We are entering a new era of world history: the end of Western domination and the arrival of the Asian century. The question is: Will Washington wake up to this reality?

If such a shift seems inconceivable, it shows how much old mental maps continue to cloud the vision of leading Americans. The West has so dominated world history for the past 200 years that we forget that from the year 1 to the year 1820, the two largest economies in the world (as demonstrated by British economic historian Angus Maddison) were China and India. A study by Goldman Sachs in 2003 confidently predicted that by 2050 the four largest economies in the world will be China, the United States, India and Japan, in that order. A more recent evaluation by Goldman Sachs showed that this could happen sooner and that the Indian economy could surpass that of the United States by 2043.

The changes will be dramatic and happen quickly. Economist and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers put it this way: During the Industrial Revolution, the standard of living rose at a rate of maybe 50 percent during a person's life span. Asia's current growth rate represents an unprecedented 100-fold rise in standards of living during one lifetime.

The paradox about the American inability to recognize this great shift is that the United States has done more than any other country to spark this Asian revival. In the 19th-century era of European domination, Asia was subjugated and colonized. As the United States became the dominant power, Asia progressively was liberated.

More important, before World War II, conquest and/or colonization were the only ways for a nation to expand its power and influence. With the creation of the United Nations in 1945 and the formulation of the rules of trade that followed — efforts advanced by the United States — a country could grow its economy without conquering new territory.

This rules-based system leveled the international playing field, allowing nations such as Japan and Germany to economically re-emerge without massive disruption to the world order. In this century, it may be China and India that peaceably emerge as world powers.

That would be a historic achievement. All previous shifts in global power (with the sole exception of the transition from Pax Britannica to Pax Americana) have been accomplished through conflict.

One key element of this 1945 package is trade liberalization, an approach the world has sustained since the creation of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, or GATT, in 1947. Unfortunately, calls for protectionism are rising in the United States and Europe. The first line of defense against any potential shock to the global economy is to resist these calls for protectionism.

At the same time, as new Asian powers emerge, the architecture of the world order will have to be re-engineered. Take the case of the two most powerful international economic organizations of the world, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. There is a 60-year-old tradition that the head of the IMF has to be a European and the head of the World Bank an American, a practice reaffirmed by appointments in 2007. Representatives of Asian nations, which make up the majority of the world's population, do not qualify. But Asia is now home to the world's fastest-growing economies, which have accumulated more than $3 trillion in foreign reserves. It is absurd to exclude Asians from the leadership of the IMF and the World Bank.

Similarly, the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council should reflect the powers of the future, not the victors of World War II. One simple, common-sense step would be to have a single European Union seat on the council in place of two seats for Britain and France.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is right when he says that change is imperative. So, will the United States, under its new president, be a force for change and forge new relationships across the Pacific? Or will it become an obstacle oriented stubbornly toward the Atlantic? The choice will determine the course of 21st-century history.

Kishore Mahbubani is dean of the school of public policy at the National University of Singapore. He wrote this commentary for the Los Angeles Times.