[Lecture] Has the West Lost it? by Prof Kishore Mahbubani

Your Excellencies, distinguished guests and colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy Evening Lecture. My name is Danny Korra. I am an economics

prof

essor here at the school and I am here tonight to welcome our founding dean

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essor. Keyshawn Abu Barney back to the liquidus school, the school he built, which could launch his new book this afternoon. If the West has missed it, you will have seen that this book is subtitled as a provocation to those of you who have followed it, since I have a key source. written over the decades one might think that the subtitle is superfluous and redundant after all, what else has Kisho been if not provocative, thought-provoking but at the same time always based on empirically grounded evidence?

What Kishore writes is always intelligent, thoughtful and compelling to read, I hope. You'll forgive the analogy, it's like taking a cold shower, it's comforting to wake up those of us who have fallen asleep at the wheel, but it's also refreshing because it energizes us all to move on to new thoughts, like a cold shower, writing of teachers should not continue. You feel too comfortable in this new book that you show, return to the question of world order, comment on the historical aberration that is Western centrality in the global system, reflect on the powers that are China and India today and ask where the world will go. world below.

They have been the failures of the West in these last two hundred years, while they will endure as the successes of the West now that the international system is ready for the change in global leadership. How will the West respond now? I'm going to start and hand it over to Kishore, but just a few. Cleansing Words: May I suggest that you turn off your cell phones or put them on silent? Kishore has agreed to speak for 30-40 minutes, after which we will have a question and answer session. I'll say this again as we get closer. Just then, but to ask his question, he will notice that there are microphones standing around the hallway.

To ask your question, please come to the standing microphones or, if you have special needs, let me know and a microphone will be brought to you. They will usually line up for questions, so please come to the microphones early as we come to the end of Kishore's presentation. I have the opportunity to moderate this evening session and I would like to maximize the conversation with the audience so that when it comes time for questions and answers. answer session I will ask you and I will ask you again to very briefly describe the setup of what you want to say but then quickly answer your question, the only thing left for me to do now is ask you to join.

I welcomed to the stage our founding dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Kishore ma boo bunny, when I left the school on December 31, of course, I did not know who would succeed me as dean of the school, but I knew it. I have a secret hope and my hope and my dream was that Professor Danny would succeed me, so a round of applause for Danny and it's a great pleasure to be back here with so many old friends, young friends, former bosses, mr. Danny Bolen, who unfortunately spoiled me, you're a good boss, he never prepared me for the other bosses that followed.

I probably had an equal. I had an equally good boss, Professor Guan gong wu, as chairman of the board, so I have many, many. old friends here and I am very happy to be back here and since some of you are very curious to know what happens after you leave the position of Dean, I am happy to inform you that life gets better. In fact, I'm having a wonderful year this year on a nine-month sabbatical. I just spent three months at Columbia and Harvard Universities and had a remarkably warm reception there and tomorrow morning I'm flying to Fudan University to spend two months there because my project this year is we should write a book about US relations. and China because that is the most important geopolitical relationship of our time, so Rafa, I go to Paris, I go to Washington DC and I go everywhere, so life after the deanery is really wonderful, so I am I am very happy to be back here to talk about the book I see released in London a few weeks ago when the West

lost

it and, despite its rather provocative title, my friends who read it are actually sure that it is a love letter from you to the West and One One of my goals in the 25 minutes or so I have here is to explain why this is kind of a love letter to the West, I mean the West, when it provides 12% of the world's population, why should we care about that and then ?

In the second part I will talk about why I think the West has

lost

its way and the third question I will try to answer is what can we do to help the West or what is the best path forward for the West, so let me start. with the first question: why does the West matter? The West matters for a fundamental reason for all of humanity, because if Western civilization had not succeeded, it would not have modernized, it would not have achieved all those tremendous advances in science and technology, the advances in the reasoning of humanity.

I would have been in a much worse condition, the reason the human condition today has never been better is because of the gifts of the West to the rest and that is why what happens in the West matters a lot now. I know a lot of you are drowning in doom and gloom and getting bad news and you think, Oh my God, Wes Kishore, obviously this gap year has gone to his head, he's got opium on his brain, he doesn't understand that the world is falling apart. How do you say the world has never been better?

Let me read pages 9 and 10 of the book and describe to you how some of the challenges that humanity has been struggling with for thousands of years and that we have now finally managed to solve, many of them take on the eternal and ancient question of war and peace. and throughout human history billions have died in wars and we still think that wars will never end, of course they won't end completely, but any future historian of the year 2100 looking at 2018 will say that this is the generation of beings luckiest humans we have ever had. I had because the man of violence has dramatically gone down in the history of humanity.

Let me quote what Steven Pinker from Harvard says and I actually spent over an hour with Steven Pinker and then I was at Harvard and he actually came up with a still new, enlightening book. which I recommend because it gives you surprising data on how the human condition has improved, but this is what he said, today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species' time on Earth, he adds, global violence has decreased steadily since the mid-20th century, according to the 2006 Human Security Report, the number of deaths in battles and interstate wars has decreased from more than 65,000 per year in the 1950s to less than 2,000 per year in this decade and even has a temporary problem due to the killings. in Syria or Yemen the long term trend is still continuing in the area of ​​war and peace, let me talk about another area where we have been trying with all our might to change the world to get rid of absolute poverty right now, let me tell you this incredibly surprising statistic from Oxford Smack wrote Max Rosa in 1950 not long ago that's two years after I was born 1950 three quarters of the world lived in extreme poverty in 1981 it was 44% in 2016 research suggests that the proportion The Extreme poverty has fallen below 10% in my lifetime, from three-quarters of the world's population to less than 10%, and the National Intelligence Council (a fairly conservative body in the United States) has predicted that it could reach zero in 2030 and I tell you that I grant you this, any future historian who looks at the last three decades will say that these 40 decades were the best in the history of humanity, just one more quote for those who perhaps some of you are still skeptical Johan, no Cato Institute book points out if someone would have said it. you in 1990 that in the next 25 years world hunger would decrease by 40 percent charm or suchness you would have extreme poverty would fall by three quarters Yura told you that they were naive fools because the fools were right, that's really what that has actually happened.

I can give you even more data to show you that the human condition has improved dramatically and I can also show you that this was all due to the success of the West over the last few hundred years and that it was a tremendous gift from the West. For the rest, this is the moment of great triumph for the West, the West should be celebrating and saying hurray, we did it, but if you return, as I did after three months in the United States and Europe, I can tell you the mood in both Europe. and America is very depressed there are no celebrations in the streets there is no sense of celebration that the West really this is a great time for the rest so the second question is therefore where did the West go wrong?

What happened and that's also what I'm trying to do. In my opinion, what happened is that the West made three critical strategic mistakes and these critical strategic mistakes were made precisely in the 30 years when the rest of the world was changing and moving upwards in a dramatic direction, so what were they? the three strategic errors, the first was in 1990 and 1990 is a very critical year in the history of humanity because that was more or less at the time of the end of the Cold War and the West triumphed saying: "we did it, we defeated the Soviet Union", one of the largest empires in the world without fighting without firing a shot were so happy that the feeling of euphoria was tremendous and is reinforced by a very famous essay that Francis Fukuyama wrote called the end of history, his basic message was "hey, we in the West have won, we haven't." We don't have to change the people, the head of liberal democracy, the rest of the world has to change and adapt, we can move forward on autopilot and, as I say somewhat cruelly in Francis Fukuyama's book, the yes caused a lot of brain damage to the West. because it put the West to sleep precisely at the time when the rest of the world was awakening and especially when China and India were awakening and why the awakening of China and India was so important because from the Year 1 to the Year 1824 1800 during The last 2,000 years the two largest economies in the world were always those of China and India and in the last 200 years Europe took off and North America took off and it is important to assimilate this statistic because it makes it very clear that the last 200 years of Western domination of world history have been a great historical aberration, all aberrations come to a natural end at some point China and India would awaken and precisely at the moment when China India would awaken after Deng Xiaoping's four modernizations after the by Manmohan Singh. the reforms in India The West fell asleep and therefore was taken by surprise the second strategic mistake was in the year 2001 so what happened in 2001 in 2001 everyone remembers 9/11 and I know that 9/11 was significant.

I was in Manhattan when it happened. I didn't see the towers fall, but it was there. I felt the shocks, the political shocks, and I could understand why the West decided that we should focus on terrorism, invade Afghanistan, invade Iraq, and then the West didn't realize that there was something much more going on. The important thing happened in 2001, which was China's admission into the WTO and of course when China joined the WTO and if we say we inject 800 million new workers into the global capitalist system, we get what Joseph Schumpeter described as creative destruction, it was inevitable that jobs would be lost. in the United States and Europe and this has been documented now by an American economist called David Otto aut, you are so clearly what the West should have paid attention to and didn't pay attention to and if at the end of the day you want to know why Trump happened for Why people voted for this populist politician is because they did not pay attention to China's admission to the WTO and how it would dramatically change the global economic system.

Second strategic error. The third is even more recent. 2014. What happened in 2014. Leave me. I give you a statistic in 1980 in terms of purchasing power parity as a percentage of world GNP: the United States' share was 25%. China's share was 2.2 percent less than the United States' 10% and people thought that China, of course, will still be far behind and then, in what future historians will regard as an absolute miracle, in 34 years to 2014 in terms of PPP, the United States became number two, China became another and the surprising thing is that no one paid attention to them, so the fundamental mistake that the West made is that it did not seem to be aware of that the world had fundamentally changed and when the world fundamentally changes you have to adapt, so this book isessentially a love letter to a friend: wake up, the world has changed, you can't continue on autopilot anymore.

I have to adjust and adapt now, if I may say something even crueler. The greatest weakness of Western public intellectuals is that they have become so arrogant, so sure that they know the world better than anyone else, that they have lost the art of listening and the ability to listen. art of paying attention to other voices, which is why even a letter like this that we weave into a book like this, which is intended to be a gesture of friendship, came out a month ago and has not been reviewed once in any Western newspaper, nor not even in a British newspaper in London.

We come out, I'm not surprised because the West has lost the art of thinking strategically and thinking long term and listening to others and that is a big part of the problem in the West, so again, in an effort to be helpful, I say okay. let me give you three suggestions on how you can create a better world for the West and I describe it as the 3m strategy 3m does not refer to a mining company in Minnesota, it refers to three amps the first words m3m the first word M is minimalist and many in the West They are actually not aware that as a result of the explosion of Western power, especially after the Industrial Revolution, the West acquired the habit of intervening throughout the world.

I mean, this, of course, we saw most strongly in the 19th century. when surprisingly a small continent like Europe could colonize the entire world, I mean, once again, a future historian will be surprised, the entire world, every corner was touched, even a small country like Portugal, with a population equal to that of Singapore, could colonize Latin America, Brazil could colonize Africa, Angola, Mozambique, could take a bite out of India in Goa. and take a bite out of China Macau, how did a small country do that which showed you how powerful the West had become and the West thought that as they decolonized and retreated to their own countries, they had stopped intervening?

Actually, Western intervention continued in so many areas in so many regions and this is again a future historian will see this very clearly and say why, for example, why should the West intervene so much in the affairs of the Middle East, how how the graduates incredibly bright, well-trained students from major countries America's universities believe that Iraq can be made a democracy overnight by sending a few hundred thousand American troops. It is absurd to observe it, but they did it with great conviction. This desire to intervene, this habit of intervention, has led to many of the problems that you will encounter in the world and in the West, so my advice to them is to take a step back from the rest of the world and this goes back to my first point: learn how to improve their own societies and become more peaceful places and exhibit a fortunate attitude despite all the difficulties. problems from time to time is our region Saudi Arabia Asia fortunately they will realize that the less attention the West paid to Southeast Asia, the better we did.

ASEAN is now actually the seventh largest economy in the world. If some of you have read my book, it is called a miracle. under Jefferson and on track to become the fourth largest economy in the world, this was supposed to be a hopeless corner of the world, so things have changed, the West doesn't have to intervene and, you know, the West always says yes we do not do it. Don't do it if you don't follow our path, things will get worse, so I say let's take two countries, two countries that have been ruled by military regimes for a long time, one is Myanmar and the other is Syria.

ASEAN to kill Myanmar, the West took care of Syria how the West takes care of Syria you have a problem start bombing impose sanctions isolate them Myanmar ASEAN said no, we don't isolate, they admitted me and mine to ASEAN and the EU stop talk to us because we admit our mind to us young and he still hasn't apologized for that and look at me love today and look at Syria today so you can see that the West has to change if it wants to be less serious it has to learn from the ASEAN onion , even if it is minimalist, the second word M is multilateral and multilateral is a very, very important word.

I know it's designed to put you to sleep. Most people, when you say I'm going to come to hear about multilateralism, no one comes, they turn off, you know the brain, but. You know, one of the results of the amazing transformations that I talked about, impact, one of my comments, but the world becoming a better place, is that the world also shrinks, becomes small, interconnected, becomes In a true global village, we know that's why you have global problems like global warming global financial crisis global pandemics global terrorism is a small interdependent world Global Village what do you do when you have a global village?

You said you have a village council to manage the village, so you create a global village. You need stronger global village councils and one. One of the stupidest things the West has done is create the best multilateral institutions after World War II and these multilateral institutions have worked because they prevented a Third World War and have served the world well. United Nations IMF World Bank World Trade Organization these are Western gifts to the world we need them more and more therefore the West should strengthen multilateralism Can you believe it? Even today they are doing exactly the opposite.

Donald Trump, if he continues this way. We are going to destroy one of the most precious organizations on planet Earth, which is the World Trade Organization. Why are they undermining multilateral institutions when it is necessary to strengthen them? And here, although much of the damage is being done by the United States, my great criticism. of the European Union is that the Europeans have been cowardly and supplicating in their attitude towards the multilateral institutions and have not protected and defended them sufficiently although I will say as a caveat that I was very happy when recently President Macron, as you know, went to Washington DC and spoke before the US Congress, the only word he used over and over again was multilateral and that is a very easy thing to do and therefore if you can make that small change in Western policy , the world would be a much better place, so what's wrong? the last M word now I better warn you then he said I'm always provocative but my last M word is especially provocative the last M word is mark your courage of course I know that Machiavelli is a controversial figure in fact, You know Leo Strauss, one of America's leading political scientists, described McKeever as a figure of evil.

Fortunately for me, I took a course on Machiavelli when we studied philosophy (the University allows it) and I read a wonderful essay on Machiavelli written by a British liberal philosopher, a very famous one called Isaiah. Berlin and if you read that essay and Machiavelli, it becomes very clear that Machiavelli's goals at the end of the day were to promote what he called virtue virt tu an Italian word that roughly translates to virtue. He was trying to achieve the right goal with your saying. sometimes you have to use different means to achieve the right goals, that's why Machiavelli, a dinner day is not an evil figure and if Machiavelli were alive today and saw what Europe and America are doing, he would say: hey, please think about it again now, let me give and Giving you a specific example, as you know, we live in a time of tremendous political and labor change, I mean, we live in an absolutely amazing time.

If someone had written a novel in which the president of the United States met with the president of North Korea in Singapore, Terrell, they would do it. Say you're dreaming, right, that's not enough fiction, but a fiction is happening. I mean, it's an example of how the world is changing so much that it makes life incredibly interesting, but labor politics, the reason the word is called labor politics is because GE or it means geography, now let me say something absolutely brilliant. : The geography of North America is not the same as the geography of Europe, anyone can see that.

North America doesn't have to worry about North Africa, it doesn't have to worry about the Middle. The East and the concern for the Islamic world the only theory of Mexicans and Canadians which is the entire United States Europe geography is different Europe has North Africa and behind North Africa I can, I know, I did not say 25 years ago which one true and this Another good news for you. Actually, I would release not one or two books, yes, today in the 20th, 30th, 20th anniversary edition of my first book, the thought of our nation, and if you can find an essay that I wrote called Occident and the rest you realize , I have been talking about the West and the rest for 25 years in that essay I point out that you know that the Mediterranean is just a small pond that divides Europe from Africa if Europe does not export development to Africa Africa will export Africans to Europe it could be clearly seen 25 years ago and in the same period let me give you another statistic, well, in 1950 the population of Europe was double that of Africa, today the population of Africa is more than double that of Europe and by the year 2100 the population of Africa be ten times bigger than Europe I'm not tall enough I can't do ten times isn't it obvious that unless Europe exports development to Africa it's going to have a problem and you know, there is a country that is trying very hard to develop ?

Africa, that country is China, but when China goes to Africa, the United States gets angry and says no, you are expanding, you should not develop Africa, but then Europe joins China with the United States and disapproves of Chinese investment in Africa, but Chinese investment in Africa. It will help you understand what the great Machiavellian is about, you have to figure out where your long-term interests are and stick to them and not get carried away by ideology, so at the end of the day, although the title is somewhat provocative, I hope that At the end of the day, my Western friends, if you ever come to review this book in any investment magazine, you will see that this is an effort to tell the West to wake up that the world has changed because of what the West has contributed to. what the world has become. a better place, so why don't you adapt to a better world too and change course before you really lose control?

When the important facts come out, now I am going to address the audience and I see that you have already lined up, okay? So we agreed that what Kishore would like to do is answer three questions at a time and then he will answer them and As we move forward, can I make sure I want to ask? I want to allow a woman to ask a question as well and right now we don't have women on any of the microphones so just a little bit of a nudge but go ahead please thank you very much for a wake up call but what I would like The question is why you want to be a good Samaritan and write a love letter to the West to wake them up, why not?

Let China and India get their due dominance. Why do you want to do that? Let them go to sleep. Thank you so much. See, that's what most people think of when they think Machiavellian. Okay, welcome back home to India. Yeah, okay, actually my question. It was similar to that of a lady, but now I changed my question, okay, basically my question, save me, it's like you know, isn't it good if it's best to keep losing? It's not good for our continued rise of Asia, okay, my question is. added, if you look at GDP growth, we actually maintained gross value for decades, it's just in relative terms, you know, in relative terms, we declined, it means you know Asia grew faster than the West, so why What do you think you know is a loss?

In the West I believe that nominally we are continuous Karuna, please allow me to address a provocative book with an equally provocative question. He mentioned the three M's, minimalism, multilateralism and Machiavelli. Has another M medium been lost? Did the West lose it with the media and in that sense I mean fake news, what has the East done better with fake news or what can it do better? In the book I address the question in the book and what I say in this book is that I am sure my friends in the third world are going to ask why Kishore is when we thought as a third world friend.

The world encourages the West to become Machiavellian and I answer the question in the book by saying that if the West does not change course, if it continues on autopilot, if it continues to intervene, for example, in the Middle East, there will be problems that will spread. to the rest of the world and, frankly, when you look at, for example, the bombings in Surabaya, which are very tragic and very sad and claimed by Isis, you know I'm not an expert, but go and study what created Isis, right? or what created al-qaeda and in my book I think that the new Asian hemisphere that you have now there is direct evidence that al-qaeda was created by the CIA as an instrument to beused against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, so when you start intervening you believe and I can tell you that the most widespread thing I say in this book, which is actually quite terrifying, Lee caused is that even an administration like the Obama administration, which is sober and balanced, does not taste at all excitable during the time of the Obama administration.

The United States facilitated the passage of ISIS fighters from Afghanistan to Syria to get rid of Assad, now that is the type of intervention that is very reckless and that is why they can intervene but we can suffer the consequences and what worries me, which is what I'm writing the book about this year about US-China relations if the US doesn't adapt to the fact that now there is a power that is as big or maybe bigger than the US and tries, and sometimes, these decisions are not rational. The EU and the United States are trying, perhaps even indirectly, to thwart China's rise.

I can tell you that any escalation of competition between the United States and China will create a very uncomfortable world for many countries, including Singapore, which is why I say be Machiavellian, albeit more so. Be careful with the United States, the better it will be for us and I also agree with you that the United States has not declined. By the way, I want to emphasize that the United States is a great society, the United States will continue to do very well and we will. It won that the United States continued to do very well because the level of innovation that the United States brings to the world is quite remarkable and I must say that after spending three months in American universities, they are still by far the best universities in the world. so we don't know I don't want a decline in America I don't want a decline in Europe I actually want to see a stronger America and a stronger Europe and a stronger America and a strong Europe that pays attention to what it really should be doing is good for the world and one that is less interventionist and focuses on its economic growth and development which is good for the world, that is why I am also defending that it is not and this is not an anti in that sense, a statement anti-

west

ern now in the media.

I must say that this is a lot. This will require another book, but you know, if you look at my book, that can be Ashen Sting, which I will also release later. I have a rehearsal. I think about media freedom and what its strengths and weaknesses are. I wrote it, so it's actually a five thousand word essay, it's very long. Look, because it is a very complex topic. On the one hand, there is no doubt that the best media channels in the world are Western media channels. If you really want to understand the world, you still have to read if you like it, not the New York Financial Times.

Times Wall Street you have to read all three The Economist because they still dominate the media scene, but the mistake they make is believing that their only point of view is the only correct point of view and one thing the West should do. In terms of what is being fought is fake news, the problem now is not who we are, what is the fundamental change in the world, that we are moving from a monocivilizational or multicivilizational world, but that we are moving from a monocivilizational world to a multicivilizational world with monocivilizational lenses in the Western media, so we have to convert the monocivilizational lenses of the Western media and turn them into learned multicivilizational lenses and that is a bigger problem than the issue of fake news.

In fact, I have two questions regarding about your ghost Oh, the first question I have to ask is that I will propose that, as far as the well is concerned, the West's own difference was ASEAN. I think I think there's your relief, in fact, it's also part of the concern that certain countries there. They are dictatorial in nature and do not change fast enough. The second question that I would also like to ask when it comes to us is that, when it comes to, I mean, why do you really consider a massive alien? Personally, I might consider that you would make use of an appropriate term that would be very political.

I guess my question is: does the East, primarily China, followed by India, really have what it takes to take on the West? My feeling would be that even in the next hundred years, the West would be ahead of the rest. From the philosophical and cultural point of view of the East, both in terms of media and entertainment, it is difficult for me to imagine a situation where China, like anyone who is not Chinese, wants to be Chinese in the same way as The rest of the world now wants to be American and wants to be essentially afraid of the West, so, as you know, it's hard for me to imagine how China can be anything more than just a producer or a distributor or an investor, and if they think it's It's possible that China could be, if it has the kind of gifts.

I mean, China has been stuck as a Neo-Confucian for the last few thousand years in the South, while the West has continued to produce everything from philosophers to scientists, which reconfigures the way in which we see the world, as the WTO was doing. presentation for China on behalf of Harvard in 2004 in Shanghai and we are longing and all the Chinese officials and a thousand people and we are trying to teach the Chinese WTO and now, after Trump, that is the tariffs, they are trying to teach Trump the WTO the point. here is this, if the West has lost, if I could present two points and the question is with the second point, the first point is that we had a leader here who spoke to us, the British prime minister, at the time when Brexit was a very, very crucial issue.

And what does it tell us about the fight against corruption that Lee Kuan Yew has taught us for 50 years and now we come to Trump and the question is how long it will last because he may have a system in his madness and he may be more Machiavellian ? than we all think and if history showed that Savonarola, the mad monk during the time of Columbus, lasted five years, then people think that maybe you lost four years before he was impeached or expelled in the next election, but if we look at Iran, the Iranian Revolution led by Khomeini is a small group at that time it lasted from 1979 until now 40 years and the minorities control the governments they just had elections in Iraq who is the winner they make fun of the winner Assad ah, he is the Shiite who fought against the Americans and the Americans generally invest a lot So the question is how long will this man be lost because he may have a small group but it is a long-lasting group.

Maybe the first question. I think you're right. The key word is realpolitik and in a certain sense I am talking. about real politics, but I also want to emphasize that behind real politics there are also other dimensions that the economic dimensions call cultural dimensions and all of that has to come to its place and I think that, for example, your first point about CR and I think Ha Comes the time for the West to respect us more, yeah, that's pretty clear, that's the second question I have to say, but the venture capitalist is a very, very deep question and you're right, I mean, no one really knows.

As we have lived in a world that has been dominated by the West for two hundred years or more, frankly, none of us know what it will be like to live in a world where China and India are the dominant powers. Well, by the way, I won't be China in India. the projections are that by 2050 the number one power and PPP terms will be China the number will be India number three United States America number four will be Japan, so it would be a much more multipolar world and not just China and India, but that we are so used to the idea that dominant powers will always try to intervene in other countries and try to reshape them or reshape them.

I don't think China is that kind of imperial power. The Chinese. This is something very sensitive. The Chinese. They're not trying to make other people Chinese, you know, Ivan. I'm going to China. I do not speak Chinese. They don't try to make me Chinese. They appreciate the fact that I'm different and don't have the kind of things that you do. You could call it the Masonic desire to change the world the way the West did, so it's a different kind, so global chemistry will fundamentally change at the end of the day. The only question that needs to be asked is: will we all be better off and My simple answer to your question is that we will all be better off because you will have more room to develop and be ourselves in that kind of world without any dominant force dominating it now.

Anthony. I must confess that I claim to know many things. things, but I don't know how long they worried us, but I can tell you that to be fair, I won one, I walked away with rum for $100, I got one, I want to bet and then the same guy who lost the bet said, he told me, Kishore , will not survive. one year I say it will survive one year I want another hundred dollars so I made a lot of money while Trump was in office and I guess I would say let me tell you something: I was in Beijing recently with an unusual group of five people the five of us were Carl Bernstein from Bernstein Woodward Fame Tom Friedman Alpha the Wolf of St Martin and myself five of us were invited to meet with a group of Chinese leaders, by the way, it was a great privilege and one of the sessions was one of the leaders Niall Ferguson. he said something another day I don't think you'll mind me quoting it you know it's a he said he said there are Chinese this he said if you want to understand Trump don't read what the New York Times tells you and he was pointing at Tom Friedman, don't read what The Financial Times tells you, it is pointing to Martin's wolf because you say that both the New York Times and Finance have come to convince you that Donald Trump is an idiot, but let me tell you that he is not an idiot, he is obviously clever at his so-and-so way I would say that in some ways the liberal media is not doing the world any favors because in their reporting on Trump, which is supposed to be objective and neutral, they are not even objective and neutral. the reporting pages and that is why we, as we are prisoners of the liberal media, inherit their prejudices and obviously think that Donald Trump is an idiot or useless, etc., etc., but I think I would say that although Donald Trump has done some things that are very wrong.

I must say that he has done the world a great favor by agreeing to meet with Kim Jong-un. There was a time when the situation on the Korean Peninsula was very tense and people were acting out war scenarios and I was on a public panel in Seoul, South Korea, next to the professor who judges Peking Co University and I was surprised that this is a public statement. I can quote it. He said it is time for China and the United States to stop talking about how they will treat each other if a war breaks out. on the Korean Peninsula I never thought a Chinese professor would say this, so the fact that Donald Trump has lowered the temperature on the Korean Peninsula and created the possibility of a solution is something we should be grateful for and if you give me a Nobel Peace Prize.

I will be very happy that there is little peace on the Korean Peninsula. My question is, ladies, you mentioned that in 1946 the banana with agreement and the United Nations grants our incomparable prosperity from NASA. Now 80 years the question is that the United States is now the creator of this. The agreement was apparently going to rule out multilateralism, but we must remember that when the United States put up this institution the GDP was half of the world's now, no matter how China India grows, the projection is that China's GDP today is 15% of the world and about 22. to 23 percent will be elected, which means that it would take some time for them to make new global orders now in this regard if you have a minimalist approach to the West and if you look at the middle, the American withdrawal has created many powers socks.

In trying to assert primacy in the regions, the Saudis realize that Europe, the Iranians, the Turkeys and we have seen what happened in between is that the situation on the ground became uncontrollable, so what is the risk now? Will you pick up from the burger truck? That is emerging in the absence of new global orders to replace the oil orders that the Americans implemented. You spoke in glowing terms about Western multilateral organizations in economics, politics and military diplomacy, isn't that a real form of constant intervention? in the world and how the world actually works and then my second part of the question is what is the alternative to intervention, so for every Myanmar that you mentioned, there are places like the Congo, which has had huge civil wars for decades, forgotten conflicts because there is no intervention and it is good that we think that it will be a better result to let these places rot alone without seeking solutions based on these multilateral institutions.

I would like to ask you something in relation to your question. your theory about a good municipal council of a global village, then what do you think is the likelihood that in the next one or two years there will be a change in the five permanent countries on the UN Security Council to better reflect the changing balance of power in the world? decades, they are absolutely right on the AI ​​issue, that all of these institutions were created in 1945, when the United States and half of the world's GNP, so it is a very different world and the United States has a lot of confidence inhimself, is very strong, very benign, very generous, and the question is: can he? continues to be equally benign, generous and so on, and in my opinion, my feeling after three months in the United States is that while the dominant establishment, especially under the Trump administration, is obviously very anti-multilateral, I think there are enough thoughtful voices within the intellectual sector.

Establishment in the United States that understands that we actually need to strengthen multilateral institutions and I was there. One of the things that really made me happy about being in the United States, but the last three months I met many people who had read my writings and really tell me that they know that their writings help us a lot because they make us see a very different point of view. about multilateralism, although I see that the tram will be very, very anti-multilateral. I would hope that the pendulum would swing back towards greater multilateralism or greater support for Methodism and it is very helpful for PI that China has decided to make a very brave decision to really support the multilateral order that the United States and the West gave to the world and therefore It was in Davos last year, in January 2017, when President Xi Jinping focused and I found his speech very inspiring because he said, "Hey, this is a big world, we can make it stronger, we have to work together and that was for me very encouraging, so I would say that the battle for multilateralism is not lost.

Now, returning to your point of view, when I say that these interventions are wrong, are we going to condemn the Congos of the world, etc., etc. ., actually the opposite will happen and you will notice that - let me tell you something very simple: the United States has intervened in Iraq twice, the first time under Father Bush, the second time under the Sun. Bush, Father Bush, a great success story. The Bush son's disaster was the difference. Father Bush sent his voice to more than 100 countries and surpassed. 100 countries to participate in the intervention in Iraq obtained authorization from the UN Security Council and it was a legal and legitimate intervention.

Bush attempted to obtain legitimization from the UN Security Council. I was Singapore's ambassador to the UN Security Council, so I know what happened inside and failed. and when it failed under international law as Kofi Annan said, the war became illegal and you saw the results of an illegal war, so I'm not saying abandon all the Congo in the world, but if you have it, if you have doors and multilaterally . Legitimate and legal interventions work much better and therefore if you involve a larger part of the global community, you get much better results and I can tell you that existing institutions can do the job.

Finally, as to Roger Wills' question about the P5, actually in a whole book about this it's called the great convergence the paradox about the UN Security Council by the way, by the way, the UN Security Council the UN in theory is run by 15 countries 10 elected members five permanent members the p5 in practice the 10 elected members are tourists in the UN Security Council the five p5 run the council and the problem is that the p5 that we run the council are those who won the second world war in 1945, so clearly you need it, it is good to have great powers in the Security Council, but you want the great powers of tomorrow and not just the great powers of today, and change the composition It's going to be very difficult, but let me leave you with an idea: the challenge that the P5 will have is that they will have to choose between the composition of the UN Security Council that they want to maintain and credibility, so if you don't change the composition you will lose credibility , then no one will pay attention to the UN Security Council, if you want to preserve credibility, then you will have to change the composition, so at some point time and this is what I talked about in the book the great convergence the change that will come may be very difficult, very painful, in reality my question also has a lot to do with multilateralism and you answered many of them, what is your specific advice to the East to improve multilateralism and if you could imagine an ideal multilateral system, what would it be like?

Very recently, China attempted to defund human rights programs for the UN 5th Budget Committee and although the UN Human Rights Commissioner resigned from his position because he argued that human rights were not actually gave enough credibility and was not really paid attention to at the UN, so I wanted to ask you to what extent do you think China really supports the UN and its goal. Hello teacher, I'm a Tyler fan, I just wanted to know how. Do you think about the true fair system in the Western world because I think the cornerstone in the number of the West is something wrong?

The Western fundamental when a cornerstone in the number of the West is to prevent poverty. I think that is not correct in this world. Do you believe? China will be able to manipulate institutions like the WTO while being accused of foul play in institutions like the WTO, considering that China is, as it currently is, in court with the WTO and many Western countries due to China's blatant attitude. Disregarding WT reggae WTO regulations, these are very, very good questions and unfortunately I have to give them telegraphic answers. Now the first is about multilateralism. I want to emphasize a point.

I am a great lover of the United Nations. I am a great lover of multilateral institutions, that is the theme of my book The Great Convergence and I believe that these are the most underestimated institutions in the world and I can tell you that I have been ambassador to the UN twice from 84 to 89 from 98 to 2004, for please don't read what the

west

ern media tells you about the United Nations it is all fake news, the United Nations does heroic work in many places, the second question about China and the United Nations, if the Chinese, China, defund resource programs humans, etc., etc., and that is wrong, wrong, but Unfortunately, the system of defunding UN programs was started and this is illegal on the part of the United States and the West and that is what the United States should change to stop this illegal defunding of programs and this is a very complex issue and I think it is wrong for China to follow in the footsteps of the United States in that area and regarding China and the WTO.

I can tell you that today China is the biggest beneficiary of the World Trade Organization because it is the largest trading nation in the world. I grant it. If the WTO makes a decision, China will abide by it because China is the biggest beneficiary of the system and to be fair, so far the United States has also abided by all WTO rules, that's amazing, you know, we live in an amazing world. when the big powers that can really ignore the resolutions still respect them, although they are moving away from some of them, so I hope that both the United States and China will come together again to finally strengthen the WTO on welfare systems, which Of course it is a great advance. question, but let me say a couple of very brief points, number one, if you ask me what an ideal society is in internal terms.

I pointed out the note to the Scandinavian societies, they have welfare societies, but they have productive and innovative populations, so Singapore should learn from the Scandinavian countries and are not a negative model. There are other aspects of the welfare system that have created a dependent population and those are bad welfare systems and ones we need to get rid of, but the biggest threat is to the welfare systems. Unfortunately and this, of course, I'm going to end with a very provocative pocket is that in the United States there is no welfare system to take care of the poor, there is a welfare system to take care of the rich because the rich control Congress. of the United States and the United States Congress gives all kinds of subsidies to the rich and the other day the rich get more money from the welfare system in the United States than the poor, so the welfare system is a big thing, it has there must be. fixed but fortunately we can learn from the Scandinavians.

Thanks Keisha.