By Abdulla Hassan
Indian strategist and thinker Parag Khanna offers a comprehensive worldview from an Asian perspective as some call it Khanna’s ‘World’s New Order’ as is reflected in his new book: The Future is Asian.
Amid Western political, military and economic hegemony on the world, Khanna announces the Asianization of today and tomorrow. He introduces the reader to a “system” of moving beyond geography and embracing alliances, institutions, infrastructure, trade, investment, culture and other parameters.
Khanna focuses on the new era of Asia that embraces China, Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, India, Russia, Turkey, Australia and Iran that paves the way for him to label the current century as the time of Asianization.
For Dr. Khanna barriers reflecting in commerce, conflict, and culture are the factors of the failure in the Asian nations’ communicative networking and relations. The author illustrates the wave of modern Asian growth as first leaders were Japan and South Korea, followed by China. The current wave consists of India, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia.
Indian strategist and thinker Parag Khanna. Photo: Facebook
Khanna argues that western liberal democracy probably does cope with the Asian countries socio-economics as much as the technocratic model does. Dr. Khanna, now, has put a new pole in the global conflict of the current uni-pole world.
The “Asian Century” is a new key word by Khanna. The new Asian system taking shape is a multi-civilizational order spanning Saudi Arabia to Japan, Russia to Australia, Turkey to Indonesia. This system, linking five billion people through trade, finance, infrastructure, and diplomatic networks will together represent approximately 40 percent of global gross domestic product GDP.
Integrity is among the main features of the new Asian linkage and the best example is China’s mega project to build the new Silk Roads across Asia which a collaborative project. This is a clear perspective of the interwoven geo-political web Asians enjoying. Asia now is heading to the model of commerce, conflict, and cultural exchange that thrived long before the western dominance in the entire world.
Abdulla Hassan, B.A, MBA is a Public Relations strategist based in Sulaimani, Kurdistan Region.