The Future is Asian. Global Order in the Twenty-first Century by Parag Khanna

In the age of Asianization, Asia will shape the United States more than the reverse.

Parag Khanna

When we think of Asia, it is China and perhaps India that immediately come to mind. But there is more to Asia than these two big countries. Asia stretches from Australia to Turkey and from Japan to Saudi Arabia. It is the most ethnically, culturally and linguistically diverse region of the planet, linking 4.5 billion people, the majority of the world population through trading, finance and infrastructure. Together they represent 40 percent of the global GDP. As the countries of Asia, collectively assert their interests, Parag Khanna says, the Asianization will reshape our world and our future.

We live in a historical era where there is a globally distributed multi-polarity, tell us Parag Khanna. For the first time perhaps, every region matters, not equally, but every region in some way shape or form the global order. There isn’t one power at the center to dictate what everyone else does get to do or not to do.  But two regions in particular, South and East Asia which we traditionally call Asia, and West Asia, which we traditionally call Middle East, but it is in fact Asia, are getting increasingly connected, returning to what it has been in centuries past, that is a system.

A system, says Khanna, is a set of countries that interact with each other more than they do with the rest of the world, through war and conflict but also through trade and commerce and diplomatic institutions. In the past 30 years, particularly since the end of the Cold War, we in the West we have been obsessed with the notion of America as a super-power and “the end of history”, then with 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the financial crisis which we thought it was global but it wasn’t, all the way through Trump and Brexit. While we have been consumed with all these things, in Asia the experience was different. The region has been undergoing a tremendous change and transformation. Millions of people have been lifted out of poverty and new infrastructure projects spanning across central Asia reconnected ancient trade routes.

When we look back from 2100 at the date on which the cornerstone of an Asian-led world order began, it will be 2017. In May of that year, sixty-eight countries representing two-thirds of the world’s population and half its GDP gathered in Beijing for the first Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) summit. This gathering of Asian, European and African leaders symbolized the launch of the largest coordinated infrastructure investment plan in human history. Collectively, the assembled governments pledged to spend trillions of dollars in the coming decade to connect the world’s largest population centers in a constellation of commerce and cultural exchange- a new Silk Road era.

Parag Khanna

The mission of this dense and comprehensive book is to prepare us see the world from an Asian point of view.  Khanna’s basic argument is that, yes, the rise of China is hugely important but the biggest story in the world the last three decades is the Asianization of Asia, the rise of the Asian system.   China represent only one third of the Asian population and half of its GDP. Today, China’s growth is slowing, while other Asian countries’ growth is accelerating.  

China is not a giant island floating above Asia. Rather, with more neighbors than any other country, it is deeply embedded in the Asian economic system in mutually dependent and beneficial ways. The future is Asian-even for China.

Parag Khanna

Asia today is a dynamic strategic theater. While our press in the West, spends its time analyzing Trump’s absurd comments, Asian countries are forging new geometries of cooperation. They build their own Asian institutions and frameworks to coordinate and govern trade, infrastructure and capital flows. They build strong trade relations with various bilateral partners, increase labor mobility, and create migrant schemes in order to attract people.  Europe, meanwhile, enthusiastically join Asian organizations, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and a new free trade agreement between EU and Japan entered into force on February 2019.  

A new chapter of global history is being written before our eyes, says Parag Khanna, “one in which Asian and Western civilizations, the North American and Eurasian continents, all play profoundly important roles.”