Illustration: Xia Qing/ GT

 
There's no question that our world today is a troubled place. Each one of us wakes up in very disturbed scenes of the continuing war in Ukraine, the war in Gaza, the war between Israel and Lebanon. And at the same time, we are still struggling to find out what are the fundamental reasons why these conflicts are taking place. 
In my view, the fundamental reason why the world is in this conflict is that the world is experiencing major structural changes. We are moving into a new global order, and unless we understand this new global order, we will face challenges.

I want to explain what are the three fundamental structural changes that have taken place in our world order. They are: the world is becoming, one, multi-civilizational, two, multipolar, and three, multilateral. 

First, the multi-civilizational world is a natural result of the fact that we are moving away from the era of Western domination of world history. And we are seeing the return of many other civilizations especially in Asia - the Chinese civilization, the Indian civilization, and the Islamic civilization.

So when I see the US trying to stop the return and development of China, I fear that the US is doing so because it fails to understand that the return of China is the natural return of the world's oldest continuous civilization - Chinese civilization. The US cannot stop the return of such an old and resilient and strong civilization, which is why I wrote my book Has China Won? to try and persuade American policymakers to take a wiser approach of accepting the rise of China.

Second, the world is also multipolar because many new powers are emerging. Certainly, Russia is one of the great powers of the world. The Europeans could have done more to prevent this war in Ukraine from happening. 

Of course, they could have done more, because many people, many leading statesmen, including Henry Kissinger and George Kennan had warned that the constant expansion of NATO eastward would trouble Russia and would lead to Russia trying to protect its security. 

Unfortunately, the wisdom of Kissinger and Kennan was ignored, Russia therefore felt that it had to defend itself. And so today, as we look for a solution to the Ukraine war, the West must understand that 85 percent of the world's population have not imposed sanctions on Russia and they are trying to send a signal that the legitimate security interests of Russia must also be taken into consideration while also respecting international law.

Third, the world is becoming nearly more multilateral. I served as Singapore's permanent representative to the UN for over 10 years. And I know for years, the UN was constantly calling for a "two-State solution" between Israel and Palestine when the Cold War ended.

When the West was very dominant, it had an opportunity to create a permanent "two-State solution," it failed to do so. It allowed the problem to fester and grow, and so at some point, it had to explode. Of course, we have to condemn the heinous attacks by Hamas on the innocent Israeli civilians. There can be no excuse whatsoever for that. But at the same time, we have to find ways and means of bridging the divide. 

Here I must say I'm glad that China has taken some steps toward trying to improve the situation in the Middle East by organizing the meetings between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and by organizing a meeting of the Palestinian factions in Beijing.

These are important contributions, and this is where I think China and the other Asian countries can step up and do more to persuade the West to accept the fact that the West has got to adapt to a different world which is, as I said, multi-civilizational, multipolar and multilateral.

The author is a distinguished fellow at the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore and Singapore's former permanent representative to the United Nations. The article is compiled based on a video speech professor Mahbubani delivered during the Global Times Annual Conference 2025. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn