In a reaction to Beijing’s 80th anniversary parade marking the end of World War Two and China’s Sept 1 Shanghai Co-Operation Organisation (SCO) summit in Tianjin where President Xi Jinping met with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Kallas — a former Prime Minister of Estonia — warned of the “battle of narratives” between the global south and the rest of the world.
Russia, then the Soviet Union, and China, were the two Allied nations that shouldered the most casualties in defeating Nazism and Fascism, but Kallas questioned this in response to the congratulatory rhetoric exchanged between the two countries. “I was like, ok, that is something new. If you know history, it raises a lot of question marks in your head. I can tell you that people don’t read and remember history that much. You can see they buy these narratives,” she said.
Even worse than Kallas’s historical illiteracy was her worrying caricature-like characterisation of the Chinese as being “very good at technology but not that good in social sciences,” while the Russians are “super good in social sciences but bad at technology”.
See also: China turns to France for support during its feud with Japan
“The fact that someone as significant as that doesn’t understand it’s a multi-civilisational world indicates the scale of the problem we have indeed,” says Mahbubani. The “truth” about European leaders nowadays, as he puts it, is that the overall “quality of mind” has gone down, with no leaders who “think long-term, strategically and comprehensively,” says the veteran diplomat at the Singapore campus of France-based business school Insead. He is speaking at a fireside chat as part of Insead’s 25th anniversary.
Quoting a term used by The New Yorker columnist Susan Glasser, he says this is why EU leaders have been in the practice of ‘strategic self-abasement’ towards Trump.
Mahbubani says: “Now this is a complicated term, but what it means is kowtow. I think that’s unwise, because in geopolitics, your interests are determined not just by politics, but by the ‘geo’ in geography.”
See also: China warns of nuclear conflict risks after Trump orders testing
In July, Trump and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen shook hands in Scotland on a 15% tariff on 70% of EU goods exported to the US, half the initial 30% threatened by the US president at the opening of negotiations. Along with what Trump calls “the biggest deal ever made” is an EU commitment to invest some US$600 billion ($767.3 billion) in American military equipment and US$750 billion in energy stateside.
Although von der Leyen has hailed the deal as a success, especially for avoiding an all-out trade war, some EU lawmakers and economists see it as clear strong-arming by Trump, a view that echoes Mahbubani’s comment on EU ‘kowtowing’.
Former Prime Minister of France, Francois Bayrou, writes on X: “It is a sombre day when an alliance of free peoples, brought together to affirm their common values and to defend their common interests, resigns itself to submission.”
Unsurprisingly, one of Europe’s leading faces of right-wing populism, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, had the most slamming criticism: “This is not an agreement... Donald Trump ate von der Leyen for breakfast, this is what happened, and we suspected this would happen as the US president is a heavyweight when it comes to negotiations, while Madame President is featherweight.”
Mahbubani says: “To quote the Polish Prime Minister [Donald Tusk]... Why are 500 million Europeans asking for protection from 300 million Americans against 140 million Russians, who cannot defeat 40 million Ukrainians? The Europeans have grown too dependent on the United States, and it’s wiser for them to work out their own independent, strategic autonomy.”
China and the world
While Mahbubani insists his comments on the EU come from “a friend of Europe”, such clarification is unnecessary when he speaks about China. Here, he leans into familiar rhetoric: China is today a “champion” of globalisation, while the US is strolling away from the system of international exchange it built and actively preached during the 1970s and 1980s.
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“In the West, there’s been a distinguished disillusionment with institutions of global governance like the United Nations (UN). In China, there’s no dissolution. Also, most developing countries still believe in the UN and the need for a stronger UN. So, fortunately, even though the United States has walked away from globalisation, the rest of the world hasn’t done so. In that sense, I’m not pessimistic about the future of global governance,” he says.
Indeed, China’s recent SCO summit has been seen by Washington as a sign of the nation’s ambition in wanting to form a sort of counterweight to the West.
What began as a regional organisation consisting of China, Russia and four central Asian countries in 2001 now includes India, Pakistan, Iran and Belarus among its member states, with 2 observers and 14 dialogue partners in its latest iteration.
“Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest China. May they have a long and prosperous future together!” reacts Trump in a Sept 6 social media post accompanied by a photo of Xi, Putin and India’s Modi.
Non-profit and non-partisan US think tank Stimson Center argues that the display “should be more instructive than concerning”, noting that the SCO “hardly amounts” to an anti-American conspiracy and that the Russia-India-China trio will “never be free of tension”.
Mahbubani concurs: “The Global Governance Initiative of China is not about enhancing China’s power in the world. It’s about enhancing the global multilateral institutions and strengthening them, so in a sense, reinforcing the positive contributions that the United States made in creating these institutions.”
He insists that the Chinese are not growing their economy “for the sake of just becoming number one” in the world. He says: “The primary motivation for increasing their economy is to improve the lives of the people. If the Chinese people are going to achieve developed country standards, if they get a per capita income of US$20,000 to US$30,000, then they will have the largest economy. The US sees that as a threat, and that’s why the US is trying to stop China.”
Should that day come when China takes the spotlight, Mahbubani argues it is in “America’s national interest” to stop trying to hold the nation back and instead work together on a common set of rules to ensure the new number one “behaves in a constructive fashion”.
But he does not anticipate the contest between the two superpowers to die down anytime soon, even with a new occupant in the White House. “Regardless of whether you have President Trump or Biden or Kamala Harris, it doesn’t matter. Long-term strategic struggles are not driven by personalities. They’re driven by interests, and the interests of the United States in remaining number one is very strong, very powerful,” he says.
Putin’s Russia, into its third year of invading Ukraine, has been courted by both Trump and Xi. Less than a month before the SCO, Putin had been welcomed with a red carpet by Trump in Alaska, who then accepted a lift from the US president’s armoured limousine before driving away to the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson for discussions.
The summit failed to yield a ceasefire in a drawn-out invasion that has resulted in the control of around 4,000 sq km of Ukrainian land, but did seemingly build a rapport of sorts between both men. “There’s no such thing as a benevolent great power. All great powers will pursue their own interests; that’s the nature of geopolitics,” says Mahbubani.
Asean ready, Singapore is not
Where do Southeast Asia and Singapore stand? Mahbubani believes that as long as Asean member states avoid taking sides in the US-China conflict, this is “good news”. He says: “The fact that Asean as a whole is more or less united on that principle; it’s good for the countries because it protects them from being pressured by the US or China.”
He is also unconcerned about political unrest in the region. In Jakarta, protests peaked on Aug 25 after President Prabowo Subianto announced a rise in Indonesian lawmakers’ monthly allowance to IDR50 million ($3,905), along with other perks.
The amount, widely reported to be about 10 times the minimum wage in Jakarta, first drew criticism on social media before sparking street protests. Although the housing allowance had been in place since October 2024, public anger intensified, feeding into demonstrations that coincided with labour union protests on Aug 28, where workers demanded a 10% minimum wage increase among other reforms.
To calm public anger, Prabowo scrapped the allowance and announced a halt of overseas trips for members of the Indonesian parliament.
In July, thousands of protesters took to the streets of Bangkok calling for Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra to resign after a phone call with former Cambodian leader Hun Sen was leaked. The call, which was about a recent border dispute, saw Shinawatra addressing Hun Sen as ‘uncle’ and brushing off a Thai military commander as just ‘wanting to look cool’, comments that triggered public backlash. Anutin Charnvirakul has since replaced the daughter of polarising figure Thaksin Shinawatra.
On this, Mahbubani says: “I think political unrest is constantly a factor in this region. Look at Malaysia. It has had so many changes of prime ministers in the last 10, 15 years, yet the Malaysian economy has kept growing.”
“So in the case of Indonesia, I think President Prabowo is committed to enhancing the economic growth of Indonesia. And in fact, in some ways, the political unrest makes it even more imperative to have economic growth,” he adds.
As for Singapore, he says that Singaporeans are “psychologically not prepared” for the more turbulent world ahead, having enjoyed per capita income growth from US$500 in 1965 to US$90,000 presently. He calls it imperative for Singaporeans to realise that the level of peace, prosperity, security and stability enjoyed by the nation for the last 60 years has been “artificial” and unique.“Singaporeans should prepare themselves for a normal world where countries have ups and downs, and not a country that is constantly growing and succeeding.”
Still, Mahbubani walks back slightly: “I don’t say that there’ll be [economic] stagnation, but there’ll be challenges. We must psychologically get ready for more difficult times and not get depressed or get worried or fear that, oh my god, the world is over.”
He adds that “countries that succeed over the long run” are countries with a deep understanding of their own history. “I was shocked to learn that when the Public Service Commission interviewed some scholars coming back from overseas, they didn’t know who Goh Keng Swee was or who Rajaratnam was! I was like, ‘Wow’.”
He continues: “The ignorance of Singapore’s history is a major competitive disadvantage for Singapore. If you don’t know that we have had exceptional leaders like Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Keng Swee and Rajaratnam, then the country is in trouble.”
