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Dan I'm Dan Kurtz Phelan, and this is the Foreign affairs interview. Even if America can intervene in these countries at relative low cost and do things like take presidents away illegally, by the way, the sense is that the future for Latin America is not limited to the United States, that if you want technology, if you want trade, if you want foreign investment, the North Atlantic, the United States and Europe will not suffice.
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That era of Asian states believing that the way to succeed is to become carbon copies of Western societies is dying, and a new era is emerging where none of these societies believe that they're going to succeed by becoming replicas of the West.
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I'm Kanishk Tharoor, deputy editor of Foreign Affairs. Dan is away this week, the shockwaves of the ongoing war in Iran are being felt far and wide. The continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz has sparked a global energy crisis, one that could be accentuated by a US Naval blockade. Countries as disparate as Chile, South Korea and Zambia have been forced to take extraordinary measures to deal with shortages and surging price. But the war's effects are not just material. Washington's decision to attack Iran is accelerating, a process already underway, the receding of both the inspiration and the reality of American power. That, at least, is the view of our two guests in this episode. Matthias Specter is a professor of politics and international relations based in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Kishore Mehbubani is a veteran Singaporean diplomat who served as his country's ambassador to the United nations for over a decade. In their Essays for Foreign affairs, both Spector and Mehbubani have sought to alert readers to changes in geopolitics that may be hard to see from Western capitals. The war on Iran, in their view, is misguided in its motivations and its execution. But its consequences could be hugely damaging for the United States, offering further proof that the world may be slipping out of America's grasp. Matias, thank you so much for joining us.
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It's my pleasure.
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Ahead of this conversation, I had the pleasure of rereading your excellent recent essays for Foreign affairs, and that's a pleasure that I would also invite our listeners to share. There are really few scholars thinking more critically about the current moment in the international system, about questions of power and order, and about the fate of those middle to lower income countries, home to the vast majority of people in the world, what we often call the global South. But before we go wide, I'd like to go a little narrow first and ask you about Latin America and the current war in Iran. This, the, the impacts of this war have been really global. We're see rising inflation in Brazil, for instance, protests in Chile over transportation costs, and fears about food supply chains because of fertilizer shortages. How would you assess the war's impact so far on Latin American countries?
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So at the surface level, the effects are primarily economic rather than political or military. The war is transmitting trouble to Latin America, if you want, through three main channels. Rising energy prices, inflation pressures and financial volatility. Governments across the region are now being forced to make a choice, very difficult trade offs, whether to absorb these effects through subsidies and then risk fiscal instability, or to pass the cause onto their publics and then face political backlash. What's striking, of course, is that this is very uneven in the region. The region has some major oil exporters like Brazil or Colombia, who are seeing short term fiscal gains, but there are many energy importers who are in much deeper trouble politically. There is a widening divide across the region between those countries that are siding with the United States and in particular the Trump administration. So a lot of the Central American countries, Argentina under Javier Milei, potentially Chile under a new right wing government, and those countries in the region that are far more critical of the United States in general and Trump in particular. But what I would say is that the more interesting story coming from Latin America is not so much the policy response to the war, it's how the war is being interpreted. For many actors in Latin America, and I would claim for many actors across the global south, the war is being read less as an isolated conflict and more as evidence of, of how power is now operating in the international system. And that's interesting because it's the increasingly common view across the board that America is a revolutionary power rather than a status quo power, that America is willing to engage in types of behavior as in Trump's threats to the Iranian population that are new and that are unusual and that seem to suggest that there is something very strange going on in the global balance of power to make America behave this way. And that, I think, is the big takeaway from the Iran war in this region, as of now at least.
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Latin America shadows the war in Iran, at least in one respect, in that it seems that the Trump administration went into Iran with the sense that it could repeat the outcome it secured in Venezuela, that is removing the top leaders of the regime and striking a deal with its remnants. We're a few months removed from that US intervention in Venezuela, though, in all honesty, to me, it feels like it was Quite a long time ago at this point. But how have Latin American governments absorbed what happened in Caracas?
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I think it's fair to say that most countries across the region were taken aback by the swiftness of the intervention, but they were not necessarily surprised by the act of intervention. Caracas had, for 25 years, defied US authority in the hemisphere. It had been a recalcitrant state for a long time. As a regime, it had been weakening for a long time, partly due to their own economic mismanagement, partly to do with the price of oil and the sanctions regime that had been imposed on Caracas. Caracas had been very isolated from Latin America in the early days of Chavismo. Caracas secured the support of the Mexicans, of the Argentines, of the Colombians, of the Brazilians, and. And that was nowhere to be seen. China itself had pulled out and had now for three or four years, left caragas to its own devices. So if anybody in the White House thought that Venezuela and Iran were good analogies, they were misinterpreting what the balance of power looked like. The Venezuelan regime is far, far weaker than the Iranian regime. It had been holding things in a way that was far more desperate than it's ever been the case for the Iranians. And the proof of that is that we've seen that once Maduro was taken out, the entirety of the regime very quickly adapted to this new world and has been complying with the Trump administration really very closely. But was this a surprise? I don't think we could claim that.
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You wrote in a piece that was published a year ago in Foreign affairs that the more aggressively Trump attempts to reassert US Hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, the more likely it is that regional governments will redouble their efforts to develop alternative sources of support and investment a year from then. Is that indeed what has happened?
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Absolutely. A lot of people see the US Intervention in Venezuela as one of the many signs that we're back in an age of spheres of influence. And following that logic, the argument is now that America has reasserted its economic and military power in the Western Hemisphere, it's clear to all the players around who's top dog in that region. I believe that that interpretation is fundamentally flawed and misunderstands the power realities on the ground. For many, many years now, for almost 20 years now, China has been gaining ground across Latin America. China is now trade partner number one for many Latin American countries, in particular in South America. But it's not just trade. Chinese foreign direct investment is growing at a level that has no Power in the region and investment in critical infrastructure is prevalent across the board, from ports to energy generation and energy distribution, 5G technologies, so on and so forth. Of course, America could tolerate that for a long time because China was providing the capital that America was no longer willing or able to provide to Latin America. So in that sense, for many years there was this tacit equilibrium in which the United States actually welcomed the rise of China in Latin America. The United States invited China to capitalize the Inter American Development bank, for example, in the early 2000s. And then around the time of the first Trump administration, China in 2016, the United States began to worry and began to try and tell Latin Americans that they should watch out and that they should begin to sever ties with China. What's happened in practice is that some countries in Central America that are deeply dependent on the United States, not only economically but also politically. So for example, the Bukele administration in El Salvador, of course took these words as marching orders and reorganized their foreign policies, moving away from China, siding with the United States. But for the majority of regional countries, what we've seen is the opposite. Not in the sense that they're doubling down on China, but that they're looking for ways to reduce the risk of overdependence on the United States. There is a very widespread perception now that America doesn't have a clear cut strategy for the region. In many instances, the United States ignores Latin America rather than tries to control it too tightly. Given the difficulty, the administration has to appoint ambassadors. Many embassies across the region have no U.S. ambassador. And to all practical effect, in many of these capital cities, the Chinese embassy does a far better job in terms of engaging the local government, getting to know governors and mayors, helping provide solutions to these countries. As it happened during COVID when China launched this very ambitious and very welcomed vaccine diplomacy across the region. So even if America can intervene in these countries at relative low cost and do things like take presidents away illegally, by the way, the sense is that the future for Latin America is not limited to the United States. That if you want technology, if you want trade, if you want foreign investment, the North Atlantic, the United States and Europe will not suffice. And all you need to do is look, the Gulf states are everywhere in Latin America now, investing big time. China too. And it's not just China. If you look at Japan, it's really quite remarkable. I'll give you just one, one instance of this. Brazil now trades more with Vietnam than it does with Peru, which is a contiguous neighbor. This is A new geoeconomic and geotechnological reality for Latin America. And US Intervention is very unlikely to change that, because the fact of the matter is that the US doesn't have the discipline of a clear cut strategy to engage the region, and many wonder whether it has the resources to play that role in the region.
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C
And what might be true for Latin America could also be true for the world, maybe. You wrote what I think is a prescient piece for the magazine titled the Rise of the Non Aligned A that was published just before Trump returned to the White House in January 2025. And in that piece, you explored what was already becoming apparent then, that the foreign policy of the second Trump administration would not be isolationist or restrained or seeking necessarily to extract the United States from the world, but rather that it would want to extract more from the world for the United States. And you observe that this would not be as easy as many people in Washington hoped. You wrote Trump's bid to reassert American hegemony will run into a world that is far less pliant than he imagines it to be. On the one hand, we have the example of Venezuela, but now we have Iran. So where do you think that assessment or that prediction of yours has, has brought us?
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Whenever I think about what's happening in the world now, I like to look at the early 19th century, when you have a world of multiple centers of power and very intense geopolitical competition among the great powers. What happens in such situations is that countries know that they have an awful lot of leeway. These gives countries far more leeway than a unipolar system when there's only one top dog. And either you follow or you become recalcitrant and therefore a target. And far more room for maneuver than a bipolar system like the Cold War, where you have to make choices that are clear cut, least one of the major powers will intervene and chop your head off. Now, there is a sense across capital cities and not just Latin America, everywhere in Africa, across the Middle east and in Southeast Asia, that the game is afoot, that there is plenty of diplomatic activity going on, huge uncertainty as to which countries are going to be winners of the technological competition of the day and the economic competition of the day, a lot of uncertainty as to whether America will remain as powerful as it has been since 1945 by 2045. And in that context, countries hedge they are extremely reluctant to tie their hands to, to one major power simply because they have a hard time assessing how power and influence are moving in the world and looking at the Iran war, which again, from the standpoint of most of these capital cities, is a war in which the United States made a mistake. It's a war in which at least after a little bit more than a month, Iran, which is a far weaker country, has the upper hand and the advantage. This does not bode well for the United States. So when Trump imposed tariffs, all these countries screamed and shouted, of course, because so many interest groups at home were being hurt. But at the same time, they were moving very fast to diversify trade, to diversify access to technology, to double down on economic resilience. This world is not just a world in which the great powers are competing very avidly. The United States, China, Russia, It's a world in which every middle power and even small countries, from middle powers like Canada or Turkey or Brazil to very small countries like South Africa or like Bolivia and Latin America or, or like Thailand or the Philippines, they are recrafting foreign policy really quickly with an eye on securing some degree of national autonomy. You know, the strategic autonomy that has been such a hallmark of foreign policy for countries like France is now a global trend. And some countries will succeed, some will fail, but that's where the game is. This is not just a world of great power competition. It's a world of competition across the board and a lot of diversity and a lot of creative foreign policy that we can see in places like India, big emerging countries that have aspirations to be great powers, or places like Singapore, which are tiny but incredibly clever and moving really fast to build up a new global order.
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C
Actually to follow on that, you know, we published a piece recently by the scholar Tanvi Madan called How to Survive in a Multi Aligned World. And in that piece she argued that, you know, in this current age, India's idiosyncratic foreign policy of, of stewing formal alliances and hedging could be a model for others to follow. It sounds to me that you might think that that's right and that should all become fence sitters now.
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That's absolutely right. By the way, I think her assessment that what we are seeing now is a major incentive given by the structure of the international system, given by the fact that you have multiple centers of power and that the United States is making so many mistakes and alienating so many allies or potential allies. That said, the idea that these countries are fancied carries with it just one problem, I think, which we need to explicitly. And it's the idea that these countries have no moral compass, that in the face of horrors such as, for example, Putin's illegal war against Ukraine out of national interest. These countries will not say much. After all, they don't want to take sides. They want to sit on the fence. And that is, I think, problematic because from the standpoint of the majority of the countries of the world, there is no moral superiority in the West. And this is a recent change. We must not underestimate the impact that the war in Gaza has had on the way the world understands the moral stance of the United States and Europe. The war in Iran now reinforces that trend. The idea that there is a virtuous west that demands that countries side with democracy and the values of human rights and human decency is going out of the window so fast. And the fact that President Trump has in recent days threatened with genocide, a whole nation is a new phenomenon for U.S. foreign policy and one that has ripple effects and consequences that are very long term. And not just for the United States, also for Europe, also for Canada, as long as they side with that position either explicitly or implicitly. So one of the troubles now, I think, that makes global order so bubbly is the fact that there is absolute certainty that there is no moral compass on one side. This is not a story of good guys against bad guys. In a world of geopolitical competition, nasty behavior is very widely distributed and it's very hard for countries to protect against that unless they double down on some form of national autonomy and trying to do business with as many centers of power as possible given the inherent uncertainty of the world to come.
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C
I want to return to questions of morality and principles in a moment, but just to linger on the. You raised the Russian war on Ukraine as an interesting inflection point. And, you know, sitting here in New York, I was struck to see the ways in which discussion of the global South, I'm using that term in scare quotes, I suppose, as a kind of new political reality seemed to crop up after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There was a good deal of surprise here, as you suggested, that many countries around the world were not as full throated in their support of Ukraine. What did you make of that moment? And what did you make of the sort of sudden interest in the west in thinking about the global south as an entity?
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When Russia attacked Ukraine in multilateral institutions, in particular the UN General assembly, there was huge effort on the part of the Europeans and the United States to try and rally support for the condemnation of Russia. And in the very early days, condemnation there was. And yet as the war evolved, that attempt at building a majority coalition to denounce Russia's illegal actions began to fray, and within a year, the situation was far more complex. The reasons for these are two, I believe. First of all, there is an appreciation across the globe that unipolarity was a bad deal for the world. And this needs to be stressed because your textbook assessment of the unipolar moment of the height of globalization is one in which the fortunes of the majority of the world improve. This is the era of enormous economic growth that did benefit the Global south, and it helped lift millions and millions of people of the poverty line. And yet politically, the memory of unipolarity is the memory of Abu Grahib, is the memory of Iraq and Afghanistan, is the memory of the law being laid down on third parties, but not an international law, a selective US Made law. In that context, the expansion of NATO towards the east was seen as America trying to exert hegemony in Eastern Europe. And for many countries and diplomatic corps around the globe, what Putin was doing in 2022 and is doing till now is trying to impose limits on power. And as we've learned time and again, unrestrained power becomes completely dangerous. And for many countries to see that America cannot lay down the law wherever it wants is a plus, not a minus. So I think very cynically, and you may say hypocritically, many countries of the Global south quietly or explicitly actually thought that Putin doing what it did was a way to stop the expansion of NATO eastwards in a way that now reflects a world where power is a little bit more in check. And that is an inherent good. So that's one side of the story. The other side of the story, of course, is the fact that Ukraine has had a very hard time showing the world making the case for the world that this is a neo colonial war. For reasons that I have a hard time understanding, elites across the Global south do not tend to see the Ukraine as yet another victim of neocolonialism, which you may say it's strange, given that the definition of the Global south is countries that have had at some point in recent history, a firsthand experience of colonial imposition and colonial violence committed against them. Why that's the case I don't really understand, but I think it's a reality on the ground that Ukraine has not commanded the support that many in Europe expected that it would.
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And the flip side of that, then, is also not seeing Russia as a kind of imperial aggressor.
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Absolutely. And I have, again, a very hard time understanding that. I think part of the story is, of course, that Russia Like China, by the way, and now Iran, are seen as counterweights to US hegemony after 30 years of unipolarity, which, as I said, for the majority of these countries is not a happy memory, is a memory of unilateral imposition and an awful lot of violence. Even if, as I said, economically, countries from across the global south benefited so much from the era of globalization that that period is a synonym of.
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In our pages, you often see debates about what kind of shape the world is now taking. You know, is it. If it's no longer unipolar, is it becoming bipolar, multipolar, Is it being carved into spheres of influence? How do you think these questions and their possible answers look when you're asking them and trying to answer them from outside of the West?
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So outside of the West, I think there is a frustration, which is that the terms of the debate are whether the world is unipolar, bipolar, or multipolar by counting the amount of great powers. So whether you think China is a great power now, whether you think Russia is a great power now, and what's frustrating about that way of approaching the issue of polarity is that if you're standing in capital cities, from Jakarta to Manila to Pretoria to Mexico City, what you see is not only that there are new centers of power in the form of Russia and China, now Iran, but. But also that power has become far more diffuse. It's not just the power of states now. Private companies, in particular big techs, are a source of major power and influence in their own right. And judging by the pace of the technological revolution, this is going to be all the more moving forward. Then on top of that, you now have the agency of many of these countries of the global south that simply cannot be ignored if you want to tackle certain things. There is no way you can deal with climate change without having the Indias, the Indonesias and Brazils of the world on board, simply because they themselves can play havoc on any sort of deal to try and curb carbon emissions. From transnational crime to global pandemics. The notion that you can provide global order by a concert of powers that sits in a room, Yalta model or Vienna conference model, is very implausible. So the dominant perception, I would claim, is that power has not only moved away from the United States, it's also moved away from states to the private sector, which of course, can be regulated by the state, but can also influence the state and capture the state in many instances, in many political systems, and in democratic systems in particular. And then there's been the rise of public opinion and elites from outside the west, which creates a whole new reality that needs to be reckoned with and that's what makes the world multipolar.
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C
Just as an aside, how does the non west, for lack of a better term in that sense, exercise power and influence when you're talking about the rise of public opinion and certain elites?
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So there has been a third world, global south slash post colonial project in international relations going all the way back to the 1940s and 1950s with decolonization. So if you look at voting patterns in the United nations, for example, you will see that there's been a persistent coalition among non Western states around key issues. I'm not suggesting that this is a perfect coalition, that it acts all the time together, that there are many contradictions and tensions, of course, no doubts about that. But the idea that there is a challenge to the west, that there is an organized challenge to perceived imposition of international law, of selective international law, that there is a shared claim to cultural autonomy and expression, that there are demands for certain rights and laws that has been a constant in international relations for the better part of the last 80 years. But in recent times this has accelerated enormously. Let me give you two examples. One is the issue of genocide in Gaza. Who would have thought that the notion of genocide, that the systematic argument of genocidal intent would be organized and presented as a case, as a legal case against Israel? Only a few years ago that would have been unthinkable. And yet this is where we are now. Now, whether that is going to be of consequence to the world remains to be seen. But at least on the basis of what we are seeing now, Israel is at a level of isolation that is really quite remarkable. And irrespective of what one's position is vis a vis Israel or US support for Israel, the fact is that the international politics of the Middle east have evolved in a way that put Israel in a very challenging position moving forward to do with this. And I think it's very hard to imagine this picking up without the agency of Global south states. I'll give you another example. The terms of the debate about reparations for slavery. Again, we may not see these take off and we may not see reparations happen in any detectable way at a global level. But the fact that there is a movement of that kind of is a new phenomenon. And that phenomenon I think needs to be reckoned with. Then there's of course a long list of transnational problems which as I said, are Very difficult to manage without having some buy in from developing countries. Climate change is an obvious one, but take global finance. That's another one we've seen ever since the 2008 financial crisis and the solution to that crisis, which was not the G7 but the G20, and the debate about how to regulate global finance and how to ensure that global finance remains a source of stability and not instability. With the advent of cryptocurrencies and all sorts of new instruments for economic development, this reality now is one that needs to be negotiated at a table that is not a table of North Atlantic nations only. So in all these respects, I think the world of today is fundamentally different from the world. I'm not saying 100 years ago or 60 years ago. I'm saying the world of 20 years ago.
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C
You know, one of the striking features of both the intervention in Venezuela and now in Iran has been Washington's relative disinterest in staking any kind of moral high ground. I mean, there is some rhetoric around regime change initially and supposed threats posed by Iran, but it seems that the Trump administration has done little, really, to suggest that it's actually committed to high principles of any kind. You know, after Venezuela, after the intervention in Venezuela that removed Maduro, you wrote a piece for us titled the World will come to Ms. Western Hypocrisy. And you offered in that piece a sort of subtle critique of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Kynie and his speech at Davos this year in which he poured scorn on the hypocrisies of the liberal international order and sort of even offered a kind of obituary for it. Unlike honey, you were not willing to let that order or some of its structures go so easily. You wrote a world in which powerful states no longer feel compelled to justify themselves morally is not more honest. It is more dangerous. Why is that the case?
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Ever since America became a great power, it's portrayed its foreign policy in the language of moral superiority. The idea that there was something exceptional and exceptionally good about US Power, that America could promote certain values and certain political forms, like republicanism, against the horrors of monarchy, like human rights, like an international order based on laws and institutions that were multilateral and gave the little guy a voice and a vote. And these ideals were very hard to implement all the time. America itself has a long colonial past, from Central America to the Philippines to Europe, interventions across the board in the Middle east, in Africa, Latin America. So the disconnect between ideal and reality was always there. So there's always some hypocrisy. But that hypocrisy was a very powerful tool in the hands of weaker nations who could then turn to the United States and point out the disconnect between word and deed and then ask America to behave better. That, in turn gave domestic groups inside the United States, civil society in particular, a very powerful tool to try and make their officials behave better. So, for example, when a series of hearings in Congress unveiled the degree to which the CIA had been in cahoots with various autocratic regiments, regimes across the third World to topple their leaders and sometimes kill their leaders, Congress reined in the executive on the argument that America should do better in the altar of all these principles that are centered on moral superiority. So hypocrisy has been a very important oil for the machine of the global order for a long time. And whenever leaders pretend to be better than they are, they grant others the opportunity that demand that they actually do. When you throw hypocrisy out of the window, what you have is a world of amorality. You no longer pretend to be better than you. You are. You simply say it as it is. And while that might be refreshing, because your audiences now know that you're not lying to their faces or you're trying to dupe them into thinking you're better than you actually are, now they have nothing to grasp. They have no tool through which they can demand better behavior. Because you're not promising to be better than you are so you can have the leader of the free world threaten genocide of a society on a tweet. How do you begin to deal with that? How do you try and manage power that way? So my argument in that piece was we will miss that world. Hypocrisy in international politics is as important as hypocrisy in interpersonal relations. It's a common glue that holds society together, opening the possibility that third parties can demand that we do better than we actually do. And losing that, I think, opens the door to a world that is nastier and in a context of very heightened geopolitical competition. What a shame to be on the ground without the resource to the language of morality to try and steer the conversation not only among the great powers themselves, but between the great powers and the rest of the world.
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C
And lastly, I'd like to close by asking you on that note, what can countries in the global south do, should they want to, to ensure that the world doesn't just head down the path of amorality and nihilism and the exercise of power, and that some of these principles that so many have worked hard to uphold in the last 70, 80 years don't just erode and crumble and fall away.
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In my view, there's only one productive pathway ahead which is to double down on institutionalized cooperation. I don't know whether that's by rescuing international institutions to the extent possible. Even if at times the great powers will hesitate. I don't know if that means accepting that America will no longer be part of these deals. And it's now a time for China to reign in many of these international institutions, from the UN to the World Trade Organization or the World Health Organization, or whether this should be done by building new fora and new sort of geometries whereby countries across the board can cooperate in a way that is institutionalized. But unless we have some kind of cooperation that is centered on regulations, on institutions that protect the weak against the strong, but also protect the strong in their ability to provide public goods, we're in deep trouble. So what I would like the Global south to do is to engage very proactively in the recrafting, rebuilding and the creation of new, if necessary, international institutions and do as much as they can to ensure that the great powers of the day sitting those institutions and talk to one another. There's nothing more dangerous now, I think, than instances of world politics in which the major powers do not speak to one another. And we can see it already in the global non proliferation regime. This is the first time in a long time when we are in really dangerous terrain because not only there is a danger that Iran will pull out of the non proliferation treaty, now you have great powers threatening to use nuclear weapons, which had never happened before. And for the first time, the major owners of arsenals have stopped sharing information, talking to one another about the prospects for nuclear war and nuclear proliferation. And that is really very dangerous. So anything and everything that will reverse that trend, I think would be an invaluable contribution that the Global south can make.
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C
That was Matias Spector speaking to us from Sao Paulo. After the break, we'll turn to Kishore Mehbubani in Singapore on how Asia is responding to the war.
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And now to my conversation with Kishore Mehbubani. Kishore, welcome to the podcast.
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My pleasure.
- [46:20]
C
We've been learning from your work within and without the pages of Foreign affairs for decades now, so it's wonderful to finally have you on the show. I should note that we're speaking on the morning of Tuesday, April 14. Over the weekend, talks between Iran and the United States in Islamabad collapsed. The US has now imposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports, and unsurprisingly, the price of oil has once again gone up. What's probably been insufficiently appreciated here in the west is just how much the war in Iran has affected people's lives in many parts of Asia. Something like 80% of the gas and oil that habitually passes through the Strait of Hormuz is normally bound for Asian countries. So the closure of the Strait has led to huge fuel shortages across the region. You're in Singapore, in the heart of Southeast Asia. How does the fallout of the war look from there?
- [47:17]
B
Well, Kanish, you're right about Singapore being at the heart of Southeast Asia, and clearly we are witnessing some serious challenges in our region. I'm sure you've read the news reports about people queuing up to get gasoline in Thailand, about Philippines asking people to work for four days a week, and Malaysia considering whether or not to reduce its fuel subsidies. So it is having a serious impact on the region, which is why most people in the region believe that this war was completely unnecessary. But having said that, I also have to add that most Southeast Asian countries have relatively competent, technocratic governments that are quite used to managing crisis like this and know what needs to be done to keep the situation going. So in that sense, while there is deep concern about what's happened, I wouldn't describe it as panic in the region.
- [48:24]
C
When you look at the sort of alarm in cities like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, what does that look like from Singapore? In many respects, those sorts of cities, they imagine their futures and their prosperity much in the same way, with the inspiration of a place like Singapore, a city that would be open to business, would be open to the world, and would use its relative peace and stability as a way of generating growth for its residents. What does the sort of panic and alarm that has descended on those cities, how does that resonate in Singapore?
- [49:01]
B
Well, I think it has provided Singapore, and by the way, the rest of Southeast Asia a very powerful lesson, that if your countries want to grow and prosper, first you must get your geopolitics right. And this is where many in the rest of the world haven't understood that even though Southeast Asia is by far the most diverse region on planet Earth, okay, so out of 700 million people, almost, you have 250 million Muslims, 150 million Christians, 150 million Buddhists, Mahayana Buddhists, Hinayana Buddhists, and you have Taoist, Confucianists, Hindus, and also lots of Communists in Southeast Asia. Now, this diverse region of planet Earth has been described, as British historians, as the Balkans of Asia, correctly. And yet, by and large, this region has been remarkably peaceful since the last war in the region, the Sino Vietnamese War of 1979. Now, that's a remarkably long period of peace that this region has had, almost five decades. And that peace is a result of geopolitical competence of the highest order. And asean. Every year, when ASEAN meets every year, it invites all the great powers to come, every one of them rising, falling. United States, Russia, eu, Japan, India, Australia, South Korea, New Zealand, everybody. And so what we have done is created a political ecosystem in which everyone has a stake in keeping it the way that it has. And so this unusual geopolitical calm you see in Southeast Asia is a result of the decades of effort, you know, which I've actually documented a book called the ASEAN Miracle. And what you're seeing in the Gulf, by contrast, is unfortunately, a high degree of geopolitical naivety, which sort of believe that if you can trust one power, you're okay, you're being protected. And that's always a mistake. You must always endure politics, hedge your bets, and keep up the good ties with as many great powers as possible. That's the lesson of Southeast Asia.
- [51:48]
C
Well, both the Gulf and Southeast Asia, Singapore specifically, have prospered and grown tremendously in recent decades on the backs of what we call globalization and into economic interdependence. We have become used to talking in recent years about weaponized interdependence and the dangers of becoming over reliant on particular suppliers for commodities. And after this energy shock, I've seen, for instance, that Japan is considering greater use of nuclear energy, which is important because of its sort of tricky, fraught relationship with that source of energy. Indonesia is speeding up geothermal and solar energy projects. You've said that Southeast Asia has managed this shock fairly well, even though it has been fairly challenging for many people there. But do you see meaningful shifts ahead in this kind of diversification of sources of energy and other kinds of commodities?
- [52:59]
B
I think you used the right word, diversification, because some people like to say that what the world is witnessing is de globalization. Now, that's rubbish. Now, it's true, as Mark Carney said in Davos, that there has been a rupture. But the big economic lesson of 2025 to the world is that there was rupture and there was resilience in the global system. Because you remember when President Trump launches Liberation day tariffs in April 2025, all the experts, including IMF, including OECD, including the World Economic Forum, said, gosh, gosh, the global economy is going to shrink and global trade will diminish. Guess what? The opposite happened. And for us in Singapore, what was truly remarkable about 2025 is that Singapore is by far the most globalized country in the world. You know, our total Trade is about three and a half times the size of our GNP. And we were praying in 2025 for 2% economic growth because our per capita income is very high, right? $94,000. Although when I was born, it was $500. And at $94,000, growing at 2% is respectable. But in 2025, we grew at 5%. Now, when the most globalized country in the world grows at 5% in a difficult year, 2025, it shows that there is no deglobalization that is going on. People are rewiring, adapting, adjusting, looking for new sources, looking for new markets. And that process of rewiring is going on every day as you and I speak. And that's why, even though in the short term people are worried about the impact of the Iran war on us, in the medium term and long term, the bullishness for this region is still
- [55:15]
C
carrying on, has that process of rewiring, as you say, received further impetus from the sort of erratic tariff policy coming out of Washington. And, and the United States now ambiguous commitment to its old upholding of free trade,
- [55:34]
B
certainly. But at the same time, what's interesting is that the US Trade with the world is also carrying on. And you know, as, you know, what makes it very difficult for people is that the United States imposes tariffs and the United States gives a lot of exemptions. But, you know, in critical sectors like pharmaceuticals and so on, so forth, all kinds of exemptions are put in place. So, you know, in many ways the United States also, at the end of the day, understands that it needs the rest of the world for many critical things. And certainly the United States also discovered in 2025 that it has a very critical dependence on China for some very essential materials which are not irreplaceable anytime in the near future. And so the United States also, for the first time, possibly maybe in a hundred years, is realizing, hey, we can be held hostage too in this game of interdependence. Everyone thought only the United States was the only country which had the cards. So I'm hoping therefore that as a result, one, as they say, don't waste a crisis. I hope that some of the more thoughtful, sober minds in the United States would start to think long term and think strategically about whether or not it is in United States interest to reduce its dependence on the rest of the world. And by the way, that results in a world that is much more closely wired to China, that's a natural consequence, or is it better to have the rest of the world wired to the American economy? Now, that's a critical long term strategic decision that American policymakers should seriously ponder about as they think about the future, even for the United States.
- [57:40]
C
I want to ask about China, but let's stick for now to the war in Iran and let's shift a little bit to the political fallout of the war. You know, across Southeast Asia, there's been a range of responses to the US Israeli attack. Malaysia, for example, condemned the war. Indonesia was more careful in its wording, though it had. It has now, I believe some of its, some Indonesian officials have suggested that they, that they might reconsider involvement in Trump's so called Board of Peace. And other countries, including Singapore, have issued narrower statements of regret and concern. But behind such rhetoric, and, you know, you've sat in these chairs, how do you think the war and its conduct is sitting with leaders in capitals across the region?
- [58:30]
B
I think frankly, globally, in all the private conversations that are taking place, and I Again, suspect this is true of Latin America and Africa. Also, the big question they're asking is why was this war necessary in the first place? You know, this was truly, by any definition, a completely unnecessary war because after the June bombings last year, the United States announced that Iran's nuclear capability had been destroyed. Right. And what is absolutely unclear to anyone in the world is what is the long term strategy in this game? And I know that, I mean, if the New York Times report is right in saying that Bibi Netanyahu, when he went to the White House, convinced the White House that a simple decapitation would just solve the problem of Iran overnight, that statement showed a dramatic ignorance of the long history of Persian civilization, which has gone through so many moments of near death and resurrected itself. So here you're not dealing with a Venezuela, you're dealing with a very strong and ancient civilization. And one thing I learn as I get older is that as I look around the world and the performance of societies, I see increasingly it depends on what I call your civilizational sinews. What muscles do you have as a civilization? And clearly Persian civilization has demonstrated over thousands of years that it's one of the strongest civilizations. And to think that two weeks of bombing can destroy it, I think is very short sighted. And as you can see, at the end of the day, one can obviously disagree about with Iran about how it violated international law, and it has violated international law, but it has in defense, accumulated a weapon that clearly is almost bringing the global economy to a crawl.
- [61:10]
C
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
- [61:11]
B
Yeah, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. You know, and you know, the one lesson of geopolitics that I learned after practicing it for several decades is that when you go into a situation, please never go into it with plan A. With the best case scenario in any geopolitical issue, you must have plan A, Plan B, Plan C. Because in many instances Plan C is for the cock up. And that happens so frequently. And clearly what's happened in Iran is a major cock up. I mean, until I'm allowed to use the word. So you must sit back and also look at the larger picture about whether or not this really in the long term benefits, for example, American national interests. Because I've been saying for years now that every war that United States fights in is a gift to China. Obviously it is, because the Chinese know that every decade of peace that they buy, they become so much stronger at the end of each decade. So each war gives China a free decade. And that's A huge gift.
- [62:36]
C
You mentioned civilization and you were involved, I believe, in 1993 in our pages, in the debates around Samuel Huntington's clash of civilizations. And when you're watching this war against Iran unfold and you see some of the rhetoric coming from certain officials in the White House, thinking of Pete Hexeth, the Defense Secretary in particular, and even from Trump, and some of the curious iconography he has spread on social media, which seems to cast the war in a curiously religious and Christian nationalist dimension. How do you see civilization rearing its head here? Or maybe not civilization, but civilizational identity.
- [63:24]
B
So we are living in a very complex world today, which is very hard to capture in any kind of simple black and white scenarios, because on the one hand, it's very clear that we are seeing the end of the era of Western domination of world history. And by the way, the west has done a remarkable job dominating the world for over 200 years now. But I always hasten to add that the end of Western domination of world history is not the end of the West. The west is still going to remain the single strongest civilization on planet Earth for a long time, but its capacity to dominate and drive world history has diminished significantly and will continue to diminish in the coming decades because other civilizations are emerging. And certainly the two obvious candidates are China and India. The return of China, India are the two biggest things that are going to change the code and chemistry of the world significantly. But at the same time, neither China nor India will emerge as anti Western civilizations. Because China knows that the reason why it is succeeding now is that it has injected critical elements of the DNA of Western civilization into its body politics, for example, mastery of science and technology, for example, free market economics in its private sector. So it has injected various elements of Western DNA into society. And of course, the thing that surprises me most, of course, given how the Chinese aesthetic is so different from the Western aesthetic that the largest number of new Western classical orchestras are now emerging in China. That's what this example of fusion of civilizations. So in this complex world that is coming, and believe me, it is going to get more and more complex, the stronger civilizations will re emerge and show their civilizational strengths in this coming century. Which is why the 21st century is the best century to be living in.
- [65:59]
C
On the terms civilization, you know, the ruling dispensations both in India and China like to cast their countries as not nation states, but civilization states, when in fact one could argue that the country that the, the Communist party in China presides over was created in 1949. And the country that the, the BJP government in India presides over was created in 1947. Why is it correct to accept that kind of framing of those countries as civilizations and not just nation states?
- [66:40]
B
You know, it's, I, I'm really glad that you chose as the title of my essay the Dream palace of the West. Now every civilization has a dream palace. And the citizens of that civilization get their identity by identifying themselves with the peaks of their civilization. So to, and this is an example I give, do you think that when President Xi Jinping goes to bed at night in China, is his dream to revive communism and make Karl Marx the center of world history? Or is his dream to revive the great Chinese civilization and show the rest of the world, world, look at how glorious we were and how glorious we are today after a century of humiliation that we suffered. And similarly interesting thing about Narendra Modi is that in contrast to all the previous Indian Prime Ministers and for example, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was a good friend of mine. I served on his Global Advisory Council. He always wore a jacket and tie, always at meetings. And Prime Minister Narendra Modi refuses to wear a jacket and tie. Now that's also what I call a civilizational signal there of identity and so on and so forth. And, but we must also remember, and to be completely candid, a hundred years, if I had been having this conversation with you a hundred years ago in 1926, all the leading minds of Asia felt ashamed by their civilizations, ashamed they could see how far they had fallen. And in India, they resented the fact that a hundred thousand Englishmen could rule India so effortlessly. Right? That was 100 years ago. Today if 100,000 Englishmen returned to India, they'd be massacred. It's almost inconceivable. And just to illustrate the point about how relative weights and strengths are changing, in the year 2000, when the 21st century opened, the British economy was still 3.5 times larger than that of the Indian economy. Today. The Indian economy is larger. And by 2050, India will be four times the size of the United Kingdom. Now just imagine that in 50 years the UK goes from being almost four times bigger than India to becoming one quarter the size of India. Now this kind of incredible shift of power doesn't happen on often in history. We are actually living through a time of massive shifts of power and especially frankly, the return of Asia, because that's the story of the 21st century.
- [70:03]
C
And you think that that kind of shift is not best captured by thinking of it in terms of the jockeying or rising and falling of nation states. But you see it as a wider sort of cultural shift.
- [70:19]
B
Definitely. And I think one of the great weaknesses of the Western mind that has developed as a result of the west dominating the world history. The Western mind keeps believing that the only societies that can succeed in the long term are societies that in one way or another become replicas of the West. And in their minds, exhibit A is Japan. You see, Japan became a great power because it imitated the west and the emperor wore coattails, and you had European traditions in the court, and the Japanese were very happy to be part of the G7. Now, you know what? That era of Asian states believing that the way to succeed is to become carbon copies of Western societies is dying, and a new era is emerging where none of these societies believe that they're going to succeed by becoming replicas of the West. And frankly, the very sorry performance of Europe on many counts, economic, geopolitical, even cultural confidence. Very few, very few people in Asia look up to Europe and say, hey, that's the future. Frankly, they look at Europe and say, isn't this a wonderful museum? But they don't want to replicate a museum in your country.
- [71:57]
C
Your last piece for us, published earlier this year in the March April issue, was titled, as you've mentioned, the Dream palace of the West. And it was a response to Alexander Stubb, the president of Finland, and his essay for us, in which I think, you know, he made a point that you just echoed here, that Western governments, Western societies, can't expect other countries to follow the same path that the west has and can't expect other countries to embrace the same sorts of political systems that the west has. Which in my mind, I suppose, strikes a note of greater humility than you're suggesting. I think you agreed with much of what he said, but you argued that Western countries don't understand and don't listen to the viewpoints of those in the global south sufficiently. And I'm paraphrasing you, but you said that people around the world have grown tired about European preaching about Russian crimes in Ukraine, while the west in large part condoned the kinds of carnage that we saw in Gaza. You wrote, no one respects an adulterous priest who preaches marital fidelity in church. But aren't lots of countries, and not just those in the west, prone to hypocrisy?
- [73:18]
B
I mean, that's true. Not just all countries. Frankly, most human beings are prone to hypocrisy is a natural human feeling, and sometimes as they say, hypocrisy is a kind of complement to virtue. Because you're saying, you're trying to say, hey, I'm actually very virtuous, which is a good thing, rather than come out and say, actually I want to be evil. Right, we don't want to be evil. But at the same time it's important to emphasize two facts. First is that the respect and reverence for the west that we saw, especially in my childhood, in my early years, was very real and very powerful. Very real. And believe me, as a child and as a young man, I believe that the only way we could succeed is by emulating the West. That's why I believe, in fact, I also, to be honest with you, in my memoirs, I describe how as a child I believe that me with my brown skin, I was intellectually and culturally inferior to the white skinned men. I believe that. I really believe that. I mean, I'm not exaggerating it. I live in the, in a British colony and I believed it. So the respect and reverence for the west wasn't, wasn't phony, it was real. As I mentioned, 100 years ago it was even more powerful. But today that's gone. And today the west, which makes up 12% of the world's population, as I emphasize in my article, has got to make a massive effort to understand the 88% with whom they share planet Earth. And they've got to understand that all these societies are going through massive changes and frankly, rediscovering themselves and rediscovering their own civilizational strengths. And so, for example, in the case of Ukraine, as you mentioned, it's what Russia did by invading Ukraine was illegal. It is illegal. It was illegal. And that's why 141 countries condemned Russia. But then when the west went ahead and imposed sanctions on Russia, the West should have noticed that 85% of the world's population didn't impose sanctions on Russia. Now that was as loud a wake up call as you can get. And the west should ask themselves, why is it the president of Brazil? You know, Brazil is, no, it's not a crazy state, it's a serious Latin American state, said, hey, it's not that simple black and white. You were also trying in some ways to rub sand into Russian ice by expanding NATO recklessly without thinking about, how about their own long term legitimate security concerns. And frankly, Ukraine should have been a bridge between Europe and Russia rather than to try to be used, as I said in my article, as a knife in the back of Russia. And you know, if you look in, if you look at Southeast Asia, right, we in asean. ASEAN was created, by the way, as an anti communist communist organization. And we thought when Vietnam fell to the communists, everything was dead. Southeast Asia was going to collapse under communist advance. Guess what? Vietnam didn't become an eternal enemy of asean. We actually got Vietnam admitted into asean. I was in Hanoi last year when Vietnam organized the ASEAN Future Forum. I was stunned. In the 1980s, I, as the Singapore Ambassador to the UN, fought the Vietnamese ambassador every day over the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia in the 1980s. Ten years after I fought them, Vietnam joined ASEAN. And today Vietnam is probably the most enthusiastic member of asean. I give that as an example of how Europe should have tried to find a formula for integrating Russia into a different kind of European fabric, which doesn't insist you must become exactly like us. No, Vietnam is still, by the way, run by Communist Party, even though ASEAN was set up as an anti communist organization. But we broadened our tent because the world is diverse and big. And I think one of the advantages that Asians have as they try to understand the world of tomorrow is that we in Asia are used to dealing with diversity. And we never expect, I mean, a Chinese would never expect an Indian to become a Chinese, and an Indian would never expect Chinese to become Indian. We're different. We're very different. Right? But you can get along and you know, in Singapore is 75% Chinese. I belong to a minority within a minority, 10,000 Sindhis in Singapore. But as a minority, I can identify with the majority. So there are ways and means of getting along that the west hasn't learned because the west doesn't know what humility means.
- [78:48]
C
Talk about China. Briefly, you mentioned that you believe that China is a beneficiary of the ongoing war between the US and Iran. And in a piece you wrote for us a few years ago called Asia's Third Way, you describe the tricky balancing act that many countries in the Global south have to manage. You know, threading between the United States and China, most governments, you wrote, are primarily concerned with economic development and do not wish to take sides in the contest between Beijing and Washington. In the wake of the turbulence of the past few years and indeed of the shocks right now coming out of the Middle east, does that basic assessment remain the same or do some countries now feel more inclined or feel more pressure to choose one way or the other?
- [79:37]
B
I think the net effect of the Iran war, I mean, by the way, I wanted one lesson I learned because I'm very old is that it always takes time to see the outcome, frankly. You know, if you had told me in 1985 when I was fighting Vietnam every day that 10 years later Vietnam would join ASEAN, I would say impossible. But the impossible happened. Okay? So in the same way, I think everybody understands today that China's rise is unstoppable. You know, the Chinese have this capacity to not just think long term, but act long term. And I just give one statistic. In the year 2000, China's share of global manufacturing was 5%. 5% in 2000, today is almost 30%. By 2030, it could hit 45%. Now, a country share. Global manufacturing does not grow from 5% of the world to 45% of the world in 30 years without the most rigorous, careful, thoughtful, long term planning and equally importantly, execution. Because you try plan A and you scout. Oh, doesn't work, sorry, we have to dump it. Go to plan B, try something else. And the Chinese have done a brilliant job. And today, frankly, the strongest economy in the world, not necessarily in size, but the strongest economy in the world in terms of being able to manufacture and deliver products in so many dimensions, which, by the way, benefit a lot of people. China makes it so cheap that in the most distant villages in Africa, you now have electricity and access to the world. Now, frankly, that's a gift from China to the world in many ways. So, I mean, it's true that the Chinese have trade surpluses that have to be dealt with. And the Chinese should be more sensitive to the impact of their exports to the rest of the world. World. The Chinese should open up their markets more. But I think they understand that in fact, China is the only country. And I attended a fair a few months ago in Shanghai. China is the only country that organizes the China International Import Exposition. Ciie, not export import. Right. So the Chinese also have to understand that they have to be aware of the impact on the rest of the world, which is definitely growing. They have to become more sensitive and probably learn a few lessons from Europe's lack of sensitivity.
- [82:25]
C
How do you then understand the motivations in Beijing that underlie aggressive posturing and indeed even moves around territorial disputes, whether it's the Himalayas with India or in the South China Sea and other maritime disputes, or what is animating that kind of friction.
- [82:46]
B
There has been a lot of assertive posturing by China. No question, China today, you know, I give a very simple example. You and I began this conversation. There was a cat sitting next to me. I'd be feeling very relaxed and comfortable talking to You. I turned around half an hour later, the cat has become a tiger. I don't feel comfortable. China is a country that has gone from being a cat to a tiger. Now, please don't expect a tiger to behave like a cat. The second largest economy in the world, the second most powerful country in the world, surely is going to be assertive. This is what geopolitics has been like. But the question is, will they become aggressive? And this is where the Chinese have learned a lesson from their old wisdom that the stupidest way to win a war is to fight it. And the best way to win a war is to not fight it. So you mentioned South China Sea. China and the Philippines have had clashes. Guess what? The Chinese patrol boat attacked the Philippines. Boats with water, okay? Hoses of water. I would love to go to Gaza and see in Gaza. The Israeli troops attack Gaza with hoses of water. There's a big difference. Huge difference. The Chinese, by the way, have incredible firepower today. Please, whatever you do, don't underestimate the military capabilities of China. See a very serious, very powerful country. But if we in the neighborhood of China can persuade China, you can become big and strong. You should become big and strong. But please understand what our concerns are and learn how to work with us. And surprisingly, you know, we do manage to get through to the Chinese.
- [85:00]
C
Do you think this war in Iran will affect in any way Chinese calculations about whether or not in some point in the future they launch a war to take Taiwan?
- [85:13]
B
I'm quite confident that the Chinese won't try to take Taiwan militarily. Unless, of course, by the way, if a Taiwanese government declares independence tomorrow, China will attack Taiwan the day after tomorrow. That's a hundred percent certainty. That's a given. But it's very clear, or the survey after survey shows that the people of Taiwan are sensible. They know that they don't want to go to war with China and that's why they don't support independence. Right. They may not necessarily support reunification, but they don't support independence either. So if you can preserve the status quo, there'll be no war. So, you know, in geopolitics, you got to watch what they call the correlation of forces. The correlation of forces are working so powerfully in China's favor vis a vis Taiwan that the Chinese don't have to go to war. Eventually, the huge magnetic strength of China will draw Taiwan closer to it. And you saw, by the way, the visit of the opposition leader to China. That's an indication of how you try to solve problems by talking between two sides, which, by the way, both claim to be completely opposite. So, you know, this. This idea that everything is going to be resolved militarily in one form or another is an idea that somehow or other has affected the Western mind. And as a result, you notice that the west, as Samuel Huntington says, has been grown to power more by the use of violence than anything else. And that's frankly a very bad habit that the west has got into today.
- [87:15]
C
In these pages and elsewhere, you see furious debates about the shape of world order. Is unipolarity over? Is the world now multipolar? You've been involved in these debates for decades, at least as far back as the end of the Cold War War. What's your perception of the trajectory ahead? And how might this current war in Iran shape that trajectory?
- [87:39]
B
Well, I think the current war in Iran, again with the qualification that it takes some time before you see how the dust settles and what is the outcome is clearly, number one, as I said at the beginning, ending the era of Western domination of world history is a demonstration of how the limits to what the west can do. And two, is clearly going to be a multipolar world. The unipolar world was a very brief moment of history, maybe the 1990s, 2000s. But over time, you know, as China emerged and as India is emerging, as Russia is showing, that is not a weak straw that can be pushed around in the way that some Europeans thought that they could. And frankly, in some ways, as Iran is demonstrating, there are societies that have decided that they want to be part of the modern world, but on their own terms. And so it's a whole new global fabric that is being created as we speak because there's massive amount of rebalancing that is going on. And by the way, I also predict a happy future for the United States because if the United States can learn how to revive many of the old friendships it has developed for decades and decades, then the United States can also be a comfortable player in this multipolar world.
- [89:18]
C
Well, on that note, Kishore, we'll close the conversation. You know, it's been a pleasure talking to you and reading you over the years, and we look forward to doing so again.
- [89:28]
B
Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thank you for listening. You can find the articles that we discussed on today's show@foreign affairs.com this episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview was produced by Mary Kate Godfrey, Rachel Powell and Kanish Garoor. Our audio engineer is Todd Yeager. Original music is by Robin Hilton. Special thanks as well to Arina Hogan make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts and if you like what you heard, please take a minute to rate and review it. We release a new show every Thursday. Thanks again for tuning in.
- [90:24]
C
We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview. Don't Forget to visit foreignaffairs.comspotlight to sign up for Dan Kurtz Phelan's for Free weekly newsletter featuring more of the clear
- [90:35]
B
headed analysis that you enjoy here on the podcast. Sign up today@foreign affairs.com spotlight.