The Great Convergence: Asia, the West and the Logic of One World

Firstly, thank you Kishore Mahbubani
Secondly, this is such an economic-based approach to global issues. Which works for me, because Mahbubani is really quite optimistic yet he keeps it real and practical by tying it to tangible economic concepts instead of intangible stuff like idk maybe 'consciousness'?

useful: http://www.mahbubani.net/book4.html#opeds

Introduction

• Material SOL: In a Financial Times column titled "In the Grip of a Great Convergence", Martin Wolf said, "Convergent incomes and divergent growth – that is the economic story of our times. We are witnessing the reversal of the 19th and early 20th century era of divergent incomes. In that epoch, the peoples of western Europe and their most successful former colonies achieved a huge economic advantage over the rest of humanity. Now it is being reversed more quickly than it emerged. This is inevitable and desirable. But it also creates huge global challenges."
• The number of people dying in wars is presently the lowest since statistics began to be kept. Now the rest of the world is converging towards peace. Major interstate wars have become a sunset industry.
• Economic interdependence: When Greece totters, Europeans are not the only ones who worry. 
• Obama knew in his guts that Greece could derail his reelection. And stock markets from Latin America to Asia, Africa to Australia also fell. Greece was a tiny domino. But it could bring down larger dominoes because we have become fundamentally intertwined.
• Despite this we still do not have the right conceptual structures to capture this new global condition. 
• The nation-state was invented in 1648 with the Treaty of Westphalia. And it has served humanity reasonably well as an organising concept, overcoming the old divisions of tribes and sects, clans and classes. But it is hard to believe that a human construct invented more than 350 years ago can serve humanity when everything has changed so totally. 
• The foundation of the 1945 rules-based order - to facilitate cooperation and a stable global order. 
• But now the global policy community is still telling the world to sail into uncertain waters of the 21st century without a captain. Akin to selecting a different committee to manage the boat each time after a new storm emerges. 
• Temporary captain and crew did emerge in time at a G20 leaders meeting in London. They mounted a major coordinated global exercise to bring the world economy back from the brink. They pooled all their resources and decided to stimulate the global economy with US $1.1 trillion. 
• Montreal Protocol in 1987
• Definitions - Global governance: multilateral institutions like the UN and processes like the Montreal Protocol
• As long as a "global government" with mandatory powers is considered unacceptable, it is essential to strengthen cooperative institutions. ''
• The single biggest achievement of the European Union is not the story of its economic integration. It is simply the fact that the continent, which unleashed the two most disastrous wars of human history, has managed to achieve zero prospect of war.
• Success of EU: Part of it is due to the fact that the states have accepted a rules-based order to guide their relations with each other. This order is made up of legal instruments and a complex political ecosystem that reflects the values of the European populations. Despite enormous geopolitical and other rivalries, there are major constraints on the behaviour of EU states. Significantly, while there are some legal sanctions on violations of rules and norms, the adherence to rules reflects values rather than fear of sanctions. 
• Yet there are leadership priorities: 
• Ronald Reagan's optimism about “morning in America” had helped him defeat Jimmy Carter, who had, in the eyes of many, inadvertently associated his presidency with the word malaise.
• In off-the-cuff public remarks, in prepared speeches, and in private conversation, I heard him field-test the idea that the spread of democracy, open society, market economy, and individual empowerment was the wave of the future. "It is important that whatever our disagreements over past action, China and the United States must go forward on the right side of history for the future sake of the world. The forces of history have brought us to a new age of human possibility. But our dreams can only be recognized by nations whose citizens are both responsible and free."
• Clinton stopped well short of endorsing the idea that something like a self-governing world community was a desirable outcome, not to mention a pre-determined one. 
• If America is going to succeed in persuading China to abide by global rules and conventions, it has to lead by example. 
• Robert Gates, embarrassed when someone asked him in reply to his call for China to abide by the Law of the Sea Treaty, about when the USA is going to ratify. 
• Hillary Clinton: the treaty was "critical to the leadership and security of the US" "US interests are deeply tied to the oceans" "No country is in a position to gain more from the Law of the Sea Convention than the US" 
• Pessimism/Optimism
• Pew Research Centre: some 87% of Chinese, 50% of Brazilians and 45% of Indians think their country is going in the right direction, whereas 31% of Britons, 30% of Americans and 26% of French do. 
• The 88% of the world's population who live outside the West want to cooperate with the 12% who live in the West. The massive new middle-classes emerging all around the world have begun to accept many of the values and aspirations of the Western middle-class. 

A New Global Civilisation

• Einstein: “When we survey our lives and endeavors we soon observe that almost the whole of our actions and desires are bound up with the existence of other human beings. We see that our whole nature resembles that of the social animals. We eat food that others have grown, wear clothes that others have made, live in houses that others have built. The greater part of our knowledge and beliefs has been communicated to us by other people through the medium of a language which others have created. Without language our mental capacities wuuld be poor indeed, comparable to those of the higher animals; we have, therefore, to admit that we owe our principal advantage over the beasts to the fact of living in human society. The individual, if left alone from birth would remain primitive and beast-like in his thoughts and feelings to a degree that we can hardly conceive. The individual is what he is and has the significance that he has not so much in virtue of his individuality, but rather as a member of a great human society, which directs his material and spiritual existence from the cradle to the grave."
• Political globalisation, 2010 Human Security Report for the UN:
• Perhaps the most reassuring finding is that high-intensity wars, those that kill at least 1,000 people a year, have declined by 78% since 1988.
• In the 1950s there was an average of six international conflicts being fought around the world each year; in the new millennium the average was less than one. Recent international wars have also been far less deadly than those of the Cold War era, and the major powers have not fought each other for more than six decades—the longest period of major power peace in centuries.
• The demise of colonialism, the end of the Cold War, a dramatic increase in the number of democratic states, and a shift in elite attitudes towards warfare are among the key political changes that have reduced the incidence of international warfare since the end of World War II.
• Dramatic long-term increase in levels of global economic interdependence, which has increased the costs of war while reducing its benefits with increased levels of international trade and FDI. In today's open global trading system it is almost always cheaper to acquire goods and raw materials by trade than to invade a country in order to steal them. 
• “The Dell Theory stipulates: No two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, like Dell’s, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain.”
• Many in the West live in fear of terrorist attacks. But even in the case of terrorist attacks, the probabilities are illuminating. According to Ronald Bailey, science correspondent of Reason magazine, an American was more likely to be killed by lightning (1 in 5,500,000) or by a car accident (1 in 19,000) than by a terrorist attack (1 in 20 million) in the last five years (2005–2010). President George W. Bush used to say frequently, “We live in a dangerous world.” He was dead wrong.
• Even the poorest parts oft he world are performing faster than they ever have in human history. Between 1275 and 1775 the British population and wage rates stayed the same. In contrast, in the much shorter period between 1913 and 2000, Ghana's per capita income increased by 63%. 
• Poor developing countries have begun to outperform some DCs in the delivery of public services. 
• The story of Ek Sonn Chan: A landmark election brought peace to Cambodia in 1993. External donors started to engage in the country, providing funding for public investments. The newly appointed General Director of the PPWSA, Ek Sonn Chan, began by firing corrupt and incompetent staff, apparently at great personal risk. He said about PPWSA when he took over that “It was bureaucratic and it was full of incompetent staffers. I fired many staff and my friends told me that I would be assassinated”.
• All the trends described so far - the decline of war, the rise of education, and burgeoning middle-class aspirations - tend to reinforce each other, as the EU states have taught us. Human nature has not changed. What has changed is the social order. 
• This may well be the biggest contribution of George W Bush in creating a more civilised human order: when the colossal military power of the US could not easily crush a small state like Iraq and when the US had to pay massive material and human costs in trying to conquer and pacify it, this provided a living and daily demonstration to the futility of war. The Iraq War is estimated to have cost American taxpayers anywhere between $1 and $3 trillion (estimate by Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz). Living standards of Americans have been damaged by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 
• Becoming a more peaceful and prosperous place because a consensual cluster of norms has been sweeping the globe and has been accepted by policy-making elites all around the world. Policymakers in all corners have essentially developed the same set of perspectives on how to improve and develop their societies. 
• While more international students studied in the US in 2011, less than 2% of US college students studied abroad during the same period. This may explain why Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged students to "not just think globally but get out there and study globally as well". The world has learnt a lot from America. Is America ready to learn from the world?  
• With more than 20m students, China has overtaken the US in having the world's largest higher education sector since 2005. As a consequence, China is going to overtake the US in citations of scientific literature. Even if these Chinese and Indian graduates do not graduate from North American universities, they often gain the same cultural and intellectual approaches. 
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• Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) graduates have helped to fuel the Silicon Valley boom and gone on to become CEOs of major American corporations or deans of business schools. 
• Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures: "Mr Khosla has a different plan to save the planet. He is investing over $1 billion of his clients’ money in ‘black swans’-ideas with the potential for sudden jumps in technology that promise huge environmental benefits, easy scalability and rapid payback. The catch? Mr Khosla expects nine out of ten of his investments to fail. ‘I am only interested in technologies that have a 90% chance of failure but, if they do succeed, would change the infrastructure of society in some radical way,’” he says. Khosla Ventures’ portfolio reads like an eco-utopian wish-list: non-polluting nuclear reactors; diesel from microbes; carbon-negative cement; quantum batteries; and a system for extracting methane from coal while it is still underground.  "Any one of these things is improbable," he said in a recent interview with The Economist, "but if you have enough shots on goal, it's very likely that something improbable will win."
• The new consensus has seeped into some of the most conservative societies on our planet. 
• The willingness of the Iranian leadership to endorse female education in massive numbers in modern science and technology (32% to 65% in Iran's higher educated student population)
• A significant percentage of Qatari students enrolled in branch campuses of top universities in Qatar's Education City are females seeking to pursue professional qualifications closer to home. For instance, 75 out of the 120 students at the Carnegie Mellon satellite campus are female. Qatar now also aims to spend 2.8% of its GDP on research in a region where figures typically range 0.02 to 0.07%. 
• ASEAN's success: ASEAN has travelled up the escalator of reason. The culture did not change, however attitudes towards regional cooperation did, as they rationally worked out the costs and benefits. ASEAN's unity in diversity shows that a clash of civilizations is not inevitable.
• Evolution of the social contract: In theory, the Chinese political system is a Communist Party dictatorship. In practice, however, the CCP (unlike in the time of Mao) knows that it has to earn its legitimacy. President Hu and Premier Wen have emphasised that the role of the party is to serve the people. Wen has urged government officials and CCP members to be good public servants: "The world 'public' requires officials to prudently use their power for the benefit of the nation's people. The word 'servant' means that officials should make efforts to diligently serve the people". 
• "Reform has reached a critical stage. Without successful political structural reform, it is impossible for us to fully institute economic structural reform and the gains we have made in this area may be lost. A historical tragedy like the Cultural Revolution could occur again. Each party member and cadre should feel a sense of urgency.” 
• China's arrival has improved Africa's infrastructure and boosted its manufacturing sector. Other non-Western countries, from Brazil and Turkey to Malaysia and India, are following its lead. Africa's enthusiasm for technology is boosting growth. It has more than 600m mobile-phone users—more than America or Europe. Since roads are generally dreadful, advances in communications, with mobile banking and telephonic agro-info, have been a huge boon. Around a tenth of Africa's land mass is covered by mobile-internet services—a higher proportion than in India. The health of many millions of Africans has also improved, thanks in part to the wider distribution of mosquito nets and the gradual easing of the ravages of HIV/AIDS. Skills are improving: productivity is growing by nearly 3% a year, compared with 2.3% in America."
• The second most closed society of recent time, Myanmar, opened up on its own volition, without any sudden increase of external pressure. Over time, historians will uncover the exact triggers of change, but even without historical perspective, it is clear that ASEAN's policy of continually engaging Myanmar while the West and the rest shunned it was a truly wise decision. The more than 1000 ASEAN meetings held each year exposed Myanmar officials to best practices in a variety of areas, from economic to environmental management, from healthcare to education, from agricultural to industrial development. Through this exposure, they were able to see firsthand how the ASEAN countries had moved ahead by accepting this new consensual cluster of norms. Through gradual, persistent exposure, the minds of Myanmar policymakers were turned. According to the Wall Street Journal, "When Western leaders deemed Myanmar a secretive pariah state and slapped on tough economic sanctions, many Southeast Asian investors and governments maintained good relations with the country – a policy that drew harsh criticism from human rights advocates across the world." 
• Malaysia's PM Najib Razak explained ASEAN's strategy in a 2012 editorial in WSJ: "Myanmar was on the receiving end of very public diplomatic scoldings, often backed up by sanctions. Implicit in this stance was the idea that democratic nations such as Malaysia should shun their less-free neighbors, and that the only way to bring about improvements was to economically cripple those who had not yet embraced the ballot box.But Asean members took a more nuanced view, believing that constructive engagement and encouragement were just as effective, if not more, than sanctions and isolation in creating positive change. As such, Asean admitted Myanmar as a member in 1997 and extended an open hand of friendship."
• According to Singapore's foreign minister K Shanmugam, ASEAN's November 2011 decision to let Myanmar chair the regional organisation was done to encourage Myanmar to pursue political reform. "Myanmar will be the external face of ASEAN. The world will be watching." Just months later the junta released political activist and now chairperson of the National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi, from house arrest.
• Multilateralism brings people together and increases both communication and understanding. The skeptic will immediately retort that ambassadors are functionally designed to make friends across borders. But it is equally true that these friendships produce benefits for the world. 
• The Law of the Sea Treaty was one of the most difficult to negotiate, taking 9 years from start to finish. 
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• Global convergence on a consensual cluster of norms has spread beyond the economic sphere. The 5 norms described here: acceptance of modern science, logical reasoning, free-market economics, a transformation of the social contract and multi-laterialism - indicate that the consensus on norms is now flowing into a wider set of areas. More and more nations are behaving lime each other and entering into the global mainstream comfortably. Whatever the topic of a global gathering, people flood in from all corners of the globe, speaking a common language. 
• This is why the West should seriously reconsider its policy of trying to change recalcitrant countries by isolating them. Ironically by imposing sanctions on Iran or Cuba, North Korea or Myanmar, the West is actually insulating them from this rising tide of common norms and protecting their regimes. By contrast, if their youth were encouraged to foster trade and investment links between them and the rest of the world, change would come much faster. 
• The rising tide of common norms can be accelerated with visionary institutions that try to bring together different cultures in an even closer embrace. It is not easy. Although there was ample scope for misunderstanding in this bold effort to bring together the best traditions of Eastern and Western education, it went ahead. If it succeeds, it will show that the rising tide of common norms is profoundly changing the human condition, creating a more peaceful a prosperous world embracing all humanity. 
• I want to receive this legacy, and also contribute to strengthening and building upon it, so that we may pass on this 'great convergence' of an educational institution, a revolutionary idea to future batches of students. I will greatly treasure my Yale NUS time as a global inheritance - both an indicator and a test-bed for the working idea of multi-lateralism and cooperation in a new zeitgeist. 

A Theory of One World

• We need a theory of one world because so far global theory has not kept up with global practice. And this paucity prevents an effective global response to many pressing global challenges. 
• Clinton: The world has never truly had to develop an ethic of interdependence rooted in our common humanity. And if we do it, the 21st century will be the most interesting, exciting, peaceful era in history. 
• Al Gore: Our grand domestic and international challenges are also intertwined. We should neither bemoan nor naively idealise this new reality. We should deal with it. It can only be led by the US - and only if the US restores and maintains its moral authority to lead. 
• Gordon Brown: We need a systematic approach as to how we as a global community can solve the problems we face. There is an opportunity, because of the changes in technology and our ability to communicate and talk to each other that never existed in the previous generation, to make a huge difference in the way our society works. Global problems need global solution.
• Significantly, while each of them could describe the state of our world well after they left office, none of them could adjust their countries' politics to reflect this global wisdom while in office. Clinton and Gore did little about climate change in the 8 years they were in office. Several leading American figures, including Clinton, Gore and Thomas Friedman, have advocated a simple and effective solution to reducing global warming: a dollar a gallon tax on gasoline consumption (currently at 50cents). Yet it would have been political suicide. There was no global theory of on world they could have used to back their arguments. All the arguments were focused on short-term national interests, not long-term global interests. 
• Brown: In creating new institutions, countries around the world should agree on a 'global ethic' that enable people to see strangers as neighbors, allow people to believe in something bigger than just themselves and enable people to feel the pain of others however different. The post-1945 system of international institutions built for a world of sheltered economies and just 50 states is not yet broken but - for a world of 200 states and open globalisation - urgently in need of modernisation and reform.
• Environmental pillar: Planned obsolescence, garbage patches,
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• While the US leads China by a mile in the creation of environmental movements and consciousness, and the overall environmental record oft he US is far superior, the US government is actually behind in recognising challenges of climate change. 
• number of nonprofit organisations dedicated to conservation and the environment rose faster than the number of nonprofit groups overall since 1995, growing by 4.6% per year compare to 2.8% per year for all nonprofits
• environmental movement has expanded in the number of organisations, members and total revenue almost every year since 1960
• Environmental groups in China have made an impact by encouraging transparency and pressuring local governments and industries to adhere to national regulations. Through a program called the Green Choice Alliance, environmental groups publish lists of companies in violation of environmental regulations and offer to conduct a third-party audit if a company chooses to clean up its act. Rather than providing money, international NGOs in China are repositioning themselves to shoulder more in terms of transferring their knowledge about capacity building and best practices in international development work. 
• China has begun a massive reforestation project in the long-deforested Loess Plateau. It has already planted forests in an area the size of Belgium. Moreover, although China is the world's biggest emitter today, the government has announced that it will reduce the carbon intensity of GDP by 40-45% from 2005 levels by 2020.
• Richard Muller: The Koch foundation funded a $150,000 study which initially concluded that global warming data was flawed, but later reversed its views, supporting scientific consensus. New York Times: "Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause"
• Reason for failure: The global system rests on an antiquated theory of the world order that the role of national leaders is primarily to defend their sovereignty and interests. It rests on a deeper assumption: that if each nation took good care of its interests and did not interfere with another nation's interests, all this would lead to a more stable world order in the political sphere. 
• Yilmaz Arguden attributes the failure of environmental summits to the structure of global governance: "The reason why the Rio+20 summit on sustainable development was a bust is simple: the summit’s agenda did not include the right issues. The real issue is not being unaware of the situation or technological impediments, it is the way humanity has organized itself. The real issue, then, is the structure of global governance — the way in which incentive systems are organized and the lack of any credible leadership on global issues that would have the authority and ability to impose remedies. For example, who is in charge of carbon emissions? Who is in charge of the oceans? Who is in charge of poverty? And who is responsible for the millions of people who do not have access to electricity and clean water? When everybody is responsible, nobody is really responsible. Therefore, the first agenda item for meetings such as Rio+20 should be how to consensually delegate sovereignty to global institutions and to make sure these global institutions have real legitimacy and jurisdiction over key global issues." 
• Economic pillar: There is no theory of a single global economy to guide the decisionmaking of policymakers all over the world. Paola Subacchi of Chatham House told Mahbubani, "International economics implicitly accepts the nation-state as the unit of analysis. Perhaps the closest example of one single economy is the euro area, but in a very imperfect way, as the building of a single market and a single currency has not been matched by a congruent political structure." 
• Eswar Prasad of Cornell University also told Mahbubani, "The notion of a single global economy is a big step from the high level trade and financial integration we now observe. As we are seeing from Europe, you need an institutional framework that is truly global in nature to manage a global economy as a single unit - a unified political system or at least a high-level of coordination at the political level."
• None of these global constructs currently exist. And yet our financial institutions are inextricably joined, whether economists prefer to recognise this fact or not. 
• The whole global economy has become so dense and intertwined that it may be a mistake to think of the 'external' consequences or implications of national decisions as 'externalities' anymore. What used to be externalities have become deeply internalised in the new global economic system that we have created. And if policymakers do not understand that we now live and function in a single global economy they could make hugely flawed decisions. 
• Major non-European leaders such as Obama and Hu have strongly urged European leaders to resolve the crisis for fear that a protracted recession could slow the US economic recovery and China;s growth. 
• The global economy came close to going off a cliff when a few Republican representatives, led by the Tea Party, refused to increase the debt ceiling of the US until barely 2 days before it would have been busted on August 2 2011. Throughout the entire debate on this issue, not one of the representatives mentioned the possibility that their actions could damage the global economy. 
• The world's dependence on the dollar is perilous. In 2012 more than 70% of global trade was still being carried out with the USD. One of the biggest decisions the 5 BRICS countries made at their summit in Sanya, China, in 2011 was to reduce their reliance on USD. In a subsequent meeting in New Delhi, they noted "The build-up of sovereign debt and concerns over medium to long-term fiscal adjustment in advanced countries are creating an uncertain environment for global growth. Further, excessive liquidity from the aggressive policy actions taken by central banks to stabilize their domestic economies have been spilling over into emerging market economies, fostering excessive volatility in capital flows and commodity prices." 
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• Technological pillar: Today many other layers of self-identification are being added because human beings everywhere are being rapidly connected to one world. A lot of this connection has happened only in the past decade or two. 
• About 20 years ago in 1990 only 11m people had a cell phone subscription. In 2000, the number was 500m. Today the number has passed 5.6b worldwide. Africa too has seen a similar explosion in cell phones, with 539m in 2010, surpassing the US's 279m subscribers.
• Laypeople all over the world now turn to Wikipedia as the first source of information. Launched in 2001 and growing to approximately 20000 articles and18 language editions by the end of that year, it has grown to 21m articles with 100,000 regularly active contributors by 2010 and an estimated 365m readers worldwide. 
• Initially there was enormous skeptism that an open platform that could be altered by anybody could be a reliable source. The general assumption was that some pranksters or malevolent souls would try to distort the data in some way or another. Our old mindsets told us that unless there was a clear central authority we could not trust the data. We were wrong: entrusting the integrity of the data to the largest possible number of custodians works better than a single world authority would. And what's amazing is that the contributors come from all over the world. No single nation owns Wikipedia even if it was born and launched in the US. Wikipedia is therefore a cutting-edge example of the good that humanity can do by using technological means to cooperate from all corners of the world.
• Open access to technology can also change hitherto closed societies. An awareness of backwardness can change human behaviour significantly. One reason that China progressed rapidly after 1978 was Deng's decision for Chinese media to show scenes of American middle-class homes with refrigerators, washing machines, TV sets and two-car garages during his visit. Until Deng did that to legitimise the capitalist doctrine of free market economics and growth, the Chinese had been told that China was a socialist paradise and America was a society exploited by their capitalist bosses. 
• Today, the largest number of Internet users in any country can be found in China not America. And open access to information is changing the social and political climate of China. Following old political instincts, the Railway Ministry tried to bury the collision of two high-speed trains as quickly as possible. The rescue effort concluded less than a day after the accident and the damaged train cars were broken apart and buried nearby. Wikipedia's documentation: 
• The Railway Ministry justified the burial by claiming that the trains contained valuable "national level" technology that could be stolen. However, hours after the rescuers had been told to stop searching for survivors, a 2-year-old girl was found alive in the wreckage. Chinese media was especially skeptical of the rescue efforts, particularly the burial of trains. In a press conference, the spokesman of the Railway Ministry, Wang Yongping, said that the burial was for facilitating the rescue work. The answer prompted heckling and gasps of disbelief from the journalists assembled. Wang then said to the press, "whether or not you believe [this explanation], I believe it." ("至于你信不信，我反正信了.") This phrase eventually became an internet meme. When asked why a little girl was found after the rescue work had been announced finished, Wang said, "This was a miracle. We did find a living girl in the work thereafter. That was what happened." ("这是一个奇迹。我们确实在后面的工作当中发现了一个活着的女孩，事情就是这个样子.") There was no evidence that experts or officials entered the front car to investigate the cause of the accident when it was buried. Families of the victims of the crash were outraged at what they viewed was an inadequate investigation, as well as poor organisation and relief in the aftermath of the disaster. Images of the wreckage being shovelled into the pits were circulated widely on the Internet, and led to speculation over a possible mishandling by the government or concealing evidence crucial for the ongoing investigation.
• Despite reported directives from the Propaganda Department, Chinese media, both independent and state-owned, directly criticized the Ministry of Railways and voiced their skepticism of the government. Such challenges to officially-sanctioned orthodoxy were bold and rare, particularly on programs aired on China's state-owned television. In one instance, in response to Wang Yongping's assurance at the press conference that the Chinese railway system was running on "advanced technology", news anchor Bai Yansong retorted on CCTV, "The technology may be advanced, but is your management advanced? Are your standard operating procedures advanced? Is the supervision advanced? Is your respect for people advanced? Are all the minute details advanced? At the end of the day, is your overall operational capability advanced?" Similarly, Qiu Qiming of CCTV program 24-Hours launched into an on-air tirade about Chinese society: "If nobody can be safe, do we still want this speed? Can we drink a glass of milk that's safe? Can we stay in an apartment that will not fall apart? Can the roads we travel on in our cities not collapse? Can we travel in safe trains? And if and when a major accident does happen, can we not be in a hurry to bury the trains? Can we afford the people a basic sense of security? China, please slow down. If you're too fast, you may leave the souls of your people behind."
• One often-overlooked contributor to the opening of minds around the world is tourism. The UNWTO notes that "In spite of occasional shocks international tourists arrivals have shown virtually uninterrupted growth: from 25 million in 1950, to 277 million in 1980, to 435 million in 1990, to 675 million in 2000, and the current 940 million"
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• Common Aspirations pillar:  Once material aspirations become more important than differing ideological or religious aspirations, an overriding set of common interests will motivate the vast majority of the world's population to work together. 
• India-Pakistan: Despite a history of conflicts, mistrust and estranged relationship, an overwhelming number of Pakistanis (70%) and Indians (74%) want peace and friendship between the nuclear-armed South Asian nations, a survey conducted on both sides of the border has revealed.
• Like other traditional rivals Greece and Turkey, Argentina and Brazil are finding that their populations are being swept along by a strong global mainstream momentum. They want their governments to focus on economic development and not on war. We have, as a result, seen a greater improvement in the standards of living of populations in the last 30 years than we have in the last 300. 
• The transition from rule by law to rule of law: In Pakistan, the High Court told the prime minister to remove the president's immunity from prosecution. He was disqualified from taking part in the 2013 election by High Court judges in April 2013. Musharraf was charged on 31 March 2014 with high treason for implementing emergency rule and suspending the constitution in 2007.
• As more and more lawyers are educated to the best global practices, they naturally bring them home. The rule of law can take hold of and transform a body politic only if the people of the society are in turn ready for these new regimes and welcome and support them.
• The instinct to resolve problems and conflicts through rule of law at home should in turn lead to a habit of doing the same across borders, giving another reason that we might expect a continued decline in wars between states. LKY said, "if a dispute cannot be resolved by negotiations, it was better to refer it to a third party dispute settlement mechanism than to allow it to fester and sour bilateral relations."
• Barry Desker, dean of S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, observed the SEA was beginning to accept international legal norms. "In the past, the tendency in ASEAN was to try and resolve issues purely by mediation or negotiations between two parties. The result was that issues or disputes between parties in the region tended to go on and on without completion, without successful negotiation. I think we are now moving in the direction of accepting a turn to international law – a willingness to accept international arbitration and this bodes well for issues in which there are bilateral differences."
• "With the adoption of the ASEAN charter in November 2007, ASEAN moved toward becoming a singular polity and has expressed its firm commitment to inter alia, enhancing rule of law in terms akin to the use and definition of this expression by the UN. The ASEAN Charter has codified adherence to the rule of law – and its now familiar linkage to human rights and democracy – as a core ASEAN purpose and principle which all ASEAN member states have pledged to uphold."

• Any national policymaker who has not understood that the theory of one world is driving global affairs will bring grief to his or her country. To create new jobs in America, policymakers will now have to study the global economy and figure out which sectors the US can now compete in. They will be unable to defend or enhance the nation's economic interests if they fail to understand the trends in the global economy. 
• Virtually every other nation has understood that the future of its national  economic fortunes depends on global economic trends. Premier Wen has said, "China and India are cooperative partners instead of rivals. They have common interests in global economic and trade system" 

Global Irrationality

• Jimmy Carter: "The U.S. is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights. At a time when popular revolutions are sweeping the globe, the US should be strengthening, not weakening, basic rules of law and principles of justice enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But instead of making the world safer, America's violation of international human rights abets our enemies and alienates our friends"
• Basically: it is in the long-term interest of each one of us to promote stronger laws and stronger institutions. 
• The West has continued on autopilot even after the strategic rationale disappeared. All this creates global irrationality. 
• The UN System: Most of our key global village councils are in one way or another related to the UN. Yet a deep fissure exists between the dominant Western narrative and the narrative of the rest of the world. The former have come to believe that the UN system is just a bloated, vast bureaucracy that does little good for the world. By contrast, the latter retain massive trust in the system. 
• 
• At one time it may have made strategic sense for the West to keep global village councils weak since it was so strong it could defend itself unilaterally. However, the primary security threats to the West in the future will no longer be military. Instead, they are nonmilitary: from illegal immigrants to dangerous viruses, from new forms of economic competition to cultural isolation. Yet even though the strategic folly of high military expenditure and weakening global institutions becomes clearer each day, there is virtually no major voice in the West advocating for a change in course. The usual potent mix of ignorance and complacency, plus powerful vested interests that have much to lose with a change of course, leads to the perpetuation of outdated policies. 
• Madeleine Albright, "The UN is the world's most visible multilateral organisation and has the most members. No one country, even the United States, can tackle the bundle of issues the world faces — from terrorism to nuclear proliferation, economic inequality to environmental degradation. We are leaving out an indispensable tool."
• The problem of UN budgets: The West has tried to block the growth of the UN system by tightly controlling any increase in assessed contributions. These contributions are important to the UN system because they provide a predictable form of funding. The West does not like them because it cannot control the agenda of the activities supported by assessed contributions. Hence, the West prefers voluntary contributions because they can then use its hitherto superior source of funding to influence the agenda of these UN activities.
• As a percentage of the global economy, the UN budget has shrunk from 0.005 to 0.004%. However there is a sustained importance of global public goods: "Public goods are the building blocks of civilisation. Economic stability is itself a public good. So are security, science, a clean environment, trust, honest administration and free speech. Humanity’s efforts to meet that challenge could prove to be the defining story of the century. Our states cannot supply them on their own. They need to co-operate. Traditionally, the least bad way of securing such co-operation is through some sort of leadership. The leader acts despite free riders. As a result, some global public goods have been adequately – if imperfectly – supplied. But as we move again into a multipolar era, the ability of any country to supply such leadership will be limited. Even in the unipolar days, it only worked where the hegemon wanted to provide the particular public good in question."
• What makes this observation of shrinking budgets even more painful is that the UN costs so little. The US spends $2400 out of every $10000 of its income to finance its national budget but the global citizen spends 4c out of the same amount for the UN budget. Global irrationality on a massive scale (even if national budgets do cover defense, homeland security, welfare payments etc). 
• The World Health Organisation: 
• 1) The zero-growth policy continued under both the more internationally minded Clinton-Gore administration and the less enlightened Bush-Cheney administration. In short, this decision to starve UN organisations was not driven by any ideology. It was driven by sheer geopolitical desire to control the global agenda.
• 2) The second strategic error was to allow the traditional Western interest in biomedicine, with its focus on individual behaviour and biology, to trump growing global interest in social medicine, with its emphasis on understanding and transforming social conditions underlying health and disease. Basically, the US government policies toward the WHO are heavily influenced by the big pharmaceutical corporations, who are in turn interested in individual health spending, not in collective wellness or well-being. 
• Still, something has gone fundamentally wrong with American healthcare. The US spends 16% of its GNP on healthcare yet it has a poorer record in life expectancy and infant mortality than Singapore which spends 4% of its GNP. 
• The health gains in low-income settings, notably Cuba and Kerala, India, also demonstrated the capacity to improve public health with limited resources.

• 3) Weakening the WHO as the leading global health agency which has the moral and political authority to investigate the internal health conditions of other states. During the SARS crisis of 2002-3, the WHO's worldwide mobilisation of scientists to identify and genetically sequence the infectious agent was especially impressive. No other global agency can replace this indispensable role. 
• We need a new commitment to the World Health Organisation and a clarification of its role. We need long-term perspectives and investments. The uncoordinated venture philanthropy of recent years has developed what some call market multilateralism. This basically means a sector which should also produce a global public good has been driven from a results based perspective from the private sector. Kickbusch concludes by saying we have to rethink the direction this has taken us in. To improve our situation today "we have to examine key elements of what it means to introduce those types of long term perspectives in global health governance, and then have a new kind of accountability-both of Member States of international organizations and of the other players.
• IAEA
• Obama: “At the dawn of the nuclear age that he helped to unleash, Albert Einstein said: “Now everything has changed…” And he warned: “We are drifting towards a catastrophe beyond comparison. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.” That truth endures today. For the sake of our common security, for the sake of our survival, we cannot drift. We need a new manner of thinking -- and action. That is the challenge before us.”
• One of its key roles is to inspect nuclear power stations to ensure their compliance to international standards and no diversion for weaponisation purposes. Yet, instead of serving Western interests of having a strong team of nuclear inspectors, the West is doing the exact opposite and shooting itself in the foot when it decreases its financial contributions to IAEA. 
• IAEA is also accused by Iran of breaking its own rules, by exposing secret information gleaned during inspections that has been grist for hostile intelligence agencies seeking regime change in Iran. There have been reports surfacing that recently assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists were identified via intelligence provided by personnel infiltrated into IAEA teams. Additionally, it has now been publicly revealed that many IAEA personnel sent to Iraq during Saddam Hussein’s time were Western intelligence agents. These stories could undermine both Western and global interests as countries will progressively refuse to accept IAEA inspections on the grounds that they are infiltrated by Western intelligence agents. 
• The UN can retain trust only if it is clearly perceived to be serving global, not Western, interests.
• For many years, the West has been trying to persuade China to pay more attention to its environment. Predictably, China reacted with a great deal of suspicion to this unsolicited Western advice. It was seen to be a clever, but transparent maneuver by the West to derail or slow down China’s economic development. A Chinese policymaker told me that China finally accepted the policy advice when it was given to them by an independent UN agency, the UNDP. No wonder then that, when the Chinese government finally decided to organize a global seminar to address this issue, its partner of choice was the UNDP. Trust is an essential commodity as we go about restructuring the global system to handle new global challenges. We should try to retain as much as possible all the trust that the UN has accumulated in our world.
• Nuclear weapon expenditure: At roughly a $100 billion a year.., we are spending about forty times more a year on unnecessary nuclear weapons than on necessary UN expenses. All these confirm that humanity at large is behaving absurdly in many ways in managing our planet. While this deterrence capacity may have made some sense in the Cold War, when the US and USSR held each other off through MAD doctrine, it no longer makes any sense in the post-Cold War era. Yet, the vested interests of key defense establishments in Washington, Moscow, Islamabad, Tel Aviv and Pyongyang cannot move away from their psychological reliance on nuclear weapons. 
• Humanity's role: Create a stronger public consensus that we have to move slowly towards nuclear-weapons-free world. 
• Leading American statesmen: "For the United States and many other nations, existential threats relating to the very survival of the state have diminished, largely because of the end of the Cold War and the increasing realization that our common interests greatly exceed our differences. Continued reliance on nuclear weapons as the principal element for deterrence is encouraging, or at least excusing, the spread of these weapons, and will inevitably erode the essential cooperation necessary to avoid proliferation, protect nuclear materials and deal effectively with new threats."
• Few noticed how ironic it was that Iran was accused of being  "irrational" in trying to get nuclear weapons when the world has actually created the dynamic that treats nuclear nations as first-class powers. Given this, it becomes perfectly "rational" for Iran to believe, rightly or wrongly, that Iran will be treated with respect after it acquires a nuclear capability. To persuade Iran to behave rationally on nuclear weapons, other nations should show the way by demonstrating that the acquisition or modernisation of nuclear weapons is a sunset industry. 
• The dictatorial power of the p5: There is a lack of wisdom in the capitals of the p5 who do not seem to be aware that in the global system they function like 5 dictators who steadfastly refuse to accept any kind of democratic accountability and transparency for their behaviour in the UN system. While Mahbubani believes that they would not lose their permanent seats in the council, they could progressively lose their global legitimacy if they did not intelligently adapt their behaviour to demands for greater publicly demonstrated accountability and transparency. 
• In concrete terms, the s5 made only one real request: that each time the p5 exercised their veto they should 'explain' their veto. This was not a challenge to their right; merely a minimal improvement in the transparency of their working methods. 
• Yet, Susan Rice who had earlier in the year criticised Russia and China's veto on a resolution condemning Bashar al-Assad's behaviour in Syria, was equally furious about the proposal. Moreover, this was supported by all P5, combining their political heft to crush the s5 resolution. 
• Hans Corell, Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and the Legal Counsel of the UN: "my main concerns are that members of the Council sometimes violate the UN Charter and the tendency among some of its members to sometimes apply double standards and to manoeuvre looking to their own immediate interests rather than viewing things in a global and more long-term perspective. This does not meet the standards required by an international system based on the rule of law." 

Seven Global Contradictions

• Old political and geopolitical fault lines are finding new resonances in an ever-shrinking global village.
• 1) Global interests vs national interests
• There is no one at the wheel. The rhetoric remains lofty but the accomplishments are negligible. 
• Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz explains why G20 meetings do not work: "The G-20 has proposed a coordinated macroeconomics response—the United States increase its savings and Chinese reduce its—so that the imbalances will be reduced in a way that maintains a strong global economy. The aspiration is noble, but each country's policies are likely to be driven by its own domestic agenda"

• 2) The West vs the Rest
• Three key institutions illustrate well how the West is severely over-represented in global institutions - the UNSC, IMF and World Bank. In the UNSC 12% of the world controls 60% of the most important seats in the most powerful international organisation. 
• Despite espousing rhetoric that they are ready to give up their domination, they effectively refuse to do so in practice. 
• The 'chutzpah' - there was no apology nor attempt to widen the candidacy for a vital global institution. To add insult to the injury, some Europeans actually argued that since the main crisis that the IMF was then engaged in was the European financial crisis, the leader of the IMF should remain European. IF at the height of either the Latin American or Asian crises anyone had argued that the head of the IMF should have been Latin American or Asian, the Europeans would have guffawed. 
• Martin Wolf, FT: The claim traditionally made by advanced countries is that their nationals should run international organisations, because they are relatively
  competent. Today’s European disarray is, the critics note, a disproof of this proposition.
• The hardly democratic election to the IMF position: The West's combined voting share is more than 50%. Hence even if the rest of the world had produced a better candidate it would have been mathematically impossible for the candidate of non-Western countries to win the election. 
• ICC: It was assumed that London would never give up its control over the ICC. Then the advertising market for cricket shifted dramatically from the UK and Australia to South Asia. Since India had the biggest audience for cricket, it saw no reason to adhere to a cricketing organisation controlled by the British. The shift of economic power led inevitably to a shift of the political control. 
• 3) The World's greatest power vs the world's greatest emerging power
• Unnatural degree of geopolitical calm in the power transition. 2 narratives: 
• China: extraordinary patience and forbearance as they followed the wise advice of Deng to not challenge American leadership and swallow its humiliation when directly provoked
• 'Accidental' bombing of Chinese embassy in Belgrade by NATO in 1999
• Crash of Chinese fighter jet when it collided into an American spy plane
• Premier Zhu's negotiation for China's entry into the WTO

• USA: generosity in allowing it to emerge peacefully, allowing Chinese accession to WTO, allowing China's massive trade surplus, allowing hundreds of thousands of students to study in American universities 
• But also because it was so self-confident in its supremacy; America did not act strategically. After the 9/11 attacks, for instance, the United States focused on the Middle East instead of the rise of China, leading Hong Kong journalist Frank Ching to write, "The fact is, it's not going too far to say that China owes a huge debt of gratitude to Osama bin Laden. 
• In February 2009, Hillary Clinton visited China on her first overseas visit as U.S. secretary of state. I wrote at the time: "There's little evidence Clinton has engaged in any serious strategic thinking about U.S.-China relations. If she had, she would have asked some big questions. Traditionally, relations between dominant powers and emerging powers have been tense. This should have been the norm with China and the United States. Yet China has emerged without alarming Americans. That's close to a geopolitical miracle. Who deserves credit for it? Beijing or Washington? China seems to have a clear, comprehensive strategy. The United States has none." 
• Officials in Washington reacted angrily to this column. A senior official at the National Security Council called up the Singaporean Embassy in Washington to complain about a Singaporean criticizing U.S. foreign policy. The real truth about this relationship is that, although there is a lot of calm on the surface, tension is brewing below. Also: when it comes to geopolitical issues, great power interests trump great power values, including that of free speech.
• The need to cooperate is rising each day, as is the potential for a major U.S.-China misunderstanding. In November 2011, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced loudly and boldly a "pivot" to Asia. Obama's administration took pains to avoid saying that this was America's response to a rising China, but nobody, including China, was fooled. 
• 4) Expanding China vs a shrinking World
• China needs to reflect deeply about the implications of the discontent and resentment at the sudden upsurge of Chinese presence around the world. 
• Moreover, with the growing importance and impact of the Chinese economy, the sheer impact of the economy can be enormous. For instance, Brazil is critical about China's economic performance, especially on the valuation of its currency. In 2012, it used a flurry of capital controls to repel foreign capital. Similarly, a top IMF official singled China as a principal culprit in causing destabilising capital flows and its closed capital account and managed currency responsible for export-damaging currency appreciation of Brazil and Peru. 
• "China poses competitive problems for other developing countries, because it is these countries that are China's main competitors. In recent research with Aaditya Mattoo of the World Bank and Prachi Mishra of the IMF, we show that China’s exchange rate has a substantial effect on the exports of other developing countries that compete with China in third-country markets. For example, a 10 per cent appreciation of the renminbi could increase exports of competitors by between 2 and 6 per cent."
• Those are economic issues. There are also geopolitical conflicts with Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia as China began to make more aggressive statements and postures.
• 5)  Islam vs the West
• It may well be the most dangerous since the geopolitical tension between China and the US/the world are geopolitical and can be managed or resolved through rational discourse or action. While there are misunderstandings created by cultural differences, there is no clash of religious values or views involved. 
• By contrast there is a growing gap in understanding and comprehension due to:
• a) Historical: both sides have cultural memories of the Crusades. And there is no doubt that both sides have completely different narratives of the same events. In Western mythology, brave Christian knights traveled long distances to save the Holy Land from the infidels. They fought courageously. The Muslim narrative is one of defending holy Islamic territory from marauding bands of uncivilised Western barbarians who raped and looted wherever they went. The facts hardly matter anymore. When the myths are so deeply imprinted in both cultures, they are not going to be gainsaid by facts, even if these could be unequivocally established.
• b) Religious: Most Christian societies, with the possible exception of America, are becoming more secular, whereas most Islamic societies are becoming more religious. I have seen this firsthand in Islamic societies in Southeast Asia. Until a few decades ago, few Islamic women in Malaysia or Indonesia wore the hijab. Now many more do. The same trend can be seen in Egypt or Turkey. The declining religiosity of the West and the rising religiosity of the Islamic world are a potentially significant source of misunderstanding. In the secular society of Denmark, for instance, where any religious figure can be made an object of satire, it seemed perfectly natural and civilized to draw a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad. In the Islamic world, Denmark was encouraging blasphemy, hence the explosion of anger there. It was a classic case of mutual incomprehension.
• c) Psychological: Both sides feel a deep sense of victimisation and unaware of the depths of the other's feelings. Muslims feel victimised because for 2 centuries and more until the late 1940s, virtually all Islamic countries, stretching from Morocco in the West to Indonesia in the East, were colonised. Even after decolonisation, Western power trampled over all their interests. The ongoing inability to liberate the West Bank and Gaza from Israel sticks like a painful bone in their throat. By contrast, especially since 9/11, the West has developed its own powerful narrative, believing it to be a completely irrational attack on innocent civilians by dangerous Islamic terrorists. The subsequent attacks in Madrid and London only reinforced Western belief that fanatical Islamists want to destroy their civilisation. 
• Solution requires political and moral courage from Western politicians, because at this point, they are far more powerful in political, economic, cultural and military terms than the Islamic world. The stronger must show magnanimity and wisdom toward the weaker.
• 6) Global environment vs global consumer 
• The Chinese middle class has undergone a massive expansion in the past twenty years, growing from 174 million people to more than 800 million. Though China is the standout case, the ranks of the middle class are swelling all across the major emerging economies of the world. The Indian middle class grew from 147 million in 1990 to 264 million in 2009. The Latin American and Caribbean middle class has expanded by 84 million people and in the Middle East and Africa by more than 150 million. The US National Intelligence Council projects that the global middle class will encompass 2 billion people in 2030, doubling in size from 2012.
• New entrants into the global middle class are going to become major global consumers. Their carbon footprints will leave very deep impressions. 
• We cannot have both global public goods. Jairam Ramesh, the minister of rural development, "The paradox of economic growth is that ecological devastation benefits one section of society.
  On the environment, the track record of Indian industry is not much to write home about.” As it stands, the corporations and the wealthy of India are reaping financial dividends on the destruction of the environment, while the poor bear most of the burden. 
• The only ethical solution is to spread the burden equitably throughout the world, with the rich bearing the most sacrifice. It is clearly ethically wrong to deny a poor Indian access to electricity while allowing an average middle-class American family to maintain 2 SUVs. The carbon footprint of each American is more than 12x higher than that of each Indian. Here, the simple $1 solution could help the world enormously - firstly reducing American consumption, and secondly generating revenue for investment into green technology to further reduce the carbon footprint of an average American. In short, solutions are available but sadly remain politically out of reach. 

• 7) Governments vs NGOs
• In theory, international life is driven by national governments. In practice, NGOs are also influencing, in a powerful fashion, norms, perceptions, and practices all around the world. 
• In many areas the principle of noninterference in internal affairs has been undermined by NGOs. The area of human rights has been completely transformed by global human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Countries do not have to respond to negative reports but they ignore them at their peril. 
• Despite the opposition of US, China and Russia to an international convention on the Prohibiton of the Use, Stockpiling, production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, it was adopted by the UN in 1997 because of the dedicated work of more than 1400 groups. 
• Similarly, the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was vociferously opposed by the US, China and India. Yet as of September 2011, 116 states were parties to the Statute of the Court. It came into force in 2002 and progressively gained legitimacy and acceptance. Even the US begun using the ICC as an instrument in UNSC resolutions.  
• With the establishment of transnational organisations, more and more people are becoming aware that we live in a small global village and that we should behave appropriately. One NGO that has played an exceptionally powerful role in shaping global perceptions has been the World Economic Forum, comparable to the advantage of UNGA meetings in passing resolutions to represent the will of the international community. 
• Strikingly, while the UN has often proved incompetent in bringing together long-standing adversaries, the WEF has been able to do so from time to time. For example, in 1988 Turkey and Greece signed a declaration at Davos to dispel the risk of war. In 1989, the representatives of  North and South Korea met, while a discussion on reconciliation was broached between West and East German leaders. In 1992, Nelson Mandela and South African president de Klerk made their first international appearance together at Davos. Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres and PLO leader Yassar Arafat constructed a draft agreement at the 1994 meeting. 
• Gideon Rachman described the virtues offered by Davos, "At Davos, political leaders from all over the world tacitly agree to set aside their differences and to speak a common language. Closeted together in a mountain valley, they restate their commitment to a single, global economy and to the capitalist values that underpin it. They mingle cheerfully with the same multinational executives and investment bankers. They campaign to attract foreign investment and trade. For five days, the world’s leaders seem to agree on a narrative about how the world works. At Davos, even the most intractable differences are temporarily smothered by the globalisation consensus."
• It has no formal role but it works. Just like how other NGOs like al Qaeda and drug cartels can do a lot of damage. They are not inherently morally superior to governments. At the same time we have to recognise that they have become an indispensable part to international life. 
• NGOs can play a helpful role. For a long time, relations between America and India were marked with distrust and suspicion because they were on opposing sides in the Cold War. Then in 2001, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) led by the highly respected Tarun Das, partnered with Aspen Institute to sponsor a meeting between Indian and American leaders. They continued to sponsor 14 more such meetings, producing tangible results. The two are now strategic partners and cooperate extensively on defense and security. The most significant contribution of the initial CII exchanges was laying the foundation for the landmark US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement, signed and ratified by both countries in 2008. 

• Convergence can also create complexity. In this new world of ours, no one can claim to be a world leader or world thinker if he or she fails to understand the major global contradictions of our time. Nor can he or she make a significant difference to improve our global order without working out how to make complex trade-offs among these global contradictions. Paradoxically, the contemporary Western mind, which has until recently been more open than other minds, may have more difficulty grasping this complexity. Through a tangled combination of having to be always politically correct and never admitting to Machiavellian (cunning and duplicity in statecraft) calculations, most Western commentators have fallen into a black-and-white mind-set. Yet in the real world, most solutions are right and wrong wrapped together. 
• Most Chinese intellectuals are genuinely convinced that Mao Zedong did more good than harm for China. It is conventionally said in China that Mao was 70% right and 30% wrong. Because Mao inherited a China that had been almost completely broken and humiliated by several major powers and made it stand tall. Mao brought about many positive changes. These included promoting the status of women, improving popular literacy, doubling the school population, providing universal housing, abolishing unemployment and inflation, increasing access to health care, and raising life expectancy significantly. In fact, China’s population almost doubled during his leadership, from around 550 to more than 900m. Several Chinese intellectuals have also told me that Deng could not have lifted China to greater heights without the platform of national unity he had inherited from Mao
• In the face of two great geopolitical challenges - the massive war against the vastly superior American forces in the Korean Peninsula and the confrontation with the world’s second-most powerful superpower, the Soviet Union - Mao always took advantage of the prevailing “contradictions” of his time to steer China into safe waters. It is possible that only a leader like Mao with his extraordinary strategic gumption and skills could have succeeded in steering China through these great challenges.
• But the era of global contradictions is not over. Victory in any sphere will go to those who master and use these global contradictions rather than opposing them. And to succeed in a world of so many contradictions, all nations will have to make complex trade-offs.

• To put the dilemma for the West plainly and simply, as the relative power of the Western world continues to recede steadily in the 21st century, Western leaders will have to learn once again to be careful and pragmatic in their foreign policies ad replace black-and-white postures with nuanced policies. Yet the tragedy of our contemporary world is that the dominant Western discourse is still incapable of mastering such intricacy.

• In Iran, can the West conceive of the possibility that the best way to engender change in Iran is to slip Iran into the story of the great convergence that this book has been documenting? China is a different China today because millions of Chinese have studied in Western universities. Can a nation like Iran ignore the logic of the great convergence of the world if it is plunged into this global maelstrom of human history?
•  When the military regime of Myanmar suddenly and inexplicably opened up in 2011 and released Aung San Suu Kyi from 21 years of house arrest, the West celebrated. But to keep the Myanmar experiment of openness going, it was equally important to open doors to those military leaders who showed courage in releasing Aung. Yet because it was politically incorrect, no Western leader invited President Gen Thein Sein to visit. And in so doing, Western leaders demonstrated that they remain victims of a black-and-white mindset that will prove to be a huge competitive liability as we sail into a world of complex geopolitical contradictions. 

Will Geopolitics Derail Convergence

• Definition: politics, especially international relations, as influenced by geographical factors.
• 2 principal schools: 
• the liberals generally take a more optimistic view of human nature, thus an inherent belief in human progress. They argue that something fundamental has changed in human history. Societies are able to cooperate for the common good. International relations are not about power struggles between nation states. 
• the realist argues that geopolitics remain and nations are always competing for influence and power in a contest that can in the end produce only one winner. They assume a) a pessimistic view of human nature b) a conviction that IR are necessarily conflictual and resolved by war c) a high regard for the values of national security and state survival d) a basic skepticism that there can be progress in international politics. 

• States have begun to cooperate more and more but sometimes aggressive competition continues. When the Yugoslav war broke out in the 1990s, Europe competed for influence but they also cooperated to put the fires out. Thus both streams jockey for influence in the minds of policymakers. 
• The America-China relationship: both will have to engage in deep reflection on how to prepare for a future that will be very different from the past.
• Still, the prospects of a war between the two are very low. Before stepping down as secretary of defense, Robert Gates told reporters, "I can't imagine either power being that stupid.” Many factors explain this low prospect of war: the danger of mutually assured destruction by nuclear weapons, the growing interdependence between the economies, the growing awareness that they have to manage many global challenges together, and the deft management by both sides of geopolitical differences. 
• Arguing that a cooperative United States-China relationship is “essential to global stability and peace,” Mr. Kissinger warns that were a cold war to develop between the countries, it “would arrest progress for a generation on both sides of the Pacific” and “spread disputes into internal politics of every region at a time when global issues such as nuclear proliferation, the environment, energy security and climate change impose global cooperation. Relations between China and the United State need not — and should not — become a zero-sum game." 
• Factors pushing for cooperation: China relies on US market to import its manufactures, to keep the Persian Gulf region stable as it still imports a lot of oil from there. US relies of China to buy its Treasury bills to ensure that US interest rates do not shoot up, to help keep the volatile North Korean situation stable. China and US often cooperate in UN SC to manage the hot issues of the day
• Geopolitical opportunities: The mutual exploitation of mistakes shows that, even while they collaborate in many important areas, they are also constantly competing with each other.
• Bush needed an enabling UN SC resolution facilitating Iraqi oil exports due to the illegal status of his invasion. The country that helped him the most was China. China obtained both short and long-term geopolitical dividends. Bush firstly pressured President Chen of Taiwan not to pursue his covert 'independence' strategy. Secondly, by legitimising the presence of US armed forces in Iraq, China consciously or unconsciously ensured that the US would be fully taken up with occupation and would have little time to focus on China's rise as a geopolitical competitor.
• China's geopolitical mistakes also helped America. Its unreasonable demands for a Japanese apology helped strengthen its defense alliance with US. Its aggressive actions in the South China Sea allowed Secretary of State Clinton an opportunity to exploit the potential divisions at ASEAN Regional Forum 2010. In a well-orchestrated move that appeared to have the backing of many SEA nations, Clinton called the dispute 'a leading diplomatic priority; for the US and voiced her country's willingness to mediate a resolution. This infuriated Beijing for it was taken as 'virtually an attack on China', asserting that 'nobody believes there's anything that's threatening the region's peace and stability'. 

• America faces the danger of acting unwisely in 2 areas: 
• a) Military: The big strategic question that Washington should be asking is whether it wants to stimulate a major arms race. Simple geopolitical wisdom would suggest that it is in America's long-term interest to avoid one. With China, America cannot try the same gambit that succeeded with the former Soviet Union: it could outspend the former Soviet Union several times over. Now with China’s economy on the verge of becoming bigger than the American economy and the American economy facing the prospect of remaining weak foranother decade or so, it would be wise for Washington DC to avoid an arms race. China may have far deeper pockets for the foreseeable future. 
• Yet Fareed Zakaria points out that American defense expenditure remain at an all-time high: Between 2001 and 2009, overall spending on defense rose from $412 billion to $699 billion, a 70 percent increase, which is larger than in any comparable period since the Korean War. Including the supplementary spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, we spent $250 billion more than average U.S. defense expenditures during the Cold War — a time when the Soviet, Chinese and Eastern European militaries were arrayed against the United States and its allies. Over the past decade, when we had no serious national adversaries, U.S. defense spending has gone from about a third of total worldwide defense spending to 50 percent. In other words, we spend more on defense than the planet’s remaining countries put together.
• This enormous military spending may also encourage a pattern of relatively aggressive behaviour. The American navy has been aggressively patrolling close to the coast of China for several decades. However, I wonder whether any policymaker has seriously asked himself searching questions about the wisdom of continuing these patrols. First, was it sensible for the American navy to continue its old patterns while Washington was implicitly seeking the help of China through the financial crisis? Second, even though China has passively accepted the patrols how much longer will it continue to do so? Third, will it also allow Chinese naval vessels and surveillance aircraft to do the same 12 miles from American shores when China has developed the capability to do so? 
• Their dialogues rarely mention any long-term strategic issues of climate change, restructuring the world financial system, reforming the world institutions, rearranging the world security system, achieving energy security etc in which both powers have vital interests as well as inescapable responsibilities. Instead the dialogues are entangled on issues such as China's internal stability, the trade balance and the currency issue. 
• b) China's political stability.
• This is also the area where the gaps in perception are the greatest. From the point of view of Chinese leaders, after almost 140 years of instability, the Chinese people have experienced over thirty years of continuous economic growth and relative political stability. The two are linked. Without political stability, the Chinese people would not have enjoyed the economic growth and the rapid improvement in living standards. Chinese leaders believe fervently that at the present stage of China’s development, China’s political stability would vanish without a strong CCP in charge. They are equally aware that the CCP has to transform itself. Polls have shown that a majority of Chinese citizens accept that the CCP should stay in power as long as the CCP continues to deliver good economic results and social benefits. There is an implicit social contract between the CCP and the Chinese people.
• Poll: "The vast majority of people (84%) believe the biggest legitimacy of the ruling Communist Party comes from the economic success it helped create in the past few decades. More Chinese than at any point in the country's history, can decide what to eat, where to live, what to think, and how to live their lives. Secondly, more than 70 percent (72%) of those interviewed, said the Party should be credited with fighting off Western imperialism back in the early years of the 20th Century. They think this victory saved the war-ravaged nation and, for the first time, gave the Chinese a sense of belonging and self-esteem. On the challenges the Party faces, 89 percent of our interviewees pointed to rampant corruption which, in turn, fuels social inequality, and undermines the reputation and credibility of the Party. Over 60 percent (64%) said they are saddened by the loss of traditional Chinese culture and values. Many people only seem to care about making money and climbing up the social hierarchy. Finally, half of the people (46%) said they are disappointed in the fact that the rule of law is only written on the paper, but in many instances, not well implemented."
• China and US need to avoid incautious rhetoric over tyranny or stability. The US should consider whether it is wise to push for political change. On the one hand, if indeed China is a political tyranny it will eventually perform badly and self-destruct. On the other, US should pause and ask what a more 'democratic' government might do at home, in the region and in the world at large. A more democratic government in China could be more populist and more nationalistic. It is not clear that China would then behave in as restrained a fashion as it has in recent years, posing even more problems for the world. 
• Nevertheless, a more democratic China will eventually emerge, especially once China has developed the largest middle class in the world. A wiser course to intervention would be to allow China to develop at its own pace. 
• The crisis of becoming #2: Jeffrey Sachs "In 1980, the US share of world income (measured in purchasing power parity prices) was 24.6 per cent. In 2011, it was 19.1 per cent. The IMF projects that it will decline to 17.6 per cent as of 2016. China, by contrast, was a mere 2.2 per cent of world income in 1980, rising to 14.4 per cent in 2011, and projected by the IMF to overtake the US by 2016, with 18 per cent. If this isn't a world-altering shift, it's hard to imagine what would be."
• When Americans finally wake up to the realization that their economy is number two in the world, it is more than likely that an acrimonious debate will begin with the famous question “Who lost America’s number one spot?” America has had debates like these before, like “Who lost Vietnam?” or “Who lost Iraq?” Such acrimonious debates are rarely enlightening. Instead, they will be full of scapegoating. China will, of course, be scapegoat number one. I have firsthand experience of the reluctance of high-ranking Americans to confront an undeniable hard reality that is about to hit their country at a panel discussion on “The Future of American Power in the 21st Century” at the Word Economic Forum in Davos. 
• My opening question was an easy one: “What do you see as the future of American power?” Their answers were predictable: America would always remain number one.
• My second question was posed more delicately. I said that I had seen some projections that the United States could have the second-largest economy within a decade or so. Hence I asked whether America could adjust to being number two in the world. Not one of them could say or imply that the United States could ever be number two. These four high-level U.S. representatives are not alone in refusing to confront the reality that America could be number two sometime soon. President Barack Obama also likes to broadcast the message that America will always be number one. 
• “the renewal of American leadership can be felt across the globe. From the coalitions we’ve built to secure nuclear materials to the missions we’ve led against hunger and disease; from the blows we’ve dealt to our enemies to the enduring power of our moral example, America is back. Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about"
• Charles Kupchan commented "the main contenders for the Oval Office are knocking themselves out to reassure Americans that their nation remains at the pinnacle of the global pecking order. Mitt Romney recently declared that “this century must be an American century.”
• Clinton will not "coddle the butchers of Beijing"
• It is traditional for presidential candidates to attack China in an effort to look tough and strong
• The politicians talk this way because they sense the reluctance of the American people to accept this changeover in power status as an inevitable reality.
• In one way or another, politicians will accuse China of 'cheating' either by manipulating its currency to keep it low or by forcibly keeping the wages of its workers low. Romney: "Unless China changes its ways, on day one of my presidency I will designate it a currency manipulator and take appropriate counteraction. A trade war with China is the last thing I want, but I cannot tolerate our current trade surrender."
• Still, it is a key function of leadership to prepare the population for unwelcome and hard truths. America needs to be educated that they are where they are because oft he decisions they made in the last one or two decades. Despite Clinton's wise declaration that nations must respond to the challenges of their times, he completely failed to warn them that they would have to adapt and adjust or be left behind with massive globalisation. It had been political impossible for him to deliver it. Instead Americans were told they had reached the End of History. This supreme self-confidence in turn led to many strategic errors. 
• Clinton's short-term decision to cave in to street demonstrators and labour unions while abandoning a WTO meeting in Seattle 1999 did long-term harm to the US economy because it helped to sustain the perception that the US could do whatever it wanted - semiprotectionist measures - and suffer no long-term change. Deep-seated in this is a strongly and deeply held belief that America was on the right side of history in handling the challenges of globalisation.
• Bush similarly ducked making hard decisions about budget deficits. Both administrations had postponed and increased the pain of necessary adjustments.
• By contrast, while Clinton's inauguration looked to the future with confidence, China looked ahead with great uncertainty and even despair, particularly after the Tiananmen Square catastrophe. China wanted to get out of its isolation, even swallowing the bitter pill of allowing the economies of Taiwan and Hong Kong to join APEC to gain its membership. Additionally, Zhu knew the only way to make the Chinese economy strong and competitive was to get into WTO, taking big political risks in pushing for membership. They knew that China had to reposition itself on the right side of history by opening itself up to global competition.
• I've prepared 100 coffins. 99 for corrupt officials and one for myself.
• Congressional Research Service report: Although Zhu still appears to be in a strong position politically at home, the domestic reforms are painful, cutting across a wide group of constituencies that have vested interests in the status quo and are potential victims of the kind of international competition that WTO obligations could bring. The private and entrepreneurial parts of the Chinese economy, already competitive, stand to be the chief beneficiaries of WTO membership.
• Although an agricultural agreement was quickly signed the next morning, Zhu was sent back to China virtually empty handed.
• "Americans are increasingly close-minded and unwilling to listen to opposing views." / "Lee looks mainly at the Chinese governance system, suggesting, among other things, that the US make politicians pass competency tests, incorporate the Special Economic Zone model and use the 50 states as economic laboratories, and restrict banks to traditional banking activities. According to an independent survey, more than 80 percent of Chinese think their government is doing a good job, while President Obama's approval rating is less than 50 percent among Americans and Congress is at record low rating of 13 percent."
• “The one over-arching objective which informs and drives (China’s) conduct is the need for stability.  Chinese leaders need – above all else – to ensure the existence of a benign and conducive global environment for China to continue to grow economically at a fast but sustainable pace — in short, to continue its ‘peaceful rise.’" There are positive aspects of China’s increased and more effective participation in international organizations.  “China’s growing role not only supports its strategic interests, but, it should be acknowledged, is also frequently constructive and helpful for the organizations in which it participates.”
• Much of the international fabric that provided the foundations for these treaties and organisations rested on ideas generated in US. Yet China has a better track record in the field of ratifying international treaties and conventions, as well as in joining international organisations. It has learnt powerfully that engagement with international organisations can improve China's conditions significantly. There is a direct correlation between China's membership in the WTO and the rapid expansion of its external trade. 
• 
• US: Free trade has become so toxic a subject in political discourse that Obama hardly mentions it anymore. 
• "68% surveyed in a Fortune poll felt America’s trading partners are benefiting the most from free trade, not the US. “That sense of victimhood is changing America’s attitude about doing business with the world, cramped by fear that America has lost control of its destiny in a fiercely competitive global economy. 
• 55% believe that growth in international trade has harmed American business and 78% think it has made things worse for American workers. Americans were willing to experiment with open borders during the exuberant 1990s, but today the mood has darkened. It found that with the economy sputtering, the US was on the “verge of becoming a country of economic nationalists.” 
• The Democratic mantra is now “fair trade, not free trade.”
• Mahbubai's "Can America fail?" article: American society could stumble and fall back if it did not force itself to conceive of failure. It suffers from 3 systematic challenges: groupthink, the erosion of individual responsibility, and an inability to see how its abuse of power has contributed to many of the problems it now confronts abroad. Many Americans are oblivious to the structural failures within their system of governance (dominated by special interests), their social contract (characterised by widening inequality) and their response to globalisation (increased protectionism). The most dangerous condition afflicting America today is that it has developed a distorted discourse about the real challenges it is facing.
• Truth-telling does not come easily to politicians, especially democratically elected ones. They have a structural incentive to pander to the wishes of the voters, not to make them uncomfortable with hard truths - that even the most powerful country has effectively lost a lot of its economic sovereignty as it encourages global interdependence and openness. 
• The second danger China faces is its smugness - that the country gets way ahead of itself and no longer believes that it faces momentous challenges. Zhu had brilliantly prepared China's future partly because he was willing to discard mental maps that had guided decisionmaking in the past. After 3 decades of success, China still has plenty of former sacred cows to slaughter. These include:
• the purported infallibility of the Chinese Communist Party
• the inability to address painful historical chapters, like the June 4th Tiananmen incident
• the enormous challenge of replacing “rule by law” with “rule of law”
• China-India: 
• Goldman Sachs has forecast that by 2050 or earlier, the number one and number two economies will be China and India. 
• There are elements of both collaboration and competition between the two. The Western media tends to highlight areas of competition rather than collaboration - wishful geopolitical thinking in the West. There can be no doubt that China has become a key factor in the American-India relationship. George W. Bush conferred a huge geopolitical gift to India by effectively “legitimising” the Indian nuclear program, both through the bilateral nuclear accords signed in October 2008 and through lobbying in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) in August 2008 to grant a waiver to India to commence civilian nuclear trade. 
• While there is no doubt that it would serve American interests for India to lean towards America in any conflict between America and China, it is not so clear that it would serve India’s long-term interests to do so. Both China and India were entering into one of the most promising periods of their economic growth and civilisational rejuvenation. It would be sheer folly to waste this by engaging in zero-sum geopolitical competition. The Indian National Security Advisor Shiv Shankar Menon said that with a few thousand years of strategic culture of its own, India would never allow itself to be used an instrument by other powers.
• Common interests stem from the fact that they are adopting a common strategy to reemerge as great powers: domestic economic liberalisation and integration with the global economy. Hence they also have a common interest in sustaining and strengthening the global economic system. Both need a strong WTO and an open-rules based trading order to continue exporting and growing.
• a) China and India collaborated closely in the infamous Copenhagen conference in December 2009 and Cancun WTO meeting in 2003.
• Fundamental interest in not being asked to take on too big a burden for global warming because global warming is not just happening because of the new 'flows' of GHG from China and India but the 'stock' of GHG by the DCs in the previous 2 centuries. 
• Since 1850, China has contributed less than 8% of the world's total emissions of carbon dioxide, whereas the United States is responsible for 29% and western Europe is responsible for 27%. Today, India's per capita greenhouse gas emissions are equivalent to only 4% of those of the United States and 12% of those of the European Union.
• Deep sense of injustice 
• Hence common desire to maintain Kyoto Protocol as the defining international agreement to deal with global warming as it imposes a clear obligation of DCs and little on relatively poor developing countries. 
• India's chief climate change negotiator has emphasised that India will not sacrifice its development to deal with climate change. "Developing countries have the responsibility to engage in sustainable development but their emission reductions will be the result of sustainable development, not the other way round." He also said that states' "ability to adapt to climate change is also linked to the level of development. Richer and more advanced states are better equipped to cope with climate change than are poorer countries. Therefore, development is the best form of adaptation, even if development in a developing country results, in the foreseeable future, to an increase in GHG emissions." The message is clear – development first.
• Still - signs that Chinese leaders are concerned about growing GHG and have implemented ambitious plans to limit emissions. 
• "China has realised that alongside command and control measures, attitudes need to be changed fundamentally to embrace innovation and sustainability. This has caused China, through the adoption of the 12th five-year plan, to pursue a more sustainable economic model, focusing on qualitative economic and social development. This includes prominent energy efficiency and carbon intensity targets. It introduces emission trading as one of the innovative new policy tools to be tested. China has already announced pilot projects to be implemented in five municipal areas and two provinces from 2013. Europe needs to realise that its position as the world leader in carbon pricing will not remain so for long particularly if it fails to act to revive its own ailing scheme"
• Common long-term interests and challenges
• a) Both will have to deal with a new political reality where the richer Western countries will no longer feel confident about the future and be unable to make significant concessions to conclude negotiations on climate change and/or trade. A greater burden would then shift on to the shoulders of China, India and other developing countries. So the time has clearly come for both China and India to think about the clear long-term interests they have in collaborating with each other in many areas of common interest.
• Both can only sustain their rapid economic growth if the relatively open 1945 rules-based order is sustained and, indeed, strengthened. Both are increasingly plugging their economies into the global economic grid. In so doing, they are demonstrating great common faith that this global economic grid will carry on. Yet they have essentially been 'free riders' exploiting the advantages of this global economic good. Common sense dictates that both China and India should put in a stronger common effort to keep the global economic grid going.
• b) Both China and India also face a common need to keep open global access to natural resources. 
• In recent years, rising Chinese oil and natural gas demand has been a major feature influencing global energy markets. Chinese oil consumption has close to doubled over the last decade and now represents over 10 percent of global world demand, with oil imports topping 5 million b/d last year.  China’s imports of liquefied natural gas have also soared from 1 bcm in 2006 to 7.63 bcm in 2009, making China a major force in Asian energy markets.
• Consumption of coal in India is increasing at 9 to 10% a year while production is growing at 7% hence imports are expected to more than triple from 2005 levels by 2020. 
• Both sides can develop rules that will ensure that the competition takes place in a civilised fashion and continue open access to key resources. Such collaboration is growing, notably in Africa. "Unbridled rivalry between Indian and Chinese companies is only to the advantage of the seller," China's official Xinhua News Agency quoted Indian petroleum nad naural gas minister Mani Shankar Aiyar as saying.
• China and India have chosen not to compete, but to cooperate, in the oil industry in Sudan since 2004.  In the 1990s, the withdrawal of Western oil companies following the conflict in Darfur provided opportunities for China and India to step in to construct an oil export sector. During this process, it was noticeable that China and India started to strengthen their relations at a senior diplomatic level in order to spur further oil exploration. In 2005, when Chinese Premier Wen visited India, the two Governments issued a joint declaration. This became a watershed event for accelerating cooperation in the energy sector. Subsequently, South Sudan gained independence in 2011 where nearly 90% of the oil resources are located in. China’s foreign minister paid a visit to South Sudan immediately. India was also one of the first countries to recognise the new nation. By establishing “new” diplomatic relationships with South Sudan, China and India made sure that they would keep oil exploration rights.
• Rising nutrition levels requires both China and India to import more food. Food, however, is a politically sensitive commodity. Clearly China and India share a common interest in developing a fair and equitable regime in food supplies. "We need a global agreement to ensure that international food markets will not be disrupted by government action—but no government today will risk being accused by the opposition of signing away its ability to ensure that its citizens have food." The net outcome is that countries "attempt to grow their own food, even if it is grossly inefficient for them to do so: the fields of grain that now appear in the middle of the Arabian desert are unlikely to be the best use of water in that location." These "myopic actions by governments to protect their citizenry in the short run result in global food insecurity and inefficient meth­ods of production in the long run." Neither has even begun a dialogue in this area. 
• c) Maritime area.
• Secure sea lanes: "both India and China are major maritime nations, we have long coastlines, we have active navies."
• Developing a viable long-term global regime for preserving fish stocks since they will have the world's largest new middle class
• d) Preserve stability on their common borders 
• If both Afghanistan and Pakistan fall apart and become havens for terrorist groups, both will suffer as they have disgruntled domestic Islamic groups willing to collaborate.
• The common challenges and shared interests of China and India underscores that the relationship between the two countries will alternate between competition and collaboration. Their geopolitics will necessarily have to be supple and not rigidly ideological. That way a win-win relationship is possible. 
• Islam and the West
• In some ways it is the most obviously troubled. There is a thousand-year history of distrust and conflict. Yet, the Islamic world is also joining the march to modernity. Their aspirations are now similar to those in the rest of the world.
• There is one cancerous tumour in the Islam-West relationship that provides the single biggest source of aggravation: the Israel-Palestine issue. However, we have the theoretical solution if we can find the practical will to implement it - an two-state solution?
• Time is no longer on Israel's side. Israel has bet its long-term security by relying on American power to protect it from the global pressure it feels. However American power has peaked and can only decline. By contrast the power of the Islamic world has toughened. It should start working on compromise solutions.
• Stephan Robert, a former chancellor of Brown University, noted that the traditional Israeli feeling of victimhood, a legacy of WWII is no longer supported by geopolitical evidence. "Israel has gone from a vulnerable little state, surrounded by tens of millions of hostile Arab neighbors, to the most powerful military force in the Middle East. Dangers will always exist, but the balance of military power has inexorably shifted. Peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan render unlikely any hostile coalition of neighboring countries. Syria has overwhelming internal problems. Iraq isn’t looking for another war. A nuclear-armed Iran could cause trouble in the whole region, certainly for Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Israel itself is a nuclear power. It has brought the Jewish people from centuries of victimization to military power not imaginable half a century ago. But can the Jewish people segue from deeply ingrained victimhood to the moral and practical dictates of being a major power?"/ "Israel is losing the moral high ground through much of the world. How can a people persecuted for so long act so brutally when finally attaining power? Will we continuously see the world as 1938, or can we use the strength of our new power to forgive, while never forgetting the lessons of our past?"
• Another NYT piece:  Israel doesn’t need to wait for a final-status deal with the Palestinians. What it needs is a radically new unilateral approach: It should set the conditions for a territorial compromise based on the principle of two states for two peoples, which is essential for Israel’s future as both a Jewish and a democratic state.
• Positive new trends that Israel and the West can capitalise on in finding a solution to the problem: 
• a) Israel can best disarm Iran for it is the perpetuation of the problem that provides Iran with a potent justification and accusation of their pusillanimity in the face of Israeli intransigence. 
• b) The people of Iran want to join the march to modernity and have no interest in prolonging conflict. Hence the best way to produce change in Iran is not through sanctions but to encourage education, travel and openness. Sanctions neither removed Castro nor changed the nature of Cuban society. In Myanmar too, the persistent engagement of ASEAN transformed the mindset of leader more effectively than the bombs that the West has utilised with great abandon in the Islamic world.
• The emergence of Islamist parties in Turkey that show no desire to emulate 19th century caliphates but instead want to progress into the 21st century has promoted economic development while protecting Islamic identity. “Erdogan succeeded in establishing a viable model for political Islamism,” Schmid said. As Ami Lourai, a senior official from Tunisian Islamist party Ennahdha, told French daily Libération in January: “Turks showed the way: you can be religious and open to modernity and democracy at the same time.” During a global economic downturn, Turkish unemployment was reduced and economy grew at a staggering 9% in 2011. The AKP supervised this economic upturn while making Turkey more democratic and influential internationally.
• An Islamic world full of modernising parties could end the dysfunctional era. Pakistani politicians and public are advocating new approaches to India: Indian MP Shashi Tharoor sensed in private conversations a widespread desire to put the Kashmir dispute on the back burner and explore avenues of mutually beneficial cooperation with India. 
• Columnist Yaqoob Khan Bangash openly derides the hallowed Pakistani argument that as Muslims, Indian Kashmiris would want to join Pakistan. "Despite being practically a war zone since 1989, Indian Kashmir has managed a higher literacy, economic growth and per capita income rate than most of Pakistan. Thus, why would the Kashmiris want to join Pakistan now? What do we have to offer them any longer?" Tharoor felt that "If such episodes reflect an incipient new national mood in Pakistan, it could well be time for India to seize the moment to build a lasting peace."
• At the same time, while the Islamic world faces many challenges, it is also clear that the Islamic world of 1.2 billion people is not immune from the larger global trends of convergence. Modern technology and frequent travel have opened the eyes of Islamic populations to this new consensual cluster of norms sweeping across most of the developing world. As a result, Islamic populations are putting enormous political pressure on their governments to focus on economic development and not get distracted. Fortunately, there are enough success stories in the Islamic world to demonstrate that modernization and Islam can go hand in hand. Turkey, Indonesia and Malaysia provide the best examples.
• Geopolitical miracle of SEA:
• First, the roots of the miracle are in ASEAN's prevention of wars among its member-states. Second it has promoted economic and many other forms of cooperation with about 1000 meetings annually. The organisation has taken many bold steps such as an 'open skies' agreement, leading to an explosion of air traffic. Third, ASEAN has consistently engaged all the great powers, realising that trying to keep them out is futile. Hence when China proposed an FTA with ASEAN it spurred Japan and India to do the same. ASEAN has shared the fruits of its geopolitical acumen with other regions. 
• Early meetings were stimulated by their participation in various ASEAN-plus meetings. Relations plummeted in 1996 when Japanese PM visited the Yasukuni Shrine, angering China and South Korea. Meeting at the fringes of an ASEAN summit in Manila, "Japan surprised everyone by inviting leaders from China and Korea for a breakfast meeting. Given the complexity of relations, the harmonious images which were televised evoked a great sigh of relief in many Japanese and warmly received. The gathering of 3 Northeast Asian leaders immediately became a regular event at the fringe of ASEAN meetings. Tripartite cooperation started at government level. 2002 became the year of tripartite exchanges and many cultural events took place in each of the three countries. At the Bali Meeting in October 2003 a Joint Declaration on the Promotion of Tripartite Cooperation among the three countries was adopted." 

• Fourth, Asean has now deepened its cooperation beyond government exchanges toward more people-to-people exchanges through university exchanges, offering of scholarships by the Singaporean government and online collaborative portals for ASEAN's youth. 
• ASEAN's experience also demonstrates how the realist and liberal-internationalist streams of geopolitics are at constant play. While competition swirls among the countries, all have realised how interdependent they are. Trade has exploded in the region from $302b in 1990 to $2 trillion in 2010. ASEAN provides a powerful microcosm of the great convergence that the world is experiencing.  

A Barrier to Convergence

•  There remains a deep psychological reluctance by many in the West to accept the simple proposition that 'we are all equal', stemming from a deeply held unconscious assumption that the West remains, in one way or another, a morally superior civilisation. 
• 
  Tragically, the idea that the West is inherently a benevolent force on the world stage is a deeply embedded myth. But the West is neither inherently benevolent nor inherently malevolent. It is, in fact, no different in its behavior from the majority of states in the world. In short, the Western states behave “normally,” not “benignly,” on the world stage.

• One of the biggest sources is the belief that the West is inherently benevolent because of foreign aid it gives to the world. Yet most development economists know that America is among the least generous of all Western countries, ranked 19th out of 23 in the OECD and giving out only 0.21% of the GNP in foreign aid. Still, the American population continues to believe that America is very generous. A 2010 Quaire survey showed that they believe foreign aid to be 25-27% of its federal budget. Because they hear it all the time in the writing and speeches of American leaders in all spheres.
•  
•  William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, argues that development aid have been too ambitious and often proposed solutions important to donors rather than to recipients. Moreover the lack of accountability to recipients and the absence of feedback mechanisms have aggravated inefficiency. 
• "This is the tragedy in which the West spent $2.3 trillion on foreign aid over the last five decades and still had not managed to get twelve-cent medicines to children to prevent half of all malaria deaths. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get $4 bed nets to poor families. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get $3 to each new mother to prevent five million child deaths. It’s a tragedy that so much well-meaning compassion did not bring these results for needy people."
• Dambisa Mayo, Dead Aid, Western aid has crippled development by taking away incentives for self-development. Africa becomes addicted and hooked on a cycle of repaying the interest on their loans instead of solving the problems. 
• The primary intention is to enhance the national interests of  the donors. 
• 1) The failure of OECD
• Official figures: $53b in 2000 to $133b in 2011. When aid fails, therefore, the recipients are blamed for incompetency and waste. Because very large and credible institutions like the OECD and World Bank are involved. However, they are tightly controlled by Western donor countries that they cannot be objective and independent in their evaluations.
• OECD has served a rich man's club, confident they were the real custodians of the 'holy grail' of economic development. Which is understandable had there been sterling record of success. Contemporary scholars understood that the purpose of the OECD was to help consolidate the transatlantic military and economic alliance between North America and Europe in a context of the Cold War and of increased interdependence’ But the Cold War ended over 20 years ago. The OECD should have reinvented itself to stay relevant. It failed to do so and thereby confirmed that it was destined to become a ‘sunset organisation’. 
• The OECD could have played a valuable role globally. Each year, it dispenses billions of dollars in aid. But no organisation bites the hand that feeds it. Instead of reviewing objectively the failures of the donor countries, officials assumed that all the flaws were the fault of the recipient countries. 'OECD reports on nonmembers took the form of “unidirectional” recommendations, since it was assumed that its members and staff enjoyed superior policy “know-how” based on the assumption of the superior functioning of their economies'. In short, despite its name and ostensible mission, the role of the OECD was not to serve the interests of aid recipient countries. This is why it kept its deliberations as secret as possible. Their opaque nature has aroused suspicion and criticism from observers, who have claimed that they served as places where the richest member countries could forge common postures with their allies before taking their agenda on to other international organisations or back home. 
• Equally and importantly, OECD was not completely honest about what the ‘developed’ countries did when they were ‘developing countries’: the insistence on “best practice” policy such as free trade for the developing world amounts to denying their own use of trade instruments in the past’. 
• Not all has gone to waste. In Pakistan, I was truly impressed by the good work done by the Lahore University of Management Sciences, a business school started with USAID funds. In Singapore, we have benefitted enormously from the wise advice dispensed by UNDP development expert Dr Albert Winsemius. 

• The corruption of aid to Afghanistan
• estimated 70 percent of all aid to Afghanistan between 2002 and 2004 was spent on the internal costs of the UN agency presence. 
• Although USAID had promised the government of Afghanisatan 1100 schools within 2 years it ended up building only 8 within the time, of which 6 had already collapsed. Citizens interviewed expressed a sense of betrayal by the international community given the waste, inefficiency and corruption. 
• Instead of opening countries up to legitimate entrepreneurial activity, the aid system epitomises the side of capitalism that is fundamentally exploitative. Afghanistan is just a more extreme example of the norm. 
• The actual nature of IMF Aid
• Rhetoric vs Reality: the Best and Worst of Aid Agency Practices, William Easterly and Claudia Williamson, in 1980s to mid-1990s, between 50 to 80% of aid was tied to recipients spending aid money on goods and services from the donor country, voting in line with it in international forums like UN or following policy prescriptions like opening up markets to goods from donor countries. After the Cold War, tied aid dropped significantly suggesting that Western donors no longer saw the necessity of buying loyalty. 
• "In this global context aid quickly became a means of rewarding rulers on the basis of whether their foreign policies supported or opposed one of the superpowers—rather than whether they were pursuing any particular development agenda"
• Every time a developing country joins the UN SC it suddenly finds that the amount of foreign aid increases  for 2 years as their vote becomes useful to the interests of the donor country. And if the developing country dares vote against the interest of the donor, it is either threatened or actually dealt a blow of reduced aid. In short, aid that is in theory meant to help the poor is actually used as an instrument of blackmail in I/R. 
• Robust positive relationship between temporary UN SC membership and participation in IMF programs. 54% increases in American aid and 7% increase in UN development aid. Governments not serving on the UN Security Council participate in IMF programs only 26.2% of the time, while governments serving on the UNSC participate 33.3% of the time 
• In 1976, after already having received nearly 10 million SDR in loans from the IMF, the Tanzanian government decided to vote for some resolutions that were not supported by all of the powerful members of the IMF. In April, Tanzania voted for a resolution calling for Indonesia to withdraw from East Timor; the US and Japan abstained. And in July, Tanzania voted for a resolution condemning South Africa’s attack of Zambia; the US abstained. The IMF never disbursed the Stand-by Arrangement loan that had been signed in August 1975.
• While in theory the IMF and the World Bank are independent international organisations, they have in practice served as instruments of Western geopolitical power.
• Self-serving food aid
• Frederic Mousseau, food security consultant has identified the main problems with food aid: (1) it is a donor driven system (2) it promotes domestic interests of donor countries (3) it is a foreign policy tool (4) international institutions that distribute food aid are driven by exporters (5) development is not necessarily the objective 
• Christopher Barrett, Cornell economist: American governmental food aid which feeds 70m people a year at a cost of up to $2b is slow, often ineffective and expensive. It is really intended to support domestic farm prices, promote commercial agricultural exports and advance America's geostrategic aims. "All these objectives are caught up in food aid; it's not just about feeding the hungry. That's just the way it is sold." Barrett claims about 50c of every $1 spent is on shipping, processing and other costs. Hence food aid underperforms its potential by a great deal as it serves objectives which are largely outdated. 
• Duplication and aid to corrupt countries
• From 1960 to 1990, autocratic regimes supporting the US had their share of aid increase from 45% of total to 70%. Aid was allocated in order to produce foreign policy outcomes beneficial to the donors. 
• OECD's Development Cooperation Report: "aid comes in too many small slices from too many donors, creating high transaction costs and making it difficult for partner countries to effectively manage their own development.” Some African countries have between 24 to 30 active donors, each accounting for less than 10% of the overall aid. This makes coherence and complementarity of international cooperation even more difficult as countries have to cope with the flow of new agencies and mechanisms.
• In this new global environment, the rest of the world will feel less aggravated if the West takes a few steps off the moral high ground. 
• Harvard Professor Stephan Walt, "Americans take too much credit for global progress and accept too little blame for areas where U.S. policy has in fact been counterproductive. By focusing on their supposedly exceptional qualities, Americans blind themselves to the ways that they are a lot like everyone else. This unchallenged faith in American exceptionalism makes it harder for Americans to understand why others are less enthusiastic about U.S. dominance, often alarmed by U.S. policies, and frequently irritated by what they see as U.S. hypocrisy, whether the subject is possession of nuclear weapons, conformity with international law, or America's tendency to condemn the conduct of others while ignoring its own failings. Ironically, U.S. foreign policy would probably be more effective if Americans were less convinced of their own unique virtues and less eager to proclaim them."

Converging on Global Governance

•  http://www.theglobalist.com/why-the-united-nations-is-kept-weak/
• A dirty little secret is that institutions of global governance are weak today by design, rather than by default. Even during the Cold War, when Moscow and Washington disagreed on pretty much everything, both nations were united in one regard. They actively conspired to keep the UN weak.
• As we move into the era of the great convergence, the world clearly needs stronger “global village” councils. The time has come for the West to begin a fundamental rethink of its long-held policy that it serves long-term Western interests to keep institutions of global governance weak.
• In response, the West has adopted an intelligent long-term strategy. If it can control an international institution, it allows that institution to become strong and occasionally effective. If it cannot control an international institution, it deliberately debilitates that institution. This once-intelligent long-term strategy is no longer so intelligent, however. As the West progressively loses relative power within the international system, the inclination is to hold on to past power as much and as long as possible. However, the best way to protect minority rights is actually through strengthening the rule of law and strengthening the institutions that promote it.
• When Strauss Kahn became the head of the IMF in 2007, European leaders acknowledged that the "gentlemen's agreement" was an anachronism. They suggested that Strauss-Kahn be the last European to head to organisation. When G20 leaders met in London in 2009, they announced that future leaders of IMF and World Bank be selected on the basis of merit. Yet European leaders relaimed their 'hereditary' right in 2011 and the US government flatly announced that another American would succeed in 2012.
• Because reforms are in an ad-hoc fashion without first getting agreement on the principles that should guide reform: principles of democracy, the recognition of power imbalances and the rule of law. 
• In practice, however, West has vehemently opposed the democratisation of global institutions as their populations have increasingly become a smaller minority, leading to a dramatic reduction of Western power.
• Realpolitik considerations of power (2nd) have overturned democracy as the international system is based on cooperation not among peoples of the world but among the nations (where there is great inequality of power). While institutions are steadily losing their legitimacy as they are not perceived to represent the views of the people, we cannot ignore the power dimensions.
• Hans Morgenthau, "international politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power"  
• The issue of the veto
• Powerful vested interest for the US to stay in the UN, valuable control over the system
• Wrong in principle: if the vast majority of the world's population wants to see a two-state solution in Israel and Palestine, it would be wrong for one state, America, to veto it. Yet it serves a useful purpose of delivering a warning that American military power would protect Israel should a solution be imposed. 
•  The daily interaction among the veto-wielding great powers in the UN SC has prevented the serious deterioration of great-power relations and has often led to the betterment of relations. Against the background of geopolitical competition and misunderstanding between US and China, they have often 'conspired; to move their agendas, in a way encouraging cooperation. Collusion may not be noble in principle but it eases the working of the world. 
• Dysfunctional as well in leading to manifest corruption such as in the Oil-for-Food scandal where the p5 abused their veto powers and direct control over the UN Secretariat to channel lucrative commercial contracts in Iraq to their own companies. The vast majority of companies in the Program were American - Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texas and El Paso. Hussein managed to pocket $1.8b, and every contract he signed and benefited from was authorised by the P5.
• Even though Paul Vocker's report on the scandal was an important document it was only discussed in a short single formal sitting of the UNSC and not at the UNGA as the p5 knew that it would inevitably indict them. 
• The veto has entrenched the great powers in the UN system and encouraged their collaboration and cooperation. But the unchecked powers of the veto has also led to corruption and abuse. Their absolute dictatorial powers must be balanced with accountability and responsibility. 
• P5 distortions
• Serve their interests at the expense of the world. 
• SC rules of procedure remain provisional after nearly 6 decades because the p5 do not want to be bound by any rules in their behaviour.
• P5 and Judicial Review 
• In theory the whole world agrees on the principle of rule of law and has been embraced across the political spectrum. Yet at the international level, when the UNSC fails to carry out its duties to prevent genocide, it never tolerates any kind of judicial review.
• Simon Chesterman, dean of NUS Law Faculty: "The UN lacks a formal process to establish the vires of its organs as the question of interpreting the Charter powers of each was quite consciously left to the organs themselves. The ICJ does not exercise the functions of a constitutional court, though an organ may choose to submit a relevant question to it for an advisory opinion."
• American discomfort with the ICJ because it serves a global interest and not necessarily American interests. Sean Murphy of George Washington University: "On one hand, the United States embraces the rule of law within its own society and, in principle, within the international system of states. The US has been and remains an active participant in cases before the Court, appearing before it several times, more than any other state, even in recent years. On the other hand, the US has never been willing to submit itself to the plenary authority of the Court and has typically reacted negatively to decisions by the Court that are adverse to U.S. interests. As is well known, in response to decisions that were reached by the Court, the US refused to participate in the proceedings on the merits of the case brought by Nicaragua in 1984 and withdrew from the Court's compulsory jurisdiction in 1986."
• The US did allow the establishment of the very expensive International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 1994 and for the former Yugoslavia in 1993. They were given a free hand to investigate the criminal deeds of war criminals. However when the chief prosecutor of ICTY said that it might begin an investigation on the legality of the NATO bombings in Kosovo, enormous political pressure was put on her to cease. 
• Hence the first and third principles would push for greater rule of law globally but be opposed by the second principle. 

• Proposals for Reform
• The main obstacle to reform lies in Washington, which sees enormous benefits from retaining the present composition. 
• US Ambassador to the UN from 2007 to 2009 Khalilzad, in a diplomatic cable leaked by Wikileaks "We believe expansion of the Council, along the lines of the models currently discussed, will dilute U.S. influence in the body. Addition of new permanent members with veto rights would increase the risk to U.S. interests from Council expansion exponentially." Even more cynically, in an effort to block the addition of more veto-wielding permanent members, he suggested, "We should quietly allow discontent with P-5 veto prerogatives to ensure the veto is not extended to new members while joining Russia and China in stoutly defending existing P-5 vetoes." In so doing, he acknowledged a widely known political reality: there is growing anger and dissatisfaction with the veto.

Conclusion

• 1) Global conversation, global parliament 
• 2) An end to anachronistic policies of the West and move towards multilateralism
• 3) The development of a global ethic
• Over time, as human communities grew in size and complexity, our sense of moral obligation to other men and women extended from family to budding nation-states. Today, more and more philosophers are noting that our sense of moral community is now slowly but steadily extending to every other member of the human race. 
• David Rodin of Oxford: “we are ‘pushed’ toward a global ethic by the need to address urgent issues that are increasingly global in nature, and we are ‘pulled’ toward a global ethic by a universal core implicit in the very idea of ethics—a core articulated most powerfully by the idea of human rights.”  
• Technology is a material force and has no soul. Yet when technology destroys distances, it extends our sense of moral compassion and our sense of moral obligation to other human beings. 
• One recent dramatic example of the moral impact of technology was provided by a video produced by a charity group in California on Uganda’s notorious war criminal Joseph Kony. Three days after its release, Kony 2012 was watched by 40m people all over the world. Suddenly, people everywhere became aware that a Ugandan war criminal was on the loose, going from moral indifference to moral outrage.
• We have known for more than a decade that Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) have been raping, looting, and killing children and innocent civilians.  The P5 had also known about his blatantly immoral activities but they did nothing and felt no obligation. Less than a month later, a nonbinding resolution “condemning Kony and the LRA for committing crimes against humanity and mass atrocities, and supporting ongoing efforts by the US Government and governments in central Africa to remove Kony and LRA commanders from the battlefield” was introduced in Senate. The resolution received bipartisan cosponsorship from 46 other senators owing to the immense popularity of the video. Senator Lindsay Graham said, “This YouTube sensation is gonna help the Congress be more aggressive and will do more to lead to his demise than all other action combined.”
• Another force generating this global ethic is logic, especially moral logic. Logic has, however, always been a double-edged sword. Many commentators have, for example, highlighted the harm done to poor African citizens by incompetent or even malevolent African governments. Curiously, when the same Africans suffer the consequences of harmful actions by benign and competent Western governments, in the form of expensive cotton subsidies given by the US Congress to rich American farmers or expensive agricultural subsidies given by the European Union to rich European farmers that have hurt and impoverished African farmers, why is there no moral compassion, or outrage, shown about this?
• The emergence of a global ethic will make it more and more difficult to have double standards like these. As the world gets smaller and smaller, we will find that a lot of our domestic actions will have global consequences and could hurt other people. As Martin Luther King wisely noted, “An individual has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow horizons of his particular individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”
• This is where a theory of one world would help us a lot. It would provide a bedrock upon which we could rest a moral theory of one world. And our sense of moral compassion toward all the other 7 billion global inhabitants of this planet will continue to expand.