The New Asian Hemisphere

An article by Kishore Mahbubani
Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore

History has shown that the rise of the West transformed the world. The rise of Asia will bring about an equally significant transformation. But, will the West resist the rise of Asia or work with it? The answer to this question will determine the course of world history.

Few in the West have grasped the full implications of the two most salient features of our historical epoch. First, we have reached the end of the era of Western domination of world history (but not the end of the West, which will remain the single strongest civilization for many more decades). Second, we will see an enormous renaissance of Asian societies. The strategic discourse in the West should therefore focus on how the West should adapt. Sadly, this has not happened yet. To make matters worse, the West has gone from being competent to becoming incompetent in its handling of many key global challenges, from the threat of terrorism to keeping the nuclear nonproliferation regime alive. This incompetence, with naturally disastrous consequences, aggravates the Western sense of insecurity.

In deciding how to react to the rise of Asia, the West will be torn between its interests and its values. At the philosophical level, the West should celebrate. For 500 years the West has been the only civilization carrying the burden of advancing human knowledge and wealth. Today, it can share this responsibility. It should also celebrate the clear spread of Western values in the rise of Asia. The spread of Western modernity into Asia has been a huge gift from the West to Asia. The West should be happy to see the positive results. However, the relative lack of celebrations in the West of the rise of Asia shows the West’s awareness that while it is gaining in the philosophical dimension, it may suffer some real losses in the material dimensions. There will be no absolute losses: most Western states will remain among the most affluent and well-endowed states. However, there will be relative losses. The relative material superiority the material West has enjoyed for centuries will gradually diminish.

There will also be relative losses in another key area: power. Western states have accumulated power in a whole range of global institutions as they nurtured these institutions. For these global institutions to be effective today, the new great powers of the twenty-first century must participate in their governance and decision making. The rise of Asia therefore creates a real dilemma for Western states: Should they be guided by their material interests and cling to this power, or should they be guided by their values and begin to cede and share power?

Several global institutions will be endangered by any Western reluctance to share power. The UN Security Council is in danger of losing its legitimacy because of a deficiency of democratic legitimacy. The IMF and World Bank are in almost exactly the same situation. One of the strangest anomalies of our times is the practice that no Asian can lead either the IMF or the World Bank, the two leading global economic institutions. An unwritten but firm understanding since the founding of these institutions after World War II is that the head of the IMF should be a European and the head of the World Bank an American. Asians (as well as Africans and Latin Americans) are excluded. Any rule that disqualifies 88 percent of the world’s population from leadership of a global economic institution is inherently unsustainable, especially when economic power is steadily shifting toward Asia.

Just as the world accommodated the rejuvenation of Europe in the post-War world, it must now accommodate the rise of new Asian economies in the years that lie ahead. What this means is that we need global institutions and new global “rules of the game” that can facilitate the peaceful rise of new nations in Asia. It also means that existing global institutions and frameworks of cooperation must evolve and change to accommodate this new reality.

History has taught us that the rise of new powers almost always leads to tension and conflict. But they can be avoided if the world accepts a new global partnership between the West and Asia. I am optimistic that this will happen. But I also know that optimistic outcomes do not happen on their own. They require decisive human intervention. The time to act is now.

Kishore Mahbubani is Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. Mr. Mahbubani has recently published The New Asian Hemisphere: the Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East.

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