22 november 2019
In this small book (only 91 pages) , KM confronts the West with some harsh realities. He starts from two key propositions : (1) In the past 30 years, i.e. since 1989, the world made an enormous progress. During that process the relative weight of the West versus the Rest (KM’s word), expressed in terms of GDP, has strongly diminished. The West has to adapt to that new reality; (2) The progress of the Rest is the result of a successful emulation by the Rest of Western best practices. “The biggest gift the West gave the Rest was the power of reaoning” (p. 11).
In this booklet KM raises a lot of interesting points for further critical thought. However what I will focus on hereafter is the contradiction I see between his second proposition and his more in depth analysis in the last part of his book. At this place I will not discuss whether KM is right or wrong with his analysis.
From page 75 on it becomes clear that the Western model is certainly not fully copied by the Rest and should, according to KM, not be fully copied :
- “The West is wrong in believing that democracy is a necessary condition for economic success. If it were, China could not and should not have succeeded. But it has. This… undermines many key pillars of Western ideology.” (80) With this statement KM contradicts to a certain extent what he wrote in the beginning. There he still stated that the spread of Western reasoning led to three silent revolutions. The first revolution he saw was political and ended ‘Oriental despotism’. However he acknowledges that huge imperfections remain but “most Asian leaders now recognize that they are accountable to their people, and as long as they have to demonstrate daily that they are improving their people’s lives Asian societies will continue to improve.” (15)
- “Democracies are not designed to take on long-term challenges.” This weakness hinders the West in taking the right strategic decisions.
- KM gives some examples of wrong strategic decisions from the past. He mentions the decision to keep Turkey out of the European Union and allowing Turks in. “It would have been wiser to keep Turks out and admit Turkey into the EU (with restrictions on free movement of labour)”. Of course with such a statement KM rejects an essential pillar of the European Union, the free movement of people.
- Another strategic mistake mentioned by KM is the European “Common Agricultural Policy” (CAP) which was launched in 1962. “It enriched a few European farmers. It impoverished millions of African farmers, especially in North Africa.”
- “There is no doubt that the Western elites failed to prepare their populations for the inevitable ‘creative destruction’ that flowed from China’s admission into the WTO in 2001.” In the same context KM makes the known statement that the elites in the West, but especially in the USA, enjoyed the advantages of globalisation while the masses did not. “200 million Americans live on the edge”.
KM states that the West made also other important mistakes. For completeness sake I mention ;
- Wars against Muslim countries, but especially the second war against Iraq
- The humiliation of Russia after 1989
- Europeans should understand that their strategic interest is different than the trategic interest of the USA. “The Americans have destabilized Europe’s Europe’s geographical neighbourhood.” (68)