For centuries, the Asians (Chinese, Indians, Muslims, and others) have been bystanders in world history. Now they are ready to become co-drivers. Asians have finally understood, absorbed, and implemented Western best practices in many areas: from free-market economics to modern science and technology, from meritocracy to rule of law. They have also become innovative in their own way, creating new patterns of cooperation not seen in the West.
Will the West resist the rise of Asia? The good news is that Asia wants to replicate, not dominate, the West. For a happy outcome to emerge, the West must gracefully give up its domination of global institutions, from the IMF to the World Bank, from the G7 to the UN Security Council.
History teaches that tensions and conflicts are more likely when new powers emerge. This, too, may happen. But they can be avoided if the world accepts the key principles for a new global partnership spelled out in
The New Asian Hemisphere.
THE NEW ASIAN HEMISPHERE: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East
Kishore Mahbubani, a much traveled ambassador throughout Asia, argues that the twenty-first century belongs to Asia, a fact that the world must urgently and structurally recognize. India and China are only the most obvious -- and largest, most populous -- Asian leading nations. But Indonesia, the two Koreas, Vietnam, even Cambodia, a basket case 20 years ago, are now expanding vigorously as economic powers, intellectual centers and cultural hegemons. The political polarity of the world is shifting: Mahbubani shows how, and presents a vision of the world that might emerge if the Asian version of the story becomes globally accepted.
