America is the Late Qing Dynasty: A View from Singapore

You may not be interested in American decline but American decline is interested in you!

The former Foreign Minister of Singapore, George Yeo, gave a keynote interview at a business conference recently and I’d been told it would be worth my time. I’m glad I finally got around to it because it contains a number of important truth bombs.

Yeo has a perspective on Asia, the US, and power-political relations that you don’t hear in Washington, Canberra, or even Tokyo. All the more noteworthy that Singapore is friendly with Western governments, including the United States, and holds a view that is shared widely across Asia and the Pacific.

Singapore’s grand strategic orientation, it should be noted, has long been “friend to all, enemy to none.” This might be described as a form of hedging that’s common in both Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands region, but it’s a wilful choice to respect power realities as they exist for a small trading nation like Singapore. In practice, “friend to all, enemy to none” has meant at least two things: 1) Try not to antagonize major powers, and 2) refuse the framework of geopolitical rivalry itself wherever possible.

Keeping that context in mind, you can watch the whole interview below. Note that the title of the talk is “Asia’s Future in a Multipolar World Order.” In most of the world, it is taken as a given that the world is multipolar, and other governments try to act accordingly. Everyone seems to know this except for those who run US foreign policy, as well as a handful of scholars stuck in the unipolar moment.

In case you don’t have time to watch the whole interview, I’ve pulled out a number of key quotes that speak to the various and sundry interests of Un-Diplomatic readers. As I sometimes do, I present the quote and then offer my short commentary about what it means and why it matters.