at precisely the moment when China and India
I'm here to address this great mystery.
Now what do I mean when I say the West chose to go to sleep?
Here I'm referring to the failure of the West
to react intelligently and thoughtfully
to a new world environment that's obviously been created
As a friend of the West I feel anguished by this,
so my goal to today is to try to help the West.
But I have to begin the story first
by talking about how the West actually woke up the rest of the world.
From the year one through the year 1820,
the two largest economies of the world were always those of China and India.
So it's only in the last 200 years that Europe took off,
So the past 200 years of world history
have therefore been a major historical aberration.
All aberrations come to a natural end
and this is what we are seeing.
you'll see how quickly and how forcefully
China and India are coming back.
The only honest answer to this question is that it was Western civilization
We all know that the West was the first to successfully modernize,
initially it used its power to colonize and dominate the world.
But over time, it shared the gifts of Western wisdom
Let me add here that I have personally benefited
from the sharing of Western wisdom.
which was then a poor British colony,
in 1948,
I experienced, like three-quarters of humanity then,
Indeed, on the first day when I went to school
I was put in a special feeding program
because I was technically undernourished.
Now as you can see I'm overnourished.
(Laughter)
But the greatest gift I got was that of Western education.
Now since I've personally traveled this journey
from third world poverty to a comfortable middle-class existence,
I can speak with great conviction about the impact of Western wisdom
and the sharing of Western wisdom with the world.
And one particular gift that the West shared
Now reasoning was not invented by the West.
It's inherent in all cultures and civilizations.
Amartya Sen has described how deeply embedded it is in Indian civilization.
that it was the West that carried the art of reasoning
And through the Scientific Revolution,
the West really raised it forcefully,
and equally importantly used this,
applied it to solve many major practical problems.
And the West then shared this art of applied reasoning
and I can tell you that it led
to what I call three silent revolutions.
I can describe how these silent revolutions transformed Asia.
The first revolution was in economics.
The main reason why so many Asian economies,
including the communist societies of China and Vietnam,
have performed so spectacularly well in economic development,
is because they finally understood, absorbed and are implementing
The second gift was psychological.
Here too I can speak from personal experience.
my mother and her generation believed
that life was determined by fate.
You couldn't do anything about it.
and the generation of Asians after me,
believe that we can take charge
And this may explain, for example,
the spike of entrepreneurship you see all throughout Asia today.
And if you travel through Asia today,
you will also see the results of the third revolution:
the revolution of good governance.
Now as a result of good governance —
Now having transformed the world
through the sharing of Western wisdom with the rest of the world,
the logical and rational response of the West should have been
to say, "Hey, we have to adjust and adapt to this new world."
Instead, the West chose to go to sleep.
because the West became distracted with two major events.
The first event was the end of the Cold War.
Yes, the end of the Cold War was a great victory.
The West defeated the mighty Soviet Union without firing a shot.
But you know, when you have a great victory like this,
it also leads to arrogance and hubris.
And this hubris was best captured in a very famous essay
Now, Fukuyama was putting across a very sophisticated message,
but all that the West heard from this essay
was that we, the liberal democracies,
it's only the rest of the world that has to change and adapt.
Unfortunately, like a dangerous opiate,
this essay did a lot of brain damage to the West
just at precisely the moment when China and India were waking up
and the West didn't adjust and adapt.
The second major event was 9/11,
And as we know, 9/11 caused a lot of shock and grief.
I personally experienced the shock and grief
because I was in Manhattan when 9/11 happened.
9/11 also generated a lot of anger,
and in this anger, the United States decided to invade Afghanistan
partly as a result of this anger,
the West didn't notice the significance of another event
China joined the World Trade Organization.
into the global capitalist system,
to what the economist Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction.
Western workers lost their jobs,
they saw their incomes stagnate,
clearly people had to think about new competitive policies,
So partly as a result of this,
the United States of America became
the only major developed society
where the average income of the bottom 50 percent —
average income went down over a 30-year period,
So partly, as a result of this,
it led eventually to the election of Donald Trump in 2016,
who exploited the anger of the working classes,
It also contributed to the rise of populism in Europe.
could this populism have been avoided
if the West had not been distracted by the end of the Cold War and by 9/11?
But the big question we face today is this:
And my answer is that it's not too late.
It is possible for the West to recover
And using the Western art of reasoning,
I would recommend that the West adopt a new "three-m" strategy:
minimalist, multilateral and Machiavellian.
(Laughter)
Now even though Western domination has ended,
the West continues to intervene and interfere in the affairs
This is generating anger and resentment,
especially in Islamic societies.
It's also draining the resources and spirits of Western societies.
Now I know that the Islamic world
is having difficulties modernizing.
but it's more likely to do so if it is left alone to do so.
Now I can say this with some conviction because I come from a region,
which has almost as many Muslims as the Arab world.
Southeast Asia is also one of the most diverse continents on planet earth,
because you also have 146 million Christians,
Mahayana Buddhists and Hinayana Buddhists —
and you also have millions of Taoists and Confucianists and Hindus
And once known as "the Balkans of Asia,"
southeast Asia today should be experiencing a clash of civilizations.
Instead, what you see in southeast Asia
is one of the most peaceful and prosperous corners of planet earth
with the second-most successful regional multilateral organization,
So clearly, minimalism can work.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
But I'm also aware that minimalism cannot solve all the problems.
There are some hard problems that have to be dealt with:
they remain dangerous threats.
They must be found, they must be destroyed.
The question is, is it wise for the West,
which represents 12 percent of the world's population —
to fight these threats on its own
or to fight with the remaining 88 percent of the world's population?
And the logical and rational answer is
that you should work with the remaining 88 percent.
if you want to get the support of humanity?
Now I've been ambassador to the UN twice.
Maybe that makes me a bit biased,
but I can tell you that working with the UN can lead to success.
Why is it that the first Iraq war,
fought by President George H. W. Bush,
fought by his son, President George W. Bush,
One key reason is that the senior Bush went to the UN
to get the support of the global community
before fighting the war in Iraq.
There's another reason why we have to work with the UN.
We are becoming a small, interdependent, global village.
All villages need village councils.
And the only global village counsel we have,
as the late UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said,
Now as a geopolitical analyst,
I do know that it's often considered naive
So now let me inject my Machiavellian point.
Now Machiavelli is a figure who's often derided in the West,
but the liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin reminded us
that the goal of Machiavelli was to promote virtue, not evil.
So what is the Machiavellian point?
It's this: what is the best way for the West
to constrain the new rising powers
And the answer is that the best way to constrain them
is through multilateral rules and multilateral norms,
Now let me conclude with one final, big message.
As a longtime friend of the West,
I'm acutely aware of how pessimistic Western societies have become.
Many in the West don't believe that a great future lies ahead for them,
that their children will not have better lives.
So please do not fear the future or the rest of the world.
Now I can say this with some conviction,
I actually feel a direct cultural connection
with society's diverse cultures
and societies all the way from Tehran to Tokyo.
And more than half of humanity lives in this space,
so with this direct cultural connection,
I can say with great conviction
that if the West chooses to adopt a wiser strategy
of being minimalist, multilateral and Machiavellian,
the rest of the world will be happy to work with the West.
So a great future lies ahead for humanity.
(Applause)