What do you find most puzzling about the United States? What puzzles me most is a certain loss of domestic confidence. And you see that then translated in many of the ideas that emerge. Yet from the outside world, the United States is seen as the most powerful country in the world. We do not see a country that is in decline, but within the country, the conversation is always about a country in decline. Yes, relative positions have shifted. New countries have emerged. But these countries that emerge have emerged because of the success of the U.S. model operating in them. Take Singapore and the United States. Two very different countries in terms of size. Singapore’s growth and success has been because there was a U.S. model available to us to consider — starting with using English as the first language, connecting with the business and economic community, opening up our markets to U.S. investments, the promise of rule of law, intellectual property, property protection. These are all U.S. templates that countries have followed. The U.S. sometimes seems to feel less confident in those templates today. Yet they have been very successful for other countries. You dealt with the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations. How would you describe the shifts between the three? This is where I have to put on my diplomatic hat. There are deep, strong elements of continuity. President Trump had a different worldview. But there were still elements of continuity between the Obama and Biden administrations. Many of the same personalities remain in positions of prominence. Trump wanted to question some of the more traditional approaches of U.S. foreign policy. The United States has been trying to deal with North Korea’s nuclear program for a very long time. They haven’t quite been successful. President Trump said, “All this has not worked. Let me try something different.” He decided to meet Kim Jong Un in Singapore in June 2018. The subsequent summit did not give the kind of outcome that President Trump wanted. But I think that some credit must be given for the fact that he was he and the administration was sometimes prepared to try something different. President [Joe] Biden making the decision to pull out of Afghanistan in 2021 — these are changes that sometimes leaders have to make. While there are strong elements of continuity, some of these different areas will change. And then you find a new balance. What was the hardest diplomatic assignment you had to undertake while here? The beauty of U.S.-Singapore relations is that we try and make it a relationship without too much drama. The difficult things really emerge in more of the regional conversations of: How do we have the U.S. more actively involved in Southeast Asia? The United States pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. You keep making the case. The Biden administration has now launched the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. We want to keep pushing them in these new areas. Last year, the Biden administration brought the ASEAN leaders here for a summit. That took a lot of effort to convince them of the value of engaging with ASEAN, because the traditional U.S. model of dealing with the region has been based on very good bilateral relationships. Wasn’t the Trump-Kim summit in Singapore kind of dramatic though? Did you have fun with that one? The cameras of the world were on it, but in my own role? Having President Trump decide to do it in Singapore brought all that attention to Singapore. Then my colleagues in Singapore took over running the entire thing, because it was a massive undertaking. I cannot claim that I was there trying to do all these things. I was there in Singapore, and I took the pleasure of seeing Singapore screened on worldwide TV, which I thought was a very good message about Singapore as a convener of these things. Others were more stressed about it than I was. Your country did not get invited to President Biden’s Summit for Democracy because of the power structure in Singapore. Is democracy overrated? Countries have to organize themselves based on their own political values and their political system. The invitation to the democracy summit was obviously a choice of the United States. It does not mean that we will adjust our political system and our political values to meet certain expectations of other countries. We will do it in a way that our society is ready to move at. Are the U.S. and China destined for a war? I hope not. A military conflict between the U.S. and China will be so devastating, obviously for both the countries but even more for the entire region. It will change the dynamic in the region, which has been a very successful region focused on economic growth and trade over the past 50 years, much of it overseen by U.S. leadership.
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