University of Singapore Dean Kishore Mahbubani's "The Case Against the West" is a stammering, often contradictory adaptation from his 2008 book, The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East, whose vitriolic Bush-era anti-Americanism/anti-Westernism is steeped in statements of the obvious ("The invasion and occupation of Iraq... was a multidimensional error"), broad generalizations coupled with vague language ("In all its analyses of global challenges, the West assumes that it is the source of the solutions to the world's key problems... this reflects a deeper structural problem: the West's inability to see that the world has entered a new era"), and outlandish predictions of Western decline based on questionable analysis. The accusations leveled at the West by Mr. Mahbubani run the gamut from the sublimely unconvincing (that the U.S. violated its own Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by participating in a Cold War arms race with the U.S.S.R.; unmentioned is the fact that the U.S. has since disarmed over 13,000 weapons and currently has a stockpile containing less than a quarter of the weapons that it harbored during the 80s) to the patently ridiculous (that "Western officials have not abandoned the old assumption that an army of Christian soldiers can successfully invade, occupy, and transform an Islamic society," a statement that approaches the truth only if the words "Western officials" are replaced with "Ann Coulter") to the literally incoherent (that Asian countries have made progress that exceeds the ability of the West to keep up by emulating Western principles; that former U.S. Vice President Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize is the last word on the threat posed by global warming and is indicative of proof that the U.S. is not doing enough to combat it). Most puzzling to me was the surprised anger Mr. Mahbubani expresses at the notion that the U.S. and Europe would dare to roll back economic practices (free trade) that have started to trend negatively for their economies, despite Eastern countries not yet being ready to take over as economic leaders. The West's greedy capitalists being accountable to the health of their own economies? Unthinkable! Oddly Mahbubani blames the West for not taking stewardship of the global economy (sort of a global application of a controlled economy, or arguably socialism) while simultaneously criticizing it for ending its push for trade liberalization (a global application of capitalism)-- all the while claiming that China is strong now and doesn't need the West anyhow.
That is Mr. Mahbubani's thesis: that Asian countries are rising such as to replace (rather than conquer) Western nations as the world's military and economic powerhouses. His evidence for this is a feeble and unsubstantiated claim that China et al. have "responded positively" to a request made in 2005 by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick that it "become a 'positive stakeholder' in the international system." Though China is increasingly privatizing its economy, it is still a Communist state infamous for human rights violations. Moreover, it is guilty of many of the accusations Mahbubani reserves for the West, such as the possession of nuclear weapons. And with the exception of Japan, all other Asian countries including runner-up India, the world's largest democracy and in some ways a reason to have hope, lag behind China in terms of economic or technological sophistication, a reality that begs the question of when, exactly, this supposed rise of the East will take place.
Zalmay Khalilzad wrote in 1995 that if the United States were to lose its hegemony, the result would not be a shift from unipolarity to multipolarity, but to "apolarity-- a global vacuum of power." He wrote that in a world just out of the Cold War, and argued-- correctly-- that U.S. leadership is crucial to prevent the rise of a "another hostile global rival" to replace the U.S.S.R. If the U.S. did not exist as a hegemon, no treaty, no matter how sound by Mr. Mahbubani's standards, could possibly stop nuclear proliferation. Furthermore, if the U.S.' hegemony were to legitimately falter, in way that allowed China or another non-Western nation to ascend to superpower status, that is a scenario in which nuclear war would be a serious and realistic concern. Fortunately, the scenario itself seems unrealistic after reading "The Case Against the West."
So what does this all have to do with global income disparity? Frankly I don't know the answer to that question yet; it's a question that this blog will aim to answer at some point, after deeper research into what causes the income gap in the first place. There are a few educated guesses I can make, however. First, China, India, and other Asian nations are among those countries with very high poverty rates. Mr. Mahbubani might think that the absence of the West and its money-grubbing capitalists might allow for the eradication of that problem, but the reality is that it would cause a host of other problems which would make income disparity seem relatively insignificant. The United States, rich as it is, may seem like a problem and an obstacle for nations that are poor, and it might be. Perhaps the U.S. should be doing more to aid poor countries. But it also might have nothing to do with the gap. That's what I'm trying to figure out, and I'll be writing on the subject soon-- but for now, I can confidently say that if the gap someday begins to close, a scenario that I will lay out a blueprint for after I am more knowledgeable, it will be because of other nations approaching the U.S.' wealth, not the other way around.
This country is here to stay; despite mistakes in foreign policy we've made and the zealous anti-American sentiments that have flared up during the 21st century, the U.S. remains a moderator of the global balance of power in a way that, according to the evidence, seems truly irreplaceable. That role comes with a responsibility to not screw up as badly as we did with the Iraq War, a regrettable error, but it's utterly absurd to allege that because of eight lousy years the U.S. is suddenly in a position to cede to countries that currently are hardly functional, economically, socially, or militarily. Part of their dysfunction is attributable to their comparative poorness, and it is that issue that this blog will ultimately address.
That is Mr. Mahbubani's thesis: that Asian countries are rising such as to replace (rather than conquer) Western nations as the world's military and economic powerhouses. His evidence for this is a feeble and unsubstantiated claim that China et al. have "responded positively" to a request made in 2005 by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick that it "become a 'positive stakeholder' in the international system." Though China is increasingly privatizing its economy, it is still a Communist state infamous for human rights violations. Moreover, it is guilty of many of the accusations Mahbubani reserves for the West, such as the possession of nuclear weapons. And with the exception of Japan, all other Asian countries including runner-up India, the world's largest democracy and in some ways a reason to have hope, lag behind China in terms of economic or technological sophistication, a reality that begs the question of when, exactly, this supposed rise of the East will take place.
Zalmay Khalilzad wrote in 1995 that if the United States were to lose its hegemony, the result would not be a shift from unipolarity to multipolarity, but to "apolarity-- a global vacuum of power." He wrote that in a world just out of the Cold War, and argued-- correctly-- that U.S. leadership is crucial to prevent the rise of a "another hostile global rival" to replace the U.S.S.R. If the U.S. did not exist as a hegemon, no treaty, no matter how sound by Mr. Mahbubani's standards, could possibly stop nuclear proliferation. Furthermore, if the U.S.' hegemony were to legitimately falter, in way that allowed China or another non-Western nation to ascend to superpower status, that is a scenario in which nuclear war would be a serious and realistic concern. Fortunately, the scenario itself seems unrealistic after reading "The Case Against the West."
So what does this all have to do with global income disparity? Frankly I don't know the answer to that question yet; it's a question that this blog will aim to answer at some point, after deeper research into what causes the income gap in the first place. There are a few educated guesses I can make, however. First, China, India, and other Asian nations are among those countries with very high poverty rates. Mr. Mahbubani might think that the absence of the West and its money-grubbing capitalists might allow for the eradication of that problem, but the reality is that it would cause a host of other problems which would make income disparity seem relatively insignificant. The United States, rich as it is, may seem like a problem and an obstacle for nations that are poor, and it might be. Perhaps the U.S. should be doing more to aid poor countries. But it also might have nothing to do with the gap. That's what I'm trying to figure out, and I'll be writing on the subject soon-- but for now, I can confidently say that if the gap someday begins to close, a scenario that I will lay out a blueprint for after I am more knowledgeable, it will be because of other nations approaching the U.S.' wealth, not the other way around.
This country is here to stay; despite mistakes in foreign policy we've made and the zealous anti-American sentiments that have flared up during the 21st century, the U.S. remains a moderator of the global balance of power in a way that, according to the evidence, seems truly irreplaceable. That role comes with a responsibility to not screw up as badly as we did with the Iraq War, a regrettable error, but it's utterly absurd to allege that because of eight lousy years the U.S. is suddenly in a position to cede to countries that currently are hardly functional, economically, socially, or militarily. Part of their dysfunction is attributable to their comparative poorness, and it is that issue that this blog will ultimately address.
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