Globalisation has not failed. The most important event in 2001 was not 9/11. It was China's entry into the World Trade Organisation.

Q FOR ALL ITS BENEFITS, WHERE HAS GLOBALISATION FAILED KEY DOMESTIC CONSTITUENCIES AND WHY?

A Globalisation has not failed.

All discussions on globalisation are distorted because Western analysts focus on the roughly 15 per cent of the world's population who live in the West. They ignore the 85 per cent who are the rest.

The last 30 years of human history have been the best 30 years that the rest have enjoyed. Why? The answer is globalization.

The rise of the middle class in Asia has spread wealth, faith in the possibility of fair international institutions and a stabilising rules-based system that benefits the majority of humanity.

So why is there a perception that globalisation has failed?

The simple answer is that Western elites who enjoyed the fruits of globalisation did not share them with their Western masses.

Even worse, they did not prepare their populations for the disruptive change caused by the spread of globalisation.

In a forthcoming book, I explain how (Donald) Trump and Brexit are the result of this failure. In it, I write:

"Instead of reacting thoughtfully and intelligently (to the 9/11 attack in 2001), the prevailing intellectual hubris led to the disastrous decision to invade Iraq. America has the world's best universities and think-tanks, as well as the most globally influential professors and pundits. Yet none of them told their fellow citizens that the most important event in 2001 was not 9/11. It was China's entry into the World Trade Organisation. The entry of almost a billion workers into the global trading system would obviously result in massive 'creative destruction' and the loss of many jobs in the West."

This, to cut a long story short, was one major reason why Trump and Brexit happened 15 years later in 2016.

The working-class populations could feel directly what their elites couldn't feel. Their lives were being disrupted by fundamental changes taking place in the world order, and their leaders had done nothing to explain to them what was happening or to mitigate the damage.

Given this, there is a solution. We need honest and courageous leaders in the West who tell their populations hard truths, like Lee Kuan Yew did here in Singapore. The West, both America and Europe, can certainly compete. However, they have to make major adjustments. For example, no more 35-hour week in France; no more agricultural subsidies in Europe; no more lifelong pension benefits after 55. You get the message.

Kishore Mahbubani's interview with Nathan Gardels, The WorldPost