The unusual two-hundred-year period of Western domination of world history is coming to an end. Today we are seeing the return of the rest, especially in Asia. So far, the United States is retreating into unilateralism. The EU is confused, occasionally supporting the United States, occasionally demurring. One great gift of Western civilization to the world has been the art of reasoning. From the days of Plato and Aristotle, we know that good cogent arguments eventually triumph. Sadly, as I discovered in my ten years as Singapore’s Ambassador to the UN, the Western powers preferred arm-twisting smaller countries as it was more efficient. This era of arm-twisting is coming to an end as well. But the West should not despair; logical and reasonable arguments can carry more sway. Since the United States, especially under Donald Trump, remains allergic to multilateralism, the EU, an inherently multilateral body, should step in and champion multilateralism. It should revive the UN General Assembly and deploy its full powers of persuasion. As a student of Western philosophy, I deployed Western logical reasoning often in the UN. And it often worked. And I was puzzled that so few Western Ambassadors dived into their own philosophical heritage to use it. I suppose there is only one caveat to using reason. Reasoning is a double-edged sword. If the rest deploy better arguments, the West must relearn the art of listening and adjusting its behavior. In short, the revival of diplomacy based on deploying the art of persuasion will help to create a more harmonious and cooperative global community, but it will require the active reasoning, listening, and adjusting of Western powers.

Modern diplomacy, at least most of it, is essentially a Western creation. In theory, then, the advanced Western countries should be its best practitioners. In practice, as I observed at first hand in my ten years as Singapore’s Ambassador to the UN (1984–89 and 1998–2004), major Western powers, including both the United States and the European Union (EU), preferred to bully other countries into submission instead of trying to persuade them through respectful diplomatic engagement. A former UN Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who served only one term, made the same observation: “It would be some time before I fully realized that the United States sees little need for diplomacy; power is enough... the Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States. Diplomacy is perceived... as a waste of time and prestige and a sign of weakness.”Footnote 1

This bullying strategy has never been wise. However, it was a feasible approach to take when the West was overwhelmingly dominant. Now, this artificial era of Western domination of world history is coming to an end. As I document in “Has the West Lost it?”, from AD 1 to 1820, the two largest economies were always those of China and India.Footnote 2 Only after that period did Europe take off, followed by the United States. Viewed against the backdrop of the past two thousand years, the recent period of Western relative over-performance against other civilizations is a historical aberration. All such aberrations come to a natural end. This is happening now.

Fortunately, all is not lost for the West. If the West, especially the United States and EU, were to recover the lost virtues of good persuasive diplomacy, it may still retain significant influence in the world. As the ambassador of a small country in the UN, I used to tell my staff that the only weapons we could deploy in multilateral institutions were reason, logic, and charm. Fortunately, they were and remain powerful weapons. As a life-long student of Western philosophy, I have discovered that reasonable and logical arguments travel well across the different cultures and languages in the large UN family of 193 nations. Hence, I was puzzled that Western diplomats rarely tried to persuade. To be fair, I should mention here that Western powers were not the only ones to try and bully smaller countries. Other great and middle powers, such as Australia, Brazil, China, India, Nigeria, Russia, and South Africa would also try to flex their political and economic muscles.

Yet, the Western powers could bully a lot more since Western power was so overwhelming. Recently, that Western power has begun to recede. Here are two key statistics. In 1980, the size of the American economy, in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms was ten times larger than China’s. By 2014, it had become smaller.Footnote 3 Similarly, in PPP terms, the top four largest economies today are China, the United States, India and Japan. Not one European country is in the top four.

Since the relative power of the European states is going to slide further downwards in the coming decades, it would be wise for the EU countries to take the lead in steering a new course toward practicing more diplomacy in the twenty-first century, which will be an Asian century. There are five concrete steps that the EU can undertake. Firstly, the EU should abandon its policy of silently supporting the current efforts of the United States to weaken or cripple global multilateral institutions. Secondly, it should opt out of the recent Western practice of unilaterally intervening in conflict or crisis situations, without the legitimizing authority of the UN. Thirdly, it should remind the United States that diplomacy was invented to talk to enemies, not friends. The United States has reversed two thousand years of diplomatic practice by insisting that the “establishment of diplomatic relations” is a gesture of friendship. Friends don’t need diplomatic channels to talk to each other. Only enemies do. This is why diplomats need diplomatic immunity. Fourthly, the EU should take the lead in establishing equitable and mutually beneficial relations between regional multilateral organizations. A first step would be to establish stronger relations between the world’s most successful regional organization, the EU, and the world’s second most successful organization, ASEAN. This would be a concrete way of demonstrating that Eastern and Western societies can cooperate in the diplomatic arena. Fifthly, and perhaps most importantly, the EU should rejuvenate the UN General Assembly and enable it to serve as the “Parliament of Man.” This essay will spell out how the EU can take the lead in these five areas. Fortunately, most of the rest of the world will respond positively if the EU were to undertake these five initiatives.