For two decades, Singaporean diplomat and author Kishore Mahbubani has been a leading voice among a growing group of intellectuals and pundits publicizing the “Asian Twenty-First Century”, a triumphalist arc where Asian powers—especially a rising China—have cast off the shackles of Western colonialism to assume their “rightful” place atop in the global hierarchy of nations and civilizations. Mahbubani’s oeuvre, dominated by his series of bestsellers popularizing a tale of Western decline and Asia’s rise, has won recognition from a host of audiences ranging from American internationalists and Chinese nationalists.
International relations
India’s western frontier with Pakistan may generate more headlines but India’s eastern border flanking both Myanmar and Bangladesh is arguably more complex. Both neighbors have long been unstable and have both at points in their history found their territory being used by rebels waging war against New Delhi. It is not just neighboring countries that pose a challenge: internal borders too are at play. The Indian government for decades has had a complex, often tumultuous relationship with its northeastern states. The inherent complexity of the region means a wider, more expansive approach to political analysis is needed. This is precisely what Avinash Paliwal’s new book seeks to do.
In the 16th century, Queen Elizabeth I tried to send several letters to her Chinese counterpart, the Wan Li Emperor. The letters tried to ask the Ming emperor to conduct trade relations with faraway England; none of the expeditions carrying the letters ever arrived. It’s an inauspicious beginning to the four centuries of foreign relations between China and what eventually became Britain, covered by Kerry Brown in his latest book The Great Reversal: Britain, China and the 400-Year Contest for Power.
Pakistan’s politics is so complicated that it can be hard to determine either a trajectory or even a throughline. If Tahir Kamran’s enormously-detailed Chequered Past, Uncertain Future is any indication, this is not due to any failure of imagination. Kamran is focused mostly on the country’s often fraught relationship with democracy, but leaves one with much the same impression about foreign and domestic policy and issues of Pakistani identity.
How did a small island nation off the coast of Europe come to play such an oversized role in the making of modern China? That question must have occurred to both Prime Minister David Cameron and Chairman Xi Jin Ping, perhaps with a touch of irony, when they reviewed the honor guard in London in 2015, under a canopy of Union Jacks and red banners. Kerry Brown, who has written numerous books about both Chinese history and its current leadership, provides his answer through an engaging and wide ranging retelling of the two countries’ entwinement.
There is much about the way international relations is framed—from the so-called rules-based order to the nation-state itself—that has its origins in the Western history, philosophy and experience. It stands to reason that the traditional view might not map very well onto two non-Western countries an order of magnitude larger than almost any other in the original dataset. In his new book Civilization-States of China and India, Ravi Dutt Bajpai posits that India and China are something other than “nation states”.
China is often seen by its peer economies as a problem. Yet, as far as climate change is concerned, Joanna Lewis writes in a new book, China has the potential to be part of the solution. Lewis, a distinguished professor at Georgetown University, highlights the importance of national bilateral cooperation with China in Cooperating for the Climate and explores China’s rise in green innovation and its growing role in international clean energy partnerships. Despite evident challenges, Lewis argues that fostering such collaborations is in the interest of the US and the world.