Former UNSC Pres Kishore Mahbubani
My excerpts with minor edits from Kishore Mahbubani’s September 17,
2018, interview with journalist Sophie Shevardnadze
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ell-being of the Young
The most important thing a society needs is to provide hope for its
young people.
Societies where the young people are the most optimistic are the
happiest societies on planet Earth. And trust me, if you looking for optimism
in young people, don’t come to Europe; and if you looking for optimism in young
people, today, don’t even go to America because Americans are also very
troubled about their future, which is why they voted for Trump.
If you want to find the most optimistic populations, come to Asia; come
to China, India, Indonesia, South-East Asia, and you’ll find incredibly
optimistic young people.
It is very hard to beat the optimism of Asia—in terms not of where you
are today but where you will be tomorrow
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roubled Mind
“The Western mind is a very
troubled mind now. And that’s why they vote for populist leaders like Donald
Trump or for extreme-right parties in Europe.
“In their minds they are very troubled. They know that their era of domination is coming to an end; and psychologically and emotionally, they cannot accept it; therefore, they are resisting it.
“That’s why they are confused.”
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aste and neglect
“…while America was busy fighting wars, China was busy growing its
economy. And that shows the strategic stupidity of the United States.”
The U.S. “population doesn’t have money” and its leadership is “burning
money maintaining 13 aircraft carriers around the world!”
“Two thirds of American households do not have $500 in emergency cash”;
so “I think … if you give (most Americans) a sensible choice — ‘Do you really
want to continue domination and pay a heavy price, or do you want to have a good
life?’” — Americans would choose the latter.
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djustment Imperative
“America (must) adjust to the new world” — … adjust to the new world
and create a better world in the process.” It is “the world that America could
live comfortably in because Americans will continue to do well in this large globalizing
economy with rising Asian economies.”
America (must) adjust to the new world.
America “has to give up its desire to dominate the world and dominate
the planet.”
Why are you bombing other countries? Stop!
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hinking void of Reflective Thought
“…while America was busy fighting wars, China was busy growing its
economy. And that shows the strategic stupidity of the United States.”
The United States of America … has the world’s best universities, the world’s best strategic think-tanks, the world’s best strategic thinkers in terms of being well-known—and it also has the worst strategic thinking.
It’s a great paradox.
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o. 1 Delusion
Some believe “America should be number one forever”
“…A strong school of thought in Washington DC (believes) that America should undermine China and prevent it from overtaking it; but this cannot be done. It’s a mission impossible.
By the sheer laws of mathematics, with the population four times the size of the United States of America, if you think that an average Chinese is even half as smart as an American, China will have the economy which will be twice the size of America. And, as you know, the Chinese are as smart as any Europeans.”
The mistake these American thinkers make is thinking that these two last centuries of Western domination is normal” when it is “an aberration, because from year one to the year 1820 the two largest economies were always those of China and India.”
The “aberration has to come to an end, one you cannot fight.”
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stablishment disconnect
The American establishment hasn’t understood. It has been going on
autopilot recommending interventions in countries like Syria when it served no
vital national interest of America to be involved in Syria.
…There needs to be a revolution in the thinking of the American establishment because one of the things that my book points out is that there’s a disconnect between what the American establishment is trying to do and what the American people want.
Because the American people felt ignored by the establishment they voted for Trump in protest against the establishment. And the establishment hasn’t noticed that.
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nternational trade benefit to U.S.
All countries live by the theory of international trade. Even if you
have a deficit you’re benefiting because you’re buying a product at lower cost
from somebody who can make it cheaper and better.
- If you do an objective audit and put all the factors in, America is actually one of the biggest beneficiaries of the current trading order.
- It has a surplus in services, it doesn’t measure that.
- More importantly, the U.S. dollar is the global reserve currency. That means that Chinese workers have to work hard 24 hours a day to manufacture things to sell to America.
- How does America pay for that? It prints dollars.
- Come on, you’re having a very good trade!
- You print dollars, you’re getting hard workers’ products. America’s benefiting.
- Most sophisticated Americans know that America is benefiting enormously from the current system.
- And therefore the one dangerous thing that (U.S. President) Donald Trump is doing is that he’s giving the rest of the world an incentive to move away from the U.S. dollar.
- …If the rest of the world moves away from the U.S. dollar the impact on America will be disastrous because you can no longer print dollars to buy products.
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nterdependence, Small Interdependent Planet
We can continue to improve lives of our people without having to go to
war with each other, without having to fight each other.
Those nineteenth century games need no longer be played in the twenty
first century.
With climate change becoming a serious problem we all have to work
together to save planet Earth. You don’t have planet B to go to. We only have
planet A.
We Americans would do well to learn to think—and demand teachers teach
the young —to think hard, deeply, critically, reflectively, studiously, independently,
and impartially.
Source
SophieCo RT “Every US foreign
intervention is a gift to China – ex-president of UNSC” September 17, 2018
https://www.rt.com/shows/sophieco/438588-global-economy-united-nations/
Kishore Mahbubani is author most
recently of Has the West Lost It? A
Provocation. He is an academic and former diplomat; currently Professor in
the Practice of Public Policy at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National
University of Singapore. He was with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Singapore’s
Permanent Representative to the United Nations (1971-2004); and in that role,
he was President of the United Nations Security Council (January 2001-May 2002).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kishore_Mahbubani
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