China, the WTO, and the Downfall of the West

In 2001, most American eyes were sternly focused on the 9/11 terror attack. However, Singaporean scholar Dr. Kishore Mahbubani has suggested a far more significant event for the West occurred that year: the admission of China into the World Trade Organization. Mahbubani powerfully argues that Americans and Europeans have been asleep at the wheel in the last three decades, while the rest of the world caught up from behind. He dares to ask the provocative question: Has the West lost it?

An Outside View

Many Americans are skeptical about globalism because it impacts jobs, prosperity, and demographics at home. Mahbubani brings an unusually observant perspective on the West from the outside. Through the eyes of small Third World countries, the world looks very different. Those populations tend to like globalism because it creates wealth, jobs, and opportunities for them. Many do not mind Europe and America sunsetting while China and India rise.

Unlike many Westerners and non-Westerners, Mahbubani wants the West to succeed, and his 2018 book Has the West Lost It? has been described as a “love letter to the West.” He pinpoints trends and facts that the American establishment has largely ignored.

He notes that the rest of the world should care because “if the Western civilization hadn’t succeeded, modernized, or achieved tremendous breakthroughs in science and technology, humanity would have been in a much worse condition.” Today that type of praise might get you labeled a far-right extremist in America.

He thinks it is beneficial for the world to have a strong and healthy West. However, due to a combination of arrogance and self-loathing, American and European elites have been divorcing themselves from reality. When the world changes, the West must adapt, he says.

Minimalism, Multilateralism, Machiavellianism

He introduces three Ms as his advice to the West. The first is to be more minimalist. Do less intervention in other nations, fewer Iraqs, Libyas, and Syrias. Second, be more multilateral. Accept that there are different axes of power and influence. His third advice is perhaps the most controversial: be more Machiavellian.

He gives an example: Europe did not invest in Africa for purely ideological reasons. It would be immoral, imperialist, and racist to do so. Meanwhile, by 2050, ten times more people will live in Africa than in Europe, and only the small pond of the Mediterranean separates them. Instead of creating a good business opportunity, Europe is now getting a flood of poor migrants. While Europe was wailing about exploitation and colonialism, China quietly entered Africa and developed the continent in return for natural resources. That could have been Europe.

Trump

His book came out while former President Donald Trump was still in office. Unlike the liberal half of America and most of the world who listened to their media, Mahbubani is surprisingly informed: “The liberal media does the world a great disservice because their reporting on Trump is supposed to be objective and neutral, but it is not.”

He correctly identifies that the West has succumbed to fake news and cannot assess the world accurately. He is still somewhat critical of Trump because of his tariffs and confrontational style but praised him for his normalization of relations with North Korea.

If he had been even more informed, he would have known that Trump is neither an isolationist nor a protectionist. Instead, he uses the threats of tariffs in a Machiavellian way to obtain better deals and treaties for the United States. Trump was arguably the most minimalist, multilateral, and Machiavellian president America has had in decades.

Contrast

Compare and contrast the views of this dark-skinned Singaporean man of Indian heritage to what the average media say about the United States. Why do we have to travel halfway around the globe to find people with a positive view of the West who don’t see it as a racist, white supremacist evil that needs to be incessantly criticized and destroyed? How can someone not native to the West be better informed about our civilization than the average American?

If Mahbubani is correct that the West has lost it, the dishonest media and the ideologically possessed elites are the main culprits. However, his message is also hopeful. There are intelligent people out there who care about the West’s fate trying to give us a helping hand. If they can get so much right from the outside, maybe there is hope that Americans and Europeans can do it, too.

~ Read more from Caroline Adana.