Asia’s strategic challenge: manoeuvring between the US and China

This paper outlines the dilemmas faced by Asian countries caught in strategic competition between great powers. Abstract This paper by Singapore’s Ambassador-at-large Bilahari Kausikan was the inaugural Shedden Lecture in Strategy and Defence. It artfully describes the tension regional countries face and advocates a posture of flexibility and independence. It argues we should not try to shoehorn current complexity into a binary repeat of the Cold War and to be forced to choose between the great powers will be to have failed strategically. Executive summary The clarity of the Cold War is forever gone and it is analytically misleading to try and re-create it today. For non-great power countries the essence of post-Cold War strategy is to embrace ambiguity. To be forced to choose is to have failed. US China competition provides a space for manoeuvre for non-great powers that conflict or agreement between the major powers does not. To be most successful, multilateral institutions should not work too well in constraining the major powers, or the institution will be sidelined. Preservation of communist party rule is the core interest of China’s leaders. Public US acknowledgement of this is central to strategic trust emerging