On the 26th of December, 1991 the Soviet Union officially collapsed and the Cold War was over. The Capitalist democracies in the USA and the West had emerged victorious. Fast forward 30 years, and it’s now the United States in disarray. And with China’s power growing everyday, could this be the moment that marks the shift in global power from the west to the east. Singapore academic and former diplomat, Kishore Mahbubani, believes that it is.
CONSIDER COVID
One only needs to look at the enormous difference in response to the Covid 19 crisis. Almost a million Americans have died already – far and away the most of any nation – and the per capita death rates all over the west, not just in the USA, but in places like Britain, Spain, France, Belgium and Italy are massive, and show no signs of slowing. Bad governance, chronic misinformation and an embarrassing culture of selfishness, have – to paraphrase Keith Olbermann – seen the Corona Virus take over from Humans as the dominant life form in the west.
Contrast that with the situation in the Asia Pacific region. Not only Communist China, but the democracies of South Korea, Japan, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia, have all competently managed the situation and kept the pandemic largely under control, hence their death rates are almost 1000 times less than the aforementioned western societies.
AFTER THE COLD WAR
Professor Mahbubani suggests that the origins of this mess can be traced back to the end of the Cold War. When the Soviet Union crumbled, many in the west, especially in America, got a little too excited and thus deluded themselves into thinking that we now had proof, that Capitalism was invincible, the free market could magically solve all our problems, and, as Reagan famously opined, Government institutions were no longer part the solution, they were the problem. What followed was 3 decades of constant underfunding and undermining of public services that, as we’ve seen, are vital in a pandemic.
But while America and the west were congratulating themselves, the big players in East Asia were a little more cautious. They understood that whilst you do need a healthy economy, you also need the stabilising hand of good governance. This progressive attitude has seen the eastern hemisphere leave the west behind in response to the challenges of Covid 19. The United States will not collapse like the USSR, but its power and influence on the global stage will continue to decline compared to Asia.
IN CONCLUSION
But Westerners shouldn’t panic, because this would actually be a return to normalcy. From the year 1 AD, up to about the year 1820, the biggest economies in the world were China and India. The last 200 years of western economic dominance – due to plundering resources through colonisation, plus the technological advancement of the industrial revolution – is actually an aberration.
In addition, it would be unwise for anybody to write off America completely. After all, this is the nation that put man on the Moon, and has still won more Nobel prizes than the rest of the world put together. It would be wonderful if global problems like Covid 19, Climate Change, the Refugee Crisis etc, lead to more international co-operation rather than competition – Because global problems require global solutions.
