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For centuries, the Asians
(Chinese, Indians, Muslims, and others) have
been bystanders in world history. Now they are
ready to become co-drivers.
Asians have finally
understood, absorbed, and implemented Western
best practices in many areas: from free-market
economics to modern science and technology, from
meritocracy to rule of law. They have also
become innovative in their own way, creating new
patterns of cooperation not seen in the West.
Will the West resist the rise
of Asia? The good news is that Asia wants to
replicate, not dominate, the West. For a happy
outcome to emerge, the West must gracefully give
up its domination of global institutions, from
the IMF to the World Bank, from the G7 to the UN
Security Council.
History teaches that tensions
and conflicts are more likely when new powers
emerge. This, too, may happen. But they can be
avoided if the world accepts the key principles
for a new global partnership spelled out in
The New Asian Hemisphere.
Excerpt
of this book
The need to develop a better
understanding of our world has never been
greater. We are now entering one of the most
plastic moments of world history. The decisions
we make today could influence the course of the
twenty-first century. But it is clear that the
worldviews of the leading Western minds are
trapped in the previous centuries. These minds
cannot even conceive of the possibility that
they may have to change these worldviews to
understand the new world. Unless they do, we
could make disastrous decisions.
The best illustration of a
disastrous decision is the decision by the U.S.
and UK to invade Iraq in March 2003. The
Americans and British had benign intentions: to
free the Iraqi people from despotic rule and to
rid the world of a dangerous man, Saddam
Hussein. Neither Bush nor Blair had malevolent
intentions. Yet, the mental maps that they
brought to understand Iraq were mired in one
cultural context: the Western mindset. Many
Americans actually believed that invading
American troops would be welcomed with petals
thrown on the streets by happy Iraqis. The idea
that any Islamic country would welcome western
military boots on its soil defies belief. The
invasion and especially the occupation of Iraq
will go down as one of the most botched
operations in human history. Yet even if it had
been well-executed, it was doomed to failure. In
1920, as secretary for war and air, Winston
Churchill could use poison gas to quell the
rebellion of Kurds and Arabs in British-occupied
Iraq. He said, "I am strongly in favor of using
poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes." If
Blair had tried the same in 2005, he would have
been crucified. The world has moved on from this
era. Sadly, Western mindsets have not moved on.
A note
from Kishore Mahbubani
For over two decades, I have
lived the life of a nomadic intellectual,
absorbing ideas at great intellectual watering
holes, like Davos and Aspen, Ditchley and
Pocantico. Initially, I was overwhelmed by the
confidence and energy of Western intellectuals.
They had sharp minds, always producing new
insights as they spoke.
It has come as a huge
personal shock for me to see this same group of
Western intellectuals now becoming totally blind
to emerging new realities. At a time of rapid
change, these Western minds remain complacent
and smug. I tried to puncture this smugness in
my speeches and columns. Sadly, I failed. They
could not see that we are moving from a
monocivilizational world to a
multi-civilizational world.
These failures taught me a
lesson. The only way to persuade the West of the
need to change mindsets was to try and develop
an alternative weltanschauung. That is the
ambitious goal of this book. If we do not wake
the West up from its intellectual complacency,
we are headed for trouble.
Op-eds by Kishore Mahbubani
Ringing in the Asian century
Los Angeles Times, 19 February 2008
Asia’s geopolitical competence
Mint, 18 February 2008
Reviews of this book
The New Asian Hemisphere Rivals How the Power Struggle Between China, India and Japan will Shape Our Next Decade
By Thomas Fuller, International Herald Tribune, 18 June 2008
Insights into Global Power Balances
By Frank Ching, The China Post, 21 May 2008
East is the New West
By Arun Maira, Outlook Magazine, 5 May 2008
We Are All Asians Now
By Rahul Sharma, Hindustan Times, 20 April 2008
Asia Pushes, West Resists
By Sreeram Chaulia, Asia Times, 19 April 2008
Het Western zit op slot
By Juurd Eijsvoogel, NRC Handelsblad, 18 April 2008
India, China can’t have Too Much Inequality
By Suman Tarafdar, The Financial Express, 9 April 2008
Asia Rising – But Not at the Expense of the West
The Straits Times, 24 March 2008
A Rising in the East
By Mohammed Hadi, Wall Street Journal, 20
February 2008
Clinton, McCain, Obama Needn't Fear Asia's Rise
By William Pesek, Bloomberg, 13 February 2008
The Future of Asia: Eastern Approaches
The Economist, 7 February 2008
The Great Eastern Promise
By Asad Latif, The Straits Times, 11 February
2008
One Face, Another Colour
By Sunanda K. Datta-Ray, The Telegraph, 9
February 2008
Kishore Mahbubani's New Book Addresses Shift of
Global Power
By May Wong, Channel NewsAsia, 4 February 2008
South Asian Journalists Association radio
interview
South Asian Journalists Association, 19 February
2008
How America can cope with the rise of Asia
By Ajay Singh, UCLA Today, 21 February 2008
Books: Eastern euphoria
By Pratap Bhanu Mehta, India Today, 21 February 2008
Eye on the new Orient
By Niranjan Rajadhyaksha Mumbai, Mint, 22 February 2008
Mapping A New World
By Jeffrey E. Garten, Newsweek, 23 February 2008
A Review by Susan Froetschel
Yale Global Online, 2008
The rise of Asian nations
By Debory Li, AsiaMedia, 26 February 2008
Advance
Praise for The New Asian Hemisphere
"In The New Asian
Hemisphere, Kishore Mahbubani has given us
a very powerful account of the world seen
through Asian eyes, and has shown the global
relevance of that penetrating vision. The book
is both insightful and delightfully combative as
well as fun to read."
Amartya Sen
Thomas
W. Lamont University Professor Harvard
University
1998 Nobel Laureate in Economics
and author of The Argumentative Indian
"There is no more thoughtful
observer of Asia, the United States, and their
interaction than Kishore Mahbubani. Having
written about Asia, then the United States he
has produced a book on their interaction that
should be read by anyone who hopes to or will
shape US foreign policy over the next decade.
And it should be read by anyone in Asia who
hopes to understand or influence that
policy...The rise of Asia and all that follows
it will be the dominant story in history books
written 300 years from now with the Cold War and
rise of Islam as secondary stories."
Lawrence H Summers
Charles W. Eliot University Professor of Harvard
University
Kennedy School
"Kishore Mahbubani is a
historian of ideas whose starting point is the
present and whose horizon is a visible,
startling future. This remarkable book is a
fact-based projection of Asia's rising
trajectory. The West has been synonymous with
modernity for perhaps the last three centuries.
Asia is the New Modern. Vision and clarity make
this book a sparkling history of the Age of
Asia."
M J Akbar
Editor-in-Chief
Asian Age
Author of The Shade of Swords
"The Western, particularly
the American, response to the rise of Asia has
been petulant, degenerating into protectionism
and panic. Japan-bashing of the 1980s was
succeeded by India-bashing over outsourcing in
the 1990s and now we have China-bashing in the
2000s. Mahbubani, one of the most perceptive and
influential Asian intellectuals today, shows the
folly of these reactions and the wisdom of
applauding and working with the reality of
Asia's remarkable success. His splendid book
must be read by every Western policymaker; it is
a tour de force."
Jagdish Bhagwati
University Professor
Economics and Law
Columbia University
& Author of In Defense of Globalization
(Oxford)
"An incisive analysis of the
long-term implications of the ongoing shift in
the global center of gravity. The new Asian
hemisphere offers warnings and lessons that
America should digest if it is to continue
playing a preeminent global role – and the
advice comes from a friend of America with an
intimate understanding of Asian realities."
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Counselor and Trustee
Co-Chair of the CSIS Advisory Board
Center for Strategic & International Studies,
Washington DC
Robert E. Osgood
Professor of American Foreign Policy
School of Advanced International Studies
Johns Hopkins University, Washington, D.C.
"Kishore Mahbubani
understands better than most that the
relationship between East and West, established
after 1945, is no longer sustainable. This book
cogently and even thrillingly explains why
global power politics is at a crucial moment of
change, where the East and most especially the
West must decide if power can be shared more
equally or will be disputed more destructively."
Shekhar Kapur
Director of the Academy Award-winning film
"Elizabeth"
"Once again, Kishore
Mahbubani proves himself a global
thought-leader. In The New Asian Hemisphere,
he combines a prodigious knowledge of history, a
flair for lucid, often witty analysis and
advocacy, and the pragmatism of an experienced
diplomat. The result is a set of prescriptions
that leaders and citizens of the world in both
hemispheres would do well to heed."
Strobe Talbott
President of the Brookings Institution and
author of The Great Experiment
"Kishore Mahbubani,
experienced diplomat, deeply immersed in the
West and in Asia, is arguably the most
articulate Asian voice bluntly telling the West
how informed Asians see it. The tide is shifting
and while Mahbubani's message will not be easy
to take, Western leaders will ignore it at their
peril."
Ezra F Vogel
Research Professor
Harvard University
"Kishore Mahbubani has a
global mind with a unique Singapore perspective
and this comes out clearly in this forcefully
argued book. He grew up in a Hindu family, among
Muslim and Chinese friends and was shaped by
British colonial education, the key ingredients
of a proto-Singaporean. By studying Western
philosophy and through working as a diplomat for
a pragmatic city-state that has survived both
hot and cold wars, he also caught the one-world
spirit identified with the United Nations ideal.
Thus has emerged the worldly Singaporean
determined to dissect how a resurgent China,
India and Islam might force the old West to
change. He also challenges a new Asia to respond
if and when this change in the West happens."
Wang Gungwu
Chairman
East Asian Institute
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