Has the West Lost It?: A Provocation

By Kishore Mahbubani

Book Overview

'A compelling warning ... It is hard to disagree with this advice from such a well-informed friend of the west' Martin Wolf, Financial Times

The West's two-century epoch as global powerhouse is at an end. A new world order, with China and India as the strongest economies, dawns. How will the West react to its new status of superpower in decline?

In Kishore Mahbubani's timely polemic, he argues passionately that the West can no longer presume to impose its ideology on the world, and crucially, that it must stop seeking to intervene, politically and militarily, in the affairs of other nations. He examines the West's greatest follies of recent times: the humiliation of Russia at the end of the Cold War, which led to the rise of Putin, and the invasion of Iraq after 9/11, which destabilised the Middle East. Yet, he argues, essential to future world peace are the Western constructs of democracy and reason, which it must continue to promote, by diplomacy rather than force, via multilateral institutions of global governance such as the UN. Only by recognising its changing status, and seeking to influence rather than dominate, he warns, can the West continue to play a key geopolitical role.

'Kishore Mahbubani might well be the most intelligent, friendly and doggedly persistent critic of the West. In this brief book, he delivers some of his trademark analysis and pungent observations. We should all think of it as the cold shower that is urgently needed to revive the West' Fareed Zakaria, author of The Post-American World

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0241312868
• ISBN13: 9780241312865
• Release Date: October 2018
• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.48 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

The West Lost it!!

Has the West Lost It, is a provocation by Professor Kishore Mahbubani in 2018. He offers his perspective with an outsider critical eye. He pointed out the two dominated economies of India and China in the past two thousand years, suffered Western colonialism and imperialism which brought the gift of reason. Western powers used their industrial power to fight, conquer and subjugate the Rest of non-whites. The winning of Cold War in the collapse of USSR made Westerners rejoice in the democratic system with the celebration of the end of history. Is it? He pointed out the world is changing and changing fast. Smart phone makes people smarter and detect lies spinning. America spends on the wrong tool in dealing China. It is economy –stupid! Page 82 quoted Clinton speech at Yale for a preparation of accepting America second status. This is why Trump platform of “Make America Great Again”. The ending of the twenty years wars in Iraq and afghanistan may be good for America. Wake up America to understand the reality universe, he concludes on page 89.