Conclusion: A Global Spring

Abstract

Twenty-five years after the Cold War ended, the world is experiencing an explosion of human liberty on a scale unprecedented in world history. The revolutions of 2011 manifested not just an Arab Spring, but a Global Spring. As Kishore Mahbubani reminds us, the American and Western projects are succeeding around the world like never before. More progress has been made in the last 30 years than in the previous three hundred.² Like Mahbubani, we want readers to finish our book “drowning in optimism” about the future. We sincerely hope for the people of the Arab World that their societies can realize the democratic demands of the protestors in 2011, and we emphasize that there is a meaningful prospect that some of them may reach their goals over the coming decades. Yet whatever happens in the Middle East, overwhelmingly the developing world has already embraced modernity. In India, Brazil, Turkey, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, and Indonesia, people are getting on with the larger and more difficult long-term challenge of reforming their societies and making their lives flourish.

The meeting of East and West on Indian soil has failed to attain fulfillment, but their great achievements are complementary, and their true co-operation will be necessary for a Universal Culture.

—Rabindranath Tagore, Indian scholar and polymath, 1901¹