Can Asians Think?

Edelgard E. Mahant is a professor of political science at York
University. She is the co-author of Invisible and Inaudible in
Washington: American Policies Toward Canada and An Introduction to
Canadian–American Relations.

Kishore Mahbubani is a diplomat who serves the authoritarian government
of Singapore. In spite of its deliberately provocative title, this
book—a collection of articles Mahbubani has published over the last 15
years—is not mainly about the old debate between Western and Asian
values. Economic and social development is the most common theme. The
author is in awe of the degree of development achieved by Western
countries, and seeks to explain key factors that have led to such
progress. Unfortunately, he defines neither the terms he uses nor the
values he espouses. He writes fulsomely about “the West,” for
example, but nowhere defines the term (in one passage, the West is
obviously meant to include Russia).

Mahbubani’s treatment of the term “progress” is similarly
confusing. Progress, it seems, is progress toward a wealthy, apparently
stable society such as that of Singapore. Or is it? Mahbubani praises
the UN for bringing about global advances in respect for human rights.
What about Singapore, where newspapers are banned and the government’s
opponents jailed? The author’s attempt to elevate the Singapore model
of development as one applicable to all Asian—and perhaps all
developing—countries is one of the book’s major failings. The
Singapore example does not prove that development is best achieved
without democracy. When Singapore was laying the foundations for its
economic progress, it was still a democratic country. Indeed, there is
no one model of development that fits all. Brutal dictatorships such as
Stalin’s Soviet Union made great progress toward development, but so
has democratic India, and the latter may prove to be the more successful
model in the long run.