This is a great, and needed, article by @mahbubani_k: https://foreignaffairs.com/united-states/dream-palace-west

It’s written as a response to @alexstubb’s article in the magazine’s previous edition (“The West’s Last Chance”: https://foreignaffairs.com/united-states/wests-last-chance) in which he argued that “this is the last chance for Western countries to convince the rest of the world that they are capable of dialogue rather than monologue.”

Kishore takes him at his word and says that “to have a dialogue, one must listen,” yet there is very little evidence that the West listens to the rest of the world.

Kishore gives the example of Europe’s relationship with China, pointing out how “EU countries [still] speak condescendingly toward China […], cast the CCP as a villain and call for the equivalent of regime change in Beijing,” which he argues “looks perfectly ridiculous”.

As he writes, from the Chinese standpoint, “the Chinese people have [just] enjoyed the best 40 years of human and social development in 4,000 years of Chinese history” so to see a bunch of Europeans – who have underperformed them in pretty much all respects during the period (certainly true economically and technologically) – speak to them as if they were inferior because they don’t have EU-style governance is indeed perfectly ridiculous.

I agree with Kishore: the lack of listening and the almost complete absence of willingness to accept the existence of other – equally valid – systems and cultures is ultimately one off the West’s most self-defeating habits.

All the more so in a multipolar world where, by definition, you cannot anymore impose your will on others by force: the only way to have influence is through genuine persuasion, and genuine persuasion begins with actually hearing the other side.

At the end of the day, nations with the political equivalent of narcissistic personality disorder meet the same fate as the people with it: they end up lonely, talking to themselves.