Title: Awakening from the Western Binary: Towards a Multicivilizational, Multipolar, Multilateral World Order
“The era of Western domination is coming to a close. The world is becoming not just multipolar, but also multicivilizational.”
— Kishore Mahbubani, Former Singaporean Diplomat and Global Thought Leader
Introduction
The post-Cold War euphoria of the West heralded the "end of history" — a phrase made famous by political scientist Francis Fukuyama in 1989. Liberal democracy, Western norms, and unipolar hegemony seemed unchallenged. Yet, three decades later, this illusion is steadily unraveling. As Kishore Mahbubani incisively notes, the emerging global order is no longer Eurocentric or America-led; it is multicivilizational, multipolar, and multilateral. This shift demands a radical transformation in how the West interprets and engages with the rest of the world.
The once-dominant Euro-American epistemology — marked by binary, moralistic, and often hypocritical worldviews — is fast becoming obsolete. If the West fails to adjust pragmatically, it risks marginalization in a world it can no longer control.
I. The Decline of Western Dominance: A Historical Reckoning
The Western world rose to global prominence through a combination of industrial revolution, colonial conquest, and military superiority. However, as Paul Kennedy argued in The Rise and Fall of Great Powers (1987), all empires face decline when their ambitions outgrow their resources. Today, the U.S. and Europe face multiple crises: internal polarization, waning moral authority, and diminished economic dominance.
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Mahbubani, in Has the West Lost It? (2018), writes:
“The West has been blind to the rise of the rest... It continues to believe it can set the rules of global governance even as its power wanes.” -
The Global South, once dismissed as periphery, now seeks new alliances. The BRICS+, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and ASEAN regional frameworks reflect alternative centers of gravity. According to Parag Khanna (The Future is Asian, 2019), “Asia is not rising — it has returned to its historical centrality.”
II. The Fallacy of Binary Thinking: Moral Absolutism and its Discontents
The West's view of the world — often simplified into democracy vs. autocracy, freedom vs. tyranny — is rooted in Enlightenment binaries. But such frameworks ignore civilizational diversity, contextual ethics, and cultural pluralism.
- As Edward Said showed in Orientalism (1978), Western narratives have long reduced the "Other" into caricatures — irrational, despotic, exotic.
- Noam Chomsky and John Mearsheimer have critiqued U.S. foreign policy's moral grandstanding as a cover for geopolitical interests.
- Amartya Sen, in The Argumentative Indian (2005), reminds us that India and many Asian societies are home to multiple rationalities and traditions of tolerance that do not fit into Western ideological molds.
The biotic, good-vs-evil lens of Western discourse fails in a world where shades of grey dominate — from China's civilizational pragmatism to India’s spiritual pluralism, from Islamic jurisprudential complexity to Africa’s community-based governance.
III. Multicivilizational World: The Return of History
Civilizations like China, India, Iran, and the Arab world are reclaiming space once monopolized by the West.
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Samuel Huntington, though controversial, acknowledged this in The Clash of Civilizations (1996):
“In the post-Cold War world, the most important distinctions among peoples are not ideological, political, or economic. They are cultural.” -
Zhao Tingyang’s concept of Tianxia (All Under Heaven) reimagines global governance not in terms of dominance, but relational harmony.
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Ashis Nandy, in his critique of colonial modernity, warns against universalist models that ignore cultural rootedness: “Western secularism is not global secularism. It's one particular historical solution to one particular set of problems.”
Asia, Africa, and Latin America are no longer content to be rule-takers. They are civilizational actors, asserting their own ontologies, ethical frameworks, and developmental pathways.
IV. Multipolarity and Multilateralism: Power Redefined
The United States’ withdrawal from global commitments and Europe’s demographic and economic decline contrast starkly with the rise of regional powers. Yet the new world is not simply “anti-West” — it is post-Western.
- The Multipolar Order includes China, India, Russia, Brazil, and regional groupings that dilute U.S. hegemony.
- The Multilateral World thrives on forums like G20, SCO, and AIIB, where decision-making is shared and decentralized.
- Ha-Joon Chang, a development economist, argues that the rules of global capitalism were written by the West to serve its interests and now must be rewritten.
In the 2022 UN General Assembly vote on the Ukraine conflict, many Global South nations chose strategic neutrality — not because they support aggression, but because they reject being dictated to. This is a sign not of moral failure but of civilizational agency.
V. The Pragmatic Path Forward: From Domination to Dialogue
Western societies must undergo a paradigm shift:
- Accept Pluralism of Values: Liberalism is one tradition among many. It cannot be universalized.
- Shift from Preaching to Listening: The Global South has wisdom — ecological, philosophical, spiritual — that the West can learn from.
- Reform Multilateral Institutions: The IMF, World Bank, and UN Security Council must reflect new realities, not Cold War relics.
- Invest in Cultural Humility: Western education, media, and diplomacy must break free from colonial residues.
As Kishore Mahbubani said in a Foreign Affairs article (2020), “The West must learn to share power gracefully — or risk losing it ungracefully.”
Conclusion: A Call from Singapore
"सदियों से पड़े थे बंधे अपनी ही जंग खाई परंपराओं की जंजीरों में,
आ फिर से सिंगापुर से मुझे होश दिलाने के लिए आ।"
Singapore — Mahbubani’s homeland — stands as a symbol of pragmatic synthesis: East and West, tradition and modernity, statecraft and civilizational wisdom.
To awaken is not to reject the West, but to reimagine its role — no longer as a missionary power, but as a co-traveler in a polyphonic world. The future belongs not to those who dominate with certainty, but to those who adapt with humility.
References:
- Mahbubani, Kishore. Has the West Lost It? (2018); The Asian 21st Century (2022)
- Khanna, Parag. The Future is Asian (2019)
- Huntington, Samuel. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996)
- Said, Edward. Orientalism (1978)
- Sen, Amartya. The Argumentative Indian (2005)
- Nandy, Ashis. The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (1983)
- Chomsky, Noam. Hegemony or Survival (2003)
- Kennedy, Paul. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987)
- Zhao, Tingyang. All Under Heaven: The Tianxia System for a Possible World Order (2011)
- Chang, Ha-Joon. Kicking Away the Ladder (2002)
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