India, Jan. 29 -- When I listened to Charles Kupchan, former adviser to President Barack Obama, speak at a political conference in Hamburg, Germany, in August 2025, I could not stop myself from asking him what I believed was a very fundamental question. Kupchan's talk briefly touched upon how globalisation was no longer working. However, after several days of discussions, I came to a different understanding. It seemed to me that what was being presented as a failure of globalisation was, in fact, a discomfort with the reality that America and Europe were no longer the manufacturing hubs of the world. The problem, in my view, was not globalisation itself, but the loss of Western dominance within it.

When the question-and-answer session be...