Singapore Diplomat Issues Wake-up Call

With the gentlest possible manner, soothing his audience with data showing that we live in a less impoverished, less violent world than ever, Kishore Mahbubani nonetheless strived to provide a wake-up call to the Western world. His message: Asia is rising and becoming ever more optimistic through huge economic and social gains; the West is becoming pessimistic and declining in power. 

If you don't already feel it and see it for yourselves he seemed to suggest, then realize now, without a doubt, "the completely different era we are living in." 

Then he twisted the knife just a bit

He was calm, he was kind, and he achieved a conversational atmosphere. The former president of the U.N. Security Council and former ambassador of Singapore, proved his point with key vital statistics. Then twisted the knife just a bit, with good intentions, by honing in with policy critiques but also by countering possibly outdated perceptions that we may have of the U.S. and Asia in a changing world order. By 2030 more than half the world will enjoy middle class life and experience a "rare uplift of the human condition," and that's occurring now in India, China, and other non-Western nations. 

His new book, The Great Convergence, offers evidence and policy arguments. His title refers to this phenomenon: after several hundred years of global economic divergence between the East and West, we are living in a time of economic convergence.

Among his key points: America will yield its top spot in world power to China, an event that should be stable given the interdependent relationship between US debt and Chinese manufacturing. Islam and the West "worry him" but he remains optimistic because the majority of Muslim countries are also rising economically (he cited Indonesia as an example). He suggested that a two-state solution to Israeli-Palestinian conflict would go far in changing the chemical balance with Islam. To act on environmental change, he suggested we must "sacrifice equitably across the world," indicating that not much would happen unless the U.S. stopped driving SUVs.

Advocating an open system of trade and government so that all boats rise, Mahbubani may be something of a citizen of the world; he is certainly a distinctively Asian observer.

The larger question is what are we? 

If we are citizens of the world, as conceived by Voltaire in 1752, then we will not despair at the gains of other nations or turn protectionist as Mahbubani cautions.

Voltaire: "To be a good patriot is to wish that one's city may be enriched by trade, and be powerful by arms. It is clear that one country cannot gain without another loses, and that it cannot conquer without making misery. Such then is the human state that to wish for one's country's greatness is to wish harm to one's neighbors. He who should wish his fatherland might never be greater, smaller, richer, poorer, would be the citizen of the world."

Low-hanging fruit we should grab now

Seizing what he called "low-hanging fruit" Mahbubani wants to strengthen multilateral institutions like the the U.N., the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the World Health Organization but called out the U.S. "for keeping global councils weak."  Some of these institutional budgets, he noted, are smaller than that of the NYC fire department.

An Asian rags to riches narrative

Mahbubani mirrors the rapid rise of some Asian societies over his generation. He grew up in Singapore to Indian parents. They were poor, a government-sponsored food program kept him nourished, and they did not have toilets. He learned by reading at a free library. In his later teens he was admitted to a university. Today, Mahubani is a writer and university dean and professor in Singapore. He has been hailed as one of the top public intellectuals in the world. 

Mahbubani delivered the 2013 Bartels lecture at Cornell University on February 13, 2013.

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