The constant gardener: why the US needs to stick to its time-tested role in Asia
Tom Plate says turning geopolitical maestro instead could prove a tall task, given that the 48 Asian nations may well play to their own tunes
It is cleverly and famously said that electoral democracy is the worst political system we have to endure in our mixed-up world, with the notable exception – and this is the key point – of all the others.
But is this well-travelled bromide still salient? Are you still a happy fan? Have you listened to what is coming out of the mouth of the elected president of the Philippines? Have you followed the US presidential debates, with all that campaign slurp and candidate mea culpa? And yet you still believe? If so, good for you; but candour compels me to tell you I have lost the faith.
I used to be as faithful as anyone. For a time the inspiring Sir Isaiah Berlin was my political Einstein, whom I read religiously. His mind was a library of great books that in his essays on liberal freedom talked to you with wisdom. The Oxford-based political philosopher and historian of ideas died in 1997 – the same year, we note, as did Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), the sly Great Innovator who represented quite a different political faith.
It was another innovator that urged me to think less dogmatically than either: Lee Kuan Yew. Planting himself somewhere between Berlin and Deng, the fiery but wonderfully polished leader of the People’s Action Party that founded modern Singapore was anything but a one-citizen, one-vote fan. It was a risky system, he would warn, that, left on its own, could yield “erratic results”. And so it is in a way fortunate that Lee, who left us last year at 91, is no longer around to have to witness the juvenile misogyny and risible amateurism of one US candidate, and the hubristic duplicity of the other.
How the second Trump-Clinton debate got dirty: recap with the SCMP’s commentary
I’ll never forget the anxious face of Lee Kuan Yew, in 2007 inquiring about Hillary Clinton, when he was told by a visiting American professor she’d probably prove “good enough”. That caused him to pause: “Good enough?” he said. “Hmm … whomever you elect, we’ll have to live with.”