Kishore Mahbubani, former Permanent Representative of the Republic of Singapore

to the United Nations and current Dean of the newly founded Lee Kuan Yew School

of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, addressed the first

Weatherhead Policy Forum of 2005 at Columbia University on March 1, 2005.

Ambassador Mahbubani, a noted author whose works include the provocative Can

Asians Think? (1998), presented an external perspective on the state of America’s

relationship with the outside world based on his new book, Beyond the Age of

Innocence.

Ambassador Mahbubani’s address looked at previous American actions that built “reservoirs of good

will” that ultimately assisted America in its ideological victory in the Cold War, especially in Asia: its

sharing of the “American dream” with the world; its openness to foreign students; the international order

built by the United States after 1945; and, finally, the stabilizing effects of its military presence in East

Asia. However, the end of the Cold War has brought changes, and the gulf between America’s self-percep-

tion and the way it is seen in the Islamic world, and China in particular, demonstrate the dwindling of

those good will reservoirs.

Ambassador Mahbubani warned that in a shrinking world, America’s power is increasingly perceived

with hostility. To counter misperceptions of America’s role in the world, he called on the United States to

enable China’s peaceful emergence as an economic power; help establish a “success story” in the Islamic

world, as postwar Japan was in Asia; redouble its commitment to the multilateral order it created in

1945; evaluate better the unintended consequences of its domestic policies; and rethink its restrictive visa

policy so that immigrant success stories in America will continue to inspire people abroad.

This Weatherhead Policy Forum was jointly sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and

the APEC Study Center, both at Columbia University. Weatherhead East Asian Institute Director Professor

Xiaobo Lü moderated the forum. This is a report of Ambassador Mahbubani’s presentation and the dis-

cussions that followed. A copy of this report can also be found at WEAI’s Web site, www.columbia.edu/

cu/weai, or APEC’s Web site, www2.gsb.columbia.edu/apec.

WEATHERHEAD EAST ASIAN INSTITUTECOLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

WEATHERHEAD POLICY FORUM

CAN AMERICA REBUILD THE CRUMBLING STATE OF U.S.-ASIA RELATIONS?

Kishore MahbubaniFormer Ambassador of the Republic of Singapore to the United Nations

and Dean, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in SingaporeTuesday, March 1, 2005

CO-SPONSORED BY THE APEC STUDY CENTER, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

2 Weatherhead East Asian Institute

PRESENTATION

Kishore Mahbubani: When I was thePermanent Secretary of the ForeignMinistry of Singapore, one of my col-leagues, another Permanent Secretary,decided to go to China and call on hiscounterpart, the Vice Minister of theChinese government. When my col-league introduced himself, the Chinesetranslator looked very puzzled and saidto the Vice Minister, “This is Mr. Tan—he says he’s the eternal typist fromSingapore.” So if China and Singapore,two majority Chinese societies, canhave difficulties in communication, youcan imagine why the difficulties ofcommunication across the Pacific are, inmany ways, even greater.

This is the moment when America,after having spent so many decadesaccumulating so much good will, espe-cially in East Asia, is in danger of losingthese reservoirs of good will and hav-ing them replaced, unfortunately, withill will. We may actually be at a tippingpoint.

I should also begin by emphasizingwhere I stand. My biases are over-whelmingly pro-American. There isvivid confirmation in this room: mywife is an Irish-American from NewJersey, and her sister is here today, andmy three children are dual nationalswho carry American and Singaporeanpassports. So in that sense, I have adirect contact with American society asI speak about it. At the same time, thereason why I can take this pro-American stand is because my life haschanged, and the world that I sawwhen I grew up in Singapore and inthe region has benefited from Americanpolicies. I can speak from personalexperience of the dramatic contribu-tions that America has made to theworld.

First, if I had to point to the factorsthat led to this accumulation of goodwill, America in some ways shared theAmerican dream with the world as awhole. Most Americans think thatAmerica is a country that is separatedfrom the rest of the world by two greatoceans. But the American dream neverstopped at the American borders. Infact, it traveled around the world. And Ican tell you that when I was a youngboy, when the first black and white TVset appeared in our house in the 1960s,we watched reruns of American pro-grams—My Three Sons, Bonanza, andso on.

When watching American TV, wealso absorbed the American ethos andthe belief that we could also succeed inour lives, that our destiny was notdetermined at birth. For many Asiansocieties, the idea that you can riseabove the class and the caste you wereborn into is a revolutionary one.Sharing that dream transformed thelives of many East Asians.

You saw the results of this dream inwhat I call the second factor that led tothe accumulation of good will. In the1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, Americaencouraged Asians to come and studyin this country. Columbia Universitytook in thousands of Asian students.And these students learned not just thetechnical details of whatever discipline

America, after having

spent so many decades

accumulating so much

good will, especially in

East Asia, is in danger

of losing these reservoirs

of good will.

Kishore Mahbubani, Dean, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore

Can America Rebuild the Crumbling State of U.S.-Asia Relations? 3

or vocation they chose to study; theyalso absorbed the American work ethic,the American culture, the belief thatyou could transform the world andmake it a better place. After they gradu-ated, these students brought this beliefback to their home countries, and theyprovided the seeds that essentially havetransformed East Asia into what it istoday. If you want to pinpoint the criti-cal reasons why East Asia hassucceeded compared to many otherparts of the world, you can look at thenumber of Asian students who havecome to study in the United States. Asof now there are 80,000 Indian studentsand 60,000 Chinese students in NorthAmerican universities, and you canimagine the impact that these thou-sands of students will have when theygo back to their societies.

The third factor that led to the accu-mulation of good will toward Americawas the nature of the internationalorder that America created at the heightof its power at the end of World War II.In 1945, no nation could challenge theUnited States. It had, by some esti-mates, 50 percent of the world’s GNPand the capacity to do whatever itwanted. It would have been just aslikely for America to behave like anyother European power at the height ofits power and colonize the rest of theworld.

The remarkable thing is that Americadecided to do the exact opposite. Itforced the European powers to decolo-nize and set the first stage for theliberation of Asia. And that contributionis still remembered by people of mygeneration.

The fourth and final factor is therole of the American military. Americanmilitary power has played an enor-mously stabilizing role, especially inEast Asia. One reason why you havenot seen great power conflicts in theregion is because of the overwhelmingstrength and influence of the Americanmilitary. There were the Korean andVietnam Wars, but the region as awhole has been geopolitically stable, byand large.

So these are the factors that have ledto Asia to thrive, succeed, and grow

with this new spirit of optimism. So thequestion is, “When and why did theattitude toward America begin tochange?” I know that it is conventionalwisdom to believe that all this was dueto the Bush administration, and that ifthe Bush administration had not beenelected, there would not have been thisgrowth of anti-Americanism around theworld.

My analysis is a different one. Ipoint to the impact of American powerin a shrinking world. What Americadoes or does not do has an impact onlives all over the world. The big changein America’s attitudes toward the worldtook place when, having won the ColdWar, America decided it could walkaway from the world.

I remember a remark that JamesBaker made at the end of the Cold War,which many have already forgotten:“We can now create a community ofdemocracies from Vancouver toVladivostok.” This statement is strikingbecause he included most of the coun-tries in that belt, leaving out only one,Japan, which had been a member ofthe community of democracies; and itwas probably excluded because it wasnot Western. If you reflect on that state-ment, you realize that there was adesire to go back to a more comfort-able universe of the Westerndemocracies and walk away from themore uncomfortable parts of the world.And this was not just reflected in state-ments; it was reflected in the deeds thattook place at that point in time.

In the case of the Islamic world, Ithink the fateful decision that Americamade was to walk away fromAfghanistan, which had been the frontline of freedom. As soon as the SovietUnion was defeated, Afghanistan wasleft to fall of its own accord, and youknow the consequence of that: theforces that were unleashed inAfghanistan to defeat the Soviet Unionwere left to fester and grow, and that ishow Osama bin Laden and al Qaedaemerged, and clearly bin Laden tookadvantage of Afghanistan being aban-doned to create the movement thateventually led to the downing of theWorld Trade Center towers here.

Having won the Cold War,

America decided it could

walk away from the world.

4 Weatherhead East Asian Institute

The remarkable thing about Osamabin Laden is that you can see him as anisolated individual who represents anextreme point of view. However, what Ihave found as I ask my friends in theIslamic world is quite the contrary; hisname comes up without fail as the singlemost respected figure in the Islamicworld, especially among the masses. Thisis true in all parts of the Islamic world,whether it be Nigeria, Morocco, Pakistan,Bangladesh, Malaysia, or Indonesia.

What happened? How did this hugesection of humanity begin to identifywith the figure who only had a destruc-tive mission against a country that wasperceived to be a positive force in theworld? There has been a sea change inthe attitudes of the Islamic worldtoward America between the end of theCold War and the events of 9/11.

Let me turn now to another largesection of humanity, the Chinese popu-lation. Relations between the UnitedStates and China might appear to bestable, with the government-to-govern-ment relations having their ups anddowns. However, by and large, we donot see great division between thesetwo societies.

But if you go beneath the surface,you find a surprising degree of Chinesesuspicion of the United States. I will tryto illustrate this with the bombing ofthe Chinese embassy in Belgrade inMay 1999 during the Kosovo War. Ihave spoken to many of the keyAmerican policymakers who were inoffice then and I asked them what hap-pened during that event, and theanswer to me was always, “Kishore,obviously it was a mistake. Why shouldthe United States want to bomb theChinese embassy in Belgrade? It doesn’tmake any sense, it was an accident,and that’s very obvious.”

At the same time, I’ve spoken toChinese policymakers at the highestlevel, Chinese professionals, and work-ing-class Chinese, and so far not 90percent, nor99 percent, but 100 percenthave responded, “We know that thatbombing of the Chinese embassy inBelgrade was a deliberate move by theUnited States to send a signal to Chinathat we cannot defy them and we can-

not challenge them in any way.”This is a strange reaction, because

there is no reason that the Chinesepopulation should have developed thisdistrust toward America; if you look atthe growth and success of China, espe-cially in the last 15 years, a large part ofit is due to China’s participation in amultilateral order that was created byAmerica, due to China playing by rulesof the WTO and accumulating a $100billion trade surplus with the UnitedStates today. With all of these factorsthat America created that allowed Chinato grow and prosper, the logical out-growth would have been for Chinesesociety to develop a positive rather thana negative attitude toward the UnitedStates. But instead, in the last 15 years,there has been a trend in the oppositedirection. If you look at America’srecord objectively, it has by and largebeen a positive force on the worldstage; it would have been much morenatural for the world to have beenawash with streams of pro-Americanism.Instead, you see in many parts of theworld, and certainly in the Islamic worldand China, a growing resentment ofAmerica and American power.

This is all a result of a global struc-tural problem in which the world isshrinking, while America remains verystrong and powerful. These two forceslead to a situation in which Americanpower impacts the daily lives of manypeople across the planet, and thisimpact leads to a sense of resentmentover America’s refusal to recognize howand when its power impacts on otherpopulations. This explains the growingnegative attitude toward America.

What can be done about this? I stillbelieve that not all is lost; I believe wecan still salvage the situation, that wecan reverse this trend in attitudestoward America. First, America has todecide that a stable world order inwhich other countries can grow andprosper is also in America’s interest.Sadly, if you look at global attitudesand beliefs, many people now believethat America doesn’t want them to suc-ceed. In private, many Chinesepolicymakers are convinced that as theygrow and succeed, America will find

the means to trip up China, and theywork on that belief that this is going tohappen.

If you want concrete evidence, lookat how China has recently proposed afree trade agreement with SoutheastAsia. Driving the proposal to improvetrade relations with all its neighbors isChina’s hope that by buying politicalinsurance today, it will help preventAmerica from successfully encirclingChina in the future. The Chinese wouldnot have gone out of their way to carryout these policies if they did notbelieve that there was a greater dangerthat they might face in the long run.

In the Islamic world the problemunfortunately is much deeper. The timehas come for the world and especiallyAmerica to try and encourage the suc-cess of at least one Islamic society. Youneed to have one Japan in the Islamicworld, or one Taiwan, Hong Kong, orSingapore; one success story that canstand as a model in the Islamic world.That would demonstrate to the Islamicstates that they too can grow and devel-op, because, frankly, many of thembelieve that this current world order istilted against them. If this support canbe made into deliberate American poli-cy, it will buy us decades of peace.

The second prescription is forAmerica to rediscover the virtues of themultilateral order that it created in 1945.The incredible decline in the fortune ofthe United Nations provides a vividreminder of why it is important toretain a stable multilateral order. Whenthe United States criticizes the UN, itthinks that it is only criticizing a build-ing, a Secretariat, a Secretary-Generalon the east side of New York City. Butthe damage done when the UnitedStates attacks the UN is far more funda-mental, because many states around theworld rely on the order of the UnitedNations to give them a certain sense ofworldwide stability.

Wars have become less commonbetween historically conflictual states asa result of the 1945 order that theUnited States created. That order was agreat gift to the world, and it should bepreserved. But for it to be preserved,the United States has to show the same

Can America Rebuild the Crumbling State of U.S.-Asia Relations? 5

commitment that it did in 1945 and cre-ate a rules-based regime that appliesnot just to other countries in the world,but also to itself. Unfortunately, the per-ception that is growing in the rest ofthe world is that America wants a rules-based regime that applies to othercountries, but not to the United States.This exceptionalism is going to under-mine the multilateral order, which,frankly, is very precious to the world.

The third prescription arises fromwhat I call the law of “intended” conse-quences. When decisions are made inWashington, D.C., with only Americanconsiderations in mind, these decisionsinevitably have a global impact. Thesimplest example is the case of cottonsubsidies. When the United States pro-vides cotton subsidies to 25,000 farmersin Southern states, it seems to be aninternal decision. But the immediateresult is that ten million people becomeimpoverished in West Africa as a resultof these subsidies, so there is a directcausal relationship between subsidies inAmerica and impoverishment in Africa.The United States should be aware ofthe “intended” consequences of itsactions, because these lead to risinganti-Americanism. I stress that they are“intended” consequences, becauseAmerican policymakers are aware ofthese consequences.

My fourth and final point, whichmay be the easiest for America to carryout, is to keep the American dreamalive here: to continue to show theworld that if you arrive in America, youcan do well, and you can succeed.Every time an Indian arrives here andsucceeds, he becomes a legend in hisown country; every time an Armenianarrives here and becomes like VartanGregorian, a success in this country, hebecomes a legend back home. Thesesuccess stories in America have a posi-tive effect all over the world. This iswhy the recent visa policy was verydamaging, because you were cutting offthe flow of a group of people who,frankly, have benefited not justAmerica, but the rest of the world, andmade it a better place.

DISCUSSION

Xiaobo Lü: One of the major foreignpolicy challenges for the United Statesis managing the rise of China. I wonderif I can use three recent cases that allintertwine economic, geopolitical, andbusiness interests, and ask you to com-ment on the larger picture. First is thelicensing for Westinghouse to competein the Chinese nuclear power sector.Second is the EU’s intention to lift theembargo on arms sales to China andthe U.S. effort to stop it. Third is theChinese firm Lenovo’s purchase of theIBM division that produces personalcomputers, which I personally think isnot going to be permitted. Takentogether, according to the Chinese,America does not want the rise ofChina. So how do you think Americashould handle this? I wonder if some ofthe policies are self-defeating.

Mahbubani: These are examples ofhow the U.S.-China relationship willunfold. The big difference in the waythe Chinese and the United States makethese decisions is that the Chinese tryto take a coordinated view. They lookat the big picture, and they figure outhow they can use each decision to fitinto their grand national strategy. In thecase of the United States, the decisionsare made by sectoral interests, drivenby the most powerful lobbies. Often,there’s no coordinated plan on the partof the United States to send any kind ofmessage to China.

This can lead to an enormousamount of misunderstanding, because

I believe we can still

salvage the situation, that

we can reverse this trend

in attitudes toward

America. First, America

has to decide that a stable

world order in which other

countries can grow and

prosper is also in

America’s interest.

Left to right: Kishore Mahbubani,Xiaobo Lü

6 Weatherhead East Asian Institute

every time the United States makes adecision, the Chinese read it as part ofa bigger strategy. And certainly the EUarms embargo is basically symbolic. Forthe United States, it’s not a big thing,but for China, it’s very important,because it sends a very powerful signal.

But behind all of these issues, themost fundamental question in theminds of the Chinese policymakers is,will the United States allow China toemerge and become a major economicpower, as it allowed the emergence ofGermany and Japan; or will the UnitedStates decide that the emergence ofChina could lead to the displacement ofthe United States as the most importantpower in the world? As you know, theNational Security Strategy says that theprimary aim of the United States is toprevent the emergence of any powerthat could displace the United States.And, incidentally, by current trends, inpurchasing power parity terms, theChinese economy will be larger thanthe U.S. economy by either 2020 or2025. So the only question the Chinesehave is, will the United States allow thisto happen, or will they block it?

Now the United States can send avery clear signal that, if China behaveslike Japan and Germany did, then it willbe happy to see the emergence of apeaceful China. I know that signal hasnot been sent, because Chinese policy-makers believe that America has theopposite intention; that it doesn’t wantto see the rise of China. So everythingthe United States does—from allowingFalun Gong activities, implicitly orexplicitly supporting the democraticmovements in Taiwan, or supportingdissidents or movements in Tibet—areall seen as part of a coordinated strate-gy. The fundamental problem is thedepth of this suspicion. If we don’t workto remove that suspicion, inevitably, weare bound to have accidents.

So far, what has saved the U.S.-China relationship is 9/11. When 9/11happened, there was a palpable sigh ofrelief among Chinese leaders, becausethey knew the United States wouldhave other preoccupations. But thishuge sense of relief in Beijing was anindication that the Chinese leaders

believed the United States would try togo after China. If there is no such coor-dinated strategy in the United States,you then have this incredible suspicionin China that something is wrong andthat something has to be done.

Question: What do you think the U.S.policy toward Taiwan should be? A lotof the Chinese attitudes and views ofthe United States stem from China’spolicy toward Taiwan.

Mahbubani: If I wanted to use a verysimple expression to describe the bestAmerican policy toward Taiwan, Iwould say, “let sleeping dogs lie.” Thestatus quo is not uncomfortable toeither the United States or China. TheChinese have a long-term national inter-est in Taiwan’s succeeding because itcan still serve as a beacon for China.Taiwan’s success was not seen as athreat to China, and China would havebeen quite happy to let Taiwan grow,as long as it did not try to secede andgain independence from China. Taiwanis by far the biggest investor in China,and this is a great paradox—the eco-nomic relationship is incredibly close,and yet the political relationship isincreasingly difficult.

The problems in Taiwan have arisenbecause of the actions of its presidentChen Shui-bian and the Chinese beliefthat he is trying to gain independence.The difficulty over the Taiwan issue isvery simple. No Chinese leader canafford domestically to be seen as beingsoft on Taiwan if there is a movetoward independence. So as soon asthere is any sense that Taiwan is mov-ing toward independence, China hasgot to send very hard signals. Onething the Chinese have made clear isthat even though they want to avoidwar, they will go to war over Taiwan.So if they have drawn a line in thesand, why should others cross it?

The best thing we can do is let thestatus quo continue as long as possible,because when, in due course, Chinesesociety becomes like any other modernsociety, when the differences betweenTaiwan and China disappear, that prob-lem will solve itself.

The most dangerous thing

that can happen is for all

of us to believe that there

is nothing we can do to

change the attitudes of 1.2

billion Muslims.

Kishore Mahbubani

Xiaobo Lü, Director, Weatherhead EastAsian Institute

Can America Rebuild the Crumbling State of U.S.-Asia Relations? 7

Question: When you say that there is ashrinking globe and that the UnitedStates is dominant, when hasn’t thisbeen the case since 1945? The UnitedStates has always acted, in certaininstances, in precipitous ways. So whendid the United States really depart fromits values? There is always a high levelof confusion and lack of coordinationin this country, particularly with regardto our pluralism. So couldn’t one saythat it is with the onset of the BushAdministration that there has been afundamental change in American policyand the American approach to theworld?

Mahbubani: During the Cold War, theUnited States made an enormous effortto distinguish itself from the SovietUnion. One of the reasons that theSoviet Union eventually lost wasbecause the cost of empire was toogreat. The United States never declareditself to be an empire and alwaysproudly held to the belief that thecountries that were on American sidewere there by choice.

America raised a lot of expectationsin many parts of the world by standingfor those values. Many countries feltabandoned and suffered in the 1990safter they were dropped by the UnitedStates very abruptly at the end of theCold War.

The best example is Pakistan, whichbelieved it was indispensable toAmerican interests. When the Cold Warended, America discovered thatPakistan was not a democracy, and itcut off Pakistan. This came as a shockto the Pakistani establishment. Americahas rediscovered Pakistan after 9/11,but no Pakistani policymaker can standup and say “America is our true friendnow, and we must stand by America allthe way.” Even sophisticated Pakistanisfelt seduced, used, and abandoned bythe United States. There are other coun-tries, too: Thailand, Indonesia, and soforth.

After the end of the Cold War, therewas a break with America’s relationswith the world. 9/11 happened notbecause of a decision that was madeafter Bush was elected; it was because

of a decision that was made back in1991. That’s why the first World TradeCenter bombing occurred in 1993.Obviously, some actions of the Bushadministration have aggravated the situ-ation, but the reason they haveaggravated the situation is because ofthe underlying pools of discontent andsuspicion.

The most dangerous thing that canhappen is for all of us to believe thatthere is nothing we can do to changethe attitudes of 1.2 billion Muslims,because within that community the vastmajority of them, if they had a choice,would want to live the Americandream. But they believe that the worlddoes not provide opportunities forIslamic societies to grow and thrive.They may be wrong in that belief, butthey do believe it. Television pipes intothe Islamic world news of Palestiniansbeing killed, Bosnians being killed.Soon they begin to believe that lossesof Muslim lives do not matter to theWest. Whatever you do, you must notunderestimate the intelligence andsophistication of the six billion peoplewho judge America daily on the basisof its actions. If you go to a typicalbazaar in Pakistan, or in Turkey or inBangladesh, you would be amazed atthe amount of discussion that takesplace on these foreign policy issues.

Question: Although there is Americanexceptionalism and misbehavior, at thesame time there has been misbehavioron China’s part. Can you comment oncertain Chinese actions, like the refusalto vote in favor of the invasion of Iraqin 1991, and also the efforts of theChinese government, along with itsRussian counterpart, to block thehumanitarian intervention in Serbia overKosovo?

Mahbubani: From the Chinese per-spective, an abstention on the Gulf Warwas a huge concession. And all that theUnited States wanted was an absten-tion. When Madeleine Albright wasAmbassador to the UN, the UnitedStates wanted a resolution to endorsethe U.S. intervention in Haiti. The thingthe United States feared most was a

Chinese veto. Albright called on theChinese ambassador and sent a signalof respect. Hence, China did not veto.I’m just giving examples of what ittakes to bring China along in these situ-ations.

The Communist Party that is runningChina today is the same Communistparty of Mao. But it behaves more andmore like a capitalist party. It has trans-formed itself. It has transformed China.The Chinese people today are notbeing told that the great mission ofChina is to go out and conquer theworld. The great mission of the Chinesepeople is to succeed, modernize, andbecome a member of the developednations club.

That major decision by China is ahuge gift to the world. Because the lastthing we want is China doing the exactopposite, trying to repeat what theSoviet Union did. So if you judge Chinaobjectively in terms of what it actuallydoes, China has an enormous vestedinterest in a stable world order.Especially because the next 20 years arethe window of opportunity for China,so it will bend over backwards to pre-serve stability.

And in the final point, after therecent Iraq war, the United States want-ed to get a subsequent UN SecurityCouncil resolution to endorse the occu-pation of Iraq. American diplomats cantell you that the Chinese were amongthe most helpful diplomats in theSecurity Council. They actually assistedAmerica at that point in time. So it isnot in their interest to disrupt the worldorder as it exists.

Question: You said the most appropri-ate strategy for the United States wouldbe to find one Islamic nation that itcould support as a beacon of hope forthe rest of the Islamic world. I waswondering what nation you had inmind. If it is Turkey, is Turkey a modelthat other Islamic nations would beinterested in following, or is it too secu-lar? If not Turkey, what other nationswould you have in mind?

Mahbubani: I would frankly be veryhappy if any Islamic society succeeded.

8 Weatherhead East Asian Institute

Turkey is clearly closest to succeeding,especially if it is admitted to the EU. IfTurkey succeeds, it will make a hugedifference psychologically. The psycho-logical point is one that Americansdon’t understand, but an African ambas-sador once said to me “You Asians areso lucky. At least you have Japan orTaiwan to inspire you. We in Africadon’t have a success story. If we hadone, we could follow it.” That’s a veryimportant dimension.

But after Turkey, Malaysia’s successwould be a huge gift to the Islamicworld. Beyond that the other candidatemight be Indonesia. The recent success-ful elections in Indonesia wereremarkable. I was quite amazed. Afterthe seven years of instability thatIndonesia went through from 1997 to2004, after all the terrorist incidents thatwe saw in Bali and elsewhere, to havesuch a peaceful election carried out insuch a large country with such a posi-tive result was an enormousachievement. All of these successeshave, over a time, a cumulative positiveeffect on the Islamic psyche, and weshould encourage them.

Question: The two big issues betweenthe United States and China are humanrights and Taiwan. Human rights is notsomething we’re going to come to blowsover. But the situation in the TaiwanStraits could easily erupt. Now your ear-lier answer as to what U.S. policy shouldbe sounds to me like a description ofwhat U.S. policy is. You used the phrase“let sleeping dogs lie”—the problem isthat the sleeping dogs are waking up. Itreally puts Washington in a pretty awk-ward position. We can’t just give bothsides sleeping pills and say go back tosleep. So what, specifically, do you thinkthe United States can do to handle thesituation?

Mahbubani: First, on human rights,Chinese intellectuals told me they resentAmerica’s criticism of China’s humanrights record. But in the past, eventhough they resented it, they at leastaccepted that America set the standardfor what respect of human rights shouldbe, and had a moral right to lecture.

Guantanamo was a great shock tothe Chinese intellectuals. They couldnot believe that the United States coulddo such a thing. From the Chinesepoint of view, after Guantanamo, eventhe Chinese intellectuals who were verycritical of the Chinese government saidin private, “So what’s the difference—we treat people badly, they treat peoplebadly. We are the same.”

On the question of human rights, ifyou look at the conditions of the ordi-nary Chinese people, and you look atthe famines, wars, revolutions, and inva-sions that China has suffered, and youmeasure the life of the ordinary Chineseagainst what they have experienced,these are the best years that China hasexperienced in 200 years, by far.

At the point in time when the livingconditions of the Chinese have neverbeen better, that is when the rest of theworld says its human rights record isvery bad. Clearly, China has to improveits human rights record. But is Chinaheading in the right direction or thewrong direction? If you observe thequality of life and openness of Chinesesociety, you will agree things are chang-ing in the right direction. BeforeGuantanamo, if you pushed theChinese, they would admit the need toimprove. Today, if you push them onhuman rights, they push back very hard,because they feel America no longer hasany moral credibility to criticize them.

In answer to your second questionabout letting sleeping dogs lie,American policy on Taiwan is not nec-essarily a simple straight line. TheChinese government has a very sophis-ticated reading of each nuance inAmerican policy toward Taiwan.

This is why China has been veryhappy with America’s policy on Taiwansince 9/11. In theory, nothing haschanged in American policy, but theamount of pressure that the UnitedStates has put on Chen Shui-bian hasnever been greater. The Chinese aresophisticated enough to know that theUnited States is trying its best to let thesleeping dogs lie. China itself is notasking for any dramatic change; itwould in fact like to see a continuationof events of the last three years.

CREDITS

EDIT0R

Michael Roston

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

Yvonne Thurman

Andy Wanning

PHOTOGRAPHY

Madge Huntington

Andy Wanning

PRODUCTION

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