Bartels World Affairs Lecture: Kishore Mahbubani

good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the 2013 Henry and Nancy Horton Bartels world affairs fellowship lecture my name is Fred log of all and I am the director of the mauryan outi Center for International Studies here at Cornell I'm also a faculty member in the history department and I have the distinct pleasure to welcome this year's Barr Bartels world affairs fellow Sherma Blue Bunny about whom we'll hear more in a moment and also to welcome all of you to what I think is going to be a most stimulating lecture followed by Q&A and a reception since its founding in 1961 them the a now D Center which just celebrated its fiftieth anniversary has helped to stimulate and support and to catalyze Cornell's work in and about the world and in addition to the specialized programs that it houses and supports the center provides a broad forum for reach that for for dialogue that reaches across the disciplines and it serves and has served I think with with considerable success to internationalize the university's teaching research and outreach agenda and the Bartels world affairs fellowship is a very key component of this broader endeavor and helps I think the fellowship helps to fulfill what I see as director as perhaps our most important task of all at the center which is the broader to to foster a broader understanding of international affairs especially among our students that Cornell graduate and undergraduate but really the whole university community and it is therefore I think a key part of the fellowship that in addition to giving a public lecture the fellow also should racked with faculty with students both undergraduate and graduate students in more informal sessions in class today's guest is no exception we've really been working him hard during the day today and he's been a really good sport about it and it is thanks to the vision of mr. and mrs. bartels that a great many distinguished visitors have been here since 1980 1984 as bartels fellows I think your program lists this group they include for example Archbishop Desmond Tutu they include His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama they include former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise our Boer journalist and foreign policy expert Fareed Zakaria and most recently former President of Chile and director of UN Women Michelle Bachelet Hank and Nancy bartels could not join us this evening and I want to say on behalf of Cornell University and everybody at the einaudi Center that we are grateful to the bartels family for establishing this this fellowship back in 1984 for providing our community with these stimulating and much-discussed talks by prominent international figures I also want to take this opportunity to thank the bartels family for our new postdoctoral fellowship program at the einaudi Center this is a new focused program in the areas of foreign policy security studies and diplomatic history and we will begin this fall with two fellows in place and Einaudi each of whom will teach an undergraduate course in addition to doing their research I also would encourage you finally to to check out our website at the Einaudi Center for upcoming events speakers we have several on tap this spring the next one being Charles caption professor at Georgetown and a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who will speak a week from tomorrow that is February 21st at 4:30 p.m. in Lewis auditorium on the end of Pax Americana a subject that I think suggests a certain connection to our speaker today today we are honored to welcome to our campus a distinguished diplomat academic and writer professor Kishore mah Bhavani he will be introduced by Cornell's Provost Kent Fox and I want to say that the Provost's steadfast support of the Einaudi Center during these past years during a difficult economic environment has been I think immensely important to the center more broadly to International Studies at Cornell I ask you now to join me in welcoming Provost Fox Thank You Fred I join in Professor logo vols welcome to all of you that are here in the audience you're in for a treat with our lecture today as Fred said the bartels were lapels fellowship lecture is an event to which the entire cornell community looks forward and we're grateful not only to the bartels but also to the annuity center itself for a sponsorship of this talk for of this fellowship and also obviously we give our thanks to the generosity of Hank and Nancy Bartels for the many distinguished lectures that they have sponsored and that have graced Cornell today it's my honor as Fred said to introduce the 2013 Henry II and Nancy Horton Bartels world affairs fellow professor Kishore Babu Bonnie few today know Asia as well as Kishore Madhubani and even fewer combine it with a deep understanding of the West's strengths and frailties those words come from a colleague at the University of Chicago professor Rajan commenting on professor MA Bonnie's latest book the great convergence Asia the West and the logic of one world which was published just last week and his title is also the title of today's talk how professor mama Bonnie came to know both East and West so well there's a story that began in that began in Asia and rather modest circumstances he was born in the British colony that time of Singapore to Indian parents but was fortunate enough to had a strong to have a strong determined mother and also not far away a free library where he devoured books at every opportunity his love of reading eventually led to his admission to the University of Singapore were in 1971 he earned a degree in philosophy he wanted to be a philosopher but his scholarship obligated him to work for the government for five years so he began a career in Singapore's foreign service although along the way he did find time to earn an advanced degree in philosophy in 1976 professor ma ba ba nee remained in the Foreign Service for some 33 years and was posted to Cambodia to Malaysia Washington and New York he served twice as Singapore's ambassador to the United Nations in January and in January 2002 excuse me in 2001 in may 2002 he served as president of the UN Security Council he returned to academia in 2004 and today he is the Dean and professor of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore throughout his career professor ma ba ba nee has made a name for himself both as a skilled diplomat and also as a thoughtful and compelling and provoking writer he has been honored by the government of Singapore with his public administration medal and also he's received the foreign policy Association medal he has been hailed as one of the world's top 100 intellectuals by foreign policy and prospect magazines as well as also and also as one of foreign policies top global thinkers in 2010 and 2011 his widely noted books include Canadians think understanding the divide between east and west published first in 1998 beyond the age of innocence rebuilding trust between America and the world 2005 and the new Asian hemisphere the irresistible shift of global power to the east and 2008 as a reviewer noted speaking of the new Asian hemisphere quote he takes the rules established by the West on democracy rule of law and social justice holds them up like a big mirror and he shows the distorted reflection practice by US and Europe as professor mama Bonnie himself has said quote the main goal of my writings is to awaken the world to the completely different historical era we are entering we are fortunate to have him today as our speaker and to discuss quote the great convergence Asia the West and the logic of one world please join me in welcoming professor Kishore Babu Bonnie thank you very much thank you very much for the very generous introduction but as you know after you get such a generous reduction it all goes downhill let me begin first of all by thanking mr. mrs. Bartels for this wonderful fellowship that they went out at Cornell I'm really honored to be here hope you convey my thanks to them and I've really been happy to come back here because some of you may not know may notice or may not know this I'm a very old friend of Cornell I first came here in 1975 because at that time I don't know the I'm sure you all know this Cornell was regarded as the global center for Southeast Asian Studies many of my friends were studying here many got their PhDs here so this was a sort of the the dream place to come to for many Southeast Asians so I'm glad to be back here now after almost 40 years back again in Cornell now the difficulty is you know when you give a lecture is deciding how you start you know in America you begin with a joke in Asia you begin with an apology so what sometimes I find the best thing to do is to combine the two traditions and sort of apologize for the bad joke and but the bad joke actually was told originally by the first chief minister of Singapore mr. David Marshall mr. and he was of Iraqi Jewish origin which is interesting because Singapore the predominantly Chinese society and one of his favorite stories was about a young Catholic priest who was very devout and wanted to pray all the time but then he also had this habit of smoking so he couldn't take the tension within smoking and praying so he finally went to see his bishop and he said you know Monsignor may I have your permission to smoke what I am praying so the bishop replied said out of the question impossible no smoking below so he walks out looking dejected and then meets another priests and the corridor and explains what happened and they said the older wiser free system come with me there's been a misunderstanding so they go back to see the bishop again and then they say Monsignor there's been a major understanding all that our friend here wants to ask his permission to pray while he smokes and the visitors of course how can anyone deny man permission to pray now I begin with that story because it's such a good way of telling that you can have the same event right described in two exactly opposite ways so there can be two narratives about the same event so in the same way I believe that in the world of today there are two dominant narratives about our world the one of course the stronger one the one that has actually dominated the global discourse for the past few hundred years of course is the Western narrative and then now what you find emerging in a sense is a non Western narrative to balance the Western narrative and the paradox about our time is that for a long time the West always provided the most optimistic societies of the world the believers that you could make the world a better place and they would succeed in making the world a better place but today in a remarkable reversal of a very long historical pattern we have a situation where the West has become progressively more pessimistic I mean if you want to if you want to drown in pessimism just go to Europe you know and you'll find very few young people there believe the future we will be great if you go to Spain I forget what the unemployment rate is for young people is about 40 percent now but that kind of obviously creates a dramatic sense of pessimism so by contrast now it is the rest of the world that is becoming more optimistic and so this is in a sense is the great the main reason why I wrote this book the great convergence and what I'm going to speak about today because quite remarkably that while the 12% of the world who which lives in the West progressively as you know becoming one more worried about the future the 88% will live outside the West actually becoming more and more optimistic about the world and about the future and this is therefore by far the most optimistic book that I've written of all the earlier books that I have done now so what I propose to do in an effort to explain what I what is the thesis of the book I'll do it in three parts first part I'll try to share with you some good news I may actually drown you in good news so that to make you understand why there's so much optimism now in the rest of the world and then of course I mean as you all know the world is not a perfect place there are challenges we face I'll discuss some of the big challenges the world faces and then I hope to end with giving a few remarkably simple prescriptions now that we can follow to make the world a better place and there are some incredibly easy I think what's called in American discourse low-hanging fruit out there that we can pick to make the world a better place and it's a pity that it's not being picked and that's why also why I wrote this book at this time so let me let me begin with the good news and you know if you if you want to understand the good news the best way to put it is that the world has never been better than it is today in several dimensions and so let me give you two or three concrete examples firstly as you know since the dawn of history the number one thing that most societies have been concerned about issues of war and peace and throughout history wars have killed millions and millions of people destroyed societies and we've always thought that there was an eternal feature of the human condition but today and it's amazing that is going unnoticed wars are becoming a sunset industry all over the world the danger of a major interstate war is the lowest it has ever been in fact in very few places do you feel that war is going to break out in a big fashion and so as a result of that the number of people who are dying in conflict again is the lowest it's ever been since the districts have been kept I in my book I caught two big two major sources the first is Harvard professor Steven Pinker who wrote a book recently called the better angels of our nature and he provides some remarkable data and what is significant about Steven Pinker's data by the way she says he doesn't just say that people less people are dying as a result of less conflicts he is also saying there's less violence in human society today and that is a remarkable shift an improvement in the human condition so maybe as recently as the 1950s half a million people would die in some kind of conflict or another today barely thirty thousand died in any kind of conflict in a year and we even though the population as you know has grown dramatically since the 1950s so that's one very sharp drop that has happened and you travel through region of the region you can see that the expect exception of the course of the Middle East and bases like that by and large people in many regions are experiencing greater peace and of course the best place incidentally to describe where peace has come is Southeast Asia you know when I grew up Saudis Asia was supposed to be the Balkans of Asia and we experienced all kinds of conflicts communist parties in internal insurgencies war in Indochina and now Southeast Asia is at peace and maybe someday I hope can you should encourage a young PhD student Cornell to write a thesis did Cornell University bring peace to Southeast Asia he may have you know and I explained it a wide we have so that's one example how lives have improved the second example you know we've always been worried about global poverty about people at the bottom you know as people who are starving and so on and so forth and here to a remarkable something remarkable is happening you know in the year 2000 when I was ambassador to the UN the UN established something called the Millennium Development Goals MDGs and they set up several MDGs about education you know health and everything but one of the most important MDGs that they establish was that we should strive for the halving of global poverty by 2015 2015 by the way is two years from now and you know what the amazing thing is that while many of the MDGs will not be met because they were fairly ambitious goals the halving of global poverty will be met and in fact will be exceeded we have actually done a remarkable job in reducing global poverty and of course a lot of it of course you can guess is due to the success of China and India I mean China alone has lifted 600 million people out of absolute poverty as a result of its rapid growth so we have done something remarkable there and by the way when you do that the benefits percolate very widely you know just about two Sundays ago when I arrived in in New York happen to be turning on the television set watching Fareed Zakaria show was the battles were fellow last year and he was interviewing Bill Gates and so he said we asked Bill Gates how do you see the future and Bill Gates said oh I'm very optimistic so far it says why why are you optimistic it's very simple he says in his work and you know he's trying his work this dress best to help people who are very poor and suffering he says he said if I remember the statistic correctly he said Fareed as recently as 20 years ago 20 million babies would die below the age of five ten years ago he went on the twelve million now is down to five million now why is this statistic important this statistic is important because babies as you know are the most vulnerable citizens of any society so when babies die the ecosystem that is supposed to protect them is not working but when babies begin to survive it shows that the ecosystem has been created to protect these babies whether it's hygiene education health care whatever it is it's improving and so blessed babies are dying and so that shows how we are in a sense reducing global poverty and most remarkably the in green one is you know one of the most traditionally most conservative institutions institutions in the intelligence agencies and something/someone organization are the National Intelligence Council you can predict would be very conservative about talking about the future but the National Intelligence Council is confidently predicted that global poverty will be eliminated totally by 2030 to make such a prediction you obviously got some positive trends you got to build on to achieve that now that's at the bottom men now at the middle class and something even more remarkable is happening in the world now as you mentioned Kent you know I grew up in Singapore in relatively poor circumstances in fact I was put on a special feeding program when I was six years old because I was technically underweight now you can see that's no longer the case and I lived in a typical that well Singapore there were ethnic riots per capita income was the same as Ghana's five hundred dollars a year so I grew up in a traditional and we had no flush toilet I mean I grew up in a traditional third-world environment but now Singapore is you know in one lifetime gone from being having the per-capita income of Ghana to now having a per capita income that is even higher than his former colonial master the British so we have superseded the British in terms of our per capita income so and everyone thought that the Singapore story was just a small exception but that Singapore story is now being replicated on a massive scale and just if you you know I won't give you too many statistics but if you want to leave with one statistic that in a sense drives home the point that we are experiencing what's called the great convergence just remember this one statistic now today in Asia are of the total population about 500 million people in Asia enjoy middle-class living standards right not that small some 500 million but by 2020 now that's by the way only seven years from now that number is going to explode from 500 million to 1.75 billion an increase of three and a half times in seven years the world has never ever seen this before this is the most remarkable transformation in human history a remarkable upliftment of the human condition and this is all part of the great convergence that is happening and globally too by the way they're now several their world bank sources the other sources you can find they will show the globally the middle classes are going to explode all around the world and by 2030 more than half the world's population will be enjoying middle class standards that's a new world coming from the great convergence of course the the big question to try and figure out is why is this happening you know you know and I and I honestly confess that there are so many factors at play that drive the great convergence that it's hard to say which which are the ones that are the most critical but one point that I emphasize in my book and in my writings and everywhere is that the reason for this great convergence is that overall in in all parts of the world people are coming to a common understanding of what it takes to build a good Society you know there's a common set of aspirations developing all over the world and that's why also wars are diminishing because any kind most countries now realize that is the stupidest thing you can do is to go to war know this you may think oh that's pretty that's pretty normal but remember that barely a hundred years ago right when Norman Angell Rorie's famous book you know saying the world has become so interdependent war it's not a possibility instead as you know the Google war one broke up and some people say to me to show what you're saying in 2013 reflects what people were saying hundred years ago when they said no wars instead World War one broke up but the difference between our time 2013 and 1913 is in 1913 the zeitgeist was such that it was glorious to go to war and so the brightest young minds from Oxford and Cambridge would sign up and say give me a gun I want to go and fight a marital Wharf a little England out there in the continent right so everyone thought that's the honorable thing to do go fight today you have to be remarkably stupid to do that and I and I said I traveled around the world I mean very few young people saying give me a gun I want to go fight in Europe or fight anyway right so that's that's an illustration of Steven Pinker's point that violence is becoming less common in human society and by the way his explanation for why things are improving in the world which I agree with and which are reinforced in my book is that there's been a escalator reason around the world and we are all most of humanity is going up the escalator reason we understand what it takes to build a better society for our people and we are doing so so a common set of norms enveloping the world and that also is part of the great convergence so so I actually believe that in the years to come the world will become better and better and we should recognize it and take advantage of it and strengthen it and that's why again I wrote the book but let me now quickly turn to do to assure you that I haven't got my head in the clouds that I understand what's going on in the world and so someone who's been in diplomacy for 33 years and I'm perfectly acutely aware of all the challenges and problems there in the world so let me discuss some of the key challenges and problems that the world face that the world faces not now let me just mention just three okay I mean that many but let me just mention three the most important challenge especially in geopolitical terms is always one between the world's greatest power and the world's greatest emerging power the world's greatest power is the United States of America the world's greatest emerging power is China and as you know throughout history with one major exception and the one major exception was when the British ceded the number-one spot to the Americans that happened quite peacefully maybe the British thought let's hand over power to another anglo-saxon country makes no difference anyway but today when the anglo-saxons have to hand over power to for the first time in 700 years to a non-western power in theory we should be seeing rising levels of tension between United States and China and if that happen that would be perfectly normal it is normal to see rising level of tension between the world's greatest power and the world's greatest emerging power which is why it is quite puzzling that you seeing the opposite if you look objectively at the us-china relationship and there are tensions there are difficulties there rivalries but overall the level of tension has been going down between the two and of course you can say this may be accidental but I suspect it also reflects conscious decisions that have been made by various policymakers I think on the Chinese side they have worked out very carefully rather sophisticated long-term policy or how to emerge as a great power which I discussed in my previous book the new Asian hemisphere and they have decided that the best way to stabilize the us-china relationship is to create a very deep interdependence within the two so as you know China relies on the United States to provide markets for its manufactured products that's why China has a major trade surplus with the United States America at the same time it creates a balance dependence and in the United States relies on China to buy US Treasury bills so that they both need each other at this time and this is the reason why this is unusual if you go just think back many of you I'm sure I still remember the Cold War and remember how there was virtually no trade within the United States and Soviet Union and the surveillance system even buying the US Treasury bills see the difference within that time and this time about the deep interconnectedness that has happened and this deep interconnectedness which i think is going to grow in the years to come will also mean that the tensions between US and China will be managed and not get out of hand in the world of tomorrow we can discuss more of course in a Q&A if you have any questions in that area another big challenge and the one actually I worry about the some extent a bit more is the one within the were what I call the chowder the tension between Islam and the West and this as you know has got very deep roots it goes back to the Crusades a thousand years ago it hasn't been fully resolved and that's why also as you know in in it is it's not as a big secret that many of the conflicts you see it today happening either in or around the Islamic world you see that happening in Syria today you see it with some extent turbulence in in Egypt and Tunisia and so on and so forth there are some tensions and difficulties in that area but the I also believe by the way that if you look at it objectively at the Islamic world as a whole you'll be surprised to discover that the majority of them are actually enjoying the great convergence that that I speak about and to give you one simple example a country that Cornell knows very well Indonesia right you know Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country it has a population of about 40 to 50 million larger than North Africa combined I mean if you add up a Algeria Tunisia India's population is bigger so while everyone is focused on the difficulties in North Africa they forget that the world's most populous country Muslim country is steadily growing at 67 percent a year comfortably and now he's on his way to having one of the top ten largest economies in the world in the next 10 15 years and no one's noticed it and a country like Bangladesh which Henry Kissinger just dismissed as a basket case right he said this country will never succeed it's been growing at 6% over the last ten years so there there are parts of the world in the Islamic world that are also experiencing the great convergence and I think that's gonna spread but there are obviously certain sections of it especially in the Middle East and North Africa that are having problems and here one point I'm going to make a very delicate point I got to make it very delicate the year which is that if you really want to remove the poison and it is a fact that there's some poison in their relations within West and the Islam there is actually a small silver bullet solution that's available which is to have as quickly as possible a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine believe me if you can do that that would make a huge difference in terms of changing the chemistry of the relations within Islam and the West and I actually wrote a column in The Financial Times I think about a year ago and I said I speaking as a friend of Israel I said to Israel please now is the time for you to make peace with Palestine and have a two-state solution because time is no more on Israel side because if you look at it over the next 1020 years even though the u.s. absolute power will remain the same the u.s. relative power will decline and this power the Islamic world I grant you will rise in the next few decades so Israel will be squeezed by declining us power and rising Islamic power so time is no more in Israel side and then I say as a friend of Israel make peace now don't wait until things go badly for you but that's another example thank you I'm glad one person agrees in this room I because I say that because it is a very delicate and sensitive subject to raise in most places and that's why I raised it very delicately now let me also mention the other challenge which actually is not a job political challenge but I which I think is the number one thing that worries many of you what's going to happen to the global environment we are all talking what the middle class is wonderful that the middle class is exploding you'll hit more than half the world's population they'll be going out there they'll be buying refrigerators cars consuming more energy what's going to happen to our planet and that obviously is a challenge and that's something that we need to address and clearly if you're going to find a solution to global warming and I discuss that in the book too we have to find a formula that allocates what I call sacrifice equitably across the world because there's no solution to global warming unless we all make some kind of sacrifice or another and I can give you just to give you a concrete example why that's so important as you know both China and India I've been put under a lot of pressure to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and therefore reduce their coal-fired plants and all that but when someone told Minister of India Manmohan Singh was a remarkably good man by the way when what are you going to do about this he said Manmohan Singh replied I think it's a fair response he says I'm not going to deny four hundred million Indians of electricity just so that Americans can keep on driving their SUVs right if you want Indians to sacrifice and maybe consume less electricity when are you Americans going to sacrifice and drive less SUVs so this is where the global warming thing will come comes about that we have to find an equitable formula to settle this problem and I actually at the end of the day I'm reasonably optimistic that we can achieve that kind of agreement why now this brings me to the third part of my presentation on how we can continue to make the world a better place and let me talk about the low-hanging fruit that is out there the easiest is you know we live in one way or another increasingly in a global village right it's becoming smaller and smaller now every village as you know needs a village council so if we are becoming a global village we should be strengthening the global village councils rather than weakening them right and yeah one of the things I do in the book is that I give away what I call a dirty little secret and what is a dirty little secret it is that it's been the consistent policy of the Western countries led by the United States of America to keep global village councils weak and that's why the UN is kept weak that's why the UN's specialized agencies are kept weak and that's why they're not functioning now this may have made eminent sense when the West was completely dominant and assume will be dominant forever they will be number one we don't need global village councils right but today in a world that is changing so fast when the West is increasingly becoming a smaller and smaller minority in the world it is time for the West to rethink what his policy should be and and and and this is why I also begin in this book in the very first introduction with a quote from a speech that Bill Clinton gave in Yale in 2003 and this is what dopant and said he said if America assumes that it will be number one forever then fine we can carry on doing whatever we are doing it doesn't matter what the rest of the world thinks by Eden if we can conceive of the possibility that we may no longer be number one but may be number two surely it is in America's interests to strengthen the rule space order that will then constrain whoever is the next number one now this is a remarkably wise thing for Bill Clinton to say in 2003 the tragedy is that he could not say when he was president indeed I described in the book how his deputy secretary of state then stroked out that a friend of mine who came out with the book also describes how when Bill Clinton was president he actually wanted to raise the subject isn't it in America's interest to do stronger multilateral institutions while we are number one so that when you become number two the next number one will be constrained multilateralism but stroked-out that said in his book all of Bill Clinton's advisers told him that if you raise this it'll be political suicide for you Americans don't want to hear what American thinking number two and this is this is a real tragedy because frankly now is the time for United States and the other Western countries to realize that it is in their long-term rational self-interest to strengthen multilateral institutions so I'm not appealing to idealism I'm not appealing to altruism I'm appealing to pure naked self-interest and it is in the naked self-interest of the West to change its policy towards multilateral institutions and the thing that's actually puzzling me and I haven't solved this puzzle yet is how is it that the West which always prided itself on having the most rational the most sort of scientific logical approaches to solving problems is now doing the exact opposite when it comes to is long-term self-interest which is that it is carrying on on autopilot continuing to weaken these multilateral institutions even though it's no longer in Western interests to do so so one of my biggest hopes with this book is to actually persuade the sophisticated vested audiences especially audiences like this to please go back and look carefully at your policies and change them now because you know if you try to create a new global architecture from scratch it is impossible but if you can take the existing global architecture and strengthen it then you can do wonders with it and there are some remarkably irrational Western policies towards multilateral institutions to give you one example there is it's been a Western policy one way they keep multilateral institutions is to have what's called a zero budget growth policy so even though the world economy has become bigger and bigger even though multilateral institutions are large and bigger handling problems of a larger global population their budgets are actually shrinking and that's because of Western demands and this as a result is weakening institutions that the West should not be weakening today and let me give you two dramatic examples the first and the most obvious example when you live in a global village as you know that if a pandemic breaks out right it's not going to stop at any border right pandemics don't carry passports they travel across borders effortlessly so if you live in a small global village it's in your interest to strengthen the global health agency which is called the World Health Organization and you know what 20 years ago 75 percent of whu-oh s budget came from regular assessed contributions which the organization could rely on and therefore make long-term plans and only 25 percent came from voluntary contributions which could vary year by year we want to develop a long-term network of health inspectors you have to rely on assessed contributions and not voluntary contributions after 20 years have passed after we've experiences challenges like SARS today 25% of the w-h-o budget comes from assessed contributions and 75 percent comes from voluntary contributions and that's insanity on a global scale you don't develop a strong World Health Organization if you can make it rely on short-term voluntary contributions you're weakening a global agency just when we needed another example the United States and other Western countries afraid of nuclear proliferation if you're afraid of nuclear proliferation what you need to have is more nuclear inspectors to have more nuclear inspectors you must give more money to the International Atomic Energy Agency the IAEA and I thought surely the West's which is so frightened nuclear proliferation will be giving more money to IAEA guess what again the exact opposite I discovered this at first hand because a few years ago nesto said yo the former president of Mexico was invited to chair commision of eminent persons look at the future of IAEA I was a member of that Commission and it was absolutely shocking to see how even the IAEA is being strangled by this irrational Western policies of depriving them of more regular SS contributions so these are examples of low-hanging fruit we these policies can be changed overnight instantly and they'll cost a little money you know if you want to understand how small the budget for the UN Secretariat is the new budget for the UN Secretariat which takes care of 7 billion people is smaller than that of the New York City Fire Department if you can have enough money to fund the New York City Fire Department for one city of 7 billion people surely you can fund something more for 7 billion people right that's an example of how absurd the scale is now of course there are other multilateral institutions there'll be harder to fix there are organizations like the UN Security Council the IMF the World Bank but in the book I also provide specific concrete ways in which they can be resolved the UN Security Council has been trying to reform itself for 20 years it set up an open-ended working group on UN Security Council reform after 20 years is achieved nothing so people say why don't we just change the name of the working group from the open-ended working group on Security Council reform to the never-ending working group on Security Council reform there will be a more accurate description but you know the reason why Security Council reform hasn't happened is for every new great power that wants to come in for every Germany that for every Brazil that wants to come in that's an Argentina that says why not me for every Japan that wants to come in there's a South Korea that says why not me you know for every Nigeria that wants to come in as a South Africa that says why not me and the best example of course when I was ambassador the UN came from Italy because and then I was ambassador to the UN Germany and Japan were pushing very hard to get into its permanent members of the UN Security Council and the Italian ambassador stood up in a forum as big as this and said you know why are you only pushing for Germany and Japan to become permanent members of UN Security Council we Italy we lost World War two also so we qualify so you can you can see how deep you can see how how how strongly these countries feel about this so to solve that problem what I have is a formula called the 777 formula where you have seven permanent members but you also have seven semi permanent members taken from 28 States so all these losers you know like South Korea and Pakistan and all that they become winners because they get a semi-permanent seat when they when they when the neighbor gets a permanent seat and so it's a way of breaking the log jam which is what I've tried to do so the reason I mentioned this is that everybody seems to the thing that when you look at the world and you see all these global problems and you assume there are no solutions out there all I'm saying to you is that in many ways there are solutions out there and what's even more remarkable is that despite the fact we don't have a great global plan to make the world a better place we are to be making it a better place we should recognize it and I'm confident that if you recognize it and take advantage of these trends we can create an even better will in the years to come thank you very much oh yes sir Bob Bonnie and I are going to sit here and take some questions from the audience they're gonna be microphones up here and I would ask those that want to ask questions that took you up at the microphones so uh I'll start as the microphones are being set to show you you were both president of the UN Security Council and now you're an academic dean which jobs are harder that's a rare our Dean's and others in the room well I can tell you what Henry Kissinger said he said that academic politics is so much more vicious because the stakes are so low I don't know I must be fair though I am very fortunate as a Dean to have a very collegial faculty in the Lee Kuan Yew School where I'm Dean and I and most people tell me that's very unusual by the way but I am very happy that we have that and so I've actually enjoyed my ideas as dean but and in the you know but I should emphasize that when you are president of the UN Security Council your hands are tied in many many ways because even though in theory you're the president of the council the power and the council rests in the five permanent members who have the veto and the ten of us who are non permanent members really have very limited scope to make changes so I would say I have greater scope to do things as Dean then as president of UN Security Council okay fair enough any questions from the audience yes I'm sure you're familiar with Daron Acemoglu and Robinson's thesis of history presented innate why nations fail basically there's they're arguing that inclusive political institutions lead to inclusive economic institutions and that's been the cause of the rapid growth that we've had there are exceptions that that temporary in their view of which Singapore is one but as not having the democracy that they would define and I but more interesting is China and the projection of the future of China there's very rapid growth that they've had so far do you what is your response or what would you maybe want to reword their thesis and then project the future of China and a number of the other countries of the world that are now rapidly growing like Vietnam that do not have inclusive political institutions even though they they seem to be growing rapidly and have a pretty competitive and canned state capitalist system of economic production yeah well I I must confess to you that I haven't read the book Why nations fail although I'm aware that this is and I think you did a very good job of summarizing it by the way that in their view the countries that will succeed will be I mean they don't use the word Western they use the word as you said inclusive political institutions and therefore they assume that the West will continue to succeed and what you've seen in China Vietnam and elsewhere just temporary phenomenon and the West will win in the long run and I I mean you poss you can never tell okay I mean it may be true this may well be true it may be may happen but I I would say it's literally from my point of view is an exercising great delusion and the reason why I say is an exercising great delusion is that the great paradox here is that you know in terms of what's happening in the world is that the Western project has succeeded you know as you know the Western project was to spread science and technology education learning all over the world and the rest is essentially succeeded in educating the world and the reason why a country like China is doing well is not because of its authoritarian system because you know it had an authoritarian system on the mouth it failed it had an authoritative underdog and he succeeded so what was the difference and the difference was that and this is what I explained my previous book the new Asian hemisphere countries like China and other Asian countries finally understood absorb implemented seven pillars of Western wisdom and the Seven Pillars of Western wisdom on which I normally give a one-hour lecture I just read them out to you free market economics mastery of Science and Technology meritocracy culture pragmatism culture peace rule of law and education these seven pillars of Western wisdom are now actually being applied more powerfully in China than anywhere else and so China's growth is not due to its authoritarian rulers is due to its ability to absorb and implement this seven pillars of Western wisdom and more importantly the Chinese mind has been opened up in a remarkable way as a result of 30 years of opening up and integrating with the rest of the world so even we I don't know how long China's authoritarian government will last I don't think the Chinese Communist Party can last forever I think that his calm his body eventually at some point in time will have to give up power too but that's not the critical variable the critical variable is that the Chinese society is implementing all these seven pillars of Western wisdom and and and and that the the most provocative thing that I say by the way is that the paradox is that in some ways the West is walking away from its 7 pillars of Western wisdom at a time when the East is embracing them and to give you a simple example for a long time the United States was the greatest defender of free trade in the world would always push for free trade agreements push for the success of trading now after trading ground today the United States is Moschino has great difficulty signing free trade agreements and by contrast their largest free trade agreements in the world are being signed in East Asia within China and ASEAN 1.8 billion people within India and ASEAN 1.7 billion people within Japan and ASEAN within South Korea and ASEAN between share a New Zealand ASEAN and he believe me the trade is growing so rapidly in East Asia and and that's it's it's one of the most amazing global phenomena we've seen in recent times explosion of trade and all these forces will carry on regardless of whether or not there is a Communist Party or not in China so I actually at the end of they believe that their thesis is wrong and that time will show that these other factors not the ones that mentioned they'll explain the success of societies then then you do not predict that the transition to democracy that occurred in Korea and Japan of course under under our occupation and that appears to be have occurred in Taiwan as well that that's going to happen in Singapore and in China well it's by the way I should let you know and this is a it's already happened in Singapore by the way in the last elections in 2011 three government ministers lost their seats and I think these three government ministers Minister of Foreign Affairs ii Minister of Finance and the senior minister state foreign affairs would be very puzzled to learn that there's no democracy in Singapore after having lost their seats in elections and just a few weeks ago the Singapore government had a by-election in which it lost again so you see this is an example of how things are changing so fast and we have difficulty in keeping up with the new changes that happening and in the case of China I keep emphasizing that China eventually will have to become a democracy the destination is not in doubt it's only the rule and timing and here the Chinese learnt a very powerful lesson from the how the Soviet Union went from a communism to democracy overnight the Russian economy imploded infant mortality rates went up life expectancy came down the Russian people suffered so the Chinese said we don't want the Chinese people to suffer in the way the Soviet Union did in the way transform itself overnight so the the the Chinese would be careful about having the Communist Party give up his rule but even though the China that China doesn't have the kind of political freedoms that the United States and other societies enjoy there has been an explosion of personal freedoms in in China in 30 years ago in China you could not choose whom to marry you could not choose when to have a child you could not choose what to wear you cannot choose where to study you cannot choose your travel that was 30 years ago today the Chinese can do all those things and each year this is a remarkable statistic 70 million Chinese leave China freely and go overseas and each year 70 million Chinese go back to China freely are they going back to jail are they so stupid are they going back to the despotic government or are they going back to the China that has experienced a far greater improvement the last 30 years that it has in the past 200 years so from the point of view of the Chinese people they have seen the most dramatic improvement their living standards and therefore they have actually a very powerful reason for carrying on with system as long as it keeps working and delivering this rapid growth because they have experienced far greater improvement than any of the ancestors ever did I think we have some questions over here please come just come to the microphone hi first of all I wanted to thank you for coming to speak my question is what role do you feel multilateralism serves and could potentially serve in confronting global inequality and more specifically in terms of you know you can you repeat that please sure what role do you feel multilateralism serves and could potentially serve in confronting global inequality in terms of wage-earning profiles between workers global inequality you mean yeah well I I hope it's not so much multilateralism per se that's going to reduce global inequality it is the whole global economic ecosystem that we have developed since the end of World War two that is part of the reason why we having so you know in terms of global economic growth we have experience in remarkable economic growth over the last since the end of World War two global trade has exploded and as a result of countries integrating themselves with the global economy that's why they are succeeding so look at China for example China was a closed system economic system for 30 years nothing changed the Chinese people did not improve themselves but when China opened yourself up and integrated with the global community then the Chinese succeeded in reducing poverty and also in that in that process reducing global inequality now they are still by the way I must emphasize there's a lots of challenges out there okay there's still lots of people who are still poor who need help and so on and so forth but the overall trend line is such that it is very positive and that's why we need to preserve this global economic ecosystem that we have developed because if the West becomes frightened and if the West becomes protectionist at this point in history there will be a huge disaster so our main priority I think in the next few decades is to keep this open system alive as long as possible so I turn to my right question over here first the first professor mu ba ba ba ba thank you so much for for speaking to us I guess my question is uh on your contention that you know international organizations budgets are are very low and you know the West Western powers do have have a role and in perpetuating that problem on that I definitely agree with you but I am wondering however if you could if you could address you know the rising Eastern powers of corresponding lack of commitment as well you know for example I believe you know Peters about People's Republic of China's contribution to the to the UN's main budget depending on your source is between you know low three high three percent so I was wondering if you know how would you reconcile that fact yeah oh I I completely agree with you I I do think that I think you know the the the thing about China is that it adopted a very wise policy when it is rising not to aspire to its global leadership and that's why China took a very low profile internationally but my message to the Chinese government is that you can no longer take this low profile now that if you emerge as the world's second largest economy you have to take on greater global responsibility and so I agree with you that the Chinese government should pay more to multilateral organizations like United Nations and all and I think it's in Chinese national interest to do that also unfortunately the name of the game in United Nations is that in theory if these multilateral institutions are working to serve global interests we should have a global consensus to raise contributions to the multilateral organization but the name of the game in in the United Nations and I've been ambassador there for ten and a half years is a zero-sum game right everybody wants to pay less so for example since everything has two hundred percent so the United States reduces contribution from 25% to 22% as you know some years ago as a result 3% had to be allocated to others so everybody has fought of efforts to pay more and that's a tragedy but all that happened because the global community doesn't yet realize the value of these multilateral institutions like the World Health Organization and so on and so forth and once we can rebuild a new global consensus that says our world needs stronger global village councils then I think we can you we won't see this problem of countries shortchanging this multi right organization because I keep emphasizing to you the amount of money there takes to keep the UN going is peanuts you know I don't know how much the United States spend in the Iraq war was it three trillion dollars so I mean Joseph Stiglitz says is three trillion dollars I mean I mean look at the amount of money you spend three trillion dollars over seven years right now I think if you took my maths is not that good one percent what is one percent of three trillion dollars tell me ten percent is 300 billion am I correct one percent is three thirty billion dollars thirty billion dollars you can fix the UN no problem one percent of what you're spending it up and have some left over for Cornell yeah question here yes sir well sorry I'm also from Singapore and I just wanted to let you know that your true inspiration to me because you represent everything that someone from a tiny island can achieve and that's just amazing to me but my question actually is I agree with you that there are very optimistic solutions to all the problems you've highlighted but how optimistic are you that you're actually going to be listened to on the political level of decision-making because it appears to me that while you're appearing to a very naked self-interest as you said there seems to be a trend going on that a lot of people don't want to be rational about this yeah well I mean I you know I always believe that the the best thing you can do is to try and write a book that ahead of his time right if there was already a global consensus that hey the West should change course and support the United Nations other Matthew then my book is not needed so but I actually believe but I you know I have found over time incidentally the great thing about writing books is that they're there as a permanent record you know you can't take them away that day and I kept saying I started writing in 1993 my first essay for the magazine Foreign Affairs I said watch out Asia is rising 30 years ago and with each passing year each passing decade every prediction I made has come true you know so so whatever I say in this book I'm confident will be rejected in the next five years maybe 10 years but after that I'm confident within 10 years people will see yes this is the right thing so it's always good to write things ahead of time and then that time vindicate your message and not not not try to just parlay that conventional wisdom of the day any question on this side nope over here so my question has to do building off the teaser singaporean by the way yeah two questions that that came before me focused a lot on the idea of interests itself and from the way I see it you are suggesting the relocation of interest from the interest in transaction and in in the moment of transaction to a long-term sort of interest so that's that's what your concept of sacrifice is trying to do and so relating that to the manner in which economies are structured from liberalism to Keynesian style economics to neoliberalism are you then suggesting that there is going to be a real significant change in the way capitalism is being organized well I actually you know that was luckily for me as I was flying here yesterday from Phoenix Arizona and amazingly as our plane was taking off from Phoenix to Philadelphia the pilot announces colder in Phoenix than in Philadelphia which happened never happened before but anyway on that flight I read the New York Times and there was a column by David Brooks and David Brooks as you know it's a relatively conservative columnist in America and he was saying in the old days the the Americans used to how do you say save for the future right so whatever they did they invested in America and capitalist system by the way nothing America was equally capitalist fifty years hundred years ago he was always investing in the future this is how America did it's great infrastructure this is how America invested in education and so on so forth this is the difference in America today is that you still have capitalism but instead of saving for the future America is now borrowing from the future now this is not a capitalist thing this is a political decision that has been made by the current electorate in America to try and have the to go to support politicians who then give you huge budget deficits which then in turn impose a burden on future generations that's not capitalism that's politics and I actually think I mean I maybe I shouldn't say this that something has gone seriously wrong in the American political system and is actually terrifying the world by the way we don't understand how you can hold the world hostage with this brinksmanship about you know your budget deficit and fiscal deficits and all that and then the whole global economy has to go and go on a sort of standby more waiting to find out what's happening in America you know basically the world is being held hostage by divisions in in America and I have a wonderful cartoon from The Economist's which shows the tea party leading the Republican Party by the nose the Republican Party leading America by the nose and America leading the world by the nose and all for them heading author took lift and that's an example of how politics can go wrong so it is not at the would say is a capitalist system I would say something has gone wrong in the politics so what I'm going to do is allow those of you that may have other questions to ask those in the reception we have a reception being sponsored by an Audi just outside the doors but before we go there I have a presentation to make so let me go get my certificate and my my gift so on behalf of a Cornell and in honor of professor Babu Bonnie's president is a presentation and lecture we present the certificate and let me read it it says Cornell University names Kishore Babu Bonnie Dean and professor National University of Singapore former Singapore ambassador to the UN and president of the UN Security Council as this year's Henry II and Nancy Horton Bartels world affairs fellow February 13 2013 signed by professor Fred logo ball and our president David J Gorton who's out of town today so thank you so much for being here thank you for the picture I'm just thank you thank you very perfect

Channel: Cornell University

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Keywords: government, policy, education, philosophy, history

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Length: 75min 1sec (4501 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 01 2013