Asia needs leaders of the calibre of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew to navigate a messy world

The past fortnight has seen the downfall of Britain’s Boris Johnson and Sri Lanka’s Gotabaya Rajapaksa, as well as the assassination of Japan’s Shinzo Abe
The quality of Asia-Pacific leadership is rising, in part due to Lee setting the standard. Examples include New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern and Indonesia’s Joko Widodo

Tom Plate

Published: 10:15am, 12 Jul 2022

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You might well be starting to believe that the calibre of today’s political leadership isn’t what it used to be. Suddenly, the global field of play is cluttered with stunning individual wreckage. Political uncertainty rules, a war sparked by an invasion reveals our current degree of “uncivilisation”, and centrepieces of former grandeur crumble under pressure.

What could be a more glaring example than the decline and fall of the polity of the United Kingdom? From a 19th-century global power to a 21st-century circus, from a political culture that once produced the most formidable and articulate leaders to the farce of Prime Minister Boris Johnson exiting ignominiously.

So much for British political credibility, whether in rudely telling Hong Kong what it is doing wrong or rebuffing Europe. My personal anglophilia has gone into remission.

Then there’s the tumult in South Asia. With even less ceremony than we witnessed in London, the president of Sri Lanka, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, had to go into hiding as Sri Lankans, fed up with the inept governance that exacerbated the country’s economic collapse, stormed his residence and office.

The widely circulated photographs and videos of protesters indulging in a dip in the president’s opulent pool will not easily fade from memory and merit consideration as 2022’s most telling political image.

Japan, the third-largest economy in the world and long known for the strength of its social fabric, was shocked last week when a man shot former prime minister Shinzo Abe with a home-made handgun at close range, taking the life of the country’s longest-serving head of government.

Anti-government protesters swim in a pool at the president’s official residence in Colombo, Sri Lanka, after storming it on July 9. Photo: AP

Abe’s confident leadership style won over many Japanese. As it turned out, the results of the weekend’s upper house national election should advance the controversial campaign of which he was champion to amend the Japanese constitution to broaden the remit and military potency of the country’s “self-defence” forces.

This may prove Abe’s most notable legacy. But it may also prove a legacy of very mixed value outside Japan – and perhaps to Japan itself in the end. The late Abe had few fans in mainland China or on the Korean peninsula. People there largely viewed his visits to the internationally notorious Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo as revealing what was truly in his heart.

China was the second-largest economy in the world according to 2o21 World Bank data, while South Korea ranked 10th. Surely better strategic thinking in Tokyo would lean towards regional reconciliation rather than confrontation, no matter how difficult China and South Korea can sometimes be.

03:06

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s death shocks Japan and world

In his new book, Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger pushes the view that great leaders must attract followers well beyond the bandwidth of core constituencies; otherwise, the putative leader becomes a lame follower of backers.

His counter-example is the visionary Anwar Sadat, third president of Egypt. He is greatly admired for bringing a vision of peace to the Middle East by a “strategy of transcendence”. It is good that this Egyptian leader is so remembered by the United States’ most prominent senior statesman.

The sole figure from Asia to be included for detailed study in Kissinger’s book is the late founding prime minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew. This is striking when one considers who otherwise might have been asked to the podium to take a bow – India’s Jawaharlal Nehru? Pakistan’s Mohammed Ali Jinnah? South Korea’s Kim Dae-jung? Japan’s Yasuhiro Nakasone? Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping?

03:09

Deng Xiaoping’s role in transforming China

Nonetheless, the choice of Lee is superb. As Kissinger puts it, Lee’s legacy is of both product – the emergence of the powerhouse city state of Singapore – and process, which Kissinger terms “the strategy of excellence”. Under the iron-willed Lee and his capable successors, Singapore attained a standard of governance that, to a certain extent, went global.

But Lee was criticised by some human rights groups with a monomaniacal focus on political rights, according to which being able to vote or take the government to task is more important than being able to eat or be housed.

China, friend or foe to Singapore? How a wily Lee Kuan Yew made it both

By contrast, Lee’s deep understanding of human needs and of the government’s moral obligation to meet them is widely appreciated.

Despite his blistering anti-Communist domestic record and his insistence on the need for a continued balancing of the US’ military presence in Asia, many in China would agree with Kissinger’s assessment of Lee, himself well known for his unstinting praise of breakthrough reformer Deng.

Lee Kuan Yew (left), then Singapore’s prime minister, welcomes then Chinese vice-premier Deng Xiaoping in Singapore on November 12, 1978. Photo: Xinhua

The overall quality of leadership in the Asia-Pacific is rising, in part as a result of Singapore and Lee setting the standard and also due to the region’s continued economic energy.

A positive example is Jacinda Ardern, who has done remarkable work since taking office as prime minister of New Zealand in 2017. She is a clear-headed, adroitly grounded politician who advances realistic possibilities instead of recycling old myths.

An impressive Asian leader is Joko Widodo, president of Indonesia, who since 2014 has been leading the world’s fourth most populous country, home to more Muslim residents than any other. Determined and credible, Widodo and Ardern should forge a special relationship to help the world work out a more functional approach to China than a containment policy.

As the plain-speaking Ardern recently put it, the world is “bloody messy”, but must escape from the dead end of black-and-white thinking and political polarisation. These are the leaders Asia needs.

LMU Professor Tom Plate is vice-president of the non-profit Pacific Century Institute and author of the “Giants of Asia” book series, which includes a volume on the late Lee Kuan Yew