IDF 2019 - Professor Kishore Mahbubani

speaking the hardest decision to make is how you start in America you begin with a joke in Asia you begin with an apology so what I do I combine the two traditions and I apologize for my bad joke but my bad joke is actually a true story many years ago when I was the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which is like the CEO or the ministry one of my colleagues in another ministry mr. Tong went to China so when you arrived in China he called on his counterpart vice minister and he introduced himself in English and said I'm miss of town and I'm the permanent secretary of this ministry so there's a young Chinese lady translator there she looked very puzzled and she was trying to figure out how do you translate permanent secretary in the Chinese then she finally said oh this guy says he's mr. Tong and he says that is the eternal typists from Singapore so permanent secretary became eternal typist in Chinese now I begin with that story actually for deliberate reason because if you can have cultural misunderstanding between Singapore which is 75% Chinese and China which is 100% Chinese you have real like you realize you have problems in our hands and that's in a sense some some what I'm going to be talking about today about some of the major misunderstandings in the world that I emerging but but don't worry I'll try to end with good news so don't don't worry too much so this is what I proposed through the question I've imposes what is international diplomacy and I propose to answer the question in two in three parts firstly what is the international context today exactly secondly the question Harlan says what is diplomacy and thirdly I'll talk about what we should do or rather more accurately what you should do right I'm already 70 years or so I've had a good life the question is whether or not all of you will have in the next 40 to 50 years when you become 70 will you have a good life or not so that's what I hope to address how you can create a better lives for yourself so so so let me let me begin by talking and addressing the question what is the international context and this is actually surprised it's in theory is a easy question to answer when practice is very difficult because you can make the case that we live in the best of times and you can make the case that we live in the worst of times so this is the paradoxical a world that we live in so let me begin by talking how we live in the best of times and I'm gonna mention by the way I did they'll just show it to you I did come out with a very short book I want the show it to you so you can read it in one hour it's called Hester West lost it and in this book surprisingly there is a lot of good news in the book let me give you three examples now since human history began the one thing that all society is worried about was that would they go to war would be--would lives be lost in wars and it was it was a case by the way in the 20th century for example the biggest wars were fought and if you were living in a world this is now 2019 if you were living in 1919 a hundred years ago you had just come out through one of the most devastating Wars one where millions and millions of people were killed so the question obviously is do we face the danger of millions and millions of people dying in interstate was now here is the good news your chances of dying in an interstate war are practically zero major interstate wars have become a sunset industry right and if you want proof there's Howard professor on my coat in my book Steven Pinker he's written two books the better angels of our nature and enlightenment now he gives you data that shows maybe in the 1950s people 65,000 maybe 70,000 people were dying you mean the state boss now it's less than a couple of thousand people dying the interstate was so that's one piece of good news and indeed anyone who was living in 1919 and if he was came alive in 2019 he said this is heaven nobody's dying in wars that's an amazing improvement in the world now the second way in which the world has improved is that in 1950 right which is not too long ago about two years after I was born seventy-five percent of the world lived in extreme poverty by the way including me too and in fact I was a kid I'll sing a post per capita income the 1950s was the same as Ghana about five hundred dollars and when I went to school the age of six I put on a special feeding program because I was technically undernourished now you can see I'm over nourished so that's the world there was in 1950 today less than 10% of the world's population lives in extreme poverty and by 2030 the National Intelligence Council of the United States has predicted that you'd come down to probably zero I can tell you this development economies were thinking for decades how do we eliminate poverty how do we eliminate poverty people thought it couldn't be done you know but the remarkable thing that it has been done and when I was ambassador to the UN in the year 2000 and we established a Millennium Development Goals one of the Millennium Development Goals was to half global poverty by 2015 and we exceeded it exceeded that goal so that's another way in which the world has become better and then if you look at another indicator of how much the world is progress and you look at the global middle class populations now I want to emphasize one factor for most of human history going back thousands of years the number of people who would enjoy the kind of comfortable life thought that all of you are enjoying would be less than 1% of the population right very tiny most people that very hard lives and their life expectancy was 30 40 years old you know but today the global middle class population is already 1.8 billion out of 7.5 billion by 2020 is going to hit 3.2 billion and by 2030 will be four point nine billion so more than half the world's population is going to enjoy global middle class living standards and believe me any future historian looking back at human history over the past thirty years would say that the past 30 years of human history have been better than the past 300 years of the past 3000 years of human history quatrain we live in remarkable times and the question of course is why this is happening and then I discussed that also in my book and I speak about it and it's about what I call one of the things of course as you know the worse the first civilization to succeed was Western civilization to the Enlightenment the Renaissance the Industrial Revolution initially the West used the power the colonized to dominate the world but after that it shared the gifts of Western wisdom with the rest of the wall and and over time the spread of what I call the gifts of Western wisdom have improved the world dramatically and and again they've been many what I call silent revolutions like for example the spread of good governance throughout the world governments around the world in all your countries are building things like roads bridges ports hospitals schools so there's a progressive improvement in the human condition as a result of the spread of what I call some Western ideas and the world is getting better and better so you can see you should all be happy and celebrating and say hey we live in the best of times so allowing I mean give you some bad news why do we live in the worst of times we live in the worst of times because we are actually going to face some very serious challenges both on the geopolitical front and on the domestic front again I'll give you three examples again on the geopolitical front I can assure you for sure that in the next 10 years at least you will be obsessed between the comp between in the competition the company obsessed with the competition between the the world's number one power today which is the United States of America and the world's number one emerging power which is China and that will be in one way or another will affect all your lives no matter where you are and I and I can say there with some confidence because one of the reasons why you might notice I'm looking very relaxed today is because I sent off my 88,000 one manuscript to my publisher in New York it's a book on us-china relations it'll be coming out in spring next year please google and buy it right away even before he goes to print political front is going to be played out in the military front is going to be played out in the cultural front and also in what I call the primacy front so it's a multi-dimensional struggle that is about to break up between the United States and China and you'll find that countries will have to choose I'll give you everyone a very simple example you're all so far you notice I've been very good I haven't mentioned President Donald Trump once I thought we'll be mentioning him later but just to illustrate to you that this has nothing to do with Trump even when the United States had a very reasonable kind peaceful president like Barack Obama right surely you'll agree is a very nice guy but even in his time when China decided to create something called the Asian infrastructure investment bank a IIb and Asia by the way needs an infrastructure bank because Asia has got to spend trillions of dollars on infrastructure China agrees to set up a bank to help patients build infrastructure and because China proposes United States opposes and sure enough all the countries got a phone call saying don't join don't join very dangerous Chinese bank don't join and sure enough Australia didn't join Japan didn't join South Korea didn't join but surprisingly almost all the other Asian countries join and even the best friend of United States best friend until last week was United Kingdom United Kingdom joined also and so that was a sign of what that's a kind of trouble that you get when when when a competition breaks out within your neurosis and China and more and more countries will have to make more and more painful decisions on more and more subjects as the conflict oh that as a competition builds up so that's one one clearly one major geopolitical tension that we have to learn to live with the second one is more delicate and it's a bit harder to speak about because it's politically incorrect but there is also as you know some kind of joke political fault line between the west and the Islamic world right and this of course as you know there have been all kinds of wars in so many Islamic countries that have been going on for the last two decades especially since 9/11 happened in New York in 2001 and I actually know the impact of 9/11 because I was in Manhattan when 9/11 happened and I know the shock and pain and grief that the American people felt and as a result the shock and the pain and grief a United States reacted angrily and first it launched a war in Afghanistan and that war in Afghanistan is considered under international law legitimate because the United Nations Security Council endorsed and said yes United States has a right to retaliate when it is attacked and so invaded Afghanistan then two years later the United States invaded Iraq and that war is considered illegitimate because the United Nations Security Council did not endorse that war in fact he was my good friend who then sadly passed away Kofi Annan who bravely said that the Iraq was illegal for which he suffered a great deal but he told the truth so but that there's just two examples and since then they've been many other wars also between the West and the Islamic world and this is another fault line cuz I hope in the Q&A period you can ask me some questions on these issues and I'm happy to discuss them my only request is please try to think of the most difficult question because I find the more difficult the question the easier the answer easier the question the harder to answer it's a real paradox so I actually prefer you to come out openly and speak about what's on your mind now so far the two challengers have spoken about the geopolitical challenges but there's also a third challenge which I also actually discuss in my book that has the West lost it and the reason why I chose that title is that what is very puzzling is that the most successful civilization as I said earlier has been the West and the West has always led the world in many ways for the last 200 years now what surprising is it is Western societies there are not progressing but regressing and what do I mean by regressing I mean that they are electing populist government's governments that are in the sense instead of working to create international programs that work with the rest of the world they are creating programs that work against the rest of the world and this is where of course President Donald Trump comes in because he actually believes that the entire all the institutions of global governance all the multilateral institutions there were gifts from the West to the rest after World War Two he sees them as being anti ameri-ghen so in one way another he's attacking every international institution he's also attacking fundamental principles of global governance like free trade is good for everybody he is imposing tariffs and what's interesting is that he's not just imposing tariffs on China he's imposing tariffs on the two best friends United States has Canada and Mexico and also on Europe and on Japan you know and I just met someone who had a conversation with Gary Cohen Gary Cohen is a former chairman of the National Economic Advisers Council and he's called and one day Gary Cohen sat down with Donald trum and tried to explain to him what you what you call economics 101 you can always 101 teaches you that tariffs is bad because you know that's how you got the Great Depression and you should actually minimize the use of tariffs and you should encourage free trade that's economics 101 so after he explained that the president Trump president Trump said no no I'm sorry I'm not going to change I will so Gary Cohen I said why why why why are you doing this and don't tell me by I like tariffs he's just in choice it's a weapon he uses it and uses it I must say indiscriminately and of course if this carries on then frankly there is a danger for the world and what's surprising is that you we thought we only had one populist leader to deal with in a few weeks time we may have another populist leader to deal with who might actually outshine President Donald Trump and his name is Boris Johnson and you know if you had told me even 10 years ago that United States would elect Donald trum and you carry like Boris Johnson out I've said no way it's a different world you can see that's coming so we can maybe in a Q&A talk about why this is happening so that's the international context so let me now turn to the second question what is diplomacy and here I must say that it's a I was a diplomat for 33 years and I actually I must say I was reasonably good at it but when I when I when I had to prepare for speaking here when I had to ask myself what is diplomacy the strange thing is that I know how to do it but I cannot find the words to describe what it is it's very difficult it's a very strange profession so what I did of course I went to the font of all wisdom Wikipedia and this is the Wikipedia definition he says diplomacy is a professional activity or skill of managing international relations typically for a country's representatives abroad now what does that mean you kind of say so let me let me tell you what in let me tell you two things about diplomacy one I'm trying to explain what diplomats do and then I explain the three levels of diplomacy but I must say this is heavy in preparing for today's talk I realized that what the world lacks is actually is a good book on diplomacy so maybe I'll try and write one after this talk so what what do diplomats do there are the three things at least that they do so when I go you know I've been an ambassador so when you when you arrive as an ambassador or as a diplomat in a country the first thing you need to do of course is to understand the country so persuade people that my country is the best country in the world so that's what you do and you know you can you can be quite innovative in the ways you do it let me give you an example when I was ambassador to un my counterpart then was a French ambassador before he came to New York he was the French ambassador to Netherlands and when he arrived in Netherlands he wanted to make sure that everyone in Netherlands knew who he was so he went around Netherlands asking who's the most popular person in Netherlands who's the most famous person in Netherlands tell you what you might think he's looking for them maybe the the philosopher the fashion designer or whatever and instead he found that the most popular person in Netherlands was the cycling champion you know Netherlands as you know the country of sight bicycles if you have any of you been to Amsterdam you don't get run down by cars in Amsterdam you get run down by bicycles it's a fact so the cycling champion of Netherlands was the number one hero in Netherlands so of course what the French ambassador did was to convey a French award on the most popular person Netherlands and everyone in Netherlands thought gosh this French ambassador is so wonderful so he succeeded in his mission of marketing his country but that's an example of what a diplomat can do and of course the third thing that a diplomat does is to solve problems and it is not a secret many countries have issues bilateral problems bilateral issues and they have to sit down and talk to each other and find solutions so that's what also what diplomats do now this might seem like something so obvious right if you have a problem we should sit down and talk about it right you all agree as anyone disagree nobody well why do you disagree I know I don't necessarily disagree it's just sometimes you sit down and talk with someone when you hear something you need to be ready to listen and some people aren't ready to listen so sometimes talking with the wrong people exhausts you it's not very tactical always so I don't fully disagree it just there's our clothes okay yeah absolutely disagree okay by the way I reason I'd tell that story is you know diplomacy was invented and by the way you all know that diplomacy is the world's second oldest profession right what did you all know what the oldest profession is okay I won't say it is a pie is des no there's no relationship within the world's oldest profession the world's second oldest profession so the anyway diplomacy was invented not to enable you to talk to your friends diplomacy was invented to enable you to talk to your enemies because the most important part of being a diplomat is that when you arrive in a capital as a diplomat you get diplomatic immunity a diplomatic immunity is very important because in the old days before diplomatic conventions came about when you were sent as an ambassador to an enemy capital quite often there that the enemy King would get angry with the Ambassador and chop off his head this is quite common in the old days ambassadors would get their heads chopped off what's a difficult job to do but over time we realized that was very stupid because you stopped chop off the heads of ambassadors then you can't talk to the Ambassador right without his head it's very difficult to talk to him so develop the concept of diplomatic immunity now I want to emphasize this concept of diplomatic immunity because the concept of diplomatic immunity makes it very clear that the only purpose of diplomacy is to talk to enemies now this is common sensical and virtually all countries follow this principle except one country that one country is the most advanced develop modern country in the world it is the United States of America now why is it the United States of America because the you know every country believes you should talk if you have an enemy you establish an embassy in that country United States has declared Cuba as an enemy it doesn't have an embassy in Cuba the universe's says that Iran is an enemy it doesn't have an embassy in Iran it says that North Korea is an enemy it doesn't have an embassy in North Korea which goes against all the fundamental principles of what the promisee is supposed to be about supposed to enable you to talk to you to enemies which is why I think the president Donald Trump should be praised for talking to the North Korean leader Kim Jong right it was there was a very wise thing for him to do right and of course as you know he was criticized for doing them and people say you know why is he doing it why is he talking to a dictator but that's the whole point you don't talk to people who are like you you talk to people who are unlike you who are the opposite of you and that's what diplomacy is about and that and so solving problems is also what diplomacy is all about but the same time I can also tell you that there are many other levels of complexity because in today's world there are many many types of diplomacy and I notice in your program you're talking about different types of diplomacy but I'm going to talk about three different levels of diplomacy and they're very different actually the first level is bilateral diplomacy within two countries the second level is regional diplomacy and then the third level is multilateral diplomacy like what do you do at the United Nations and so on so forth and I I have done bilateral diplomacy I've done regional diplomacy I have done multilateral diplomacy and all three are very very different so even if you take for example I had three bilateral postings as a diplomat first time I went a Singapore chargee d'affaires to Phnom Penh Cambodia he was by far the most exciting posting I had because when I was there in Phnom Penh from 1973 to 74 the city was shelled every day by the Khmer Rouge they were surrounding the city so once I was in my house and this is we had French working hours because you know the French had French Cambodia was a French colony you had siesta in the afternoon so I went home for a siesta and some dissident pilot decided to bomb the palace which well in here we're staying so when the 500-pound bomb fell on the palace my bed went up in the air threw me up in the air I fell down I ran down to under the staircase but if you ever in a house that is close to a bomb bingo and then we got divorced and after he got divorced we continued to live in the same house we could move away so we have a neurotic relationship so when I became the deputy High Commissioner there I was treated with some degree of distrust suspicion so on so forth it's normal and then from there I went to Washington DC and in Washington DC Washington's love Singapore so I went from a city where a street every distrust and suspicion the city where everyone loved me so there I'm telling you this story so that you know diplomacy depends a lot on context right the context you're in makes a huge difference to what you have to do so in bilateral diplomacy it depends on whether you go into a country that is very friendly to you or country that is hostile to you but my recommendation to you is if you have have to choose a posting to the posting in a country that is hostile to you it's more interesting more challenging don't pick a country that's friendly this boring because there's no words no work to be done then you come to regional diplomacy and regional diplomacy surprisingly is very very difficult and and and the surprising thing is that in theory we should all be welcoming regional organizations but in practice most regional organizations fail right I mean I don't know what which parts of the world you want talk about you have something called the South Asian Association of regional cooperation right and it's struggling because India and Pakistan cannot talk to each other or have great difficulty talking to each other so suck is you know moribund and then okay I can also give you an example you have the Gulf Cooperation Council and you have problems with in Saudi Arabia and Qatar right so and then I can go on and the amazing thing is that the most successful regional organization in the world by far is the European Union but amazingly the European Union is about to break apart you know the Kingdom is leaving shocking right it's amazing so which is the one regional organization the world that is now the most successful regional organization the world huh ASEAN of course good answer absolutely correct us by the way ASEAN was founded in Bangkok here on August 8th 1967 and I can recommend to you a book called the ASEAN miracle which I co-authored with a friend of mine who lives in Bangkok and the amazing thing about ASEAN is a ASEAN was designed to fail why was it designed to fail now you know that there are 7.5 billion people on planet earth right now you can travel to any corner of planet that you can go to Latin America you can go to Africa you can go to Central Asia you can go to Europe and go anywhere there's no part in the world which is as diverse as Southeast Asia is because there are 650 million people you have 240 million Muslims 150 million Christians 150 million Buddhist Mahayana Buddhist Hinayana Buddhists you have Hindus your towers you have Confucian is and of course all these resources got on communists so it is the most diverse corner of planet Earth and this is where regional organization should fail but ASEAN has ended up being the most successful regional organization that's why it's a remarkable success story that you should all get to know because if there's one regional organization there should be a model for the rest of the world it is today ASEAN and you want a place where Christians and Muslims can work together it's hacia so that's an example Hawaii RCN method so that's regional diplomacy and then of course you also then idea also have what I call multilateral diplomacy which is what we do at the United Nations now you will find that everybody likes to rubbish the United Nations I actually believe that the hope for the future lies in organizations like the United Nations and I'm a passionate defender of the UN and what it does and what it can do which is why it's very appropriate that we are meeting here under the auspices of the UN so let me let me conclude now by telling you what in the sense are the three things we should be doing further for you for the rest for all of you you want if you want to create a better world in the next 30 to 40 years what should you be doing well in the first thing you need to do is to change the mindsets of the people of the world of how international relations should work now what do I mean by changing our mindsets and I use a very simple boat analogy to explain what the change of mindset requires in the past when 7.5 billion people lived in hundred and ninety-three separate countries it was as thought they were living in 193 separate boats right and so as you know when you're on a boat you have captains and crews who take care of the boat and normally you have rules to make sure their boats don't collide in the world and that's what I call the 1945 rules-based order now what's happened is that in the last seventy or years of plus the world has shrunk it has become very small very interdependent place so now the 193 countries are no longer on 193 separate boats the 7.5 billion people who live in 193 separate countries are now living in Hanoi 93 separate cabins on the same boat but the problem with this global board is that your captains and crews taking care of each cabin and no captain or crew taking care of the global boat as a whole and that's absurd because all the challenges that are coming for your generation there's absolutely no doubt that their biggest challenges will be challenges that affect the whole board not telogen affect your cabin alone and if you stay in your cabin you will not be able to fix that problem you have to come out and collaborate that everybody else I mean I can give you some examples the more obvious example is global warming you can't solve global warming by in any country you have to work with the whole world right similarly if you have a pandemic that's spread you can go around the world instantly and you know Singapore experience that anything in 2003 or something when you had the SARS virus it started in a small village in China from China went to Hong Kong and from Hong Kong when simultaneously to two cities on opposite sides of the world exactly opposite sides of the world Singapore and Toronto so that's how we are now on the same boat so the question is if we are on the same boat why aren't we taking care of the boat as a whole which is why I the only way you can take care of the board as a whole is if you've strengthened the institutions of global governance and therefore you peace you should be strengthening the United Nations unfortunately at a time when the great power should be strengthening the United Nations they are weakening the United Nations and this is suicidal for Humanity right and I'm not exaggerating by the way the national security adviser of President Donald trum is a man called John Bolton and somebody asked John Bolton what should we do about the UN he said we should take a giant saw and cut the building into half and throw away half of it so that's John Bolton now at a time when you should be doubling the size of the UN he wants to cut the UN into half and that's an act of enormous stupidity at this time in human history so that's the first thing that you need to do the second thing you you need to do is as I and I mentioned you earlier on one of the most sensitive challenges you are facing is the divide between Islam and the West and there's a famous writer called Samuel Huntington who wrote a book called the clash of civilizations you may have heard of it fortunately I'm pleased to inform you I wrote a response to it my essay which I caught every larry summers is called the fusion of civilizations not the clash of civilizations so you should all especially if you sit together in a room like this from many different nationalities and from for many different countries in a sense find out what is common among all of you emphasize the similarities and not emphasize the difference and the third and final thing you should do and this is what I said at the very beginning whatever you do when you look at the future please don't be pessimistic you must retain your optimism and continue to believe that you can make the world a better place because when you consider how much the world has improved in the last thirty years there is absolutely no reason why you all cannot do a better job than my generation did and make sure you do an even better job in the next thirty years thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: Humanitarian Affairs Asia

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Length: 40min 13sec (2413 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 25 2019