The debates

Should a small state “behave like a small state”?

In a Straits Times column on 1 July 2017 he drew a lesson for Singapore from the blockade of Qatar: small states must always behave like small states. Ambassador-at-large Bilahari Kausikan called the argument “muddled, mendacious and indeed dangerous”, saying Singapore’s founders won respect by standing firm. Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam called it intellectually questionable.

His reading: survival for a small country rests on prudence about the sensitivities of great powers, not on acting as a middle power it is not. NUS said his decision to step down as dean later that year was unrelated to the column.

The Straits Times column, 1 Jul 2017 · Bilahari Kausikan, via The Online Citizen, 3 Jul 2017 · K. Shanmugam, via The Online Citizen, 3 Jul 2017 · Times Higher Education, 10 Nov 2017

Is he too soft on China?

Reviewers of Has China Won? called it provocative and worth reading but riddled with questionable assertions, such as the claim that China is more capitalist than America, and light on China’s economic troubles. Reviewers of Has the West Lost It? said it generalises about the West and goes easy on China’s conduct in the South China Sea.

His reply is that the West misreads a geopolitical contest as an ideological one, and that China has no wish to export its system. In the 2019 Munk Debate the Toronto audience moved towards his side, against H.R. McMaster and Michael Pillsbury.

John West, Australian Institute of International Affairs, 10 May 2021 · David Hutt, Asia Times, 17 Jun 2018 · Munk Debates

Does he see the West too darkly?

Critics say he writes about a single “West” that does not exist, and that his long list of Western mistakes skips over Asia’s own failures of accountability.

His reply, made at Davos and in Has the West Lost It?, is that he is urging the West to adapt rather than writing it off: admitting relative decline, intervening less and planning for the long term are its best route to staying strong.

David Hutt, Asia Times, 17 Jun 2018 · World Economic Forum, Davos 2019

An undiplomatic memoir, or a diplomatic one?

The Asian Review of Books found the memoir readable and insightful but said it passes lightly over his China commentary, his 2017 retirement from the school and his recent dissent from Singapore’s foreign policy establishment, with little reflection on the role of a public intellectual.

The book’s own claim is narrower: one life as a window on Asia’s century, told from the inside.

Asian Review of Books, 13 Nov 2024

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