Tuesday, April 9, 2024
4:30 pm – 6:00 pm
City View Room
Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052
The lecture will analyze broad trends in the US approach towards Southeast Asia and the drivers of these trends in the context of global and regional developments. These developments include, but are not confined to, US-China strategic competition. It will suggest that American policy towards Southeast Asia and the region’s responses may offer clues towards the development of the broader Indo-Pacific.
Speaker
Bilahari Kausikan is a Singaporean academic and retired diplomat. He was Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the former ambassador to the UN and Russia. Bilahari is currently Chairman of the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore.
Bilahari Kausikan joined the civil service in 1981. He was appointed as Singapore’s ambassador to the newly formed Russian Federation in 1994, and subsequently as ambassador to the United Nations (1995 – 1998). Bilahari was appointed Second Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2001, and promoted to Permanent Secretary in 2010.
After a 37-year career in Singapore’s foreign relations, Bilahari is known to speak his mind about the issues confronting the country and the wider region. He believes the civil service has become too accommodative and argues that ‘when you are polite, nothing gets done.’ He has called for Singapore to be more muscular in its own delicate diplomatic relations, saying that true neutrality means ‘knowing your own interests, taking positions based on your own interests and not allowing others to define your interests for you by default’. Furthermore, he warns of the danger of passivity in relation to the current US-China split, saying there is no ‘sweet spot’ to keep both the Chinese and Americans ‘happy’.
Bilahari studied political science at the University of Singapore before receiving a scholarship to embark on a PhD in international relations at Columbia University. However, he decided against an academic career and returned to Singapore to join the Foreign Ministry. He is the author of Singapore is Not an Island: Views on Singapore Foreign Policy (2017).
Moderator
Janet Steele is professor of Media and Public Affairs and International Affairs, and the interim director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies. She received her Ph.D. in History from the Johns Hopkins University, and focuses on how culture is communicated through the mass media.
Dr. Steele is a frequent visitor to Southeast Asia where she lectures on topics ranging from the role of the press in a democratic society to specialized courses on narrative journalism. Her book, “Wars Within: The Story of Tempo, an Independent Magazine in Soeharto’s Indonesia,” focuses on Tempo magazine and its relationship to the politics and culture of New Order Indonesia. “Mediating Islam, Cosmopolitan Journalisms in Muslim Southeast Asia,” explores the relationship between journalism and Islam in Indonesia and Malaysia.
Awarded two Fulbright teaching and research grants to Indonesia and a third to Serbia, she has served as a State Department speaker-specialist in Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Brunei, the Philippines, East Timor, Taiwan, Burma, Sudan, Egypt, India, Bangladesh, Jamaica, and Kosovo. The author of numerous articles on journalism theory and practice, her 2014 book, “Email Dari Amerika,” (Email from America), is a collection of newspaper columns written in Indonesian and originally published in the newspaper Surya. Her most recent book, forthcoming in October 2023, is called “Malaysiakini and the power of independent media in Malaysia.”
