The rise of Asia and the West’s response (Part 1)

The emergence of Asia - and that of China and India, among others - in economic terms and international trade, characterizes today's world. Asia coexists with the military and nuclear –and political - power of the United States. The optimistic post-Cold War voices who stated that mankind’s story would end up based on the dominance of representative democracy and market economy have been muted. With the advent of globalization, various hubs are powered by and compete with one another through international trade. The events of September 11, 2001 complicated the post-Cold War scenario with the terrorist threat, as did the unfortunate U.S. intervention in Iraq.
 
This article contains two visions about the rise of Asia in this context. The first is that of Kishore Mahbubani, a prominent diplomat and political scientist at the National University of Singapore, in his book The New Asian Hemisphere: The irresistible shift of global power to the East. 1 The second is an article by Princeton’s John Ikenberry, "The rise of China and the future of the West" 2 in the latest issue of the influential journal Foreign Affairs in which China was featured. Though not directly interrelated, these publications from early 2008 offer important insight into the Asia-West issue in tandem. It is, after all, one of the key issues in today’s globalized world.

"Dangerous" international system? The emergence of Asia.
 
Various Western leaders and intellectuals in the United States and the European Union, refer to current international system as "dangerous".
 
Kishore Mahbubani focuses in depth on the situation from the Asian perspective in his book, The New Asian Hemisphere. It is a vision to which we are not very accustomed. Developed, yet dogma-free. Reasoned, but with conviction and a strength of argument that is informed and committed.
 

For the author, "the danger" to which Western leaders refer masks the fear of the loss of the West’s more than 200 year-old hegemony over trade. He states the rise of Asia, and emerging powers such as China and India, should not be feared, and clarifies "that few Asian societies want to destabilize a system that has served them (so well)" (Mahbubani, page 2).
 
Various arguments are interwoven in order to give us that perspective which the political scientist described as optimistic in the sense that the Asian emergency should not be seen as a setback for development and world order. On the contrary, a shift toward the East should be viewed as just another twist among the many which have occurred throughout history.

Mahbubani does not deliver a closed-minded position. He recognizes the values of Western culture and civilization, as well as its strength -democratic legitimacy, the advancement of science, human rights - and the Western dominion of the global economy - 62% of the world’s GDP, 13.4% of the population, 73.8% of the 500 largest multinational corporations.
 
He also focuses on what, in his opinion, is the lack of Western acknowledgment of the magnitude of the changes that are happening and that are exemplified by international, political (and the United Nations Security Council) and economic (IMF, World Bank, WTO) organizations – which play a greater role commensurate to the increased openness of trade - but that have been frozen in their leadership structures, showing a correlation of forces that is not the one that currently manifests itself in the international system and the globalization. Thus, the participation of Europe appears over represented.

In the current international context, the United States and the European Union are losing the optimism and motivation necessary to continue promoting free trade, and resort to various forms of protectionism, tariffs and non-tariff measures, which, in turn, explains the successive delays and failures of the Doha Round within the WTO framework.

 
The Alternative Vision: The Integration of New Actors according to the position of John Ikenberry.
 
No doubt, that this too is not the only perspective for analyzing the realities of today’s international politics and trade.

In the early 2008 edition of Foreign Affairs, , specialists such as John Ikenberry of Princeton in his article "The rise of China and the future of the West", gave a more nuanced version of the generic topic of "a changing China", which coincided in part with the position of Mahbubani, or some of his alternatives.
 
This vision is not fatalistic about the fate of the West, but rather highlights the "remarkable capacity" that it has "to accommodate emerging powers" (Ikenberry, 2008:31).

In this context, Ikenberry develops a line of thought which is from that of Mahbubani, "the Western world with a strong framework of rules and institutions is already starting to facilitate the integration of China" (Ikenberry, 2008:31).

Kishore Mahbubani (2008),The New Asian Hemisphere. The irresistible shift of global power to the East. Public Affairs, New York, 314 pages.

John Ikenberry (2008) "The rise of China and the future of the West" , Foreign Affairs, Volume 87, Number 1, January/February 2008, New York.