Judt and Mahbubani

In “The Case Against the West” by Kishore Mahbubani and “What Have We Learned, If Anything?” by Tony Judt, the authors pessimistically criticize the Western presence on the global level. Mahbubani holds that the West, once the dominating power and the leader of the international affairs has become the main source of many of the world’s problems. The West is reluctant to accept that “the Asian century has come” and many countries that they controlled are gaining their own power. The West has clung to its strong presence in the global forums such as the UN Security Council and the World Bank and refused to adjust to the Asian century. Judt also has similar views, seeing the West as stridently insistent that the past has little to teach them about the future.  Judt believes that if the West were to take a more critical look at their past, they could understand their present more accurately.

    Mahbubani sees the West as an incompetent nation on handing the vast global problems. He sees the Bush administration and the occupation of Iraq as failures on the US’s part. He believes that they are mishandling the two immediate and pressing challenges of Afghanistan and Iraq and therefore, the war is not being successful. He sees the invasion as an error. He says, “the United States and the United Kingdom sought the Security Council’s authorization to invade Iraq, but the council denied it”(9). Therefore, this subsequent is illegal. Mahbubani sees the United States as paranoid of other countries especially during the Cold War when it began a military buildup dividing the worlds into two halves: those that had nuclear devices and those that did not. Mahbubani disagrees with the rational behind this as it increased spending and led to issues amongst countries who wanted to be in the core five countries that were allowed to have weapons. India and Pakistan already tested their first missiles in 1998 despite the condemning by the international community. In the end, despite all of the pressure by the councils to regulate the nuclear weapons, the United States and Russia have continued maintaining thousands of weapons. For this, Mahbubani believes that as long as the nuclear weapons exist, countries will be in a nonstop pursuit of them.

Mahbubani also focuses on the Global Warming crisis, which Al Gore has shed light on after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. An international consensus has been formed that global warming is a threat and while some countries have made strides in reducing their outputs the West has the highest output: the United States had 29% and western Europe has 27% clearly showing that they are not acknowledging their responsibilities.

 I agree with Mahbubani on how the West is putting China as their foremost obstacle and forgetting that they are flawed. The United States has enjoyed centuries of prosperity and domination over the world and it has hard for them to acknowledge that other countries are developing. The United States-who was once the champion of human rights- has become the violators. They have resorted to violence and become the barbaric killers who Judt alludes to. Judd goes describes the devastating effects the wars have had on other countries where their soldiers have lost many and the United States has lost so few, For this reason, they doesn’t believe that the U.S. understands fully loss. This relates back to China and the emergence of Asian countries as the leaders. The U.S. is afraid to loose their power.