Below my reply to a vitriolic review of my book WSJ by Tunku Varadarajan (@tunkuv) the paper’s own contributor and affiliate of a conservative think tank, which the paper rejected (editor went on personal leave). I am not surprised (feel vindicated actually) that some might feel aggravated by my book’s argument that civilization is a shared creation, but at least they should tolerate a right of reply if democratically-minded.  Let’s debate and let readers decide.

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Reviewing my book, The Once and Future World Order (WSJ, June 22, 2025), Tunku Varadarajan denounces my view that the end of Western dominance may “turn out to be a good thing.” (in the “long run”, I say). He brushes aside my reasoning that Western dominance produced colonialism, inequality, racism, and avoidable wars in the global South.

Mr Varadarajan condemns the 1955 Bandung conference in which postcolonial nations demanded decolonization and racial equality, alleging that that it produced authoritarianism. But there is no such causal link.

My book argues that civilization and world order are not the West’s monopoly. Mr Varadarajan asserts the superiority of Western civilization – with its Greco Roman heritage – as being “more scientific than most.” Yet, the West borrowed scientific and rationalist ideas; for example Indian mathematics, Chinese paper-making and printing, and Islamic algebra, medicine and rationalist philosophy, which fed Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. The Greeks invented democracy, but with limited participation and without individual liberty. Other civilizations in Near East, Asia, and Africa invented diplomacy, peace treaties, humanitarian values, freedom of seas, etc., but get little credit.

Mr Varadarajan attacks my “values” and the book’s blurbs from Australia’s former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, and Singaporean public intellectual Kishore Mahbubani, because of their allegedly anti-American or pro-China views. He ignores endorsements from Yale historian Odd Arne Westad and Cambridge Professor Ayse Zarakol, and novelist Amitav Ghosh.

Mr Varadarajan falsely alleges that I ask Western nations to pay “material reparations” for their past colonialism. I did not make such a call. He further has me saying that the end of Pax Americana will create a “global Eden.” I clearly state that a post-Western world – I call it a “global multiplex,” “does not mean paradise,” but might “alleviate the conflicts and injustice it had caused,” and produce an “inclusive world order.”

Amitav Acharya

P.S. before being turned down, the text of my rejoinder was compressed and resubmitted at the suggestion of the letters editor of WSJ. But I did not hear back from him for weeks and in the end he wrote back saying he went on personal leave and it was too late to publish the rejoinder. I found this excuse implausible. as my revised rejoinder was sent to the official email address of the letters editor and one would expect a big paper like WSJ would have someone covering for him.). I invited Mr Varadarajan to directly debate with me but he at first ignored it and then refused it in his X Post.