[Lecture] Has the West Lost it? by Prof Kishore Mahbubani

your excellencies distinguished guests and colleagues ladies and gentlemen welcome to the Lee Kuan Yew school of public policies evening lecture my name is Danny Korra I'm a professor in economics here at the school and I'm here this evening to welcome our founding dean professor Keyshawn Abu Barney back to the liquidus school the school that he built that he might this evening launched his new book has the West lost it you will have seen that this book is subtitled a provocation for those of you who have followed as I have key source writings through the decades you might think that subtitle superfluous and redundant after all what else has Kisho ever been but provocative thought-provoking but at the same time always evidence-based empirically grounded what kishore writes always turns out intelligent thoughtful and pressing reading him I hope you'll forgive the analogy it's like taking a cold shower it's bracing in waking those of us who have fallen asleep at the wheel but also refreshing that it energizes all of us onwards to newer thinking like a cold shower teachers writing is not meant to keep you over comfortable in this new book you show returns to the question of world order he remarks on the historical aberration that is Western centrality in the global system he reflects on the powerhouses there are China and India today and he asks where the world goes next what have been the West's failures in these last two hundred years while will endure as the West's successes now with the international system poised for change in global leadership how will the West respond now I'm going to begin and turn over to Kishore but just a few words of housekeeping might I suggest that you either turn off your mobile phones or set them to silent Kishore has agreed to speak for between 30 to 40 minutes after which we will have a question-and-answer session I will say this again as we approach that time but to ask your question you will notice that they are standing mics around the hall to ask your question please go up to the standing microphones or if you have special needs please so indicate to me and a microphone will be brought to you a queue will usually form to ask questions so please get to the microphones early as we come down to the end of Kishore's presentation I get to moderate this evening session and I would like to maximize conversation with the audience so when it comes to the question-and-answer session I will ask you and I'll ask you again that you please describe the setting very briefly for what you want to say but then get to your question quickly the only thing that remains for me to do now is to ask you in joining me welcoming to the stage our Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy founding dean professor Kishore ma boo bunny when I left the school on 31st December of course I didn't know who was going to succeed me as the Dean of the school but I did have a secret hope and my hope and dream was that I would be succeeded by Professor Danny qua so a round of applause for Danny and it's such a pleasure to be back here with so many old friends young friends former bosses mr. Danny Bolen who unfortunately spoiled me you're such a good boss he never prepared me for the other other bosses that followed I probably had a equal I had an equally good boss in professor Guan gong wu as chairman of the board so I have many many old friends here and I'm very happy to be back here and as some of you are know very curious what happens after you've stepped down as a Dean I'm pleased to inform you that life gets better I'm actually having a wonderful year this year of a nine-month sabbatical I just spent three months at Columbia and Harvard universities and I got a remarkably warm reception over there and I'm tomorrow morning I'm flying out to Fudan University to spend two months there because my project this year we should write a book on us-china relations because that's the most important geopolitical relationship on our time then Rafa I go to Paris I go to Washington DC and I go to everywhere so life after deanship is actually wonderful so I'm very happy to be back here to talk about the book which I see launched in London a few weeks ago as the West lost it and despite its rather provocative title my friends who read it actually sure this is a love letter from you to the West and one of my goals in the gues 25 minutes or so I have here is to explain why this is a kind of love letter to the West I mean the West when he provides 12% of the world's population why should we be concerned about it and then the second part I'll talk about why I think the West has lost his way and the third question I'll try to answer is what can we do to help the West or what the best course for the West to take so let me begin with the first question why does the West matter the West matters for a fundamental reason for all of humanity because if the Western civilization hadn't succeeded hadn't modernize hadn't achieved all those tremendous breakthroughs in science and technology the breakthroughs in reasoning humanity would have been in a much much worse condition the reason why the human condition today has never been better is because of the gifts from the West to the rest and that's why what happens in the West matters a great deal now I know many of you are drowning in pessimism and picking up bad news and you think gosh Wes Kishore obviously this sabbatical has gone to his head he's got opium in his brains he doesn't understand that the world is falling apart how does he say that the world has never been better let me read from pages 9 and 10 of the book and describe to you how some of the challenges that humanity has been struggling with for thousands of years we have now finally succeeded in solving many of them take the age-old eternal question of war and peace and throughout human history thousands millions died in wars and we keep thinking wars will never end of course they won't end completely but any future historian from the year 2100 looking at 2018 will say this is the luckiest generation of human beings we've had because the man of violence has gone down dramatically in human history let me quote what Harvard Steven Pinker says and I actually spent an over an hour with Steven Pinker and then I was in Harvard and he's actually come up with an even new book enlightenment now which I recommend to you because he provides you amazing data on how the human condition is improved but this is what he said said today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species time on Earth he adds global violence has fallen steadily since the middle of the 20th century according to the human security brief 2006 the number of battle deaths and interstate Wars has declined from more than 65,000 per year in the 1950s to less than 2000 per year in this decade and even it has a temporary blip because of killings in Syria or Yemen the long-term trend is still carrying on that's in the area of war and peace let me talk about another area we've been trying very hard to change the world to get rid of absolute poverty right now let me give you this incredibly stunning statistic from Oxford smack wrote Max Rosa in 1950 that's not so long ago that's two years after I was born 1950 three-quarters of the world were living in extreme poverty in 1981 it was 44% by 2016 the research suggests that the share in extreme poverty has fallen below 10% in my lifetime from three-quarters of the world's population to less than 10% and the National Intelligence Council the United States very pretty conservative body has predicted he might come to zero by 2030 and I tell you I granted you this any future historian looking at the past three decades will say these 40 decades were the best in human history just one more quote for those who may some of you may still be skeptical Johan no book of the Cato Institute notes if someone had told you in 1990 that over the next 25 years world hunger would decline by 40 percent charm or tality would have an extreme poverty would fall by three-quarters Yura told him they were naive fool for the fools were right that's truly what has happened in actually I can give you even more data to show you that the human condition has improved dramatically and I can also show you that all of this was due to the success of the West in the past few hundred years and so that was a tremendous gift from the West to the rest so this is the moment of great triumph for the West the West should be celebrating and say hooray we did it but if you just come back as I have from three months in America and Europe I can tell you the mood in both Europe and America is very depressed there are no celebrations on the streets there there's no sense of celebration that the West really this is a great moment for the rest so the second question therefore is where did the West go wrong what happened and that's also what I try to answer in this book and in my view what happened is that the West made three critical strategic mistakes and these critical strategic mistakes were made precisely in the 30 years when the rest of the world was changing and moving upwards in a dramatic direction so what were the three strategic mistakes the first was in 1990 and 1990 is a very critical year in human history because that was about the time about the end of the Cold War and the West was triumphant saying hey we did it we defeated the Soviet Union one of the world's greatest empires without fighting without firing a shot they were so happy the sense of exhilaration was tremendous and is reinforced by a very famous essay that Francis Fukuyama wrote called the end of history his basic message was hey we in the West have won we don't have to change people chief liberal democracy the rest of the world has got to change and adjust we can just keep going on autopilot and as I say in a somewhat cruel fashion in the book Francis Fukuyama's si did a lot of brain damage to the West because he put the West to sleep at precisely the point when the rest of the world was waking up and especially when China and India were waking up and why was China India waking up so important because from the Year 1 to the Year 1824 1800 over the last 2,000 years the two largest economies of the world were always those of China and India and it's all in the last 200 years the Europe took off and North America took off and this statistic is important to absorb because it makes it very clear that the past 200 years of Western domination of world history have been a major historical aberration all aberrations come to a natural end at some point in time China and India would wake up and precisely at the moment when China India waking up after Deng Xiaoping's four modernizations after Manmohan Singh's reforms in India the West went to sleep and therefore was caught off guard the second strategic mistake was in the year 2001 so what happened in 2001 in 2001 everybody remembers 9/11 and I know 9/11 significant I was in Manhattan when it happened I didn't see the towers come down but I was right there I felt the shocks the political shocks and I could understand why the West decided we must focus on terrorism invade the Afghanistan invade Iraq and then the West didn't notice there's something far more important happened in 2001 which was China's admission into WTO and of course when China joined WTO and if you let's say you inject 800 million new workers into the global capitalist system you get what Joseph Schumpeter described as creative destruction it was inevitable that jobs will be lost in America and Europe and this has now been documented by an American economist called David Otto aut you are so clearly what the West should have paid attention to it didn't pay attention to and if at the end of the day you want to know why Trump happened why the people voted for this populist politician is because they didn't pay attention to China's admission into WTO and how he would change the global economic system dramatically second strategic mistake the third one is even more recent 2014 what happened in 2014 let me give you one statistic in 1980 in purchasing power parity terms as a share of global GNP the United States share was 25% China share was 2.2 percent less than 10% of the United States and people thought well China will of course continue being far behind and then in what future historians will regard as an absolute miracle in 34 years by 2014 in PPP terms the United States became number two China became another one and the amazing thing is nobody paid attention to them so the fundamental mistake that the West made is that he didn't seem to be aware that the world had changed fundamentally and when the world changes fundamentally you have to adjust and so this book is essentially a love letter to a friend say wake up the world has changed you can no longer continue an autopilot you do have to adjust and adapt now if I can say something even more cruel the greatest weaknesses of Western public intellectuals is that they have become so arrogant so confident that they know the world better than anybody else that they have lost the art of listening and the art of paying attention to other voices so even a letter like this we weave in a book like this which is meant to be a gesture of friendship came out a month ago has not been reviewed once in any Western paper not even a British paper way London we came out I'm not surprised because the West has lost the art of thinking strategically and thinking long-term and listening to the rest and that's a huge part of the problem in the West so again in an effort to be helpful I say okay let me give you three suggestions of how you can make create a better world for the West and I describe it as the 3m strategy 3m doesn't refer to a mining company in Minnesota it refers to three amps the first m3m words the first M word is minimalist and many in the West are actually not aware that as a result of the explosion of Western power especially after the Industrial Revolution the West got into the habit of intervening all over the world I mean saw this of course most powerfully in the 19th century when quite amazingly a small continent like Europe could colonize the whole world I mean again a future historian be amazed wow the whole world every corner was touch even a small country like Portugal population same as Singapore's could colonize Latin America Brazil could colonize Africa Angola Mozambique could take a bite of India in Goa and take a bite of China Macau how did a small country do that that showed you how powerful the West had become and the West thought that as it sort of decolonize and retreated back to their own countries that they had stopped intervening actually Western intervention continued in so many areas in so many regions and this is again a future historian will see this very clearly and say why for example why should the West intervene so much in the affairs of the Middle East how how do incredibly bright well-trained graduates of the leading universities in America believe that you can make Iraq into a democracy overnight by sending a few hundred thousand American troops absurd right inherently observe but they did it with great conviction this desire to intervene this habit of intervention has led to many of the problems that you'll find in the world and in the West so my advice to them is step back the rest of the world and this goes back to my first point are learning how to improve their societies themselves and becoming more peaceful places and exhibit a fortunately despite all the problems now and then is our region Saudis Asia fortunately you notice that the less attention the West paid to Southeast Asia the better we did so ASEAN is really now the seventh largest economy in the world if some of you have read my book they are said miracle with Jefferson and well on its way to becoming the fourth largest economy in the world this was supposed to be a hopeless corner of the world so things have changed the West doesn't have to intervene and you know the West always says if we don't do it if you don't follow our way things will get worse so I say let's take two countries two countries that have been run by military regimes for a very long time one is Myanmar the other is Syria ASEAN to kill Myanmar the West took care of Syria how the West take care of Syria you have a problem start bombing impose sanctions isolate them Myanmar ASEAN said no we don't isolate we admitted me and mine to ASEAN and the EU stop talking to us on because we admitted me our mind to us young and still hasn't said sorry for that and look at me ama today and look at Syria today so you can see that the West has got to change if it wants to have less serious it's got to learn from ASEAN onion so be minimalist the second M word is multilateral and multilateral is a very very important word I know it's designed to put you to sleep most people when you say I'm gonna get come to listen to talk multilateralism nobody comes they switch off you know the brains but you know one of the results of the amazing transformations I spoke about impact one of my remarks but the world becoming a better place is that the world is also shrunk becomes small interconnected become a real global village we know that that's why you have global problems like global warming global financial crisis global pandemics global terrorism is a small interdependent world Global Village what do you do when you have a global village you said have a village council to run the village so you create a global village you need stronger global village councils and one of the things that is the most stupidest thing that the West has done is that it created the best multilateral institutions after World War Two and these multilateral institutions have worked because they are prevented a World War three and they have served the world well what is the United Nations IMF World Bank World Trade Organization these are Western gifts to the world we need them more and more therefore the West should be strengthening multilateralism can you believe it they're doing the exact opposite even today Donald Trump if he continues in this way is going to destroy one of the most precious organizations on planet Earth which is the World Trade Organization why why are you undermining multilateral institutions when you need to strengthen them right and here although a lot of the damage is being done by the United States my great criticism of the European Union is that the Europeans have been cowardly and supplicant in their attitude towards multilateral institutions and they haven't protected them and defended them enough although I will say as a qualification I was so happy when president macro recently as you know went to Washington DC and spoke to the US Congress the one word he used over and over again was a multilateral and that's such an easy thing to do and therefore if you can make that small switch in Western policy the world would be a much better place so what's the last M word now I better warned you then he said I'm always provocative but my last M word is especially provocative the last M word is mark your value of course I know that Machiavelli is a controversial figure in fact you know Leo Strauss of one of the America's greatest political scientists described McKeever is a figure of evil fortunately for me I did a course on Machiavelli when our studying philosophy it allows the University and I read a wonderful essay on Machiavelli by a British liberal philosopher a very famous one called Isaiah Berlin and if you read that essay and Machiavelli it becomes very clear that Machiavelli's goals at the end of the day was to promote what he called virtue vir tu an italian word which roughly translates into virtue he was trying to achieve the right goal by your saying sometimes you have to use different means to achieve the right goals so Machiavelli a dinner day is not an evil figure and if Machiavelli were alive today and if he saw what Europe and America were doing he would say hey please think again now let me give and by giving you one specific example as you know we live in a time of tremendous job political change I mean we live in absolutely amazing times if somebody had written a novel that the president of America would meet the president of North Korea in Singapore Terrell they would say you're dreaming right that's not good enough of fiction but a fiction is happening I mean that's an example of how the world is changing so much this makes life incredibly interesting but job politics the reason why the word is called job politics is because GE or stands for geography now let me say something absolutely brilliant the geography of North America is not the same as the geography of Europe anybody can see that right North America doesn't have to worry about North Africa doesn't have to worry about the Middle East and the worry about the Islamic world the only theory of Mexicans and Canadians that's all United States Europe geography is different Europe has got North Africa and behind North Africa I can I know I I don't say 25 years ago which by the way and this another piece of good news for you I'd be actually launching not one book or two books yeah today at the 20th the 30 20th anniversary edition of my first book our nation's think and if you can find an essay which I wrote called the West and the rest you notice I've been talking about the west and the rest for 25 years in that essay I point out that you know the Mediterranean is just a small pond that's dividing Europe from Africa if Europe doesn't export development to Africa Africa will export Africans to Europe you could see that so clearly 25 years ago and in the same period let me give you another statistic okay in 1950 Europe's population was twice that of Africa's today Africa's population is more than twice that of Europe and by 2100 Africa's population will be ten times that of Europe I'm not tall enough I can't do the ten times isn't it obvious that unless Europe exports development to Africa it's going to have a problem and you know what there's one country trying very hard to develop Africa that country is China but when China goes to Africa America gets upset and says no you are expanding you being expansion is you shouldn't develop Africa but then Europe is joining in China with America and disapproving of Chinese investment in Africa but Chinese investment Africa it's gonna help you rope that's what big Machiavellian is all about you got to figure out where your long term interests are and stick with them and not be led by ideology so at the end of the day even though the title is somewhat provocative I hope at the end of the day my friends in the West if they ever come to review this book in any investment journal will see that this is an effort to tell the west wake up the world has changed thanks to what the West has contributed the world has become a better place so why don't you also adjust to the better world and change course before you really lose it thank you thank you too short for that bracing cold shower that has been promised us truly brilliant delineation of the issues the romp through well history the emergence of the important facts I'm now going to turn to the audience and I see they've already lined up is it ok questions so we've agreed that what Kishore would like to do is to take three questions at a time and then he'll respond to them and as we go on can I make sure that I want to ask I want to allow a woman to ask a question as well and right now we have no women at any of the microphones so just a bit of a nudge along but please go ahead - sure thank you very much for a wake-up call but what I would like to ask you why do you want to be a good Samaritan and write the love letter to the West to wake them up why not let China and India get their rightful ascendancy why do you want to do that let them go on to sleep thank you very much [Laughter] see that's what most people think about when they think of Machiavellian all right welcome back home on the Indian yeah okay actually my question was similar to a lady's but now I changed my question okay okay basically my question save me it's like you know isn't it a good if the best to continue to lose isn't good for our the continuous rise of Asia okay my question is added if you look at the GDP growth actually us kept a gross for the decades it's just a in relative you know terms in relative terms us decline it means you know Asia grew more quickly than West so why do you think you know that's a lost out the Western I think in the in the nominal term us is continual Karuna please allow me to address a provocative book with an equally provocative question you mentioned the three M's minimalism multilateralism and Machiavelli have you missed out another M media has the West lost it with the media and in that regard I'm referring to fake news what has the East done better on fake news or what can it do better and learn from the West you know the you're absolutely right in fact actually I to be I do address the book I do address the question in the book and I say what I say in this book is that I'm sure my friends in the in the third world are going to ask the question why is Kishore when we thought as a friend of the third world encouraging the West to become Machiavellian and I answer the question the book by saying that if the West doesn't change course if it continues on autopilot if it continues to intervene for example in the Middle East right there will be problems that will spill over to the rest of the world and frankly when you look for example at the bombings in Surabaya right which are very tragic and very sad and claimed by Isis you know I'm I'm not an expert but go go and study what created Isis right or what created al-qaeda and in my book I think the new Asian Hemisphere you have we there's now direct evidence that al-qaeda was created by the CIA as an instrument to be used against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan so when you when you start intervening you create and I can tell you the most propagated thing I say in this book which is actually quite frightening Lee provocated is that even an administration like the Obama administration which is sober balanced you know not at all excitable during the time of the Obama administration the United States facilitated the passage of Isis fighters from Afghanistan to Syria to get rid of Assad now that that's the kind of intervention which is very unwise and so they may intervene but we can suffer the consequences and the thing that worries me which is what I'm writing the book about this year on us-china relations if the United States doesn't adjust to the fact that now there's a power that is as large or maybe larger than the United States and tries and sometimes these decisions are not being rational EU and the United States try see maybe even indirectly to thwart China's rise I can tell you that any escalation of competition between United States and China will create a very uncomfortable world for many countries including Singapore so that's why I'm saying be Machiavellian though more careful the wes's the better it is for us and I also agree with you by the way that the US has not declined by the way I want to emphasize one the United States is a Great Society the United States will continue to do very well and we won the United States to continue to do very well because the level of innovation that the United States brings to the world is quite remarkable and and I must say after spending three months in American universities they're still by far the best universities in the world so we don't know I I'm not I'm not wishing for a decline of America not wishing for a decline in Europe I actually want to see a stronger America and a stronger Europe and a stronger America and a strong Europe that pays attention to what it really should be doing is good for the world and one that's less interventionist and focuses on his economic growth and development that's good for the world so that's why I'm also advocating so I'm not and this is not an anti in that sense an anti-western statement now on the media I must say this is a much this one will require another book but you know if you look at my book that can ashen sting which which I'm also going to be launching later I have an essay I think about the freedom of the media and what its strengths and what is the weaknesses I've written it so actually a five thousand word essay it's very long I see because it's a very complex subject you see on the one hand there's absolutely no doubt that the world's best media channels are Western media channels if you really want to understand the world you still got to read whether you like it not the Financial Times New York Times Wall Street you have to read the three The Economist because they still dominate the media scene but the mistake that they make is in believing that their one point of view is the only correct point of view and and one thing that the West needs to do in terms of what you combat is fake news is not the issue now what we are what the fundamental change in the world is that we are moving from a mono civilizational world or multi civilizational world but we're moving from a mono civilizational world to a multi civilizational world with mono civilizational lenses in the Western media so we got to convert the mono civilizational lenses of the Western media and make them multi civilizational lessoned lenses and that's a bigger issue than the fake news issue I actually have got of two questions regarding regarding about your ghost Oh the first question I have to ask is that I will propose would submit that when it comes to the well the West's own distinct was ASEAN I think I believe there is their relief actually also part of the concern that that certain countries there are well dictatorial in nature are not changing fast enough the second question I also would like to when us is that when it comes to I mean why you really consider well massive alien I personally might my consider well submit that you will make use of a more appropriate term that would be well real politic I guess my question is does the east mainly China followed by India really have what it takes to take on the West my my sense would be that even in the next hundred years the West would be ahead of the East philosophically culturally media wise as well and artainment wise and it's hard for me to imagine a situation in which China as in anybody that is non Chinese wants to be Chinese in the same way that the rest of the world now wants to be American who wants to be West in essence afraid so you know it's hard for me to imagine how if China can be more than just a producer or a distributor or an investor and whether you think that it's possible that China can be that whether it has the kind of chops I mean it china has kind of been stuck as a neo-confucian for the last you know South thousands of years whereas the West has continued to produce Philosopher's after philosopher scientist to scientists which reconfigures the way we see the world right I was doing the WTO introduction for China on behalf of Harvard in 2004 in Shanghai and we are longing to and all the Chinese official and a thousand people and we are trying to teach the Chinese WTO and now after Trump that is tariffs they are trying to teach Trump WTO the point here is this if the West has lost it if I could present two points and the question is with the second point the first point is we had a leader here who spoke to us the British prime minister at the time when brexit was very very crucial issue and what do you speak to us about anti corruption which Lee Kuan Yew has taught us for 50 years and now we come to Trump and the question is how long will it last because he has may have system in his madness and he may be more Machiavellian than we all think and if history would show Savonarola the mad monk during Columbus time lasted five years so people think maybe you lost four years before his impeached or chucked out in the next election but if we look at Iran the Iranian Revolution led by Khomeini a small group at that time it lasted from 1979 to now 40 over years and minorities control governments they've just had elections in Iraq who's the winner the winner is mocked Assad ah he's the Shia who fought the Americans and Americans they usually invest a great deal there and so the question is how long will this man lost because he may have one small group but it's a long lasting group maybe the the first question I think you're right the the key word is realpolitik and I'm in a sense talking about real politic but I also want to emphasize that real politic that behind real politic there are also other dimensions that economic dimensions called cultural dimensions and all that you have to come to place and and I think for example your first point about RC and I think that time has come for the West to pay more respect to us yeah that's that's pretty clear that's the second question I must say but the venture capitalist is a very very profound question and and you're right I mean actually nobody knows we have lived in a world which has been dominated by the West for two hundred years or more frankly none of us know what it's going to be like to live in a world where China and India the dominant powers okay I won't be China in India by the way the projections are by 2050 the number one power and PPP terms to be China number to be India number three United States America number four be Japan so it would be a much more multipolar world and not just China and India but we've got so used to the idea that the dominant powers will always try to intervene in other countries and try and refashion the countries or reshape the countries I don't think China will be that kind of an imperial power the Chinese I this is a very sensitive thing the Chinese are not trying to make other people Chinese you know Ivan I go to China I don't speak Chinese they don't try to make me Chinese they appreciate it the fact that I am different and they don't have the kind of what you might call the Masonic desire to change the world in the way that the West did so it's a different kind of so the global chemistry will change fundamentally by the end of the day the only question you need to ask is will we all be better off and my simple answer to your question is that we will all be better off because you will have greater scope to develop ourselves and be ourselves in that kind of a world with no dominant force dominating it now Anthony I must confess that I pretend to know lots of things but I do not know how long troubled us but I can tell you to be fair I won one I $100 went rum one I got I wanna bet and then the same guy who lost the bet said he said to me Kishore he will not survive one year I say he'll survive one year I want another hundred dollars so I made lots of money with Trump staying in office and I think I would say that I tell you something I was in Beijing recently with a unusual group of five people the five people were Carl Bernstein of Bernstein Woodward Fame Tom Friedman Alfa the Saint Martin wolf and myself five of us were invited to meet a group of Chinese leaders it was a great privilege by the way and one of the sessions it one of the leaders Niall Ferguson said something another day I don't think you'll mind me quote saying it you know it's a he said he said there are Chinese this he said if you want to understand Trump don't read what the New York Times tells you and he was pointing the Tom Friedman don't don't read what the Financial Times tells you is pointing the Martin wolf because you say both New York Times and Finance the time to convince you that Donald Trump is an imbecile but let me tell you this he's no imbecile he's obviously canny in his own way so and so I would say that the in some ways the liberal media does the world a great disservice because in their reporting on Trump which is supposed to be objective and neutral it is not objective and neutral even the reporting pages and so we because we are a prisoners of the liberal media we inherit their biases and we obviously think that Donald Trump is an imbecile or useless and so on so forth but and I think I would say that while Donald Trump has done some things which are very badly wrong I must say he's done the world a great favor by agreeing to meet Kim jong-un there was a time when the situation on the Korean Peninsula was very tense and people were playing out war scenarios and I was at a public panel in Seoul South Korea next to professor judging Co Peking University and I was shocked this is a public statement I can quote him he said it's time for China and America to stop talking about how they will deal with each other if a war breaks out in the Korean Peninsula I never thought a Chinese professor would say this so the fact that Donald Trump has reduced the temperature in the Korean Peninsula and created the possibility of a solution is something we should be grateful for and if they give a Nobel Peace Prize I'll be very happy there is going little peace in the Korean Peninsula my question is ladies you mentioned that in 1946 plantain with agreement and the United Nation gives our unparalleled prosperity of the NASA 80 years now the question is that America now the originator of this Agreement was apparently going into discarding multilateralism but we must remember that when America put this institution is GDP was half of the world now no matter how China India grow the projection is that China's GDP today is 15% of the world and you will pick around 22 to 23 percent so that means that it would take some time for them to make a new global orders now in this regard if you're one minimalist approach of the West and if you look at the middle is the American withdrawal has created many middle power trying to assert primacy in the regions the Saudis the is realize the Europe the Iranians the turkeys and we have seen what happened out in the middle is the situation on the ground become uncontrollable so what is the risk now is will they pick in the burger truck that is appearing in the absence of a new global orders to replace the oil orders that the American put in place you spoke in glowing terms about the Western multilateral organizations in economics and politics and diplomacy military isn't that an actual a form of constant intervention in the world and how the world actually functions and then my second part of the question is what is the alternative to intervention so for every Myanmar that you mentioned there are places like Congo which has huge civil wars going on for decades forgotten conflicts because there is no intervention and is it okay that we think that it's going to be a better outcome to just let these places rot on their own without seeking solutions based on these multilateral institutions I'd like to ask you something in relations to in relation to your question your theory on a good the town council of a global village so how likely do you think that a shuffle in the permanent five countries in the UN Security Council to better reflect the changing balance of power in the world will occur in the next one or two decades they you're absolutely right the question of AI that all these institutions were created in 1945 when America and half the world's GNP so it's a very different world and America is very self-confident very strong very benign very generous and the question is can it continue to be equally benign generous and so on and so forth and in my view my sense after three months in the United States is that while the mainstream establishment especially under Trump administration is obviously very anti multilateral there I think enough thoughtful voices within the intellectual establishment in America that understand that actually we do need to strengthen multilateral institutions and I was there one of the things that really pleased me about being in the US but last three months I met lots of people who she had read my writings and it would actually say to me you know that you you all that the your writings help us a lot because they make us see a very different point of view so on multilateralism while i see that that the tram will be very very anti multilateral I would I would expect the the pendulum to swing back to it's more multilateralism or more support of Methodism and it is PI to be very helpful that China has decided to make a very brave decision to actually support the multilateral order that America and the West gifted to the world and so I was in Davos last year in January 2017 when President Xi Jinping's focus for and I found his speech very inspiring because he said hey this is a great world we can make it stronger we have to work together and that was for me was very encouraging so I would say that the battle for multilateralism is not lost now coming to your point about when you when I say that this interventions are wrong are we going to condemn to the congos of the world and so on and so forth actually the opposite will happen and you notice that - let me give you very simple the United States has intervened in Iraq twice first time under Father Bush second time under Sun Bush father bush great success story son Bush disaster was the difference father Bush sent and voice to over 100 countries and got over 100 countries to participate the intervention in Iraq got UN Security Council authorization and it was a legal and legitimate intervention son Bush tried to get UN Security Council legitimization I was an ambassador of Singapore to the UN Security Council so I know what happened inside and he failed and when he failed under international law as Kofi Annan said the war became illegal and you saw the results of an illegal war so I'm not saying give up on all the Congo in the world but if you have it if you have multilaterally and doors legitimate and legal interventions they work much better and so if you get a larger part of the global community involved you get much better results and I can tell you that the existing institutions can do the job then finally on the Roger wills question about the p5 actually within a whole book on it called the great convergence the the paradox about the UN Security Council by the way incidentally the UN Security Council in theory is run by 15 countries 10 elected members five permanent members the p5 in practice the 10 elected members are tourists on the UN Security Council the five p5 run the council and the problem is that the p5 we run the council are the ones who won world war two in 1945 so clearly you need it's good to have great powers in the Security Council but you want tomorrow's great powers and not just today's great powers and changing the composition is going to be very difficult but let me just leave one thought with you the challenge that the p5 is going to have is that they gotta choose between the composition of the UN Security Council which they want to keep and the credibility so if you don't change the composition you will lose the credibility then nobody will pay attention to the UN Security Council if you want preserved the credibility then you got to change the composition so at some point in time and this is what I discussed in the book the great convergence the change will come might be very difficult very painful actually my question has also much to do with the multilateralism and you answered many of them what is your concrete advice to the east to enhance multilateralism and if you could imagine a ideal multilateral system what would it look like very recently China actually attempted to defund human rights programs for the UN 5th Budget Committee and although the UN Human Rights Commissioner has resigned from his position as he argued that human rights weren't actually given enough credibility and wasn't actually paid attention to in the UN so I wanted to ask you to what extent do you think China actually supports the UN and its goal hello professor I'm fan Tyler I just wanted to know how do you think of the real fair system in western world because I think that the fundamental stone in West number is something wrong the Western fundamental when a fundamental stone in West number is prevent poverty I think that is not correcting in this world so do you think the China will be able to manipulate institutions like the WTO while being accused of foul play in institutions like the WTO keeping in mind that China has as is currently in court with with the WTO with the WTO and many Western countries because of China's blatant some blatant disregard of WT reggae WTO regulations these are very very good question and I got to give you unfortunately telegraphic answers now the first one about multilateralism I want to emphasize one point I'm a great lover of the United Nations I'm a great lover of multilateral institutions that's a theme of my book the great convergence and I think these are was are the most underrated institutions in the world and I can tell you as having been ambassador to the UN twice from 84 to 89 in 98 to 2004 please don't read what the Western media tells you about the United Nation is all fake news the United Nations does heroic jobs in many many places the second question about China and the UN whether Chinese China defunding HR programs and so on and so forth and that's wrong wrong but unfortunately the system of defunding UN programs were started and this is illegal by the United States and the West and so that's the thing that the United States should change you to stop it's illegal defunding of programs and this is a subject that is very complex and I think it's wrong for China to follow the footsteps of the United States in in that area and about China and the WTO I can tell you this China today is the biggest beneficiary of the World Trade Organization because it's the world's largest trading nation I grant you this if the WTO makes a ruling China will abide by because China is the biggest beneficiary of the system and to be fair until now so far the United States has also abided by every WTO ruling that's amazing you know we live in an amazing world when the great powers who can actually ignore the rulings still abide by them although they are backing away from some of them so I'm hoping that both United States and China will come back together to strengthen the WTO finally on welfare systems that's of course a very very big question but let me just say one couple of very quick bullet points number one if you ask me what is an ideal Society in domestic terms I pointed the note to the scandinavian societies there they have welfare societies but they have productive and innovative populations so singapore should learn from the scandinavian countries and and they're not negative model there are other aspects of the welfare system that have created a dependent population and those are bad welfare systems and those we have to get rid of but the biggest threat there about the welfare systems unfortunately and this is of course i'm going to end with a very provocative pocket is that in the united states you don't have a welfare system to take care of the poor you have a welfare system to take care of the rich because the rich control the united states congress and the united states congress feeds all kinds of subsidies to the rich and the other day the rich get more money from the welfare system in america than the poor do so the welfare system is something that's big there's got to be fixed but fortunately we can learn from the Scandinavians Thank You Keisha you [Music]

Channel: Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy

Views: 231,379

Rating: 4.6802435 out of 5

Keywords: kishore mahbubani, west, economy, power, politics, policy, public policy, danny quah, china, india, soft power, international relations, geopolitics, lky school, lkyspp, lee kuan yew school of public policy, NUS, has the west lost it, lee kuan yew, lecture, cgtn, has, john mearsheimer, decline of the west, singapore, trade war, jeffrey sachs, parag khanna, has the west lost it kishore mahbubani, kishore mahbubani debate, munk debates

Id: lcAdFKsdweU

Length: 62min 54sec (3774 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 26 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

They never "had it", the modern west is built on colonialist theft

[u/shadows888]

Prof Kishore Mahbubani is very intelligent and I think he's very on point regarding the current state of the world. And his prediction of the future.

[u/Palladium1987]

He also never watches American MSM news even while he is in the US because he said they are an insult to the intelligence.