Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy

On a visit to Harvard in 1968, the 45-year-old Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, stunned the faculty with a stirring defense of American foreign policy in Asia, including the war in Vietnam, as critical to the security of small states such as his. This speech symbolized not only his penchant for “going against the grain” (281), but also a keen awareness of where the interests of his state truly lay, apart from abstract moral categories. Lee was the leader of a new, tiny state with a divided population and almost entirely lacking in natural resources, and yet it soon became an economic giant. Kissinger argues that Lee convinced his people “to unlock possibilities in themselves that they had not known existed” (283), using his own cosmopolitan background as an example.

Born in 1923, when Singapore was a British colony governed from India, Lee grew up in a Chinese family but attended English-language schooling. In 1941, while Lee was still a young man, Singapore fell to Japan, and there followed an occupation that tried to snuff out Chinese and English influence alike. Lee kept himself useful by translating Japanese propaganda into English. Seeking further education in Cambridge after the war, anti-colonial struggles in India and elsewhere inspired Lee, who in 1950 returned home to a country racked with economic troubles. Singapore achieved self-government in 1959, with Lee as Prime Minister, and independence in 1965.

Under Lee’s stewardship, notes Kissinger, the government clamped down on corruption and expanded economic opportunities so that, within a decade, his party commanded overwhelming majorities. Independence tended to exacerbate ethnic tensions between Chinese, Malay, and others, however, and so, to foster national unity, Lee developed a military (with Israeli advisors) with universal male conscription. He enshrined English as a universal language while ensuring protections for local languages as well. Kissinger observes that, having earlier leaned toward socialism, Lee adopted market economics as a practical method of encouraging growth that all ethnic groups could share in together, especially after the withdrawal of the British fleet in 1971 removed a major source of wealth. Strict rules on personal conduct, including dress codes and fines for jaywalking, helped incentivize foreign investment and reliance on Singaporean labor. By the time Lee left office in 1990, Singapore was lauded as one of the “Asian Tigers,” vastly more productive and prosperous than its size and resources would suggest.

In the realm of foreign policy, Kissinger says, “Lee Kuan Yew was on a permanent quest for world order” (301), desperate for a global balance of power to protect his small state and its need for stable markets. Of particular importance, Kissinger observes, were the United States and China. Lee generally viewed the US as a major trading partner and source of regional security. Lee was also cognizant of China’s quickly evolving role on the world stage from revolutionary agitator under Mao to an economic colossus in development, with enormous if unforeseen consequences for all of Asia and the world. Kissinger states that Lee’s example helped inspire Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping to adopt more pragmatic economic reforms in favor of global trade and foreign capital. As China grew in power, Lee supported “a cordial but cool relationship between the superpowers” (309), viewing himself as an interlocutor capable of helping the two understand each other. He insisted that China be taken seriously as a great power, while warning that a bellicose China would drive the other regional powers, including Singapore, into the arms of the US.

Kissinger claims that Lee’s great success was not just economic revitalization, but also defining a space for culture apart from the dominant paradigm of political ideologies. He was neither a democrat nor an authoritarian, but rather integrated Confucian ideals of benevolent hierarchy with a western commitment to pragmatism. He sought outside knowledge whenever and wherever he needed it, but also jealously guarded his privacy. In concluding, Kissinger observes that Lee, who died in 2015, has not been a widely discussed figure in the West, but as nations struggle with managing diverse populations, and China establishes itself as the leading alternative to a US-led order, the questions with which he wrestled are more relevant than ever.