming geo-politically competent for the first time. Colonisation showed how incompetent we were — how did 300 million people in India get ruled by one lakh British officials? Eastern institutions like the Asean summit are sunrise organisations; the G7 on the other hand is a sunset body.
Do East and West necessarily have to be antagonistic?
No, certainly not. But the West may not be able to accept a cooperative structure. It always resists change.
Where do you see India figuring in this new order? Some say we are
becoming too close to the US.
I think India is better off emerging as a completely independent power. India cannot and should not become any kind of card, as in an anti-China card, for anyone. If you become a card you can also be dropped as one. You should become an independent swing power.
Where does democracy fit in the Asian scheme of things? The West keeps pointing out that many Asian countries are not democracies.
Russia is a classic example of
exporting democracy. Iraq is
another. It shows how the western mind works. Don’t get taken in by
the US liberal wing — it is a small
veneer of the country. For the
rest, there is amazing naiveté and
even arrogance.
But does blaming the West take us anywhere? What about the nepotism and corruption in the East?
Of course we must look at our
own society. But then we don’t preach to anyone. The West preaches. I have pointed out a recent speech on democracy by the British foreign secretary David Miliband where he talks about the bravery of the Myanmarese monks in standing up to the junta;
but he did not have a word about the human rights abuses by the US in Guantanamo Bay. Or see how the
EU behaved when a democratic
government of Muslim parties was elected in Algeria.
How do you see the way the West has reacted to events in Tibet?
Firstly, let us get this straight.
Independence is never going to happen in Tibet. Maybe, at best, some sort of autonomy will happen. The Chinese government is not thinking of how the world sees it but how the one billion population at home thinks. The
government cannot be seen as weak —any such perception will be suicidal. It’s caught between a rock and a
hard place.
So what’s your solution for greater world democracy?
The world will eventually have to come together; 12 per cent of the world’s population cannot control the world. And the Security Council is not the answer either. If America believes in discussions or debate, it must take its case to the UN general assembly, not the Security Council.
Are you forecasting the West’s end? Yes, a shift to Asia is happening, but it won’t happen quickly. We will see the end of western domination, not the end of the West. We will all have to share power. After 1945, the rules of global engagement were set, but sadly they have withered away.