Kishore Mahbubani in Top 50 World Thinkers list

By Goh Chin Lian, The Straits Times, 2 Apr 2014

PROFESSOR Kishore Mahbubani, who heads the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, has been hailed by a leading British current affairs magazine as one of this year's top 50 world thinkers.

The veteran diplomat is the only Singaporean on the list, which includes Pope Francis, International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde and economist-philosopher Amartya Sen.

Harvard President Emeritus Lawrence Summers, and United States' Federal Reserve chairman Janet Yellen, were also picked by Prospect, a monthly magazine.

The list recognises leading thinkers with a global reach and whose achievements in the past 12 months contributed significantly to addressing central questions of the world today.

Prospect's managing editor Jonathan Derbyshire said it also gives credit to the currency of the candidates' thinking.

"Kishore Mahbubani's work certainly grapples with some of the biggest questions of our time, sketching as it does the contours of a new era in which the West can no longer take its primacy for granted," he added.

The 65-year-old dean, who writes a monthly column in The Straits Times' By Invitation series, has been lauded for being among the first to argue that Asian powers were ascending while the influence of Western democracies was declining. His recent ST columns have also touched on issues such as public transport and Singapore's soft power.

An author of four books, Prof Mahbubani said it was a great honour to have his latest The Great Convergence: Asia, The West And The Logic Of One World, recognised by Prospect's listing.

He told The Straits Times yesterday that with only a 12 per cent share of the world's population and a consistently declining share of global gross national product, it was "inevitable that Western primacy of the world order will also decline".

"However, if the West remains shrewd and wise, it can preserve its influence if it focuses on winning hearts and minds and not try to maintain the former dominant position," he added.

This is the fifth time he has been on a list of globally influential thinkers.

In 2005, the former President's Scholar was named by Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world.

In 2009, the Financial Times included him as one of 50 individuals who would shape the debate on capitalism's future.

He was also selected one of Foreign Policy's top 100 global thinkers in 2010 and 2011. His diplomatic career of more than three decades included being Singapore's Ambassador to the United Nations and president of the UN Security Council.