News

The New Asian Hemisphere Rivals How the Power Struggle Between China, India

and Japan Will Shape Our Next Decade BOOKS : Nonfiction

By Thomas Fuller

The New York Times Media Group

926 words

18 June 2008

International Herald Tribune

1

4

English

© 2008 The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved.

The New Asian Hemisphere / The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East

By Kishore Mahbubani

Kishore Mahbubani

314 pages. $26.

PublicAffairs Books

*

Rivals How the Power Struggle Between China, India and Japan Will Shape Our Next Decade

By Bill Emmott

352 pages. $26.

Harcourt Books

*

Reviewed by Thomas Fuller

*

Kishore Mahbubani starts ´´The New Asian Hemisphere´´ by telling readers that some of his friends urged him not to publish the book in its current form because it risked alienating Westerners. He might have been better off taking the advice. Not because Western readers might be offended by his provocative views - those are always welcome. The trouble is that the book reads like a humorless rant, grating for any reader, Western or not.

A former high-ranking Singaporean diplomat, Mahbubani has the experience and the intellectual depth to make nuanced points on complex geopolitical questions. But what he delivers is a cri de cÅìur in rough draft. The West, he says, ´´has gone from being competent to becoming incompetent in its handling of many key global challenges.´´ China, he says without providing convincing evidence, ´´may prove even more open and cosmopolitan than the insecure societies of the West.´´ China more open than the United States?

Mahbubani´s book at times feels like it is describing the distant past, when Europeans lorded over their Asian colonies and the United States was a country of white Protestants. ´´Deeply buried in Western minds,´´ he writes, describing a one-time U.S. idea for a grouping of democracies, is a ´´desire to create a new and powerful white men´s club.´´

Mahbubani´s main point is that the West is unprepared for the rise of Asia and that its unwillingness to cede power to non-Western countries will leave the world in crisis. The five permanent members of the UN Security Council - Britain, China, France, the United States and Russia - are ´´dictators of the world´´ and the United States always gets its way, he says. (Iraq, he says, was a rare exception.) The UN needs urgent reform, with the UN General Assembly given more power, he argues.

Mahbubani´s frustration and pessimism are understandable. The past eight years have been difficult for allies of the United States who want it to adapt more nimbly and less ideologically to the challenges of the day. But the book has two main flaws. First, Mahbubani says he speaks for the 88 percent of the world that does not live in the West. The ´´primary purpose of this book,´´ he says in the introduction, ´´is to explain the world as it is seen through non-Western eyes, so that the 900 million who live in the West appreciate how the remaining 5.6 billion people view the world.´´

The notion that the voices of billions of people will rise up from the pages of this book like a Greek chorus is fanciful. As a former Singaporean government official, Mahbubani surely knows that his small and wealthy city-state is resented by its poorer neighbors for its Singapore-knows best attitude.

The second flaw is that the world is not bipolar. One has only to witness negotiations on climate change or the stalled world trade negotiations to see that it is fractured along many and often surprising fault lines. West versus the Rest is grossly simplistic. It follows the same ´´us and them´´ logic that caused so many in the world to resent George W. Bush and the United States.

The counterpoint to Mahbubani´s world view is Bill Emmott´s ´´Rivals.´´ A former Japan correspondent and editor of The Economist, Emmott is refreshingly self-deprecating, beginning his book by quoting Orwell - ´´every book is a failure.´´ Emmott deconstructs the rise of China and India and how power struggles between those two countries and Japan will shape the world. ´´There is no single entity called Asia, one that will in future demand equality of treatment and influence with America and Europe,´´ he writes. ´´Asia is divided.´´

That both Emmott´s and Mahbubani´s books were released at roughly the same time is coincidence. But read together they offer a fascinating divergence of opinion on global geopolitics.

In Mahbubani´s bipolar world, the main tension comes between the West and the rest of the planet, especially rising Asia. Emmott, by contrast, looks at the potential for conflict within Asia: historical enmities, territorial disputes in the Himalayas and the East China Sea and the rush to obtain natural resources around the globe. A ´´new power game´´ between China, India and Japan will shape the next decade and beyond, he says.

He repeats twice in the book a quote from an Indian government official: China and India both ´´think that the future belongs to us,´´ the official says. ´´We can´t both be right.´´

Or maybe they can. One point where Mahbubani and Emmott seem to agree is that the United States continues to play a stabilizing role in Asia. As Emmott puts it, it ´´is the one country from whom an intervention or retaliation would be feared if another major power were to contemplate starting its own conflict or invasion.´´

Mahbubani makes roughly the same point but calls for the United States to cede ground to Asia´s rising powers. But could it be that in this time of change, Asia needs more U.S. presence not less?

Document INHT000020080617e46i00038

starts ´´The New Asian Hemisphere´´ by telling readers that some of his friends urged him not to publish the book in its current form because it risked alienating Westerners. He might have been better off taking the advice. Not because Western readers might be offended by his provocative views - those are always welcome. The trouble is that the book reads like a humorless rant, grating for any reader, Western or not.

A former high-ranking Singaporean diplomat, Mahbubani has the experience and the intellectual depth to make nuanced points on complex geopolitical questions. But what he delivers is a cri de cÅìur in rough draft. The West, he says, ´´has gone from being competent to becoming incompetent in its handling of many key global challenges.´´ China, he says without providing convincing evidence, ´´may prove even more open and cosmopolitan than the insecure societies of the West.´´ China more open than the United States?

Mahbubani´s book at times feels like it is describing the distant past, when Europeans lorded over their Asian colonies and the United States was a country of white Protestants. ´´Deeply buried in Western minds,´´ he writes, describing a one-time U.S. idea for a grouping of democracies, is a ´´desire to create a new and powerful white men´s club.´´

Mahbubani´s main point is that the West is unprepared for the rise of Asia and that its unwillingness to cede power to non-Western countries will leave the world in crisis. The five permanent members of the UN Security Council - Britain, China, France, the United States and Russia - are ´´dictators of the world´´ and the United States always gets its way, he says. (Iraq, he says, was a rare exception.) The UN needs urgent reform, with the UN General Assembly given more power, he argues.

Mahbubani´s frustration and pessimism are understandable. The past eight years have been difficult for allies of the United States who want it to adapt more nimbly and less ideologically to the challenges of the day. But the book has two main flaws. First, Mahbubani says he speaks for the 88 percent of the world that does not live in the West. The ´´primary purpose of this book,´´ he says in the introduction, ´´is to explain the world as it is seen through non-Western eyes, so that the 900 million who live in the West appreciate how the remaining 5.6 billion people view the world.´´

The notion that the voices of billions of people will rise up from the pages of this book like a Greek chorus is fanciful. As a former Singaporean government official, Mahbubani surely knows that his small and wealthy city-state is resented by its poorer neighbors for its Singapore-knows best attitude.

The second flaw is that the world is not bipolar. One has only to witness negotiations on climate change or the stalled world trade negotiations to see that it is fractured along many and often surprising fault lines. West versus the Rest is grossly simplistic. It follows the same ´´us and them´´ logic that caused so many in the world to resent George W. Bush and the United States.

The counterpoint to Mahbubani´s world view is Bill Emmott´s ´´Rivals.´´ A former Japan correspondent and editor of The Economist, Emmott is refreshingly self-deprecating, beginning his book by quoting Orwell - ´´every book is a failure.´´ Emmott deconstructs the rise of China and India and how power struggles between those two countries and Japan will shape the world. ´´There is no single entity called Asia, one that will in future demand equality of treatment and influence with America and Europe,´´ he writes. ´´Asia is divided.´´

That both Emmott´s and Mahbubani´s books were released at roughly the same time is coincidence. But read together they offer a fascinating divergence of opinion on global geopolitics.

In Mahbubani´s bipolar world, the main tension comes between the West and the rest of the planet, especially rising Asia. Emmott, by contrast, looks at the potential for conflict within Asia: historical enmities, territorial disputes in the Himalayas and the East China Sea and the rush to obtain natural resources around the globe. A ´´new power game´´ between China, India and Japan will shape the next decade and beyond, he says.

He repeats twice in the book a quote from an Indian government official: China and India both ´´think that the future belongs to us,´´ the official says. ´´We can´t both be right.´´

Or maybe they can. One point where Mahbubani and Emmott seem to agree is that the United States continues to play a stabilizing role in Asia. As Emmott puts it, it ´´is the one country from whom an intervention or retaliation would be feared if another major power were to contemplate starting its own conflict or invasion.´´

Mahbubani makes roughly the same point but calls for the United States to cede ground to Asia´s rising powers. But could it be that in this time of change, Asia needs more U.S. presence not less?

Document INHT000020080617e46i00038

divided.´´

That both Emmott´s and Mahbubani´s books were released at roughly the same time is coincidence. But read together they offer a fascinating divergence of opinion on global geopolitics.

In Mahbubani´s bipolar world, the main tension comes between the West and the rest of the planet, especially rising Asia. Emmott, by contrast, looks at the potential for conflict within Asia: historical enmities, territorial disputes in the Himalayas and the East China Sea and the rush to obtain natural resources around the globe. A ´´new power game´´ between China, India and Japan will shape the next decade and beyond, he says.

He repeats twice in the book a quote from an Indian government official: China and India both ´´think that the future belongs to us,´´ the official says. ´´We can´t both be right.´´

Or maybe they can. One point where Mahbubani and Emmott seem to agree is that the United States continues to play a stabilizing role in Asia. As Emmott puts it, it ´´is the one country from whom an intervention or retaliation would be feared if another major power were to contemplate starting its own conflict or invasion.´´

Mahbubani makes roughly the same point but calls for the United States to cede ground to Asia´s rising powers. But could it be that in this time of change, Asia needs more U.S. presence not less?

Document INHT000020080617e46i00038

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