We own the world, Singapore author tells America

Kishore Mahbubani, author of The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East, writes in the Los Angeles Times:

We are entering a new era of world history: the end of Western domination and the arrival of the Asian century. The question is: Will Washington wake up to this reality? When the new president meets with schedulers in January, will he or she say, “Cut down on the visits to Europe. Send me across the Pacific, not the Atlantic. The G-8 represents a sunset process. Let us focus on the new sunrise organizations in Asia.”

If such a shift seems inconceivable, it shows how much old mental maps continue to cloud the vision of leading Americans. The West has so dominated world history for the last 200 years that we forget that from the year 1 to the year 1820, the two largest economies in the world (as demonstrated by British economic historian Angus Maddison) were China and India. A study by Goldman Sachs in 2003 confidently predicted that by 2050, the four largest economies in the world will be China, the U.S., India and Japan, in that order. A more recent evaluation by Goldman Sachs showed that this could happen sooner and that the Indian economy could surpass that of the U.S. by 2043.

The changes will be dramatic and happen quickly.

Mahbubani’s triumphalist and disdainful stance toward America and the West is unmistakable: “irresistible shift of global power to the East … end of Western domination … arrival of the Asian century … Will Washington wake up? … sunset process … new sunrise organizations … old mental maps continue to cloud the vision of leading Americans.” Yet the belligerence is odd, given his concession that the economic rise of Asia was made possible by the liberalized trade policies that were put in place by the United States:

The paradox about the American inability to recognize this great shift is that the United States has done more than any other country to spark this Asian revival. In the 19th century era of European domination, Asia was subjugated and colonized. As the U.S. became the dominant power, Asia was progressively liberated….

This rules-based system leveled the international playing field, allowing nations such as Japan and Germany to economically reemerge without massive disruption to the world order. In this century, it may be China and India that peaceably emerge as world powers.

So Mahbubani states that it was America’s belief in freedom, equality, openness, non-discrimination, and a level playing field that unshackled the countries of Asia from the subordinate positions they had occupied under European colonialism. But at the same time, sounding almost like Nikita Khruschev crying, “We will bury you,” he boasts that the U.S. is about to go down under the Asian economic onslaught that the U.S.itself empowered. One can only conclude that the very liberalization, pushed by the U.S. ,which allowed the Asian powers to advance, has also liberated in them the will to assert their power over us. Which is just what happened with the Asian immigrants in Britain, as discussed in the previous entry. The British generously permitted a mass influx of Asians into their country, and now that the Asian population has gained political clout an Asian spokesman arrogantly announces that the British no longer have the right to control Asian immigration into Britain. It is also similar to what happened with Michelle Obama, to whom white America gave a Princeton education, a Harvard law school education, and a $300,000 salary, and who from her exalted perch in the establishment now informs whites of her lifelong alienation from the white majority culture, and tells them the only way they can end the alienaton is by electing her husband as president of the United States.

Believing in universal sameness, Westerners allow into their world peoples who do not share the West’s belief in universal sameness, but who are operating according to the age-old racial loyalties and will to dominance that have moved mankind from the start.

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Mark P. writes:

I’ve always found such outbursts to be amusing at best. Declaring that countries whose economies are completely dependent on selling to the West will somehow rise to dominate the global economy is an act of wishful thinking the likes I rarely get to see.

Asia’s economies are not only dependent on the rules and level playing field the West invented. They are completely dependent on selling their products to the United States. More accurately, they are completely dependent on the “labor arbitrage” that Western corporations engage in to sustain themselves. How can they somehow rise to dominance if they lack even the basic self-sufficiency needed of a great industrial power? If the United States decides that it no longer wants to import Chinese products, then to whom will the Chinese sell there surplus output? To Europe at 50% discount? Good luck with that.

Asia needs us more than we need it. We can do without what they produce and bring it back home.

LA replies:

Any economic power builds up its wealth and power by producing and selling things. Since when is the fact that the country produces and sells things make it weak and dependent on the buyer? By your logic, all producers and sellers are weak because if their buyers stop buying the seller stops making money.

Mark P. replies:

You wrote:

“Since when is the fact that the country produces and sells things make it weak and dependent on the buyer?”

When that producer is one of a dozen other countries producing an identical product and the buyer is its only major market.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 23, 2008 05:01 PM | Send