Has the West Lost It?

A Provocation

By: Kishore Mahbubani

Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble

Length: 2 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

Penguin Audio presents Has the West Lost It? by Kishore Mahbubani, read by Jonathan Keeble.

The West's centuries-old status as the centre of global wealth and power is coming to an end. As the new powers - China and India from Asia and others from Africa and Latin America - rise to the top of the world's pecking order, how should the West react? Kishore Mahbubani argues passionately and provocatively that the West can no longer impose its power and ideals on the world at large, and - paradoxically - that only by admitting its decline can the West set itself up for strategic success in the long term. Mahbubani examines the myths and self-delusions of Western power with an outsider's critical eye, and the shocking freshness of his geopolitical analysis will give all Westerners and political thinkers pause for thought.

©2018 Kishore Mahbubani (P)2018 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

A compelling warning ... It is hard to disagree with this advice from such a well-informed friend of the west (Martin Wolf)

Sometimes you need a shock to wake you up. Has the West Lost it? (2018) is such a shock. The sheer concentrated force of this 91-page essay [...] is as unrelenting as it is astonishing . . . It's time we listened to Mahbubani. (Richard Horton)

We should all think of it as the cold shower that is urgently needed to revive the West (Fareed Zakaria, author of 'The Post-American World')

It's a powerful, disputatious book . . . It's not comfortable reading, and it wasn't meant to be (Paul Kennedy, Director of International Security Studies and Professor of History at Yale University)

Kishore Mahbubani brings unrivaled experience and insight into strategizing where the West goes from here. A book that truly speaks to our tumultuous times (Ian Bremmer, President of Eurasia Group)

In the longer view, America's - and before that Europe's - dominance may come to be seen as a short aberration and the rise of China and other Asian nations as simply a reversion to the natural order of things. That at least is the key point of a provocatively titled book, Has the West Lost It?, by Kishore Mahbubani, a Singaporean academic and former diplomat. As many in America and Europe contemplate the dramatic changes to their world in the past few years, it's been getting a lot of attention. (Gerard Baker)

Great analysis and Ideas, opens the mind

I do not fully agree with all the conclusions made, but the arguments made are clear and thought provoking.

A short, but impactful book that helps to loom at world development in a different way.

Exceptionally well written for Western readers

This is a timely, well-researched, and passionately written provocation, especially important for Western readers with a concern and genuine commitment towards global well-being.

Contributions to global development nurtured in the Western world are undeniable: market economies, technological advances, democratic principles, and much more. However, the expansion of these phenomenon do not translate into historic inevitability, conceptual domination, or continuous social improvement in our rapidly changing world.

"Has the West Lost It?" challenges readers to appreciate the emergence of a more pluralistic human civilization, and the consequences of arrogance, hubris, and willful blindness on a planet that we, and future generations, must share.

Mahbubani's perspective is deeply informed by decades of personal responsibility and professional commitment as a global diplomat (Singapore's ambassador to the United Nations) and professor and academic dean (Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy). As a prolific editorial writer, he blends a writer's literary gift and a policy-marker's comfort with data into a persuasive call for mutual respect, rule of law, and pragmatic optimism towards the future.

Half backed pretensious work.

Useful introduction to China geopopitics pre Covid

Best paired with a first rate piece by: Robert Kagan
"The World America Made"

Highly recomended together but Kagan first.