ISBN: 978-1-9821-1533-3
Pavel K Baev
Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)
Read more about this book at www.paragkhanna.com/ourasianfuture
The author’s fame as a sharp commentator and valuable consultant is
probably well-deserved, but his much-advertised
but not quite best-selling magnum opus is a disappointment. It is built around
a simple thesis that Asians are fulfilling their ‘natural destiny’ and ‘presiding
over the construction of a new Asian-led order’ (p. 11). The proposition that
hugely different states and societies from Turkey to Japan are getting together
into a ‘coherent system’ is made into an axiom, which was not self-evident
before only because European colonialism fractured Asia into fragments unable
to ‘congeal meaningfully’ (p. 6). The consent to preserve in the Asia-led world
such features of Westernization as ‘the English language, capitalism, and the
pursuit of scientific excellence’ (p. 23) might appear ridiculous, but it is
not innocent: it allows the author to bracket out such inconvenient notions as
human rights and democratic freedoms. For that matter, the Rohingya genocide is
mentioned only once in passing. Climate change is of minor importance in the
brilliant Asian future; it is mentioned twice: as a factor that ‘accelerates
Russia’s Asianization’ (p. 90), and as a condition that makes Africa import
more food from Asia (p. 266). The repetitive assertions of virtues of Asian
order make Thomas Friedman look like a deep philosopher and George Friedman like
a wise futurologist – but neither is listed in the bibliography. Khanna loves
to quote his conversations with the great minds of our times, but Francis
Fukuyama has not made it to the index, and Samuel Huntington received one
indifferent nod. Artificial geopolitical construct of Asia has little explanatory
value, and the book proves it at great length.