Transcription
There's so little reflection in [music] the West of how many people have you killed, how many lives have you destroyed by becoming so trigger happy. But I can tell you that was a mistake that prevented you also from seeing what was happening.
[music] And the rest of the world noticed. >> [applause] >> Uh, good morning everyone. This is my first time at the How the Light Gets In festival and my first speech. So you can see I'm very nervous. But anyway, as you know, in in in the West, especially in Americans and British, you start the talk, you you make a joke. Uh, I come from Asia and in Asia, we always begin with an apology. And but this is actually uh a genuine apology and I sincerely want to apologize to you all if my talk makes you feel uncomfortable. And the problem here is that if I don't make you uncomfortable and if I don't take you out of your comfort zones, you won't understand the world that's coming. The world that is coming is so far outside your comfort zones that you really got to, in a sense, suffer a bit of pain uh if you're going to understand it.
So the way I, what I pro, the way I propose to organize my remarks today uh is to, to try and give you a glimpse of the new world that's emerging. And I'll talk in the first part about how we are seeing, firstly, of course, the end of the era of Western domination of world history. The West has had a very good run. [laughter] 200 years plus of global domination, which is fun, but that's over. And it's important to understand why it's over. What happened? What did the West do wrong? And then the second part about, basically, what you're seeing is a new multi-civilizational world where you're seeing the return of other civilizations. And that's of course going to change the texture and chemistry of our world significantly. And um, and I'm going to focus, although uh in that section mostly on China, because China is now the leading edge of the new world. And if you don't understand China, [laughter] you don't understand the new world that's coming, right? And then I'm going to talk about what you might see therefore as we move into this new world. What kind of scenarios can we expect? How will we stumble into this new world that's coming?
So let me then begin by talking about why the West has lost its way. And I want to just begin by making a slightly provocative statement that the West has, in global terms, become a lonely, narcissistic civilization, self-absorbed in itself, very happy with itself. And therefore, with this narcissism, has blinded itself to the mistakes that it has made in dealing uh with the rest of the world. And I want to begin the story, in some ways uh, with the end of the Cold War in 1990. Because I mean, don't, I'm sure you all remember how the West celebrated, how happy the West was that it defeated the Soviet Union without firing a shot. And the West thought, hey, we have arrived. And you even believed this is amazing. Almost everyone in the West believed that you had reached the end of history. Hooray! We don't have to struggle anymore. We've made it. We made it to the top. We've achieved these liberal democratic societies, which are the best societies in the world. We succeeded. We've made it. The rest of you, the rest of the world, you got to struggle. We don't have to struggle. And one statistic that I'm surprised that so few in the West are aware of is that the West only makes up 12% of the world's population. 12%. 88% lives outside the West. And the West crazily assumed at that moment of history, when it reached the end of history, that the rest of the West would come and become replicas of the West, copy you, follow you, and become like you. I'm sure you'll all agree that that's a somewhat arrogant assumption on the part of the West. But that arrogance dominated the worldview of all the Western intellectuals at that time. I know it so well because by an accident of history, I spent a year in Harvard in '91-'92 and I drowned in that arrogance that I could feel about how the West had arrived and succeeded and the rest of you poor chaps, you know, get used to it, adjust it, move on.
So the reason why that arrogance at that point was a major strategic mistake, because that arrogance put the West to sleep at precisely the moment when the other civilizations decided to wake up. So you close your eyes when the rest of the world was waking up. And remember, China had started this form of modernization program in 1979. And by 1989, 1990, was gaining a lot of momentum. And then India also woke up around the early 1990s as a result of crisis, by the way. In both cases, China went through major crisis and it's like, okay, enough is enough, time for us to get sensible and do the right thing. India went through major crisis and said, enough is enough, let's do the right thing. And of course, what you've seen since then, in the case of the Chinese, the Chinese civilization has been around for 4,000 years. And the last 40 years of economic and social development in China have been the best 40 years in 4,000 years of Chinese history. And the West said, it cannot be. They're not like us. They cannot be succeeding, right? Because you assume to succeed, you must be liberal democratic. So that clearly, that's why I think the end of history moment was a disastrous moment for the West, because they put the West to sleep at precisely the moment when the West was waking.
But there was another major strategic mistake that the West made once it felt that, okay, we're number one, we can run the world, we can do what we want to do. And of course, the West, all West, many in the West believe that the most peaceful, law-abiding civilization in the world is Western civilization. But if you look at the data, the West became trigger happy and started getting involved in wars after wars. The last 30 over years, the West decided that the best way to spread liberty is to bomb cities. Bombing is the best way to spread democracy and liberalism. And the rest of the world noticed that this happened, that you had become trigger happy. Of course, it started in the late 1990s when, of course, you thought you're doing the right thing. You're trying to protect the people of the former Yugoslavia. And the way you do that is by bombing Belgrade. [snorts] And incidentally, curiously, many in the West believe that the West, of course, always abides by international law. The bombing of Belgrade was a violation of international law. International law makes it very clear, this is Western international law. 1945 UN rules-based order, Western international law, that says that use of force is justified when it's either an act of self-defense or if it's authorized by the UN Security Council. The bombing of Belgrade was not an act of self-defense, not authorized by the UN Security Council, and therefore illegal. And it's interesting because the, you, the, you, the West always believes in the rule of law. But I can tell you, when a Western prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia tried just to say, should we ask the question whether the bombing of Belgrade was legal or illegal, the amount of pressure put on that prosecutor was phenomenal. Again, many in the West didn't notice this, but the rest of the world noticed this.
And that, of course, that trigger-happy uh strain didn't stop at Yugoslavia. Uh, you know, carried on with the uh Iraq war in 2003. And clearly, that war was illegal. Was not an act of self-defense, not a uh authorized by UN Security Council. And I, by the way, I know, I know perfectly well it wasn't authorized by the UN Security Council because I was a member of the UN Security Council myself personally for two years. I watched the debates and I watched whether or not the, the, the United States and UK pushing very hard to get the rest of the world to agree. The time had come to remove Saddam Hussein. The rest of the world said no. This is not legal. And by the way, curiously, one interesting thing about the Iraq war that is worth noting and remembering is that two of the best friends of the United States and the United Kingdom, two countries called France and Germany [snorts] actually opposed the war and did say to us and UK, this is a mistake, don't do this. This is a mistake. And of course, they were shoved aside because there was total conviction that what the US was doing in spreading democracy was the right thing. What stunned me, by the way, sometimes the little stories that give you an indication of how people think. I thought that this desire for war was probably limited to the neo, what a tribe that's called the neocons in America, by the way, who always believe that the best solution is American military intervention. And but I happened to be in New York in 2002 attending uh a wonderful lunch in a very exclusive club in New York. And I was sitting next to a very successful American businessman. And as we sat down for lunch, we were being served wine. And when the waiter came to pour wine, then this gentleman asked the waiter, "Is this French wine?" The waiter said, "Yes." He said, "I'm not touching French wine. They're opposing our war in Iraq." That to me was a huge wakeup call. Gosh, this desire for war is so deep, so entrenched in the West.
But Iraq war, as you know, was not the last war. There could have been lessons learned. War crimes were committed in Iraq. And at the same time, subsequently, when you intervene in Libya, right? That was also a major war crime. I mean, Gaddafi was a dictator. Let's be clear about that. There's no doubt that he was a dictator. But under him, the Libyan people had the best lives of anybody in Africa. They had guaranteed income, guaranteed healthcare, guaranteed education, guaranteed peace. They had, they led good lives. And then you bombed Gaddafi. The country collapsed. The West created a failed state and just walked away. And the rest of the world noticed. So I mean, there's so little reflection in the West of how many people have you killed, how many lives have you destroyed by becoming so trigger happy after the end of the Cold War. But I can tell you that was a mistake that prevented you also from seeing what was happening.
And of course, the third strategic mistake that the West made was to, to continue to try and dominate the world. I think most ordinary citizens in the West are not aware of what your leaders, what your diplomats are trying to do in trying to preserve Western control of the world [snorts] and and in often using methods and principles that in theory go against Western principles. Okay. I mean, for example, you believe in meritocracy. You believe that if anyone should be chosen to run an organization, he should be the best possible person. [snorts] It doesn't matter whether he's white or black or Asian or African. Doesn't matter if he's the best person. We pick him, right? Now, two of the world's most important international economic organizations are the IMF and the World Bank. In theory, they serve the world. So anybody in the world should qualify to run the IMF and the World Bank. And I can tell you, at one moment, when the West fell very vulnerable at the height of the 2008 financial crisis, when people in the US and Europe began to think, what's happening to us? What's happening to us? When you suddenly needed the rest of the world to come together to save the world economy, you had a G20 meeting in the UK, chaired by Gordon Brown, and you said at that meeting, from now on, the leaders of the IMF and the World Bank must be chosen on merit. 2008 is 18 years ago. 18 years have passed. Even now, to become the head of the IMF, you must be a European. You become the head of the World Bank, you must be an American. And 88% of the world's population don't qualify to run a world's institution. Now, that is so unwise. So unwise. These are supposed to be global institutions. Why do you insist that only Westerners can run it? Why do you say only 12% of the world can run the world's institutions? Clearly, these are decisions made by your leaders. And all these decisions will come to haunt you as the world changes.
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