Survival.
Lee’s vision of geopolitical stability would require, for starters, an adult working relationship among great powers. Any thrust for hegemony by any one power is inherently disturbing and destabilizing. It is the moral as well as politically realistic position for all to oppose such a buildup by one power alone.
Even if Singapore were not the little bird pecking away on the top of the hippo to survive, but were itself one of the hippos, his vision and instinct would not change. Even in the mind of an alleged ‘soft authoritarian’, there have to be limits on the freedom of the strongest, as of course they burden the weakest.
Survival. LKY himself is quite the survivor. In an environment of utter comfort bereft of challenge, he would shrink psychologically to a more normal dimension of political actor. In the reality of his own mind, he sees existential challenges everywhere. He is still unconvinced that mainly Muslim Malaysia is no longer a military threat to 76 percent Chinese Singapore.
As he puts it to me: “Both our northern and southern neighbors are much larger than us. Both have Muslim majorities and are differently organized. Both have not completely accepted their ethnic Chinese citizens. This accentuates the religious and cultural divide, and a subconscious sense of being a nut in a nutcracker.”
Paranoid?
Or prudent?
Threats are everywhere. He has seen off engineers to Holland to study the science of dike building in the event the pace of global warming quickens and a rising sea level threatens Singapore’s reclaimed land. He most admires those who take destiny in their hands rather than cower in indecisiveness. He admires no one more than the Israelis for their hard-scrabble, high-IQ survivalism.
I look up from my yellow pad on which are scribbled topics I want at least to touch on before the clock runs out: “There’s a line in your autobiography that I just want to have a little fun with if you would. You talked about ‘every society has a small percentage that’s exceptionally able. These people are like the philosopher-kings of old. They will have to be thrown up through a meritocratic process or be actively sought out to lead. Doing so helps raise the lot of all society far more than pretending that all men are equally capable or talented.’ Then at one point, you said, and I found this hilarious: ‘I’m not as smart as an Israeli.’ ”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Whatever do you mean by that?”
He turned to stare at me, an eyebrow almost raised, as if the point were obvious: “The Israelis are very smart.”
“Why?”
He searches his memory for a story: “I asked a Bank of America president in 1990 or something, why are the Jews so smart? And he gave me a book, his own copy, well-thumbed. So—I had it bound up because it might come apart; I think I’ve still got it somewhere—I read it through, small book. And, well, it didn’t go into the pogroms and how the stupid people, the slow and the half-witted, were destroyed and the bright ones survived. He emphasized how the good genes multiplied. He said the rabbi in any Jewish society was often the most intelligent and well-read, most learned of all because he’s got to know Hebrew, he’s got to know the Talmud, he’s got to know various languages and so on. So, the rabbi’s children are much sought-after by successful Jews to bring the good genes into the family. That’s how they multiply, the bright ones multiply. That sums it up.”
I say: “And whereas in the Catholic Church, the priests will destroy that [by not procreating] and so the Church’s kids are getting dumber.”
“And the priests are thinning out to nothingness now. That’s right.”
LKY adheres to the almost mechanistic logic of eugenics and negative eugenics the way the ‘scientific’ baseball manager relies on statistics of home runs and strikeouts to make game decisions. If such and such a batter has a .200 lifetime average against left-handed pitchers, that batter will not likely be permitted to come to the plate late in a close game against a left-handed pitcher. Similarly, smart couples are more likely to produce smart children than couples that are less smart (however measured). The problem for Singapore (and others in Asia, including Hong Kong and Japan) is that more and more smart couples are having fewer and fewer children. Under the dis-eugenics hypothesis, this means each successive generation becomes less smart, like a systematically shrinking Catholic-priest population.
Lee’s solution for his country’s dilemma is to open doors to foreigners who want to become Singaporean, but not to all outsiders—only to the educated professionals, the achievers, the brains, the elite. In almost any democracy, such thoughts by a leader would get him into a boil of trouble. LKY says that he does not worry much about being politically correct. If a given proposition is true and germane to good governance, it is a betrayal of trust to act as if such a truth doesn’t exist. Burying it under the sawdust of political correctness is to lay a land mine for yourself. If a certain ethnic or racial group is overwhelmingly disadvantaged regarding this or that, ignoring that reality, by not treating it, only perpetuates the negative consequences of the disadvantage.
A merit-based system advantages everyone, the less able included, by having governance driven by the best. Suggesting that everyone is equal or that the exceptionally able population is anything but a small percentage of the whole is, in his view, arrant foolishness and, at worst, an evil deception. Purely democratic systems which are not strictly meritocratic tend to elevate mediocrity. The honest, courageous leader—or contemporary ‘prince’—will not hesitate to tell the truth publicly and act on it. Yes, sometimes people’s feelings will get hurt.
Political systems vary by the terrain. Israel is basically a Western-style democracy, and the Catholic Church is not. Neither is China. All three dominions in one way or the other, at given times, have been successful. But democracy ideologues will not be happy until everyone is a democracy. China is often urged by the West to open up and democratize, even overnight.
I say, trying to cover a lot of territory quickly: “In 1999, in Beijing, Clinton said bluntly to China’s President Jiang Zemin, during a memorable joint public TV appearance, that the Chinese government’s thinking about how to govern was on the wrong side of history. Is it?”
“They never thought so then, they even less so think so now.”
“But what do you think?”
“No, I didn’t think so then and I don’t think so now. I think their way has kept China together and they are making progress, but they’re going to face many problems along the road. Technology is going to make their system of governance obsolete. By 2030, 70 percent or maybe 75 percent of their people will be in cities, small towns, big towns, mega big towns. They’re going to have cell phones, Internet, satellite TV. They’re going to be well-informed; they can organize themselves. You can’t govern them the way you’re governing them now where you just placate and they monitor a few people because the numbers will be so large. They know this and they don’t know where they will end up, but they believe step by step, as the situation changes, they adapt, they change, they can remain in control and they co-opt the bright people and the activists into their party. It’s no longer a communist party. It is a party of all those who will make China great and strong. That’s all.”
Me adding: “But the wrong side of history point, it goes back to the Francis Fukuyama book, The End of History, and not only was he wrong in the sense that unpredictable history keeps rolling on whether we like it or not, but maybe our cherished democratic system in America is the exception that doesn’t prove the rule. In other words, that other forms of governance are going to be more thematic in the future.”
LKY adds: “I do not believe that one-man, one-vote, in either the U.S. format or the British format or the French format, is the final position. I mean, human society will change over the years with technology, with free travel. The demographics of countries are changing with mixtures of population.
“What will be the end result? I don’t know. I mean, what will be the future of the U.S. to begin with? The Chinese have projected it and they are fairly confident. They see themselves as relatively homogenous. Yes, they’ll absorb a few more foreigners along the coastal cities, but they’re likely to remain, as today, 90 percent Han. In fifty years’ time, at the most, another 10 percent non-Han, mixed; 80 percent Han. By comparison, they see the U.S. and their migration patterns. By 2050, the Hispanics will overtake the Anglo-Saxons. So, either you change their culture or they change you, and I do not believe you can change their culture.”
Lee continues, at breakneck speed now: “I mean, you look at Latin America. You might change the culture of a few whom you now appoint. Those Hispanics that Obama has appointed to the cabinet or Clinton appointed to the cabinet or George Bush appointed to the cabinet, those are exceptional Hispanics, but the total Hispanic culture will remain what it is. So, you will lose your dynamism, and if you continue with one-man, one-vote, they will set the agenda because they are the majority.”
“I do not believe that one-man, one-vote, in either the U.S. format or the British format or the French format, is the final position. I mean, human society will change over the years...”
I think it is fair to say that Lee would not win any election in any district dominated by Latinos, not to mention by Uighurs or Sinhalese. Here, the deeply embedded American penchant for optimism might come in handy for dealing with what is probably inevitable: continuing waves of immigration into a country whose spectacular success has been built on the brains, as well as the backs, of immigrants, few of whom came here with PhDs, MDs or law degrees. But their kids and then their kids have them in droves.