Attentive readers of Re-engage! will know that I'm quite a fan of Kishore Mahbubani, an extremely smart strategic thinker who was Singapore's ambassador to the UN until a couple of years ago.Recently, he had a great piece of commentary in the Financial Times on "the meaning of the Georgian war." (Hat-tip to Bernhard of MoA for noting this article.) Mahbubani writes:
Sometimes small events can portend great changes. The Georgian fiasco may be one such event. It heralds the end of the post cold-war era. But it does not mark the return of any new cold war. It marks an even bigger return: the return of history. The post cold-war era began on a note of western triumphalism, symbolised by Francis Fukuyama’s book, The End of History. The title was audacious but it captured the western zeitgeist. History had ended with the triumph of western civilisation. The rest of the world had no choice but to capitulate to the advance of the west. In Georgia, Russia has loudly declared that it will no longer capitulate to the west. After two decades of humiliation Russia has decided to snap back. Before long, other forces will do the same. As a result of its overwhelming power, the west has intruded into the geopolitical spaces of other dormant countries. They are no longer dormant, especially in Asia. Indeed, most of the world is bemused by western moralising on Georgia. America would not tolerate Russia intruding into its geopolitical sphere in Latin America. Hence Latin Americans see American double standards clearly. So do all the Muslim commentaries that note that the US invaded Iraq illegally, too. Neither India nor China is moved to protest against Russia. It shows how isolated is the western view on Georgia: that the world should support the underdog, Georgia, against Russia. In reality, most support Russia against the bullying west. The gap between the western narrative and the rest of the world could not be greater. It is therefore critical for the west to learn the right lessons from Georgia. It needs to think strategically about the limited options it has...
The fourth paragraph there describes something that "westerners" crucially need to be able to understand. Westerners do not monopolize either humankind's smarts, or its sensibilities, or its way(s) of looking at the world. Indeed they (we) are in a distinct minority, and badly need to understand that. Especially given that one of our bedrock values in the world is that of the equality of all human persons.... Well, it still is, isn't it? Mahbubani has a lot more there, too. Including this:
In the US, leading neo-conservative thinkers see China as their primary contradiction. Yet they also support Israel with a passion, without realising this stance is a geopolitical gift to China. It guarantees the US faces a hostile Islamic universe, distracting it from focusing on China. There is no doubt China was the bigger winner of 9/11. It has stabilised its neighbourhood, while the US has been distracted. Western thinkers must decide where the real long-term challenge is.* If it is the Islamic world, the US should stop intruding into Russia’s geopolitical space and work out a long-term engagement with China. If it is China, the US must win over Russia and the Islamic world and resolve the Israel-Palestine issue. This will enable Islamic governments to work more closely with the west in the battle against al-Qaeda. The biggest paradox facing the west is that it is at last possible to create a safer world order. The number of countries wanting to become “responsible stakeholders” has never been higher. Most, including China and India, want to work with the US and the west. But the absence of a long-term coherent western strategy towards the world and the inability to make geopolitical compromises are the biggest obstacles to a stable world order. Western leaders say the world is becoming a more dangerous place, yet few admit that their flawed thinking is bringing this about. Georgia illustrates the results of a lack of strategic thinking.
* I guess my only criticism of this analysis is over Mahbubani's argument that "Western thinkers must decide where the real long-term challenge is," with the choice presented being a strictly dyadic one between it being "the Islamic world" and it being China. Actually, I don't think the choice is anywhere near as dyadic as this implies (and anyway, the policies that he prescribes for either choice are broadly similar.) But here's the deeper problem: he is still in the mindset at that point of arguing that the "west" needs to identify a main enemy-- or as he says, a "real long-term challenge"-- that is another state or bloc of states. But then, in the last paragraph he goes against that thinking-- certainly, with respect to China-- when he underlines that China, like India, wants to work with the US and west. And here's an addendum to that: so do most governments in "the Islamic world", and so, indeed do most Muslims... provided this cooperation with the US and the west is on a basis of mutual respect and fair cooperation. Neither China nor the vast majority of members of "the Islamic world" want to overthrow any western governments and dominate their countries, which is what, for a period of time, the Soviet Union aspired to do. So where is the real "long-term challenge" that the west faces? I believe it is the challenge, for Americans, of starting to see themselves (ourselves) as co-equal members of the world community rather than standard-bearers in some kind of existential, life-or-death contest with enemy states that requires us to bear the huge costs of maintaining our bloated military and using it to "keep order" right around the world: 360 degrees, 24/7. And then, oh yes, there are plenty of other, very serious long-term challenges that we and the rest of the world community all face together. Challenges like dealing with:
- climate change;
- global inequality and the suffering of our brothers and sisters in the low-income world;
- weapons proliferation;
- the occurrence of conflict-driven atrocities;
- the anti-humane violence perpetrated by Islamist extremists and others...
So please, while we're facing serious challenges like those ones, let's not, as "westerners," go round the world looking for whole blocs of people and governments to make war on, as well. Kishore Mahbubani was quite right there, in his last paragraph, when he wrote that few western leaders were prepared to admit that their own flawed thinking has been making the world a more dangerous place. But I think the greatest flaw in the thinking of most westerners has been this need to organize the world, and mobilize one's own resources and activities, around the definition of a state or bloc of states as our enemies, to be faced down or toppled with our military power. It is that tendency that has made the world more dangerous for everyone-- ourselves, along with many, many others. Now, we need to adopt the much more realistic stance of aligning ourselves at the side of the world's other six billion people, facing the challenges that confront all of us, together. One final note: A couple of days after reading Mahbubani's article I wrote over at my 'Just World News' blog a post titled The return of geography, which readers here might also find interesting. (The present post was also originally published at JWN, here.)
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