Wednesday, January 7, 2009


Mahbubani's article, "The Case Against The West" is just what the title entails: blatantly anti-western, Mahbubani holds the West accountable for the world's wrongs and always returns to his motif of the "Asian Century". He theorizes that "the West's inability to see that the world has entered a new era", the era of Asian superpowers, results in Western incompetency in leading the world. Mahbubani calls on the G-8 to retire from their prominent positions in the UN in favor of countries such as China and India. He claims "China has responded positively" to Robert Zoellick's 2005 call to become a "responsible stakeholder in the international system". And on top of these ludicrous statements, Mahbubani compares America's violations of UN resolutions to the human rights violations of North Korea and Iran!
If Mahbubani's illogical transitions, obnoxious claims, and inconsistent standards bother you as much as me, check out a blog post on him, titled "Why You Should Ignore Kishore Mahbubani and Cancel Your Newsweek Subscription". This Blog was written in response to another of Mahbubani's similarly-themed articles, "Fixing Uncle Sam's Problems" in which Mahbubani explores what he sees as "Washington's failure to think strategically".
Tony Judt in his article, "What Have We Learned, If Anything?", argues against what he calls the "end of History" theory. Judt explains that the misremembering of the twentieth century has doomed the world, and especially the United States, to repeat historical mistakes. He focuses especially on the uniquely American position of keeping war as a strategical option, which Judt connects directly to the relatively small number of US casualties in conflicts throughout the past hundred years. He concludes his article begging readers to "learn again-- or perhaps for the first time-- how war brutalizes and degrades winners and losers alike and what happens to us when, having heedlessly waged war for no good reason, we are encouraged to inflate and demonize our enemies in order to justify that war's indefinite continuance".

Zakaria's article, "The Rise of the Rest"
Book on India’s rise to economic power, Think India

1 comment:

  1. I suppose your anti-Mahbubani source is even more reliable since he insists that people who argue that we're faced with global warming are "anti-capitlistic" radicals who simply want to "exert control over other people". It's a fairly conservative blog, which is fine, but do you have any other source on Mahbubani? You have a strong opinion about Mahbubani. What about Judt?

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