Kishore Mahbubani, Has the West Lost It? A Provocation
| Published date | 01 October 2020 |
| Date | 01 October 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0020881720961924 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Book Review
Book Review
Kishore Mahbubani, Has the West Lost It? A Provocation (Allen Lane,
2018), 105 pp., `499, ISBN: 978-0-24131-286-5 (Hardback).
The debate about the decline of the West has received considerable scholarly
attention for over a decade now. An early response to this changing international
situation from Fareed Zakaria was couched in terms of the ‘rise of the rest’
(Zakaria, 2009). Amitav Acharya characterized the changing patterns as an
upsurge of ‘a multiplex world’ (Acharya, 2014). Bill Emmott, on the other hand,
argued that the West can survive this change in world affairs provided it sticks
firmly to liberal democracy, opens its technology to other states and demonstrates
‘flexible statist behavior’ (Emmott, 2018). Scholarship in this context has taken a
fresh turn with twin developments taking shape in the West: first, Donald Trump’s
coming to power in the United States; and second, Britain’s exit from the European
Union. Both the events reflect the dominant current trends in many Western
societies, that is, decrease in wages and mounting inequality, coupled with
attempts by sections of political parties at stoking populism and even xenophobia.
It is against this backdrop that Kishore Mahbubani’s monograph, Has the West
Lost It? A Provocation, is a thought-provoking addition to the corpus of literature
that seeks to comprehend the slow decline of the West in terms of economy and
influence. The author states that the West, ‘blinded by hubris’, committed a series
of strategic errors with unwise interventions in the Islamic world which halted its
rise and provided further impetus to its decline (pp. 44–45).
Mahbubani argues that the rise of Western powers is a recent phenomenon.
Until the 1800s, China and India were the two largest economies in the world, and
now they are slowly regaining their positions (p. 4). Western domination in the
19th and 20th centuries was an ‘aberration’ that is now coming to a halt. He seeks
to illustrate this by pointing out that in 2015, the share of G7 countries in global
economic growth stood at about 31.5 per cent, which was lower than the 36.3 per
cent of the seven emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South
Africa, Indonesia and Turkey (p. 7). Similarly, in the last three decades, real
wages in Western economies have stagnated, whereas most countries in Asia and
Africa witnessed rising incomes, better education and healthcare facilities, upward
mobility and overall improvements in the quality of life. The West has to adjust to
this changing reality by crafting a ‘coherent and competitive global strategy’
(p. 7). However, the author laments that Western elites, while garnering all the
benefits of globalization, have not actually delivered the benefits to their
populations, who are facing job losses and falling standards of living.
International Studies
57(4) 407–416, 2020
2020 Jawaharlal Nehru University
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DOI: 10.1177/0020881720961924
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