Former Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani, one of the world’s leading public intellectuals, is sometimes called “the muse of the Asian century” for his often provocative and frequently prophetic insights into the diverse region we call Asia. This article is adapted from his keynote speech at AmCham HK’s 2026 China conference, which was attended by over 200 senior executives, policymakers and industry experts. AmCham Chairman David Butts noted in his welcome address to the conference that 2026 is a pivotal year in US-China relations, with four meetings scheduled between US President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping. Ambassador Mahbubani’s comments were made in advance of the first of these meetings, scheduled for May 14-15, 2026.
By Kishore Mahbubani
Whatever our expectations were for the 21st century, few thought that after a quarter of a century, geopolitics would come back with a vengeance.
Three of the most significant geopolitical contests we face today are Israel vs Iran, Europe vs Russia, and the US vs China. Who is winning and who is losing in these contests? The nature of geopolitics is very different from other kinds of competition. The goal of my analysis is to bring out the complexity of the issues that we are now dealing with.
Israel vs Iran
The first and most obvious contest is the one that is clearly seizing the world today: the contest between Israel and Iran. Why do I emphasize Israel and Iran and not the United States? In my view, the strategic impetus came from Israel. Israel then brought the US along in its effort to eliminate the threat from Iran once and for all.
On April 7, The New York Times published a story by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, “How Trump Took the U.S. to War with Iran”. The authors described how Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu went to the White House to put forward a case for why the time had come for an attack on Iran, arguing that it would be powerful, effective, and over in a few weeks. The leadership of Iran would be decapitated, and the problem would be solved. But they were not. The question is, what happened?
Superficially, one might think Israel is winning. Israel can bomb any city in Iran at any time and cannot be stopped. That is a tremendous and decisive military advantage. Israel has also severely weakened Iran’s proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah. Many significant Iranian nuclear facilities have sustained severe damage, and about fifty key Iranian leaders have been killed.
Yet Iran, just by closing one chokepoint, the Strait of Hormuz, has been able to hold the whole world hostage.
According to The New York Times, Netanyahu had promised Trump “near-certain victory: Iran’s ballistic missile program could be destroyed in a few weeks. The regime would be so weakened that it could not choke off the Strait of Hormuz, and the likelihood that Iran would land blows against U.S. interests in neighbouring countries was assessed as minimal.” This was what was supposed to happen after the war began. Clearly, something went wrong. Instead of becoming too weak to fight back, Iran showed remarkable strength and fortitude. In a geopolitical competition, you’re not just competing against a few leaders or against a regime. In this case, Israel was competing against the hard civilizational rock of Iran.
At the end of the day, Iran represents a civilization that is at least 3,000 years old. It has gone through many near-death experiences and has always bounced back. The resilience of that civilization was clearly underestimated. The gridlock we are mired in today could have been prevented if the US had stepped back and asked itself, “Is it going to be so easy to do this?” If the US had made an effort to understand the complexity of other civilizations (like the Persian civilization), we would not have ended up in the disastrous situation we are in today.
Iran was fighting for survival. It won by not losing. Israel lost by not winning. However, Iran has also made some big strategic mistakes. It should have followed in China’s footsteps by adopting Deng Xiaoping’s philosophy of “Hide your strength; bide your time,” growing its economy and avoiding conflict. I hope that Iran will learn that lesson. Similarly, Israel should be wiser. It should work harder to make more friends and go for a two-state solution.
Europe vs Russia
The other contest that is also greatly affecting the world is the war in Ukraine. The complexity of this conflict becomes clear when you look at the two completely different narratives which are circulating about Ukraine. If you read the Anglo-Saxon media, you will find a simple, black-and-white story. Russia violated international law by invading Ukraine. Therefore, Russia is clearly in the wrong, while Ukraine and the West are entirely in the right.
If you look deeper into this story, however, you may come to realize that only about 12 percent of the world’s population agrees with it, and the other 88 percent does not – as shown by the fact that the majority of the Global South has not joined the West in imposing sanctions against Russia. Why haven’t they?
True, there’s no doubt that Russia violated international law, and that the invasion was illegal. But at the same time, the rest of the world finds it disingenuous when Western leaders say repeatedly that the war was unprovoked. This war could have been avoided if the Western powers understood geopolitics better. They would have realized that if they kept expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Russia would feel threatened, and there would inevitably be a backlash. Foolishly, Europe backed Russia into a corner. Just as Iran had to fight for its survival, Russia felt that it had to fight for its survival.
The real mistake was made by Europe, not the US. The expansion of NATO was beneficial for America’s goal of retaining global primacy. Yet, the Europeans’ interests are different. They will have to live with Russia for centuries to come and they should have opposed NATO’s expansion.
The remarkable thing is that some of the best Western thinkers had warned against NATO expansion as long ago as 1997, before the US Senate ratified the expansion. George Kennan, the architect of America’s successful containment of the Soviet Union, wrote in an article in The New York Times that “expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.”
After the US Senate ratified NATO expansion in 1998, the Times opinion columnist Tom Friedman interviewed Kennan, who was then 94 years old, to find out what he thought about this move. Kennan said: “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever.” He added: “Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are – but this is just wrong.”
Is there a wise solution to the Russia-Ukraine issue? Yes. Henry Kissinger, another eminent American diplomat and thinker, wrote in The Washington Post in 2014: “Far too often the Ukrainian issue is posed as a showdown: whether Ukraine joins the East or the West. But if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side’s outpost against the other — it should function as a bridge between them.”
He proposed the following solution for Ukraine. First, Ukraine should have the right to choose freely its economic and political associations, including with Europe. Second, Ukraine should not join NATO. Third, Ukraine should be free to create any government compatible with the expressed will of its people. Internationally, it could be like Finland, fiercely independent and cooperative with the West while carefully avoiding institutional hostility towards Russia.
Fourth, he said, “It should be possible to put Crimea’s relationship to Ukraine on a less fraught basis. To that end, Russia would recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea. Ukraine should reinforce Crimea’s autonomy in elections held in the presence of international observers.”
He concluded, “The test is not absolute satisfaction but balanced dissatisfaction. If some solution based on these or comparable elements is not achieved, the drift toward confrontation will accelerate.”
Unfortunately, Kissinger’s warning went unheeded, along with the many other warnings about this war. Kissinger pointed out that the West’s foreign policy goal should be “to bring Russia and the West – especially Russia and Europe – into a cooperative international system,” and that “to treat Ukraine as part of an East-West confrontation would scuttle for decades any prospect” of doing so. Such a goal is clearly more aligned with Europe’s long-term interests than heightening tensions with its neighbour. However, instead of working toward this goal, the West chose to expand NATO toward Russia’s borders. Russia reacted adversely and the drift toward confrontation accelerated, just as Kissinger, Kennan, and many other foreign policy experts had predicted.
And that is why it is very important to understand geopolitics—or at least listen to the people who do.
US vs China
Finally, the most important geopolitical contest in the world, and the most delicate one to discuss, is always going to be the one between the world’s number one power – today the United States – and the world’s number one emerging power, which is now China.
It has long been clear that this problem was coming. About ten years ago, when Cui Tiankai was China’s ambassador to the United States, he invited me to the Chinese embassy and asked me to talk to a group of very young, eager, dynamic Chinese diplomats.
I began my talk by saying, “I’m sorry to depress you. All of you will work very hard over the next few years to try and improve US-China relations. Please keep working hard – but you will fail. It’s an iron law of geopolitics: When the world’s number one emerging power becomes stronger, the world’s number one power is not going to sit by.”
However, we must find ways and means of overcoming this iron law. I believe that the best way to do that is by being brutally honest and dispassionate in our analysis of what is really happening.
Anyone who believes the United States is weakening ought to have his head examined. The US remains by far the most powerful economy in the world.
In the 2000s and 2010s, China clearly grew much faster than the United States. Yet the gap between the size of the US and Chinese economy has not diminished and has actually grown. In the 2020s, China’s relative growth slowed down. In 2020, the US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was USD 21 trillion and China was USD 15 trillion, a USD 6 trillion gap. In 2030, US GDP is expected to be USD 37.6 trillion, while China’s is expected to be USD 26 trillion. The gap is set to increase to around USD 11 trillion.
The US is clearly still a very powerful actor in the world. It is clearly ahead in artificial intelligence (AI), military technology and exploration of outer space, and many other areas. The United States is doing formidably well.
At the same time, anyone who says that China may be losing should also have their heads examined. China’s emergence is arguably the largest social and economic transformation in world history. The size and scale of China’s resurgence in such a short space of time is incredible. Just look at where China was 40 years ago and where it is today. Its share of the world’s GDP, based on purchasing power parity, has gone from two percent in 1980 to almost 20 percent today. 800 million people have been lifted out of poverty. It’s amazing, and in many areas, it has changed the world dramatically.
Let me give you one statistic. In 2000, China’s share of global manufacturing was only six percent. By 2025, its share was 30 percent, and by 2030, it is predicted to reach 45 percent. How does one country go from having six percent of global manufacturing to 45 percent in 30 years? It’s astonishing.
In short, we are dealing with two incredibly powerful countries. Madeleine Albright, the former US Secretary of State, once described the United States as the “indispensable nation,” in an interview on the Today Show, on February 19, 1998. Albright said, “If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future.” Today, in terms of the world economy and its functioning, China has also become an indispensable nation. The contest between these two indispensable nations is going to be consequential and era-defining.
It will require a tremendous amount of wisdom on both sides to ensure that this contest doesn’t get out of control. When we come back here in ten years’ time, we may find that the global economy has once again become frozen because this contest has accelerated.
I want to emphasize that there are ways and means of managing this situation in such a way to avoid the worst-case outcome. Both sides should pay attention to three ‘P’s: people, profit and planet.
Let’s start with the first ‘P’: ‘people’. If we were to do a rational cost-benefit analysis, would the people of the United States and the people of China be better off if the two countries could contain this contest rather than let it get out of control?
As to ‘profit’, it’s also very clear that when it comes to business cooperation, companies will be more profitable if the contest is contained.
For example, the CEO of Ford, Jim Farley, has been trying very hard to see where they can marry American auto technology with Chinese batteries. It would be a fantastic combination—but politics have gotten in the way. If you want to make your companies more profitable, find ways of overcoming the political restrictions and cooperate more in business.
Finally, when it comes to the planet, I think we can all agree that if we destroy planet earth, we don’t have a planet B to go to. It’s clearly in the common interest of both China and the United States to protect and preserve this planet.
If we look at the larger picture and at our common interests, it’s clear that we need to contain this contest. I hope that we will at least succeed in that, because whatever we do, we won’t be able to stop the contest.
Preparing for a multi-civilizational world
We live in times of remarkable change. Two new eras are emerging. One is the end of the era of Western domination of world history. The end of Western domination is not the end of the West, which remains the single strongest civilization. What is ending is the capacity that the West had to dominate the rest of the world over the last 200 years.
A hundred years ago, the West colonized nearly every corner of the planet. That era is ending. Just to point to Russia as an example, the West could have tried to accommodate Russia by dealing with it as a separate civilization and society. Instead, it asked Russia to become like the West, and Russia resisted.
The present Iranian regime has made so many mistakes. It has gotten engaged in so many unnecessary conflicts instead of focusing on developing its own economy. Despite all these mistakes, at the end of the day, the Persian civilization is still going strong in Iran, which is not going to become in any way like the West.
Certainly, in the case of China, China will re-emerge and modernize, but it will never Westernize. The end of the era of Western domination of world history is a fundamental, driving force. The corollary is that we’re now seeing the return of other civilizations as people all around the world regain confidence in their own cultures. A multi-civilizational world is emerging. Unfortunately, most of us have not conceptually accepted that this new world is coming, let alone thought about how to deal with it.
As these new civilizations bounce back, they don’t have to be pro-Western or anti-Western. Take India, for example. India is not an enemy of the West in any way, but when Prime Minister Modi walks into a room, he will not be wearing a Western jacket and tie. He will be wearing a classical Indian outfit to signal, “I come from a different civilization.”
The return of other civilizations is a new dynamic that we must learn and understand if we want to understand the world of tomorrow.
Kishore Mahbubani is a Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Research Institute (ARI), National University of Singapore (NUS). A former diplomat, he was with the Singapore Foreign Service for 33 years (1971 to 2004). He had postings in Cambodia, Malaysia, Washington, DC and New York, where he twice was Singapore’s Ambassador to the UN and served as President of the UN Security Council in January 2001 and May 2002. He was Permanent Secretary at Singapore’s Foreign Ministry from 1993 to 1998.
From 2004 to 2017, he headed the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at NUS as its Founding Dean. He is the author of ten books, most recently Living the Asian Century: An Undiplomatic Memoir (PublicAffairs, 2024).