Has traditionally sober-minded Singapore gone a bit soft on China?
The statesmen of Singapore in the tradition of Lee Kuan Yew are known for their foreign-policy realism, and they know Asia much better than do Westerners. We should assess their geopolitical advice with that perspective in mind. Bilahari Kausikan, a former top official in Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has written an essay in Foreign Affairs that for all of its eloquence and obeisance to history is nevertheless reminiscent of Norman Angell’s 1910 work The Great Illusion, which argued that the economic interdependence of great powers would lessen the chances of a major war — three years before the outbreak of World War I.
