Reason grounds Western morality, with its respect for the individual and her freedom at its center. The force of this system has created a moral industry in the West - with think tanks, politicians and journalists broadcasting its goodness - but the continued use of torture undermines it all, argues Kishore Mahbubani.

One of the greatest joys of my life was studying Western philosophy, absorbing the wisdom of great Western thinkers from Socrates to Wittgenstein. The dedication of all those great thinkers, over thousands of years, to the power of logical reasoning was truly inspiring. Hence, for me, the power of the West was always associated with this commitment to using reason to understand and improve the world.

Western logic was always irrefutable. Plain logic would create irrefutable statements. Hence if the premise was “all dogs are animals”, the consequence of the claim “Fido is a dog” was the irrefutable statement that “Fido is an anima