The Case Against the
West
Summary: The West is not welcoming Asia's progress, and
its short-term interests in preserving its privileged
position in various global institutions are trumping its
long-term interests in creating a more just and stable
world order. The West has gone from being the world's
problem solver to being its single biggest liability.
KISHORE MAHBUBANI is
Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National
University of Singapore. This essay is adapted from his latest book, The
New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East
(Public Affairs, 2008).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is a fundamental
flaw in the West's strategic thinking. In all its
analyses of global challenges, the West assumes that it
is the source of the solutions to the world's key
problems. In fact, however, the West is also a major
source of these problems. Unless key Western
policymakers learn to understand and deal with this
reality, the world is headed for an even more troubled
phase.
The West is understandably reluctant to accept that the
era of its domination is ending and that the Asian
century has come. No civilization cedes power easily,
and the West's resistance to giving up control of key
global institutions and processes is natural. Yet the
West is engaging in an extraordinary act of
self-deception by believing that it is open to change.
In fact, the West has become the most powerful force
preventing the emergence of a new wave of history,
clinging to its privileged position in key global
forums, such as the UN Security Council, the
International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the G-8
(the group of highly industrialized states), and
refusing to contemplate how the West will have to adjust
to the Asian century.
Partly as a result of its growing insecurity, the West
has also become increasingly incompetent in its handling
of key global problems. Many Western commentators can
readily identify specific failures, such as the Bush
administration's botched invasion and occupation of
Iraq. But few can see that this reflects a deeper
structural problem: the West's inability to see that the
world has entered a new era.
Apart from representing a specific failure of policy
execution, the war in Iraq has also highlighted the gap
between the reality and what the West had expected would
happen after the invasion. Arguably, the United States
and the United Kingdom intended only to free the Iraqi
people from a despotic ruler and to rid the world of a
dangerous man, Saddam Hussein. Even if George W. Bush
and Tony Blair had no malevolent intentions, however,
their approaches were trapped in the Western mindset of
believing that their interventions could lead only to
good, not harm or disaster. This led them to believe
that the invading U.S. troops would be welcomed with
roses thrown at their feet by happy Iraqis. But the
twentieth century showed that no country welcomes
foreign invaders. The notion that any Islamic nation
would approve of Western military boots on its soil was
ridiculous. Even in the early twentieth century, the
British invasion and occupation of Iraq was met with
armed resistance. In 1920, Winston Churchill, then
British secretary for war and air, quelled the rebellion
of Kurds and Arabs in British-occupied Iraq by
authorizing his troops to use chemical weapons. "I am
strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against
uncivilized tribes," Churchill said. The world has moved
on from this era, but many Western officials have not
abandoned the old assumption that an army of Christian
soldiers can successfully invade, occupy, and transform
an Islamic society.
Many Western leaders often begin their speeches by
remarking on how perilous the world is becoming.
Speaking after the August 2006 discovery of a plot to
blow up transatlantic flights originating from London,
President Bush said, "The American people need to know
we live in a dangerous world." But even as Western
leaders speak of such threats, they seem incapable of
conceding that the West itself could be the fundamental
source of these dangers. After all, the West includes
the best-managed states in the world, the most
economically developed, those with the strongest
democratic institutions. But one cannot assume that a
government that rules competently at home will be
equally good at addressing challenges abroad. In fact,
the converse is more likely to be true. Although the
Western mind is obsessed with the Islamist terrorist
threat, the West is mishandling the two immediate and
pressing challenges of Afghanistan and Iraq. And despite
the grave threat of nuclear terrorism, the Western
custodians of the nonproliferation regime have allowed
that regime to weaken significantly. The challenge posed
by Iran's efforts to enrich uranium has been aggravated
by the incompetence of the United States and the
European Union. On the economic front, for the first
time since World War II, the demise of a round of global
trade negotiations, the Doha Round, seems imminent.
Finally, the danger of global warming, too, is being
mismanaged.
Yet Westerners seldom look inward to understand the
deeper reasons these global problems are being
mismanaged. Are there domestic structural reasons that
explain this? Have Western democracies been hijacked by
competitive populism and structural short-termism,
preventing them from addressing long-term challenges
from a broader global perspective?
Fortunately, some Asian states may now be capable of
taking on more responsibilities, as they have been
strengthened by implementing Western principles. In
September 2005, Robert Zoellick, then U.S. deputy
secretary of state, called on China to become a
"responsible stakeholder" in the international system.
China has responded positively, as have other Asian
states. In recent decades, Asians have been among the
greatest beneficiaries of the open multilateral order
created by the United States and the other victors of
World War II, and few today want to destabilize it. The
number of Asians seeking a comfortable middle-class
existence has never been higher. For centuries, the
Chinese and the Indians could only dream of such an
accomplishment; now it is within the reach of around
half a billion people in China and India. Their ideal is
to achieve what the United States and Europe did. They
want to replicate, not dominate, the West. The
universalization of the Western dream represents a
moment of triumph for the West. And so the West should
welcome the fact that the Asian states are becoming
competent at handling regional and global challenges.
THE MIDDLE EAST MESS
Western policies have been most harmful in the Middle
East. The Middle East is also the most dangerous region
in the world. Trouble there affects not just seven
million Israelis, around four million Palestinians, and
200 million Arabs; it also affects more than a billion
Muslims worldwide. Every time there is a major flare-up
in the Middle East, such as the U.S. invasion of Iraq or
the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, Islamic communities
around the world become concerned, distressed, and
angered. And few of them doubt the problem's origin: the
West.
The invasion and occupation of Iraq, for example, was a
multidimensional error. The theory and practice of
international law legitimizes the use of force only when
it is an act of self-defense or is authorized by the UN
Security Council. The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq could
not be justified on either count. The United States and
the United Kingdom sought the Security Council's
authorization to invade Iraq, but the council denied it.
It was therefore clear to the international community
that the subsequent war was illegal and that it would do
huge damage to international law.
This has created an enormous problem, partly because
until this point both the United States and the United
Kingdom had been among the primary custodians of
international law. American and British minds, such as
James Brierly, Philip Jessup, Hersch Lauterpacht, and
Hans Morgenthau, developed the conceptual infrastructure
underlying international law, and American and British
leaders provided the political will to have it accepted
in practice. But neither the United States nor the
United Kingdom will admit that the invasion and the
occupation of Iraq were illegal or give up their
historical roles as the chief caretakers of
international law. Since 2003, both nations have
frequently called for Iran and North Korea to implement
UN Security Council resolutions. But how can the
violators of UN principles also be their enforcers?
One rare benefit of the Iraq war may be that it has
awakened a new fear of Iran among the Sunni Arab states.
Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, among others, do not
want to deal with two adversaries and so are inclined to
make peace with Israel. Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah
used the opportunity of the special Arab League summit
meeting in March 2007 to relaunch his long-standing
proposal for a two-state solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unfortunately, the Bush
administration did not seize the opportunity -- or
revive the Taba accords that President Bill Clinton had
worked out in January 2001, even though they could
provide a basis for a lasting settlement and the Saudis
were prepared to back them. In its early days, the Bush
administration appeared ready to support a two-state
solution. It was the first U.S. administration to vote
in favor of a UN Security Council resolution calling for
the creation of a Palestinian state, and it announced in
March 2002 that it would try to achieve such a result by
2005. But here it is 2008, and little progress has been
made.
The United States has made the already complicated
Israeli-Palestinian conflict even more of a mess. Many
extremist voices in Tel Aviv and Washington believe that
time will always be on Israel's side. The pro-Israel
lobby's stranglehold on the U.S. Congress, the political
cowardice of U.S. politicians when it comes to creating
a Palestinian state, and the sustained track record of
U.S. aid to Israel support this view. But no great power
forever sacrifices its larger national interests in
favor of the interests of a small state. If Israel fails
to accept the Taba accords, it will inevitably come to
grief. If and when it does, Western incompetence will be
seen as a major cause.
NEVER SAY NEVER
Nuclear nonproliferation is another area in which the
West, especially the United States, has made matters
worse. The West has long been obsessed with the danger
of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,
particularly nuclear weapons. It pushed successfully for
the near-universal ratification of the Biological and
Toxin Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons
Convention, and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).
But the West has squandered many of those gains. Today,
the NPT is legally alive but spiritually dead. The NPT
was inherently problematic since it divided the world
into nuclear haves (the states that had tested a nuclear
device by 1967) and nuclear have-nots (those that had
not). But for two decades it was reasonably effective in
preventing horizontal proliferation (the spread of
nuclear weapons to other states). Unfortunately, the NPT
has done nothing to prevent vertical proliferation,
namely, the increase in the numbers and sophistication
of nuclear weapons among the existing nuclear weapons
states. During the Cold War, the United States and the
Soviet Union agreed to work together to limit
proliferation. The governments of several countries that
could have developed nuclear weapons, such as Argentina,
Brazil, Germany, Japan, and South Korea, restrained
themselves because they believed the NPT reflected a
fair bargain between China, France, the Soviet Union,
the United Kingdom, and the United States (the five
official nuclear weapons states and five permanent
members of the UN Security Council) and the rest of the
world. Both sides agreed that the world would be safer
if the five nuclear states took steps to reduce their
arsenals and worked toward the eventual goal of
universal disarmament and the other states refrained
from acquiring nuclear weapons at all.
So what went wrong? The first problem was that the NPT's
principal progenitor, the United States, decided to walk
away from the postwar rule-based order it had created,
thus eroding the infrastructure on which the NPT's
enforcement depends. During the time I was Singapore's
ambassador to the UN, between 1984 and 1989, Jeane
Kirkpatrick, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, treated the
organization with contempt. She infamously said, "What
takes place in the Security Council more closely
resembles a mugging than either a political debate or an
effort at problem-solving." She saw the postwar order as
a set of constraints, not as a set of rules that the
world should follow and the United States should help
preserve. This undermined the NPT, because with no teeth
of its own, no self-regulating or sanctioning
mechanisms, and a clause allowing signatories to ignore
obligations in the name of "supreme national interest,"
the treaty could only really be enforced by the UN
Security Council. And once the United States began
tearing holes in the fabric of the overall system, it
created openings for violations of the NPT and its
principles. Finally, by going to war with Iraq without
UN authorization, the United States lost its moral
authority to ask, for example, Iran to abide by Security
Council resolutions.
Another problem has been the United States' -- and other
nuclear weapons states' -- direct assault on the treaty.
The NPT is fundamentally a social contract between the
five nuclear weapons states and the rest of the world,
based partly on the understanding that the nuclear
powers will eventually give up their weapons. Instead,
during the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet
Union increased both the quantity and the sophistication
of their nuclear weapons: the United States' nuclear
stockpile peaked in 1966 at 31,700 warheads, and the
Soviet Union's peaked in 1986 at 40,723. In fact, the
United States and the Soviet Union developed their
nuclear stockpiles so much that they actually ran out of
militarily or economically significant targets. The
numbers have declined dramatically since then, but even
the current number of nuclear weapons held by the United
States and Russia can wreak enormous damage on human
civilization.
The nuclear states' decision to ignore Israel's nuclear
weapons program was especially damaging to their
authority. No nuclear weapons state has ever publicly
acknowledged Israel's possession of nuclear weapons.
Their silence has created a loophole in the NPT and
delegitimized it in the eyes of Muslim nations. The
consequences have been profound. When the West
sermonizes that the world will become a more dangerous
place when Iran acquires nuclear weapons, the Muslim
world now shrugs.
India and Pakistan were already shrugging by 1998, when
they tested their first nuclear weapons. When the
international community responded by condemning the
tests and applying sanctions on India, virtually all
Indians saw through the hypocrisy and double standards
of their critics. By not respecting their own
obligations under the NPT, the five nuclear states had
robbed their condemnations of any moral legitimacy;
criticisms from Australia and Canada, which have also
remained silent about Israel's bomb, similarly had no
moral authority. The near-unanimous rejection of the NPT
by the Indian establishment, which is otherwise very
conscious of international opinion, showed how dead the
treaty already was.
From time to time, common sense has entered discussions
on nuclear weapons. President Ronald Reagan said more
categorically than any U.S. president that the world
would be better off without nuclear weapons. Last year,
with the NPT in its death throes and the growing threat
of loose nuclear weapons falling into the hands of
terrorists forefront in everyone's mind, former
Secretary of State George Shultz, former Defense
Secretary William Perry, former Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger, and former Senator Sam Nunn warned in The
Wall Street Journal that the world was "now on the
precipice of a new and dangerous nuclear era." They
argued,"Unless urgent new actions are taken, the U.S.
soon will be compelled to enter a new nuclear era that
will be more precarious, psychologically disorienting,
and economically even more costly than was Cold War
deterrence." But these calls may have come too late. The
world has lost its trust in the five nuclear weapons
states and now sees them as the NPT's primary violators
rather than its custodians. Those states' private
cynicism about their obligations to the NPT has become
public knowledge.
Contrary to what the West wants the rest of the world to
believe, the nuclear weapons states, especially the
United States and Russia, which continue to maintain
thousands of nuclear weapons, are the biggest source of
nuclear proliferation. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director
general of the International Atomic Energy Agency,
warned in The Economist in 2003, "The very existence of
nuclear weapons gives rise to the pursuit of them. They
are seen as a source of global influence, and are valued
for their perceived deterrent effect. And as long as
some countries possess them (or are protected by them in
alliances) and others do not, this asymmetry breeds
chronic global insecurity." Despite the Cold War, the
second half of the twentieth century seemed to be moving
the world toward a more civilized order. As the
twenty-first century unfurls, the world seems to be
sliding backward.
IRRESPONSIBLE STAKEHOLDERS
After leading the world toward a period of spectacular
economic growth in the second half of the twentieth
century by promoting global free trade, the West has
recently been faltering in its global economic
leadership. Believing that low trade barriers and
increasing trade interdependence would result in higher
standards of living for all, European and U.S.
economists and policymakers pushed for global economic
liberalization. As a result, global trade grew from
seven percent of the world's GDP in 1940 to 30 percent
in 2005.
But a seismic shift has taken place in Western attitudes
since the end of the Cold War. Suddenly, the United
States and Europe no longer have a vested interest in
the success of the East Asian economies, which they see
less as allies and more as competitors. That change in
Western interests was reflected in the fact that the
West provided little real help to East Asia during the
Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. The entry of China
into the global marketplace, especially after its
admission to the World Trade Organization, has made a
huge difference in both economic and psychological
terms. Many Europeans have lost confidence in their
ability to compete with the Asians. And many Americans
have lost confidence in the virtues of competition.
There are some knotty issues that need to be resolved in
the current global trade talks, but fundamentally the
negotiations are stalled because the conviction of the
Western "champions" of free trade that free trade is
good has begun to waver. When Americans and Europeans
start to perceive themselves as losers in international
trade, they also lose their drive to push for further
trade liberalization. Unfortunately, on this front at
least, neither China nor India (nor Brazil nor South
Africa nor any other major developing country) is ready
to take over the West's mantle. China, for example, is
afraid that any effort to seek leadership in this area
will stoke U.S. fears that it is striving for global
hegemony. Hence, China is lying low. So, too, are the
United States and Europe. Hence, the trade talks are
stalled. The end of the West's promotion of global trade
liberalization could well mean the end of the most
spectacular economic growth the world has ever seen. Few
in the West seem to be reflecting on the consequences of
walking away from one of the West's most successful
policies, which is what it will be doing if it allows
the Doha Round to fail.
At the same time that the Western governments are
relinquishing their stewardship of the global economy,
they are also failing to take the lead on battling
global warming. The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to
former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, a longtime
environmentalist, and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change confirms there is international
consensus that global warning is a real threat. The most
assertive advocates for tackling this problem come from
the U.S. and European scientific communities, but the
greatest resistance to any effective action is coming
from the U.S. government. This has left the rest of the
world confused and puzzled. Most people believe that the
greenhouse effect is caused mostly by the flow of
current emissions. Current emissions do aggravate the
problem, but the fundamental cause is the stock of
emissions that has accumulated since the Industrial
Revolution. Finding a just and equitable solution to the
problem of greenhouse gas emissions must begin with
assigning responsibility both for the current flow and
for the stock of greenhouse gases already accumulated.
And on both counts the Western nations should bear a
greater burden.
When it comes to addressing any problem pertaining to
the global commons, such as the environment, it seems
only fair that the wealthier members of the
international community should shoulder more
responsibility. This is a natural principle of justice.
It is also fair in this particular case given the
developed countries' primary role in releasing harmful
gases into the atmosphere. R. K. Pachauri, chair of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, argued last
year, "China and India are certainly increasing their
share, but they are not increasing their per capita
emissions anywhere close to the levels that you have in
the developed world." Since 1850, China has contributed
less than 8 percent of the world's total emissions of
carbon dioxide, whereas the United States is responsible
for 29 percent and western Europe is responsible for 27
percent. Today, India's per capita greenhouse gas
emissions are equivalent to only 4 percent of those of
the United States and 12 percent of those of the
European Union. Still, the Western governments are not
clearly acknowledging their responsibilities and are
allowing many of their citizens to believe that China
and India are the fundamental obstacles to any solution
to global warming.
Washington might become more responsible on this front
if a Democratic president replaces Bush in 2009. But
people in the West will have to make some real
concessions if they are to reduce significantly their
per capita share of global emissions. A cap-and-trade
program may do the trick. Western countries will
probably have to make economic sacrifices. One option
might be, as the journalist Thomas Friedman has
suggested, to impose a dollar-per-gallon tax on
Americans' gasoline consumption. Gore has proposed a
carbon tax. So far, however, few U.S. politicians have
dared to make such suggestions publicly.
TEMPTATIONS OF THE EAST
The Middle East, nuclear proliferation, stalled trade
liberalization, and global warming are all challenges
that the West is essentially failing to address. And
this failure suggests that a systemic problem is
emerging in the West's stewardship of the international
order -- one that Western minds are reluctant to analyze
or confront openly. After having enjoyed centuries of
global domination, the West has to learn to share power
and responsibility for the management of global issues
with the rest of the world. It has to forgo outdated
organizations, such as the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development, and outdated processes,
such as the G-8, and deal with organizations and
processes with a broader scope and broader
representation. It was always unnatural for the 12
percent of the world population that lived in the West
to enjoy so much global power. Understandably, the other
88 percent of the world population increasingly wants
also to drive the bus of world history.
First and foremost, the West needs to acknowledge that
sharing the power it has accumulated in global forums
would serve its interests. Restructuring international
institutions to reflect the current world order will be
complicated by the absence of natural leaders to do the
job. The West has become part of the problem, and the
Asian countries are not yet ready to step in. On the
other hand, the world does not need to invent any new
principles to improve global governance; the concepts of
domestic good governance can and should be applied to
the international community. The Western principles of
democracy, the rule of law, and social justice are among
the world's best bets. The ancient virtues of
partnership and pragmatism can complement them.
Democracy, the foundation of government in the West, is
based on the premise that each human being in a society
is an equal stakeholder in the domestic order. Thus,
governments are selected on the basis of "one person,
one vote." This has produced long-term stability and
order in Western societies. In order to produce
long-term stability and order worldwide, democracy
should be the cornerstone of global society, and the
planet's 6.6 billion inhabitants should become equal
stakeholders. To inject the spirit of democracy into
global governance and global decision-making, one must
turn to institutions with universal representation,
especially the UN. UN institutions such as the World
Health Organization and the World Meteorological
Organization enjoy widespread legitimacy because of
their universal membership, which means their decisions
are generally accepted by all the countries of the
world.
The problem today is that although many Western actors
are willing to work with specialized UN agencies, they
are reluctant to strengthen the UN's core institution,
the UN General Assembly, from which all these
specialized agencies come. The UN General Assembly is
the most representative body on the planet, and yet many
Western countries are deeply skeptical of it. They are
right to point out its imperfections. But they overlook
the fact that this imperfect assembly enjoys legitimacy
in the eyes of the people of this imperfect world.
Moreover, the General Assembly has at times shown more
common sense and prudence than some of the most
sophisticated Western democracies. Of course, it takes
time to persuade all of the UN's members to march in the
same direction, but consensus building is precisely what
gives legitimacy to the result. Most countries in the
world respect and abide by most UN decisions because
they believe in the authority of the UN. Used well, the
body can be a powerful vehicle for making critical
decisions on global governance.
The world today is run not through the General Assembly
but through the Security Council, which is effectively
run by the five permanent member states. If this model
were adopted in the United States, the U.S. Congress
would be replaced by a selective council comprised of
only the representatives from the country's five most
powerful states. Would the populations of the other 45
states not deem any such proposal absurd? The West must
cease its efforts to prolong its undemocratic management
of the global order and find ways to effectively engage
the majority of the world's population in global
decision-making.
Another fundamental principle that should underpin the
global order is the rule of law. This hallowed Western
principle insists that no person, regardless of his or
her status, is above the law. Ironically, while being
exemplary in implementing the rule of law at home, the
United States is a leading international outlaw in its
refusal to recognize the constraints of international
law. Many Americans live comfortably with this
contradiction while expecting other countries to abide
by widely accepted treaties. Americans react with horror
when Iran tries to walk away from the NPT. Yet they are
surprised that the world is equally shocked when
Washington abandons a universally accepted treaty such
as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
The Bush administration's decision to exempt the United
States from the provisions of international law on human
rights is even more damaging. For over half a century,
since Eleanor Roosevelt led the fight for the adoption
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United
States was the global champion of human rights. This was
the result of a strong ideological conviction that it
was the United States' God-given duty to create a more
civilized world. It also made for a good ideological
weapon during the Cold War: the free United States was
fighting the unfree Soviet Union. But the Bush
administration has stunned the world by walking away
from universally accepted human rights conventions,
especially those on torture. And much as the U.S.
electorate could not be expected to tolerate an attorney
general who broke his own laws from time to time, how
can the global body politic be expected to respect a
custodian of international law that violates these very
rules?
Finally, on social justice, Westerns nations have
slackened. Social justice is the cornerstone of order
and stability in modern Western societies and the rest
of the world. People accept inequality as long as some
kind of social safety net exists to help the
dispossessed. Most western European governments took
this principle to heart after World War II and
introduced welfare provisions as a way to ward off
Marxist revolutions seeking to create socialist
societies. Today, many Westerners believe that they are
spreading social justice globally with their massive
foreign aid to the developing world. Indeed, each year,
the members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development, according to the organization's own
estimates, give approximately $104 billion to the
developing world. But the story of Western aid to the
developing world is essentially a myth. Western
countries have put significant amounts of money into
their overseas development assistance budgets, but these
funds' primary purpose is to serve the immediate and
short-term security and national interests of the donors
rather than the long-term interests of the recipients.
The experience of Asia shows that where Western aid has
failed to do the job, domestic good governance can
succeed. This is likely to be Asia's greatest
contribution to world history. The success of Asia will
inspire other societies on different continents to
emulate it. In addition, Asia's march to modernity can
help produce a more stable world order. Some Asian
countries are now ready to join the West in becoming
responsible custodians of the global order; as the
biggest beneficiaries of the current system, they have
powerful incentives to do so. The West is not welcoming
Asia's progress, and its short-term interests in
preserving its privileged position in various global
institutions are trumping its long-term interests in
creating a more just and stable world order.
Unfortunately, the West has gone from being the world's
primary problem solver to being its single biggest
liability.
Kishore Mahbubani
Source:
Foreign Affairs , May/June 2008
|
