Word: mahbubani
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...Mahbubani, who served two terms as Singapore's ambassador to the United Nations, has published a cold-eyed look at how the rest of the world views the U.S. in the wake of Sept. 11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Beyond the Age of Innocence is written by a friend of America, aimed at Americans. If no one but the reflexive America bashers among the Davos crowd in Europe and Asia read it, the book will have been a failure...
...Some of the ground Mahbubani covers is familiar enough, but much is not. One of his arguments is that the loss of trust between the U.S. and the rest of the world started years before George W. Bush invaded Iraq "unilaterally." Mahbubani is particularly astute about how the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 damaged America's image overseas. He writes, for example, about how disillusioned Thais were when the U.S. did not bail them out after it had bailed out Mexico during a similar currency crisis in 1994. The reason the U.S. spurned Thailand may seem obvious...
...Mahbubani argues that the U.S. and the international institutions it effectively runs (the IMF, for example) always confuse America's own interests with what's good for everyone. This is true no matter who is in power, Mahbubani says. Indeed, the architects of the U.S. response to the Asian financial crisis were then Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin?now practically worshipped in the U.S. as the man behind the Clinton boom years?and Larry Summers, who succeeded Rubin as Treasury Secretary. Devout Bushies they are not, but neither saw the disconnect that to many Thais seemed utterly obvious after the fact...
...Mahbubani is equally forceful about U.S. abuses at its war-on-terror prison camps. He writes that Guant?namo Bay?where inmates have been held indefinitely without formal charges?has had a "profound effect" on the liberal ?lites that are America's "best friends abroad." Many Americans don't yet see the corrosive effects of this injustice, viewing Guant?namo as a necessary evil in a grim but vital war against the people who brought down the Twin Towers and beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. But I'll bet Christopher Hill gets it. Hill is the U.S. diplomat now charged...
...implicit comparison would drive many Americans to distraction. Guant?namo isn't in the same league as Kim Jong Il's gulag. But it's bad enough, and as Mahbubani points out, it has weakened the moral authority that the U.S. had at the end of the cold war. Alas, his brief chapter on what the U.S. can do about this flirts with the banal ("promote greater respect for international law"). Which means the ultimate message of the book is clear if, for Americans, depressing: in places like Guant?namo, the U.S. frittered away much of the world's trust...