I first discovered Kishore on the Sinica Podcast (highly recommended). His eloquence and sharp takes on America and China inspired me to read some of his work. Being from Singapore, a country born of Chinese and British influences, Kishore provides a balanced (or at least, a fresh) view on Sino-Western relations. I enjoyed his constructive criticism of modern Western civilization. Quotes and notes below.
Initially – indeed, for centuries – the West used its military and technological prowess to conquer and dominate the planet. Modern science and technology were harnessed to create powerful weapons. By the end of the nineteenth century, Western power had exploded into every part of the planet. Virtually every society on Earth – including the two previously greatest economic powers, China and India (which had almost half of the world’s GDP in 1820) – was subjugated by the West. Every other human civilization had no choice but to bend before Western power. And this domination could have carried on for many more centuries if not for the two suicidal world wars which the Western powers indulged in in the first half of the twentieth century.
An interesting perspective on the World Wars of the prior century. I doubt Western domination would have carried on for centuries longer without the Wars but they certainly redistributed Western power amongst Western powers.
The giddy spirits of the West were ready to ingest any form of seductive opium. Conveniently, they found this in Francis Fukuyama’s famous essay ‘The End of History?’ In it, he boldly argued: ‘What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.’ Western rulers fell in love with his essay and began to believe that their societies had reached the top of the metaphorical Mount Everest of human development and would not be dislodged. Partly as result of imbibing Fukuyama’s opiate, triumphalists in the West didn’t notice that the end of the Cold War coincided with a more fundamental turn of human history, which triggered a new historical era rather than ending history. China and India – the two sleeping giants of Asia – were waking up.
Hubris.
In 1976, the West launched the G7 to bring together the world’s most powerful economies. Their share of the global GDP was 45.3 per cent in 1995. By contrast the share of the E7, the seven largest emerging economies, then was half that at 22.6 per cent. However, by 2015 their respective shares were 31.5% (G7) and 36.3% (E7). PWC has forecast that by 2050, the G7 share will slide to 20% and that of the E7 will have risen to almost 50% in purchasing power terms. Few periods of human history have seen such enormous changes in one lifetime. Sadly, no brave Western leader has emerged to speak honestly about them. This monumental shift of power away from the West will be uncomfortable for Western minds. Ignoring it will only mean delayed and more painful adjustments for Western societies.
The absence of these facts from the American conversation is frustrating. Acknowledging the tenuous position of America in a dynamic world order could really help unify Americans. Instead of looking out and around, Americans are currently focused on tearing each other down.
This ignorance about the extraordinary progress made by billions on our planet is aggravated by the global supremacy of Western media, which dominate global news and infect the world with prevailing Western pessimism.
Islam is not just getting more adherents. Muslims are getting more religious. Since the Western mind likes to extrapolate Western assumptions into the human condition, it assumes that the modernization and economic development of any society will lead to less religiousity and more secularism. In the Islamic world, the reverse is happening.
The West’s second major strategic flaw was to further humiliate the already humiliated Russia. Gorbachev’s unilateral dissolution of the Soviet empire was an unimaginable geopolitical gift to the West, especially America. The Russia that remained was a small shell of the Soviet empire. After winning the Cold War without firing a shot, it would have been wise for the heed Churchill’s advice: ‘In victory, magnanimity.’ Instead, the West did the exact opposite. Contrary to the implicit assurances given to Gorbachev and Soviet leaders in 1990, the West expanded NATO into previous Warsaw Pact countries, including the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia. Tom Friedman was dead right when he said, ‘I opposed expanding NATO toward Russia after the Cold War, when Russia was at its most democratic and least threatening. It remains one of the dumbest things we’ve ever done, and of course, laid the groundwork for Putin’s rise.’ The humiliation of Russia led to an evitable blowback. The Russian people elected a strongman ruler, Vladimir Putin to defend Russian interests strongly… They wanted a strongman ruler who could also poke the eyes of the West. He did this by invading Crimea and supporting Assad in Syria. There are no saints in geopolitical games. There is only tit for tat.
Few in the Rest are convinced that the West’s post-Cold War encouragement of democracy abroad represents a moral impulse. Instead, they see this as a last futile attempt to continue the two-century period of Western domination of world history by other means. They also notice the cynical promotion of democracy in adversarial countries like Iraq and Syria and not in friendly countries like Saudi Arabia.
Ouch. Right in the sense of moral superiority.
This reminded me of Trump’s defense of Putin in 2017 that also threw American moral superiority under the bus: “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?”
We need to build a new global consensus. The beautifully written Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which espouse many noble universal values, can provide the foundation for the values of this new consensus.
Kishore was President of the United Nations Security Council for a period of time so he’s “pretty into” the UN. However, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads like the Declaration of Western Ideals to me. We have countries like Saudia Arabia cynically signing off on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and ignoring half of it. Clearly ‘Human Rights’ aren’t really universal. The Universal Declaration strikes me as a move to install (noble) Western values as the international default. Kishore is great at pointing out Western hubris in many domains, but somehow he doesn’t consider the UN’s “Universal Declaration” an example of this.
In our rapidly changing world, the West need to learn more from Machiavelli and deploy more strategic cunning to protect its long-term interests. Strategic cunning is as old as the hills. Two thousand five hundred years ago, the legendary Chinese strategist Sun Tzu advised, ‘Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.’ The most difficult part of this piece of advice is ‘Know thy self.’ Few in the West are aware of how quickly the Western share of global power has shrunk.
The reality that the West has to deal with is that the primary strategic challenge for America is not the same as the primary strategic challenge for Europe. For America, it is China. For Europe, it is the Islamic world at its doorstep.
Africa’s population will become as large as Asia’s by 2100. Then there will be 4.5 billion people in Africa. How will an ageing population of 450 million Europeans deal with this demographic explosion?
The Islamic world is not America’s primary strategic challenge. It is a secondary challenge. Hence it should make peace with the Islamic world, not rile it.
The best way to transform Iranian society is to send thousands, if not millions, of American tourists to the country.
Brillant! I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.
In theory, China will win in the economic competition, because it has a much larger population: 1.37 billion, as opposed to America’s 321 million. Yet, America has outperformed every other economy in the world by being able to attract the best and brightest of the 7 billion people on Earth. This is why many of America’s greatest universities, schools and companies are led by American citizens born overseas. The H1B visa, which allows US companies to employ foreign nations in certain occupations, is part of America’s strategic answer to China’s population advantage. Yet it is precisely at the moment when America needs more H1B visas to deal with China’s economic competition that America is reducing the number of H1B visas.
America’s ‘strategic answer’, the ability to attract talent, is partly due to the flexible and inclusive identity structure in America. This, combined with freedom and financial incentives, is vital. Smart people can’t go to China and become a successful Chinese individual. Smart people can go to America and become a successful American. Ethnostates may have strength in cohesion but they’re not optimized to attract global talent.
The West is wrong believing that democracy is a necessary condition for economic success. If it were, China could not and should not have succeeded. But it has. This is also why many in the West deeply resent China’s success. It undermines many key pillars of Western ideology.
So what is the best outcome for America when it becomes number two? The best outcome would be a number one power (namely, China) that respects ‘rules and partnerships and habits of behavior’ that America could live with.
And would be the best way to slip on these ‘handcuffs’ […] on China? This is where Bill Clinton was cunning. He was advising his fellow Americans to slip the handcuffs of ‘rules and partnerships’ onto themselves. Once America had created a certain pattern of behavior for the world’s number one power, the same pattern of behavior would be inherited by the next number one power, namely China.
China, unlike America, does not have a messianic impulse to change the world. If order abroad facilitates order at home, China would be happy.