STILL AN AMERICAN THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

There is no change in mindset, no intellectual development and no confidence to describe the new order in international relations

WE all know America is diminished. Whether caused by the rise of China or, more extensively, by its own actions of self harm, this diminution however has not weakened the hold of American thought leadership on foreign policy issues in international relations.

Last week, I finished reading the latest book by Richard Haass: The World, A Brief Introduction, and subsequently attended a London School of Economics webinar, where he introduced the book.

Haass has a fine intellect, has written 14 other books on international relations, and has been president for almost 18 years of the influential Council on Foreign Relations in New York, where I had met him a couple of times. He is an experienced diplomat, policy-maker and leading international relations public intellectual.

His book is intended to open American eyes, frequently halfclosed, to the world outside, so as to give them a better appreciation of the global reality. At the webinar, I had put it that the book was too euro-centric, suggesting he did not give enough space to Asia-Pacific thinking.

He denied this, saying he covered every part of the world adequately. Actually, the moderator was inadequate in the way he paraphrased my question, and I did not get the chance to push the point, which is one of the frustrations of webinars in the Covid19 world. The point about eurocentrism is not just about geography. In my question, I had mentioned intellectual thought coming out of other parts of the world, which is not part of mainstream American and European intellectual tradition.

In the part of his book “Where to go for more”, Richard Haass does not anywhere refer to sources other than those of America and Europe.

While I do not expect him to lead his readers, whose eyes and mind he wants to open up to China’s shrieking self-righteous Global Times, I had expected him to at least mention for example Kishore Mahbubani’s writings — even if he does not agree with them, as I do not much of them, for their remorseless pro-China stance.

Or the more even-handed Parag Khanna, who writes on the rise of Asia and not just China. The point is, there is scant regard for the thinking existent in the AsiaPacific region even if there is now, often grudgingly, recognition of its rise and significance in the international system.

This has been a serious problem among Western public intellectuals, whether when analysing the severe problems of their domestic political systems or when presenting the situation of contemporary international relations.

They tend to talk to one another, use self-serving sources and references and, most importantly, do not reach, in content, language or mode of publication, the people whose minds they need to open up and change.

This complacent exclusivity is founded on many years of unchallenged thought leadership which needs to be shaken just as much as Western domestic political systems and the international order do.

However, it still enjoys a dominance in intellectual circles outside of America and Europe, even if there is nascent non-Western international relations thinking and writing. None of it though is accorded similar authority as the commentaries by Richard Haass, or Fareed Zakaria, or Gideon Rachman. There are at least three problems on our side of the world of developing a credible international relations intellectual tradition.

The foremost is exclusion — such as the blackout on other sources in Haass’ new book. On the other side of the coin, as the West still controls almost all formal media and standard texts, what is streamed is unsurprisingly a Western slant on what is drummed in as the objective reality.

Secondly, there are a couple of disabling tendencies among nonWestern international relations practitioners and public intellectuals when engaging on issues of foreign policy. On the one hand, they put too much emotion, are strident, even angry, when making their points, with strong narrative, but insufficient research.

I would not name leading nonWestern writers who are guilty of this as it would upset them, but they really have to up their game instead of being easily satisfied if given token space in the Financial Times in London, or Foreign Affairs in New York.

On the other, there is no escape in the use of terminologies that capture a false reality. For example, even China’s ferocious Foreign Minister Wang Yi falls into the trap of referring to what happened in 2008 as the “Global Financial Crisis” (as in his response to Trump’s recent United Nations General Assembly speech).

It was not the global financial crisis. It was the Western Financial Crisis, 2008. The more we use the wrong terminology, as determined by Western control of formal media, the less exact becomes the responsibility for that crisis.

We readily own up to the Asian Financial Crisis of 1998. Yet, for 2008, we slavishly accept pre-determined terminology which obscures what happened and can mislead the uninitiated. This is a relatively recent event. We must also not forget the many double standards in the history of international relations.

For instance, the exclusion until the 20th century of non-Western states from international councils and meetings as they were considered not “civilised”. Then the Japanese were invited after they gave the Russians a bloody nose in the RussoJapanese war of 1904-05.

The irony was not lost on the Japanese representative at The Hague Peace Conference in 1907 when he said: “We showed ourselves to be your equal in the art of scientific butchery, and at once, we are invited to your councils as a civilised nation.”

Finally, there are no sufficiently strong international relations policy research institutions that can command respect and thought leadership in international affairs. There are institutes of research which not only pander to Western thought leadership in the field, but also tend to limit their remit to regional matters.

There are also institutions too often focused only on national concerns in foreign relations. There is not a body of thought or an institution of policy research that has the wherewithal to magisterially command attention on the world stage in the way the Council on Foreign Relations in America or the World Economic Forum in Switzerland does.

There has been geopolitical change. Certainly a new balance of economic power. But as yet no change in mindset, no sufficient intellectual development and no confidence to strut the stage to describe that new world and the new order that must come in international relations.