Madhav Nalapat

Asia should change its West-centric looking glass

By M.D. Nalapat (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-12-03 08:01

For a continent that is the cradle of civilization, it is sad that only meanings invented elsewhere get affixed to words. An example is "globalization", which is seen as a phenomenon of recent origin. The fact is that many parts of Asia were globalized long before the second half of the 20th century. The Mesopotamians, Chinese, Indians and Persians were trading even before the Roman Empire was built. So why is it that we continue to see "globalization" as something new, something introduced to Asia by "outsiders"? Why is Asia still suffering from a "colonial" hangover - of judging everything from outsiders' perspective?

This attitude is deep-rooted not only in commerce, but also education. Take the field of international relations for example. Every country has its own approach to geopolitics and needs to view facts from its own perspective. Yet for decades the three biggest powers in Asia - China, India and Japan - have been sending hundreds of students to the US or European countries to study international relations.

Many of those who return from abroad with multiple degrees subconsciously imbibe the biases and deficiencies of the US-European viewpoint on Asia, and thus get disconnected from their own countries' realities. And quite a few of them become important policymakers in their home countries. The true meaning of "globalization" is to make the home country the hub and let its "spokes" radiate across the globe. But, for much of the Asian policymaking community, the hub is either the US or the European Union (EU), or both.

We need to ensure that future international relations students are anchored to the needs of their own societies. Of course, those who choose to stay back in the US and or a European country are free to see matters from the West's perspective.

India, where at least 310 million people are close to starvation levels, spends tens of millions of dollars every year on endowments and scholarships to send students to the US and the EU. Recently, a large group of young Indian parliamentarians were sent to the US to study international relations at the expense of taxpayers. These future leaders were drilled in curricula that understandably place the interests of the US at the core. The money would have been worth being spent if the government of India had given it to its universities to set up international relations departments. Although the US and EU make no pretence that their policies are anything other than geared exclusively toward furthering their own interests, many of their counterparts in Asia appear reluctant to adopt such robustness in defending the interests of their own peoples.

The debate on climate change is an example of how much the entire world has been influenced by "globalization", defined as a West-centric viewpoint. Any individual moving away from such a territory-specific calculus is seen as "anti-globalization", while people in Asia who support US and EU policies are called "good global citizens". Watching some of the more prominent international TV channels one would get the feeling that the horrors of climate change have been caused by the economic growth of China and India, when the truth is that 87 percent of the damage is the direct consequence of human activity in the US, the EU and other developed countries.

What developing countries like China, India, Brazil and South Africa need to do is to publish a joint white paper, detailing the origin of environmental degradation over the past couple of centuries and giving the per capita greenhouse gas emission of every country in the developed world.

Although the "globalizers" talk of "one Europe", they refuse to acknowledge the existence of "one Asia". Instead, they have broken Asia into different segments, and treat each as separate from the rest, when in fact the continent forms a single geopolitical mass. For example, there is "East Asia", "Southeast Asia", "South Asia", "Central Asia" and the "Middle East". And since President Dimitry Medvedev considers Russia to be "100 per cent European" three-fourths of the largest country gets excluded from Asia. Asians should be aware of international relations theories that divide Asia into separate parts and hence prevent a pan-Asian view from evolving.

This propensity to view all matters from the lens of the self-appointed "globalizers" can be termed the "Dubai syndrome". Those who have visited the UAE city must have seen how comprehensive the influence of Western "experts" on its decision-making process is. To a lesser degree, such outsourcing of brainpower is characteristic of several of Dubai's neighbors.

Other countries too have suffered for outsourcing their decisions. From 1955 to 1995, South American countries provide several examples of collapsed economies for adhering to the so-called "Friedmanite" economics, which in effect made monopolitics out of foreign companies and denied incentives to domestic enterprises.

Dubai is the most recent example. But outsourcing of "mind space" to the "globalizers" has for long been an unfortunate feature of Asia. And since the problems in Dubai have been caused by decisions taken on the advice of external banking institutions shouldn't they bear the cost of such errors? Indeed, the Gulf Cooperation Council has already suffered - a loss of more than $1.3 trillion because of the greed of the "globalized" financial fraternity.

Dubai is a warning to Asia. The continent needs to look at itself from its own perspective, the way the developed world has been doing. Once the UAE city emerges from the mess created because of its blind faith in Western advisers, whose only intention was to make quick profits, hopefully its leadership would follow policies that are helpful to its people. Asia must avoid a repeat of the "Dubai syndrome", by looking at the world through a lens that has the continent at the core.

The author is professor of geopolitics at Manipal University, India

(China Daily 12/03/2009 page9)