Obama in Asia: West Looks East After "The End of History"

SINGAPORE -- The 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall has just been celebrated. For many, that momentous event marked the so-called "end of history" and the final victory of the West. This week, Barack Obama, the first black president of the once-triumphant superpower in that Cold War contest, heads to Beijing to meet America's bankers -- the Chinese Communist government -- a prospect undreamt of 20 years ago. Surely, this twist of the times is a good point of departure for taking stock of just where history has gone during these past two decades.

Let me begin with an extreme and provocative point to get the argument going: Francis Fukuyama's famous essay "The End of History" may have done some serious brain damage to Western minds in the 1990s and beyond. Fukuyama should not be blamed for this brain damage. He wrote a subtle, sophisticated and nuanced essay. However, few Western intellectuals read the essay in its entirety. Instead, the only message they took away from the essay were two phrases that can be found in the essay: namely The End of History = The Triumph of the West.

Western hubris was thick in the air then. I experienced it. For example, in 1991 I heard a senior Belgian official, speaking on behalf of Europe, tell a group of Asians, "The Cold War has ended. There are only two superpowers left: the United States and Europe." This hubris also explains how Western minds failed to foresee that instead of the triumph of the West, the 1990s would see the end of Western domination of world history (but not the end of the West) and the return of Asia.

There is no doubt that the West has contributed to the return of Asia. As I document in my book The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East, several Asian societies have succeeded because they finally understood, absorbed and implemented the seven pillars of Western wisdom, namely free-market economics, science and technology, meritocracy, pragmatism, culture of peace, rule of law and education.

Notice what is missing from the list: Western political liberalism, despite Fukuyama's claim that "The triumph of the West, of the Western idea, is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism."

The general assumption in Western minds after reading Fukuyama's essay was that the world would in one way or another become more Westernized. Instead, the exact opposite has happened. Modernization has spread across the world. But modernization has been accompanied by de-Westernization, not Westernization. Fukuyama acknowledges this today. As he said in a recent interview with Global Viewpoint editor Nathan Gardels: "The old version of the idea modernization was Euro-centric, reflecting Europe's own development. That did contain attributes which sought to define modernization in a quite narrow way."

In the same interview, Fukuyama was right in emphasizing that the three components of political modernization were: the creation of an effective state that could enforce rules, the rule of law that binds the sovereign, and accountability. Indeed, these are the very traits of political modernization that many Asian states are aspiring to achieve. Asians surely agree that no state can function or develop without an effective government. We feel particularly vindicated in this point of view after the recent financial crisis. One reason why the United States came to grief was the deeply held ideological assumption in the mind of key American policymakers, like Alan Greenspan, that Ronald Reagan was correct in saying that "Government is not a solution to our problem; government is the problem." Fortunately, Asians did not fall prey to this ideology.

Consequently, in the 21st century, history will unfold in the exact opposite direction of what Western intellectuals anticipated in 1991. Then they all assumed that The End of History = The Triumph of the West. Instead, we will now see that The Return of History = The Retreat of the West. One prediction I can make confidently is that the Western footprint on the world, which was hugely oversized in the 19th and 20th centuries, will retreat significantly in the 21st century.

This will not mean a retreat of all Western ideas. Indeed many key ideas like free-market economics and rule of law will be embraced ever more widely. However, few Asians will believe that the Western societies are best at implementing these Western ideas. Indeed, the general assumption of Western competence in governance and management will be replaced by awareness that the West has become quite inept at managing its economies. A new gap will develop. Respect for Western ideas will remain, but respect for Western practices will diminish, unless Western performance in governance improves again.

Sadly, in all the recent discussions of "The End of History" 20 years after its publication, few Western commentators have dared to address the biggest lapse in Western practice. The fundamental underlying assumption of "The End of History" thesis was that the West would remain the "beacon" for the world in democracy and human rights. In 1989, if anyone had dared to predict that within 15 years, the foremost "beacon" of human rights would become the first Western developed state to reintroduce torture, everyone would have shouted "impossible." Yet the impossible happened!

Few in the West understand how much shock Guantanamo has caused in non-Western minds. Hence, many are puzzled that Western intellectuals continue to assume that they can portray themselves and their countries as models to follow when they speak to the rest of the world on human rights. Fukuyama is right to emphasize the importance of "accountability." Yet no one in the West has been held accountable for Guantanamo.

Consequently, what moral authority does the West have to speak on the issues of human rights anymore? This loss of moral authority is the exact opposite outcome that Western minds expected when they celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Does this mean we should give up hope? Will the world become a sadder place? Probably few in the West will remember what Fukuyama wrote in the last paragraph of his essay. He wrote: "The end of history will be a very sad time. The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one's life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands. In the post-historical period there will be neither art nor philosophy, just the perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history."

Here, too, as the 21st century unfolds, we will see the exact opposite outcome. The return of Asia will be accompanied by an astonishing Asian renaissance in which many diverse Asian cultures will rediscover their lost heritage of art and philosophy. There is no question that Asians will celebrate the return of history in the 21st century. The only question is: Will the West join them in these celebrations, or will they keep waiting for the end to come?

Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, at the National University of Singapore, is the author of The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East.

(c) 2009 GLOBAL VIEWPOINT/TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES. HOSTED ONLINE BY THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR.

 

Comments

[PaPaPeng]

The "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" is the modern formula for the successful running of a country the US seems to have stumbled in implementing. All it says is that every country should get these basics right if they are to succeed in raising their standard of living and therefore their economic wellbeing and national security. To ignore them is to fall behind with all the problems that bring. No country can defeat the US or wants to. Only you can do it to yourself.

China has no grand plan to dominate the world. China ain't that clever. Her primary concern is to modernize and raise the standard of living for her people. It is as basic as raising the remaining >400 million of China's poor to earn an income of above $2 a day. That $2 won't buy you a latte in Starbucks. 400 million is more than the entire population of the US (300 million) or of Europe (350 million?) This means China will continue with its well proven export orientated industrial policies and its monetary policies for at least another decade. There won't be any revaluation of the Yuan or free convertability. Things do change no doubt buy do not expect any quick fixes soon.

[msbadger]

"One reason why the United States came to grief was the deeply held ideological assumption in the mind of key American policymakers, like Alan Greenspan, that Ronald Reagan was correct in saying that "Government is not a solution to our problem; government is the problem." Fortunately, Asians did not fall prey to this ideology." Well, that pretty much sums it up. This seems to be a very likely outcome if we don't change our ways. Even with Obama in the WH, and the whole world loves him, we have definitely lost our street cred. We believed our own bullsh*t too long.

[ExFatoFides]

I like the idea of these pillars of "Western wisdom, namely free-market economics, science and technology, meritocracy, pragmatism, culture of peace, rule of law and education."

It is a great day when we can conceive a global system that includes a wealthy and free Asia. It is great to bring up Fukuyama's thesis, the self-congratulation of the West after the end of the Cold War.

Heres to the hope that Asia will be able to, on its own terms, find progress in terms of freeing captive farmers, low caste peoples, women, journalists, dissidents, and a fruitful future.

I wish we could hope the best for one another.
But that is now our way.

[elan4444]

There's some fuzzy logic involved here, mainly because many of these countries such as China exist as authoritarian capitalistic countries. That's basically materialistic consumerism without the democracy part. Not that we're a shining beacon as is mentioned, but we have to be honest in assessing Asia as well. What is not broached here is the subject of Islamization, which must be faced squarely if Europe and the U.S. are to maintain their societies. We ascribe to freedom of religion, not understanding that in Islamic countries, choice of religion is not an issue. As is demonstrated by events that transpired this week, the issue cannot be ignored.

[FearlessFreep]

The US had already lost what moral authority it had by 1989. (Thank you, Ronald Reagan.)

[jinsei]

I think people mistake modernization with "Westernization."

[YorickBrown]

Incredibly article. Very well written. I just disagree with the one point that they'll rediscover their own art and culture. I think it'll be more of a mix between western culture and their own culture.

[PeterNY]

Asian countries export to our markets automobiles, electronics, durable goods and consumer bric-a-brac. In return, we send them soybeans and movies. They have a collective motto that goes, "Never buy what you can eventually manufacture yourself," and when a new industry emerges in the west, they target it with impenetrable import barriers until they can catch up with the technology. This practice is aided and abetted by Wall Street financiers, who can marshal tens of billions of dollars of capital funding to wrest managerial control of a domestic company and funnel its production overseas to where people work for sixty-five cents an hour with no benefits. When profits hit the roof, the payoff in the stock sale is staggering.

Sorry Mr. Workingman, get a job selling imports. Until this country wises up and imposes reciprocal import tariffs, that's where your future lies.

[CaptainParker]

Puhleeze - Asia assuming a posture of moral superiority? I don't think so. The problem here is that too many Western elites have acquired this quaint notion that they must now bow and scrape toward what was previously called the Third World as atonement for the colonial era. And a period of isolationism by the West might not be a bad idea - certainly it would allow the US to devote its resources to rebuilding internally instead of wasting national treasure playing global cop. Moreover, and the bleeding hearts would gasp at the thought, the West (read US) still has the capacity, if needed, to send China, India or any other Asian country back to the 18th Century with an afternoon of carrier squadron strikes and cruise missiles. When Western culture sheds itself of this current bout of self-flagellation, it will reassume its position of superiority.

[dansmith17]

The comment was not Asia claiming Moral superiority but of them seeing the hypocrisy of us claiming it. We demand that Singapore or Thailand condemn Iran for torture in Evian prison and they ask but what was the difference between that and Guantanamo.

The US does still have the capacity if it used nukes to send any country on the planet back to the stone age in an afternoon. Using conventional weapons sending them back to the 18th century could be done but would take more than an afternoon, think strikes on Serbia for a couple of months, or the air strikes of Gulf War 1, for 3 months.

However the US is in danger of going through a period like the UK post 1945 with a military which could occupy any nation on Earth, destroy any nation on Earth, with the exception of the 2 Superpowers but bankrupt and subject to the whims of it's bankers. UK decided to invade Egypt and easily defeated the Egyptians but was forced to agree to withdraw in an afternoon when Eisenhoer snapped his fingers and the UK Pound fell off a cliff.

China is now the banker of the US but is not yet in anything like the position the US was with regards to the UK as at the time the US could aford to lose the UK as a market, China now can not aford to lose the US.

[CaptainParker]

An excellent comparison to the British fiasco at Suez. Unfortunate that the solons in our State Department were more interested in dismantling the British Empire (to open it to American corporations) than looking upon it as a vehicle to develop a lot of the Third World countries that have since become the basket cases and militant hotbeds of our times. It is also interesting that immediately after Suez was the ten-year period when the British scrapped the hundreds of ships they had in their mothball fleet, reduced the British Army and abandoned their positions east of Suez and reduced the RAF - basically extending the middle finger to the US. The French were less subtle - DeGaulle simply withdrew France from NATO and committed his country to maintaining a truly independent military force. Moral to the story: The US is not a good ally - it blows with the wind.

As for our hipocrisy - every great power is entitled to a little hipocrisy - privilege of rank. Asian countries are among the last to throw stones given their own records in the 20th Century.

[worldman49]

"the West (read US) still has the capacity, if needed, to send China, India or any other Asian country back to the 18th Century with an afternoon of carrier squadron strikes and cruise missiles. When Western culture sheds itself of this current bout of self-flagellation, it will reassume its position of superiority."

You're equating brute force with superiority. Not the same thing, as the Vietnam War so clearly demonstrated. The US did not demonstrate its "superiority" by defoliating the Vietnamese landscape with napalm. Savagery, barbarity, and ruthlessness, perhaps, but not superiority. You obviously have some issues with Asians. That's too bad, because most Asians are nice people if you get to know them.

[CaptainParker]

Vietnam demonstrated that when your military leaders try to fight the last war and your political leaders lack the cajones to make the right decision vis-a-vis employing the military, you are going to lose big time. Yes, the record establishes that in every major pitched set-piece battle, especially Tet in 1968, we won - decisively. But as one of the North Vietnamese generals commented to anAmerican officer many years after 1975 - "so what?" JFK was preparing to pull out when he was assassinated - LBJ was too macho to follow through and listened way too much to his eminence grise Robert McNamara. A decision to fight in Vietnam would NOT have involved a half-million man american style army with the massive artillery train and logistics trail. Instead, it would have used many more Special Forces units waging an equivalent guerrilla campaign in North Vietnam taking advantage of the disaffected elements in that country. The violence level would be escalated to the equivalent of what the Communist regime did in the south. THAT is how the war SHOULD have been fought - IF you made the decision to stay. Unfortunately, we don't seem to have learned very much. Afghanistan is becoming more and more of a replay of the late 1960's - too many generals want a shot at combat command time. I say this as a former infantry officer of eleven years who did several years of active duty during the latter years of Vietnam.

[PaPaPeng]

[the West (read US) still has the capacity, if needed, to send China, India or any other Asian country back to the 18th Century with an afternoon of carrier squadron strikes and cruise missiles.]

Iraq and AfPak wars have shown the limits of conventional American military power. You military is essentially broken. The US cannot fight another conventional war any time soon. It will take more than a decade to rebuild. A lot can happen in mainstreet meantime.

As for nuclear war there are three natural superpowers, namely America, Russia and China. All three countries are too big geographically to be knocked out by all the nuclear weapons in the world. There is no chance of two superpowers ganging up to knock out the third. Only the US (you) can think of a nuclear exchange with either China or Russia. Say it happens and both protagonists are severely mauled. Both (US-China) would have spent their entire nuclear arsenal as there are no half measures in a nuclear exchange. That leaves the third nuclear power intact. This third superpower can then impose her will on the whole planet for who will there be to stop her. She wouldn't even have to fire a shot. Think of a Russia that will now be the Master of the Universe.

[Hugh Sansom]

The US and the major western powers (but above all the US) have identified moral virtue with wealth for decades. (The two great virtues in the United States are wealth and fame.) So it is no surprise that now that wealth is moving to the East that the West's idea of Virtue should move east too.

[Realization]

"... several Asian societies have succeeded because they finally understood, absorbed and implemented the seven pillars of Western wisdom, namely free-market economics, science and technology, meritocracy, pragmatism, culture of peace, rule of law and education."

Not hardly as far as free-market economics goes. Japan, Korea, China are all countries with industrial policies that have high barriers to imports of finished goods in any category they have targeted. And FDI is difficult and imbalanced with the U.S. as well as tech transfer flows. They have been getting U.S. tech for a long time and nothing really comes back except to their own firms operations in the U.S.

And hey, since when has the U.S. fixation on free markets and free trade been pragmatic? It's more of a religious belief. They are the pragmatic ones, even China now. Ideology has gotten the U.S. in this mess.

Time we start learning form them. Or at least put our economists in a bucket and learn to properly assess the tactical and strategic situations.

[Paramendra Bhagat]

The pendulum swing is obvious.

[langej]

Let us hope that the West has merely been temporarily knocked to the canvas by being too cocky in the ring. The arrogance and incompetence of George W Bush, and the unwillingness of Europe to back their ideals with action, make this knock-down well deserved. But let us hope that the west will be back with its ideals of equal rights for all; to stand up and fight against those who believe in the systematic oppression of women, the hounding of groups of a different religion, and the silencing of any who do not toe the government line.

If not, the west (especially America) will turn isolationist and leave Asia, Africa and the middle east to pay for their own defence, argue for free trade to lift the poor from poverty and to create their own new ideas and inventions. Looking at history, that does not promise a pleasant or prosperous future.

[norkas]

Cheny ran foreign policy for America and almost destroyed America. His thirst for wars and lies proved him to be a coward in many eyes including many veterans who were Republicans.

Today we have politicians who careless about humanity in both parties and cater to those lobbyist who can fund with the love and compassion they are suppose to have for ALL AMERICANS.

Both parties do have some honest politicians but the numbers are scant. I believe that all parties in America know they have the same problems with their leadership and unless we all stand united America will change for the worse.

It is time to unite and change the way politicians thinks about America and how they receive funding for their campaign's from lobbyist. We ask for their love and compassion not greed and stupidity that is only getting worse.

[shallyv]

Or so you hope, Dean! But then Indians usually exaggerate, don't they?!!! Must be the result of all the Indian folk tales!

[IssuesInFocus]

Truly an interesting read. For those of us who love history -- books on East/ West culture wars, fascinating indeed.
I only ask: where is the William Shakespeare among us to place this tale on stage. That the West Looks East in itself is a truism that although hard to fathom is a fact that must be acknowledged. To those who are afraid to do so, witnessing "The End of History" takes little effort . The footage /out takes are right at our door steps.