March 2005
Age of Innocence
Beyond the Age of Innocence:
A Worldly View of America
by
About the Author:
Kishore Mahbubani will assume his new post as
Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore in August 2004.
After having lived in New York for six years, he will return to Singapore with his wife and three children.
Editorial Reviews:
From Publishers Weekly
More than half of the world's population lives in Asia and the Middle East-and is becoming more and more alienated from America. Now a uniquely qualified Asian writer explains-provocatively-why.
After publishing articles in leading American journals over two decades, Kishore Mahbubani was described as"an Asian Toynbee, preoccupied with the rise and fall of civilizations" by The Economist. Trained in philosophy in North America and Asia, and well-experienced in realpolitik as a diplomat on the world stage, Mahbubani has unusual insight into America's ever more troubled relationship with the rest of the world.
In Beyond the Age of Innocence Mahbubani reveals to us the America that Asia and the rest of the world see. We are a country that has given hope to billions by creating a society where destiny is not determined at birth. After the Second World War, we created a global order which allowed many nations to flourish. But when the Cold War ended, America made a terrible mistake. We started behaving like a normal country, ignoring the plight of others, indifferent to the consequences of our decisions on others. America was imprudent in its policy towards two large masses of mankind: the Chinese and Muslim populations. Guantanamo damaged our moral authority, but Abu Ghraib, paradoxically, may have demonstrated the accountability of American institutions. Still, disillusionment with America has spread to all corners.
To allow any lasting gap between America and the world, Mahbubani argues, would be a colossal strategic mistake for America and a huge loss to the world. But there is still time for the US to change course; and in this thought-provoking, visionary book, Mahbubani shows us how.
Booklist
Mahbubani's provocative previous work, Can Asians Think? (2002), pressed Westerners
to reexamine their ignorance of the East and earned its diplomat-scholar author
comparisons to Arnold Toynbee and even Max Weber.
His latest book expounds an essentially similar thesis, packaged to draw American readers to Asia by way of post-9/11 concern about the image of the U.S. abroad. The U.S. has done more good for the world than any other civilization, Mahbubani exuberates, his credibility bolstered by years spent in New York as Singapore's ambassador to the UN.
But the U.S. has harmed the world, he continues, by opportunistically shirking the expectations the rest of the world hopes it will live up to, as evidenced by Afghanistan's jilted mujahadin, but especially by fickle fiscal policies toward Thailand and Indonesia during the recent Asian financial crisis.
Mahbubani's obligatory discussion of the U.S and Islam is eclipsed by his astute analysis of Chinese-American relations; less alarmist than most tellers of tales of sleeping dragons, he nevertheless credits the Chinese for patiently and profitably strategizing their way through decades of American mixed messages.
Pragmatic tough love for the new century.
Brendan Driscoll
American Library Association.
Washington Times, March 7, 2005
"A reasoned and sympathetic analysis of America's "benign" global power...
strongly critical."
Publishers Weekly
"Lucid analysis of America's diminishing prestige... thoughtfully detailed."
Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2005
"[America's] leaders would surely benefit from reading Beyond the Age of Innocence."
John Lewis Gaddis, Yale University
"Mahbubani establishes himself as the best interpreter of the world
to Americans -- and of Americans to the world."
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
"Everyone who is puzzled by the global distrust of [America] should
Beyond the Age of Innocence."
Strobe Talbott, President of the Brookings Institution
"Cogent, constructive criticism and practical, well-timed advice... Americans can't
ask more than that from Kishore Mahbubani."
Samuel Huntington, author of The Clash of Civilizations, and Who
Are We
"Mahbubani provides an absorbing, eloquent, and insightful perspective, enriched with
personal reminiscences... of American power on the world."
Fareed Zakaria, author of The Future of Freedom
"In this elegant book [Mahbubani] describes his hopes and fears about [America] and
the new world it finds itself in."
Paul Kennedy, author of the Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
"This is a lovely book, very personal and very reflective."