‘Asians have not arrived. They have just begun on the road to modernity’

In New Delhi for the release of his book, Mahbubani talks to Ravish Tiwari on Asia’s march to modernity and t4he West’s response to the global shift in power

•You call the current global situation a ‘plastic moment’ and describe the West as both part of the problem and its solution. Can you elaborate.

The very idea that the West is part of the problem is something that western minds cannot accept as they believe the West is part of the solution. We are seeing the biggest global shift in power ever in human history. When there is a shift in power, those who are used to wielding power in the past, resist change. They refuse to accept the newcomers. For example, to become the head of the IMF you must be European. To become head of World Bank, you must be American. People from other countries don’t qualify even though they are part of the fastest growing economies, have the world’s largest foreign reserves and are producing more PhDs than the West. The West is part of the problem because it resists change and because it refuses to accept that it is part of the problem.

•In your book, you point out the dichotomy between Western values and Western interests. Looking at the four big problems: terrorism, the West’s relations with the Islamic world, climate change, and nuclear non-proliferation, can you identify the interests that are compelling the West to stop this shift in power?

The Islamic world is angry with the West because they see a sharp divide between Western values and Western interests. In theory, the West opposes the occupation of territories but the last piece of occupied territory in the world today is in Palestine. And, the reason why Israel can stay for as long as it wants in Palestine is because of American support.

Then there is the issue of climate change. The problem is not just because of greenhouse gas emissions by China and India but also because of the stock of greenhouse gases emitted by the Western world ever since the Industrial Revolution. So, here the West can easily become part of the solution by accepting to pay the economic price of their past emissions and by asking India and China to pay for their current emissions. But the West is only talking about India and China’s emissions and not their own. This is an example of their double standards.

As far as the non-proliferation regime goes, it is about how basically to prevent the proliferation of countries with nuclear weapons. This is the result of a deal reached between the nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear weapon states and in that deal the non-nuclear weapon states were supposed to slowly reduce their weapons and eventually eliminate them. Most of the non-nuclear states have kept their promise but the US has modernised its nuclear arsenal and advanced its nuclear capability. It goes against the commitment made under the NPT and they are endangering the non-proliferation regime.

• Amidst the rising power of the Asian economies, you contemplate two scenarios. One, Asia’s continuing march to modernity and, two, the retreat of the West to their protectionist fortress. What seems more probable?

I think the march to modernity is the more probable scenario. Asians want to participate in this march to modernity and I think that’s a good sign.

I visualise the retreat to the fortress scenario because Western triumphalism is being replaced by a new kind of Western pessimism where many people in the West no longer believe that they can compete with young Chinese and young Indians. If Americans and Europeans no longer believe they can compete with Chinese and Indians, they become protectionist and then we enter a very dangerous world. This is why I call this as a plastic moment of world history because the West can go either way at this moment.

•While you talk of the possibility of a confrontation between the rise of Asian powers and resisting western powers, Japan is an exception. It has aligned its interests with western interests so the question of a confrontation between the two doesn’t arise.

Japan is a unique case. It was the first Asian country to modernise. For the last 150 years, the Japanese have believed that they should align their interests with the West rather than with Asia to secure a better future. Now they realise, that apart from the western bus of history, there is an Asian bus too leaving the station and now they have got to make this difficult decision on whether to stay on the western bus or move to the Asian one.

•Given your hypothesis that at times the West, particularly America, guards its interests more closely than its values, do you see any kind of grand plan on part of the US to further its interests when it offers an Indo-US nuclear deal could not have been imagined earlier?

In geopolitics, you will always have all kind of pragmatic deals. And I think the Indo-US nuclear deal is not just a pragmatic deal, it’s also a result of a geopolitical alignment.

•Do you foresee any differences within the Asian block?

Rising tension between China and Japan or China and India is conceivable. But there is also a growing interdependence within Asia. A case in point is that of ASEAN which provides a platform for the leaders of Japan, China, and India to hold discussions. Asians should not feel that they have arrived. They have not arrived. They have just begun on the road to modernity and they done a good job so far.