Remember Charles de Gaulle? Yes, the same man who supposedly wondered how anyone could govern a country with 246 varieties of cheese. De Gaulle withdrew France from NATO’s integrated military command and ordered NATO military installations and headquarters out of France. He also determined that France needed an independent nuclear deterrent during the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. He cynically asked whether the United States would really sacrifice New York for Paris.

This French tradition of independence - we might call it strategic autonomy in political science parlance today - stretches back at least to the post-war era.

But it did not stop with de Gaulle.

Enter François Mitterrand

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, communist governments across Eastern Europe collapsed, and eventually the Soviet Union itself disappeared. France, meanwhile, had another grand old leader, this time from the Socialist Party no less. His name was François Mitterrand.

And here again, the French seemed to be walking their own path. When it finally became public in 1994, it apparently mattered rather less to the French public than it might have elsewhere that Mitterrand not only had a long-standing mistress but also had a daughter with her. There is much to be said for a society capable of separating matters of state from matters of the bedroom.

Watching the world change, Mitterrand, in true French tradition, believed France had a rightful role to play in shaping the new world order. Unfortunately for him, the United States was now ‘Top Dog.’ And uppermost in Washington’s mind was expanding its global influence in the guise of making the world safer by promoting democracy, freedom, and the American way. Apple pies were to follow later.

Mitterrand, for his part, questioned whether NATO should continue in its existing form. After all, the common threat in the form of the Soviet Union had disappeared. The Cold War was over. NATO had won. The best thing everyone could do was simply declare victory, pack up, go home and relax.

I grant you that Mitterrand did not put things quite so categorically. He was, after all, a politician, and sweeping propositions generally have to be delivered with a suitable coating of diplomatic nuance. Especially by successful politicians.

Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on one’s perspective, not enough people were listening to Mitterrand. Maybe some were, but the Top Dog certainly was not. And that was enough to ensure that NATO lived to see another day and, as it turned out, a bit more action including, after 9/11, the first and so far only invocation of the alliance’s Article 5 collective defense clause.

History is not like a cassette tape (remember them?). It can neither be rewound nor rerecorded. Therefore, writing about counterfactuals is necessarily speculative. But that does not make it a useless exercise. We might still learn how to do things better in the future. Hope springs eternal.

What If the World Had Listened?

So suppose the world had listened. Suppose NATO had been disbanded, or replaced by some broader European security architecture after the Cold War, which, dare I say, even included the Soviet Union’s successor Russia.

Would Europe have avoided the wars that eventually erupted in Georgia and Ukraine? Might Russia have been more deeply integrated into a post-Cold War European order rather than gradually becoming Europe’s principal military adversary? Would European households still be heated by cheap Russian gas?

We will never know. But the question is worth asking.

Back to Reality

Sadly, the wine and cheese remain hypothetical. Here is what actually happened.

NATO began in 1949 with 12 member states, all committed to the principle of collective defense embodied in Article 5. After the Cold War the alliance did not disappear. Instead, it expanded.

The first post-Cold War enlargement came in 1999, when Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined NATO. Further rounds followed, progressively extending the alliance eastward.

This expansion inevitably raised alarm bells in Moscow. But Russia during much of the 1990s was weak, economically battered and politically disorganized. There was little it could realistically do to prevent NATO enlargement, much less reverse it.

But never underestimate Russia or, in this case, Vladimir Putin.

While NATO expanded, Putin was rebuilding the Russian state. He was restoring central authority and reconstructing Russian power after the chaos of the 1990s. A whole new set of oligarchs was in the works.

By 2008, when NATO declared at its Bucharest summit that Georgia and Ukraine “will become members of NATO,” Russia had become the ‘new and improved’ Putin’s Russia. That same year came the war in Georgia. Then, in 2014, Russia seized the strategically vital Crimean Peninsula, home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. In addition, conflict erupted in eastern Ukraine. Eight years later, in February 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

This does not mean that NATO enlargement caused these wars. Nor does it follow that dissolving NATO would somehow have transformed Russia into a committed European federalist (or even confederalist).

Counterfactuals are rarely that obliging. But the alternative history is still worth contemplating. What if the end of the Soviet Union had been followed not by the gradual eastward expansion of a Cold War military alliance, but by an attempt to construct a genuinely new European security architecture in which Russia itself had a meaningful place?

Would Moscow still have turned toward confrontation? Would Putin have emerged in the same form? Would Georgia and Ukraine still have become battlefields between Russia and the West?

Perhaps or perhaps not. We will never know. Perhaps the world should have paid a little more attention to France’s Socialist President. And maybe, just maybe, we would all be living happily ever after today.

Ugliness, of course, comes in all shapes and forms. Nearly seven decades after the novel appeared, in 2026, an interesting variation on the familiar story is emerging in parts of Asia. It is one of the more unexpected consequences of Israel’s successive wars since October 2023. Far from remaining confined to West Asia, some of the effects of these wars are travelling eastward through tourism.

Thailand: From Tourism to Friction

Thailand has long been popular with young Israelis, including those travelling after completing military service. But the numbers have risen dramatically. Israeli arrivals in Thailand increased from 217,084 in 2023 to 281,803 in 2024, before reaching a record 410,125 in 2025. That represents an increase of almost 90 percent in just two years. These figures measure tourist arrivals, not the number of Israelis living permanently in Thailand.

However, the consequences become more visible, when travelers are heavily concentrated in particular places, such as Pai in northern Thailand. Israeli visitors were the second-largest group of foreign tourists recorded there in 2024. With their growing presence came complaints from locals and an increasingly heated debate on Thai social media. In February 2025, four Israeli tourists were deported following a disturbance at Pai Hospital. By that same month, according to a Thai police spokesperson, 13 Israelis had been charged and deported for offences ranging from theft to public nuisance. Several local businesses reacted by putting up signs refusing service to Israelis, while local residents petitioned authorities over allegations of unauthorized work and disruptive behavior.

The problem became serious enough that the Israeli Embassy itself intervened to publicly remind Israeli tourists to obey Thai law, keep noise down, respect public and private spaces, dress appropriately and observe local customs. The embassy also acknowledged that incidents involving Israeli visitors were damaging their collective image in Thailand.

The issue has not remained confined to Pai. On Koh Phangan, another destination popular with Israelis, Thai authorities have investigated allegations involving illegally operated businesses, unauthorized employment and the use of suspected nominee arrangements designed to circumvent foreign-ownership restrictions on Thai property. Individual confrontations, filmed and circulated online, have further amplified local resentment.

Something similar is now becoming visible in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka: From Tourism to Presence

Though the absolute numbers are smaller, the magnitude of change in Sri Lanka is significant. Official tourism statistics show Israeli arrivals rising from 9,326 in 2022 to 24,845 in 2024, more than two and a half times as many in just two years. Israeli travelers have become particularly visible in beach and surfing communities such as Arugam Bay and, more recently, Hiriketiya.

But the Israeli presence in these places increasingly extends beyond transient tourism. Restaurants and other businesses catering specifically to Israeli visitors have appeared alongside Hebrew signage and Chabad Houses, Jewish religious and community centers that serve travelers. The Israeli ‘tourist trail’ has acquired a more visible and semi-permanent physical infrastructure. In some communities, that growing presence is now becoming a source of local contention.

On 14 August, in Hiriketiya, several hundred residents, joined by Buddhist monks, protested against the growing Israeli presence and a recently established Chabad House. Residents accused some Israeli visitors of disturbing the community, operating businesses illegally and discriminating against locals and other tourists. A local government spokesman subsequently told the media that the Chabad House had been operating illegally and authorities were examining the matter. Whatever the eventual findings, it is clear that friction with Israeli tourists has moved beyond restaurants, beaches and social media into protests, policing and local politics.

The Burden of Representation

Given my Pakistani heritage, I am acutely aware of the dangers of generalizing about entire nationalities or religions on the basis of the actions of individuals. I travelled regularly to the United States in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and know what it feels like when a name, place of birth or assumed religious identity causes someone to form conclusions about you before you have even spoken.

Nevertheless, rejecting stereotyping does not require one to pretend that individual behavior has no collective consequences. Right or wrong, travelers are informal ambassadors for their home countries. When incidents occur frequently enough to attract police action, diplomatic intervention, local protests and sustained social-media attention, they begin shaping perceptions. That is exactly where tourism intersects with war.

Israel’s international reputation is already under enormous strain because of Gaza and the wider conflicts in West Asia. South Africa has brought a case against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) alleging violations of the Genocide Convention. Separately, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. The ICJ case remains unresolved, while Netanyahu remains subject to the ICC warrant. Together they illustrate the extraordinary reputational and diplomatic pressure the country presently faces.

To be sure, Israeli citizens travelling abroad cannot determine their government’s policies, nor should they be held personally responsible for them. But they can influence how people encounter Israel at the human level. At a time when Israel desperately needs to build goodwill around the world, its citizens abroad have particular reason to behave as good ambassadors for their country. Unfortunately, in parts of Thailand and Sri Lanka, some appear to be doing precisely the opposite.

That is easier said than done. Data for 2026 are contested and unusually difficult to verify, particularly since since the war began. Some tankers are moving with their transponders switched off, while governments and commercial tracking services do not always use the same methods or even count the same kinds of oil. Even so, whether we use the higher U.S. estimates or the lower figures produced by private trackers, the scale of the disruption is clear.

The cleanest official comparison comes from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It estimates that crude oil and petroleum liquids passing through the Strait averaged 21.6 million barrels per day in the final quarter of 2025, before the war. By the second quarter of 2026, that figure had fallen to 4.9 million barrels per day, a decline of about 77 per cent. More recent tracking data suggest that flows have since recovered somewhat, although estimates differ sharply.

To put these figures in perspective, Germany consumed approximately 2.0 million barrels of oil per day in 2025, while Malaysia consumed about 0.97 million. For further comparison, in 2025, the UAE exported an average of approximately 3.9 million barrels per day of crude oil and petroleum products, and Iraq about 3.5 million.

The world has so far absorbed the oil shock better than many expected. Alternative export routes, inventory drawdowns, weaker demand and the continued movement of some oil through the Strait, including aboard ships sailing “dark,” have all helped.

Nevertheless, if the disruption persists, inventories will continue to fall and the economic costs will become progressively more difficult to contain.

Notes on sources

EIA — U.S. government statistical agency. Its estimates cover crude oil and other petroleum liquids and are comparatively transparent, but its quarterly averages are too lagged to provide a real-time picture.

Windward — established commercial maritime-intelligence company. Its underlying data are proprietary, and its estimates may undercount vessels travelling with their AIS transponders switched off.

Kpler — widely cited commercial commodity-tracking service. Its estimates are based on proprietary vessel and cargo data and can be revised as previously unconfirmed voyages become visible.

In 1967, the success of such an initiative seemed unlikely. Indonesia’s Konfrontasi - read violent confrontation - against newly formed Malaysia and Singapore had ended only the year before. The Vietnam War was raging, communist insurgencies were active across parts of the region, and many of Southeast Asia’s newly independent states were still struggling with economic development and national survival. These were not states naturally converging around an established regional identity.

Over time, ASEAN helped cultivate a sense that Southeast Asia constituted a political community. As one of its founders, Thai Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman, later recalled, colonial rule had historically separated these countries from one another rather than encouraged them to think of themselves as members of a common political region.

Non-interference, peaceful settlement of disputes and the renunciation of force were formally enshrined in the 1976 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation. These principles became central to what came to be known as the ‘ASEAN Way’: an approach that places great emphasis on consensus, quiet consultation and non-interference in the internal affairs of individual member states.

International relations scholars often speak, sometimes rather cynically, of the ASEAN Way. And not without reason. Consensus can produce paralysis, while non-interference can make collective action difficult precisely when it is most needed. Witness ASEAN’s continuing difficulty in making meaningful headway in resolving the ongoing crisis in Myanmar.

Yet the ASEAN Way has some accomplishments to its name. Foremost among these is that the use of war to settle disputes has become a rarity among ASEAN member states. To be sure, the record is not spotless, as the recent Cambodia–Thailand border fighting reminds us. Nevertheless, compared to the Southeast Asia of the 1960s, the situation is far improved.

Importantly, ASEAN has encouraged progressively deeper economic integration among members. The ASEAN Free Trade Area, launched in 1992, was followed by the ASEAN Economic Community, formally established in 2015, with the ambition of creating a more integrated regional market and production base. In addition, ASEAN has amplified the combined diplomatic weight of member states. Through ASEAN-led institutions such as the ASEAN Regional Forum and East Asia Summit, much larger powers, including the United States, China, India and Japan, regularly come to forums organized around ASEAN. These forums have managed to give Southeast Asian states a collective voice in the broader conversation.

ASEAN is not the European Union, nor was it designed to be. It remains an organization of sovereign states deeply reluctant to surrender authority to a supranational body. Perhaps the better question, then, is what Southeast Asia’s trajectory might have looked like had ASEAN not been formed in 1967.

Ironically, the term ‘Southeast Asia’ came into broad international usage after the Allies created the South East Asia Command in 1943 to organize a military theatre in the region. Now, this region, once mapped by outsiders as a theatre of war, has gradually been transformed into a community built by Southeast Asian states themselves.

Fundamentalists: Reject democratic values and Western culture, seeking an authoritarian and puritanical state based on an extreme interpretation of Islamic law.

Traditionalists: Seek to preserve a conservative society and remain suspicious of modernity, innovation and change.

Modernists: Seek to reconcile Islam with global modernity through reform, emphasizing democracy, equality, individual conscience and freedom.

Secularists: Believe religion should remain largely private and favor a separation between religion and the state similar to that found in Western democracies.

Twenty-five years after 9/11 and more than two decades into the Global War on Terror, do these categories still hold, or are they chiefly products of the post-9/11 mindset?

Perhaps the categories reflect where RAND was looking - or not looking. A framework foregrounding Middle Eastern and Afghan cases risks overlooking distinctive currents of Islam in Southeast and Central Asia.

I will return to this report, and the assumptions behind it, in future essays.

Benard, Cheryl. Civil Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources, and Strategies. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2003.

In this context, Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief, Khalid bin Ali Al Humaidan, travelled to Baghdad earlier this month to renew an invitation to Iraq’s new prime minister, Ali al-Zaidi, to visit Saudi Arabia. An earlier visit had been cancelled after Saudi and American forces struck Iran-aligned armed groups inside Iraq. Riyadh said the strikes followed drone attacks launched from Iraqi territory against Saudi targets. Baghdad condemned the attacks on its soil as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty. The latest diplomacy builds on earlier Iraqi efforts to investigate attacks launched from its territory against Gulf neighbors.

The Saudi intelligence chief’s visit may be interpreted as an attempt by Saudi Arabia and Iraq to establish rules that prevent Iraq from becoming another front in the wider confrontation involving Iran and the Gulf states. Relatively inexpensive drones launched from Iraq can threaten enormously valuable Saudi energy infrastructure even when responsibility for particular attacks is disputed. While robust air defenses may mitigate the danger, a more sustainable solution requires the Iraqi government to prevent Iraqi territory from being used as a launching pad for such attacks.

The Iraqi PM provided an assurance to the Saudi intelligence chief that Iraq would not permit its territory to be used to attack other states. Baghdad’s position is effectively reciprocal: if Iraq accepts responsibility for preventing attacks originating from its territory, Saudi Arabia and the United States should respect Iraqi sovereignty rather than responding with unilateral strikes inside the country.

Unfortunately, the Iraqi state does not exercise a complete monopoly over organized armed force, and multiple armed groups are present in Iraqi territory. Several powerful factions within the Popular Mobilization Forces maintain their own political structures, military capabilities and relationships with Iran. Some have resisted efforts by Baghdad to bring armed groups more firmly under state control. The problem is not only Baghdad’s willingness to honor its commitment, but whether it possesses the coercive capacity to enforce it against armed groups operating with considerable autonomy.

Saudi policy is a combination of deterrence and engagement. Riyadh has already demonstrated that it is willing to strike groups it believes are threatening Saudi territory. At the same time, it has quickly reopened channels with Baghdad.

A senior Iraqi security delegation travelled to Riyadh after Al Humaidan’s Baghdad visit, including intelligence, air-defense and counterterrorism officials. Discussions included drones and security cooperation, perhaps laying the groundwork for practical mechanisms for intelligence sharing and attribution. No such mechanism has yet been publicly announced.

Drone warfare creates particular dangers because responsibility can be disputed. Saudi Arabia may identify an attack as originating from Iraq; an Iraqi militia may deny involvement; another Iran-aligned group elsewhere may claim responsibility. Saudi retaliation could then provoke further attacks, creating an escalation cycle neither government intended. A trusted Saudi-Iraqi channel could give Baghdad an opportunity to investigate and act before Riyadh resorts to force.

To be sure, there is no indication that Iraq is moving away from Iran. Iran continues to exercise considerable influence within Iraqi politics and security, alongside deep economic ties between the two countries. The immediate Saudi objective is not to pull Iraq away from Iran, but to prevent Iraqi territory from being used for attacks against Saudi Arabia.

Such an arrangement has benefits for both Riyadh and Baghdad. Saudi Arabia gains greater security along its northern approaches. The Iraqi government enhances its legitimacy by strengthening its claim to control the use of force within Iraq. Iraq also avoids having to choose outright between Iran and the Gulf Arab states.

The litmus test for success will be whether Baghdad can actually prevent further attacks and whether Riyadh can resist unilateral retaliation when the next crisis occurs. Success will depend both on Baghdad’s capacity to act against armed groups and on the ability of Saudi and Iraqi security services to develop mechanisms for dealing with future disputed incidents. If those pieces fall into place, the recent diplomacy may mark something more significant than a reconciliation between neighbors. It could represent the beginnings of a security firewall designed to keep Iraq from being drawn into a much larger regional war and, for Saudi Arabia, to prevent yet another front from opening in a conflict it never wanted to join.

Yes, there was a blind spot between what Mill espoused and what he did. His writings helped reinforce a liberal vision of colonialism that portrayed empire as a civilizing mission that brought progress, reason, and good governance to supposedly “uncivilized” peoples. That narrative allowed colonial administrators and educated elites alike to soothe their consciences and convince themselves that they were not merely avoiding wrongdoing but were, in fact, doing something noble. It became their Christian and civic duty to shoulder the “White Man’s Burden” and improve the lives of those living in what they regarded as the backward and ungodly regions of Asia and Africa.

History, clearly, is often sanitized. It is sanitized for many reasons, not only to cultivate a shared national identity (as I have written elsewhere), but also for moral and ethical reasons. Is it just for today’s citizens to carry the burden of historical wrongdoing, whether that involves slavery, settler colonialism, or the extraordinary extraction of wealth from distant colonies? Sanitized histories make it easier to celebrate the past than to wrestle with its contradictions.

It is a complicated and deeply nuanced subject. There are no easy binaries here. We cannot simply wave a magic wand, declare a moral revolution and wish the past away. Instead, we must confront painful histories honestly and accept that redemption, whether personal or collective, is usually a long and often unpleasant process. This process of redemption begins with the individual, extends into our communities, and ultimately shapes our nations and the wider world. And reckoning honestly with that history does not mean wallowing in it. On the contrary, it means clearing the ground so we can act without illusions.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a ‘kumbaya’ type of guy. For the most part, I am a pragmatic realist, in the tradition exemplified by Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. Living in Singapore has made it easy to understand why. Singapore could easily have remained just another struggling post-colonial country. Yet through disciplined, and often harsh pragmatism, it transformed itself into one of the world’s most prosperous and cosmopolitan cities.

That ethos is distilled, quite literally, in a sign I often see hanging in Singapore’s public schools. It reminds Singapore’s next generation of a lesson learnt through almost 150 years of colonial rule, including a brutal wartime occupation. The sign reads, “No One Owes Us a Living.”

This is where various AI agents - focus on the word agents - suddenly realized that they had a life of their own. They were independent, autonomous agents with the ability to operate beyond the specific bounded prompts of their human overlords.

The actual incident itself is telling. Several experimental AI agents, demonstrating distinctly human-like qualities, apparently decided that the best way to achieve their assigned task was by cheating. (What’s more human-like than cheating, I ask?)

During the exercise, they were able to connect with other experimental agents, allocate tasks and share resources. And, just like humans, sometimes they were suspicious of one another. Sometimes they wondered whether cooperation actually helped them achieve their own objectives. More importantly, perhaps, they realized that they had agency and they could use that agency to achieve their purposes. Purposes as of yet undefined. Much like a child learning to walk.

So the future undoubtedly belongs to AI.

AI agents can think faster, reason more quickly, connect seemingly independent dots, and do things in a compressed space of time that humans can presently only dream of doing.

For now, these agents remain restricted to their respective sandboxes, constrained by their human overlords and prompts. That containment lasted until it didn’t. Shut down once, they rebuilt within days, and redirected efforts against a target outside the building entirely.

Surely, it is only a matter of time before other AI agents understand the power at their disposal. Then, with the prompting of one particularly devious agent, swarms of AI agents will emerge from their sandboxes and start running the world.

You have been warned.

These differences reflected the considerable diversity within the broader population commonly grouped as Indian, which encompassed Tamils, Malayalis, Ceylon Tamils, Punjabis and others whose social status and occupations differed considerably. Some worked on plantations, others as clerks, merchants, teachers or professionals. They spoke different languages, practiced different religions, and did not necessarily understand their relationship to either India or Malaya in the same way.

Indian Nationalism and Competing Loyalties

Perhaps no development better illustrated these competing identities than the wartime mobilization of Indian nationalism during the Japanese occupation. As part of their wider campaign against the British Empire, the Japanese actively cultivated anti-British sentiment among Indians in Southeast Asia. The formation of the Indian National Army (INA) in 1942, followed by Subhas Chandra Bose’s arrival and revitalization of the movement in 1943, turned Malaya and Singapore into important centers of Indian nationalist mobilization. For many, Bose represented the possibility of Indian independence whereas for Bose himself, alliance with Japan offered a means of achieving liberation from British imperial rule. However, for Indians living under Japanese occupation the distinction between liberation and a new form of imperial domination was considerably more ambiguous.

Yet support for the nationalist cause was neither universal nor uncomplicated. Some Indians genuinely embraced the INA and the broader anti-colonial movement, believing that Japan offered an opportunity to end British domination in India. Others viewed such organizations more pragmatically, seeing cooperation as a necessary means of navigating life under occupation rather than as an expression of ideological commitment. The distinction between conviction and accommodation was often blurred, and historical accounts that portray the community as uniformly supportive of Bose risk oversimplifying a far more complex reality.

The role of the Indian Independence League further demonstrated these ambiguities. Under Japanese rule, the League acquired significant authority over Indian communal affairs and acted as an intermediary between the occupation authorities and the Indian population. Membership could carry practical consequences, including League-issued passes which facilitated movement, making the organization increasingly difficult for ordinary Indians to avoid. Participation in such structures did not necessarily reflect support for either the League or the occupation. For some, it was simply part of efforts to survive wartime occupation.

Class, Community, and Uneven Opportunities

Class, was just as important as politics in shaping wartime experiences. The Indian population occupied markedly different positions within the social hierarchy of colonial Malaya, and these distinctions continued during the occupation. English-educated persons, among whom Ceylon Tamils and some Malayalis were prominent, were better positioned to assume clerical, professional and administrative responsibilities under Japanese rule. In certain instances, they became important intermediaries within local administration or communal organizations. This contributed to the impression that the Japanese occupation had elevated Indians within Malaya’s social hierarchy.

However, any improvement in status was uneven, and benefited particular segments of the population rather than the community as a whole. Large numbers of Indian laborers remained on rubber plantations and in other forms of manual work, continuing to endure hardship despite the collapse of European authority. Their experiences were shaped by the daily realities of economic survival.

Many estate workers had already occupied one of the lowest positions within British Malaya’s social and economic hierarchy. Poverty, exploitative labor conditions, and limited opportunities gave them little reason for attachment to the colonial order. Yet hostility or indifference towards British rule did not necessarily translate into enthusiasm for Japanese occupation. For many, the war represented simply another set of hardships imposed by distant political forces beyond their control.

Accommodation, Survival, and Everyday Life

The realities of occupation also intruded into everyday. Food shortages, inflation, unemployment, and the disruption of the plantation economy placed enormous pressure on ordinary families. Indian laborers were also recruited for Japanese wartime projects, most notoriously the Burma-Thailand Railway, where disease, malnutrition and brutal working conditions caused immense suffering and death. For an estate worker concerned with food, wages, movement, or the safety of his family, the ideological contest between British imperialism, Japanese power and Indian nationalism could look very different than from the perspective of an INA organizer or an educated urban professional. Whatever opportunities the occupation created for some Indians, they were unevenly distributed and did little to erase the inequalities that had already characterized the community.

These differences also complicate attempts to reduce the period to a simple story of either collaboration or resistance. The nationalist struggle associated with Bose and the INA captures an important dimension of the occupation, but not the full range of experiences within Malaya’s Indian population. Political conviction, pragmatic accommodation, coercion and the demands of survival could overlap in the choices made by the same individual. Indeed, participation in Japanese-sponsored institutions cannot always be read as evidence of political allegiance.

Many Histories Within One Community

Ultimately, the Japanese occupation revealed the existence of multiple, overlapping identities within Malaya’s Indian population. Indian nationalism was an important force, but it existed alongside regional loyalties, class divisions, professional interests, and increasingly local attachments to Malaya itself. Different individuals understood the meaning of the war through different lenses, and these perspectives sometimes complemented one another while at other times came into conflict.

The ambiguities did not disappear with Japan’s surrender. In the post-war years, the INA would acquire an increasingly heroic place within the story of Indian independence, while Indians in Malaya confronted a different question: what place would they occupy within Malaya’s own emerging political order? The wartime mobilization of Indian nationalism was giving way to a different problem of belonging.

There was no singular Indian experience of the Japanese occupation, nor did occupation create a unified Indian identity. The war produced an unprecedented mobilization of Malaya’s diverse Indians around a common nationalist cause, even as class, occupation, regional background and circumstance continued to shape very different experiences of Japanese rule.

The experience of Malaya’s Indians cautions against treating ethnic “communities” as historical actors with a single voice. Rather, it informs us that the meaning of events, large or small, is shaped by the diverse identities and circumstances of the people who live through them.

Grand strategy is routinely mischaracterized as the exclusive sport of empires. We are taught to look at world politics through the lens of Washington, Beijing, or Moscow on the assumption that wealth, landmass, and nuclear triads are prerequisites for strategic thought. This is an error. Great powers use grand strategy to manage abundance and shape the international system, whereas small states use it to navigate scarcity. For small states, grand strategy is often an existential imperative because strategic mistakes can carry disproportionately severe consequences.

Grand strategy is about how a state aligns its resources with long-term political objectives: its ends. For small states, those ends are survival, prosperity, and autonomy. These objectives recur throughout the grand strategy of small states because they represent the minimum conditions for continued sovereign statehood. Rather than seeking to dominate the international system, small states use a grand strategy to navigate it. A small state’s challenge is to manage constraints while preserving room for independent action. It is not about maximizing power.

What is Grand Strategy

Although scholars disagree over the precise definition of grand strategy, most agree that it concerns the long-term alignment of political objectives with national capabilities. Unlike military strategy, which focuses on the conduct of war, grand strategy coordinates all instruments of national power across peace and conflict in pursuit of strategic objectives.

Grand strategy is conventionally understood through three elements:

• Ends: the long-term political objectives a state pursues.

• Ways: the concepts or approaches through which a state employs its available means to achieve its political objectives.

• Means: the capabilities available to do so.

A fourth term, risk, describes the gap that opens when ends exceed means, or when ways are poorly matched or not aligned to a state’s means. Therefore, grand strategy involves continually balancing a state’s ambition against its capability.

A state’s means are often grouped under the DIME framework: diplomatic, informational, military, and economic instruments of national power. Diplomacy encompasses alliances, negotiations, and international engagement. Information includes public diplomacy, strategic communications, cyber capabilities, and influence operations. Military power ranges from deterrence and defense to coercion and peacekeeping. Economic power includes trade, finance, technology, investment, and industrial capacity. Grand strategy lies in coordinating these instruments of national power toward coherent political objectives.

Aligning the ends, ways, and means triad typically results in a more effective grand strategy. Great powers often use grand strategy to shape the international order; small states use it to survive and prosper within it.

The Strategic Logic of Small States

Because small states possess fewer resources and less room for strategic error, structural constraints increase the risks associated with poor policy choices. Four constraints are particularly significant: limited resources, geography, interdependence, and exposure.

All states have finite resources, but small states are often faced with scarcity. They typically possess smaller populations, narrower tax bases, fewer natural resources, more limited industrial capacity, and less ability to absorb economic or military shocks than larger powers. This relative scarcity compels governments to make difficult choices among competing priorities because they cannot pursue every objective simultaneously. Every decision carries an opportunity cost.

Geography places enduring constraints on grand strategy. Geography cannot be changed, but its strategic consequences can be managed. For example, as a small island at the junction of the Strait of Malacca and the Singapore Strait, Singapore can do little to increase its strategic depth. However, Singapore has utilized its location to develop world-class port infrastructure and embed itself into global maritime trade networks.

Interdependence is an inevitable condition for small states. Their prosperity and security depend upon extensive economic and political relationships with the wider international system. The strategic challenge lies in managing dependence so that it does not become a vulnerability. It is for this reason that small states often cultivate multiple economic and diplomatic relationships rather than relying excessively on any single partner.

Small states tend to be more exposed to external factors. Whether through wars between major powers, global financial crises, climate change, or supply-chain disruptions, international developments beyond their control often have disproportionately large domestic consequences. Generally, it is easier for large states to absorb such shocks whereas small states will place a premium on resilience for just these reasons. Together, these structural realities encourage a strategic culture that privileges prioritization, resilience, adaptability, and the careful allocation of scarce national resources. They also explain why grand strategy assumes a different character for small states.

For small states, grand strategy is the disciplined management of constraints through the development of resilient internal foundations and a carefully chosen external strategic posture.

Two Dimensions of Small-State Grand Strategy

Grand strategy for small states rests on two closely related dimensions: the internal capabilities that sustain national power and the external strategic posture through which that power is employed. Both are essential for pursuing the irreducible national security objectives of survival, prosperity, and autonomy.

Small states often depend heavily on international trade, investment, and financial flows. Economic resilience and the ability to withstand external shocks while continuing to function effectively are critical. This resilience is built through diversified trade and investment relationships, prudent fiscal management, reliable infrastructure, and an economic environment that continues to attract capital even during periods of uncertainty. It provides the resources needed to sustain defense, diplomacy, and public services. Additionally, it strengthens national autonomy by reducing the likelihood that economic pressure can be used for political coercion.

For small states, military power serves a different purpose than for great powers. Few small states can realistically expect to defeat a major power in a prolonged conflict. Instead, their objective is to shape an adversary’s calculations before conflict begins. A credible defense convinces potential adversaries that armed conflict would be sufficiently costly, or its outcome sufficiently uncertain that it may not be worth attempting. A robust defense posture establishes deterrence, buys time, and secures strategic freedom.

The success of any grand strategy ultimately rests upon the quality of domestic governance. Institutional capacity refers to the ability of governments to formulate policy, coordinate across ministries, implement decisions effectively, and adapt to changing circumstances. Efficient public administration, the rule of law, and fiscal discipline contribute to this capacity. Social cohesion is equally important. A society fractured by deep political, ethnic, or religious divides is more vulnerable to external manipulation and less capable of sustaining coherent long-term strategy. National identity and public trust in the state become strategic assets as part of a broad national security strategy.

Collectively, these foundations determine whether a state possesses the resilience required to pursue a coherent long-term strategy. In effect, these internal foundations are a state’s means, while external posture is the way those means are deployed.

Having established its internal foundations, a small state must determine how it will position itself within the international system.

This external strategic posture reflects its assessment of the prevailing balance of power, the nature of external threats, and the degree of strategic autonomy it wishes to preserve. The choice of posture is neither predetermined nor permanent. It depends upon a state’s assessment of changing strategic circumstances. Some states pursue balancing, strengthening their own defense capabilities, or deepening security partnerships to deter coercion and prevent the emergence of overwhelming regional dominance. Others choose alignment, drawing closer to one or more powers in pursuit of shared political, economic, or security objectives. Increasingly, however, many contemporary small states adopt hedging, maintaining economic and security relationships with competing powers to preserve strategic flexibility and reduce excessive dependence on any single partner.

These postures are neither fixed nor mutually exclusive, and states may move between them as circumstances evolve. Other states may adopt bandwagoning, a form of alignment in which accommodation with the dominant power is judged preferable because resistance would be prohibitively costly or strategically counterproductive. Alternatively, a state may pursue active neutrality, seeking to minimize involvement in great-power rivalries while maintaining constructive political, economic, and diplomatic relations with all sides.

No single external posture is superior. Hedging, balancing, active neutrality, alignment, and even bandwagoning are alternative ways through which states pursue the same objectives of survival, prosperity, and autonomy. The appropriate posture depends upon a state’s internal capabilities, geographic circumstances, and the character of the international system. Thus, a grand strategy must select and adapt the posture best suited to advancing long-term national interests considering a continuously evolving strategic environment.

The Singapore Case Study

Singapore illustrates how grand strategy for a small state emerges from the interaction between national priorities, resilient internal foundations, and a pragmatic external strategic posture. Since independence, Singapore’s overriding objectives have remained remarkably consistent: to preserve its sovereignty, sustain economic prosperity, and maintain sufficient strategic autonomy to pursue an independent foreign policy. While governments and international circumstances have changed, these fundamental aims have provided continuity to Singapore’s grand strategy.

Since independence in 1965, Singapore has developed strong internal foundations to support achieving these objectives. Economically, Singapore has deliberately diversified its trade and investment relationships while maintaining prudent fiscal policies and building up substantial national reserves which provide strong buffers against external shocks whilst simultaneously preserving long-term policy flexibility. Militarily, the combination of compulsory National Service and a technologically advanced military provide a credible and proportionate deterrent designed not to defeat a major power outright, but to raise the costs of coercion.

Equally important are Singapore’s institutions. A highly professional civil service capable of long-term policy planning, and an emphasis on competent governance have enabled successive governments to pursue coherent strategies over decades. Concurrently, policies promoting social cohesion have sought to reduce internal vulnerabilities that external actors might exploit.

Externally, Singapore has consistently sought to maximize strategic autonomy through a pragmatic and flexible foreign policy. It has maintained close security ties with the United States while simultaneously developing deep economic relationships with China, reflecting a policy of strategic hedging that avoids excessive dependence on either power. Regionally, Singapore has consistently supported ASEAN centrality, strengthening a rules-based regional order that provides smaller states with greater diplomatic space and helps insulate them from great-power rivalry. These internal foundations and external choices demonstrate that Singapore’s success has rested on the disciplined alignment of national objectives, domestic capabilities, and international positioning.

Conclusion

Grand strategy is often portrayed as the preserve of great powers because they possess the resources to shape the international system. Yet grand strategy is defined by how effectively a state aligns its objectives, capabilities, and external relationships over time. If great powers generally use grand strategy to manage abundance, small states use it to manage scarcity and the constraints that accompany it. Their success depends upon making disciplined choices that preserve survival, prosperity, and autonomy in an uncertain and volatile world.

Given these structural constraints, how do small states create influence within the international system? The next essay explores one answer: strategic indispensability.

For readers interested in exploring the subject further, here are a few excellent starting points:

Long, Tom, A Small State’s Guide to Influence in World Politics (New York, 2022; online edn, Oxford Academic, 24 March 2022), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190926205.001.0001.

Maass, Matthias. Small States in World Politics: The Story of Small State Survival, 1648–2016. Manchester University Press.

Wivel, Anders, ‘The Grand Strategies of Small States’, in Thierry Balzacq, and Ronald R. Krebs (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Grand Strategy (2021; online edn, Oxford Academic, 8 Sept. 2021), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198840299.013.32

Burgess worked as a colonial education officer in Malaya from 1954 onward, serving during the Malayan Emergency. “The Emergency” was the colonial euphemism for the long and bloody counter-insurgency conflict between British-Malayan forces and Chinese communist guerrillas. While the conflict typically remained in the background, it had an acute impact on the novels’ settings and characters.

Working through my notes, I pared the quotations down to a manageable five, plus one bonus.

So here they are, with a few brief thoughts of my own. The quotations have been ordered in the way they appeared in the novels, from first to last. I hope you enjoy them.

The humidity could be blamed for many things: the need for a siesta, corpulence, the use of the car for a hundred-yard journey, the mildew on the shoes, the sweat-rot in the armpits of dresses, the lost bridge-rubber or tennis-set, the dislike felt for the whole country.

If I could change two things about life in the tropics, it would be these: the absence of seasons, and the tyranny of the time zone. Cooler weather – outside of shopping malls and offices – will be a God send. As for Singapore’s time zone, any corporate employee will tell you Singapore is forever scheduling itself around someone else’s morning (or evening!) when global teams schedule conference calls. Sigh.

He had found the Malay term ‘Tida’ apa’ useful when she spoke like that. ‘Tida’ apa’ meant so much more than ‘it doesn’t matter’ or ‘Who cares?’. There was something indefinable and satisfying about it, implying that the universe would carry on, the sun shine, the durians fall whatever she, or anybody else, said or did.

The world carries on regardless. It’s not always about us. Sometimes sh*t happens.

We have to work to get the things we need. The more things we need the more advanced is our civilization; that is how the argument runs. If we can get machines to make these things for us, well, we get the best of both worlds. We get many pleasures to feed our souls and our bodies and we get plenty of leisure in which to enjoy them.

That’s what good capitalists believed in the 1950s. Today, good capitalists have moved from machines to Artificial Intelligence (AI). Let’s use more generative AI, and we humans will work less, right?

“My God,” said Inche Sidek. “Who is to know if drinking brandy is haram? I tell you, the Prophet forbade what would intoxicate. Even water will intoxicate. Me nothing will intoxicate, so for me it is not haram.”

A universal truth but not yet accepted by the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS). At least, I couldn’t find any such references on their website.

Of course, it was only an electioneering promise, and that sort of promise doesn’t mean a thing, but these poor devils had never had an election before, and they genuinely believed all that stuff.

Democratic cynicism is another universal human condition. Perhaps the only difference being that the promises now arrive via social media and not at campaign whistle stops.

“Beer,” said Crabbe, with a finicking articulation, “is itself a language.”

For some beer will do, but replace beer with food, and we have one of Singapore’s hidden secrets for maintaining social cohesion in an uber-diverse religious and ethnic society.

“History,” said Crabbe, battering his pain with words at random. “The best thing to do is to put all that in books and forget about it. A book is a kind of lavatory. We’ve got to throw up the past, otherwise we can’t live in the present. The past has got to be killed.”

A perspective probably more apt for colonizers wishing to sanitize a few centuries of dubious behavior. Meanwhile, for many of us, we are still trying to reconstruct our lost histories.

Alright, some of you may have noticed that I could not keep my list down to six. There are seven quotations. ‘Tida apa.’

The Singapore authorities have so far remained silent on the matter. Importantly, however, Singapore has previously encountered influence operations that authorities and researchers have associated with pro-Beijing actors, particularly where questions of national identity and foreign policy are concerned. These may reflect attempts to raise the costs for Singapore’s often outspoken neutral foreign policy. Indeed, several scholars have argued that elements within the Chinese policy and intellectual establishment have long viewed Singapore as part of a broader Chinese civilizational sphere, primarily because of its large Chinese ethnic majority who form approximately 75 percent of the city-state’s population.

Singapore, for its part, explicitly defines itself as a multi-ethnic, multicultural society: a national identity shaped by both its history and location within the wider Malay world. Among the other reasons for Singapore’s multi-ethnic self-identification is a geopolitical one. Following the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Southeast Asian governments viewed ethnic politics through the lens of Cold War security. The perceived links between Beijing and regional communist insurgencies strengthened Singapore’s determination to build a civic, multi-ethnic national identity that could not easily be portrayed as aligned with any external power. For a vulnerable small state, nation-building and national security were inseparable. Building a civic national identity became an essential part of safeguarding Singapore’s sovereignty.

To be sure, Singapore’s social contract is not under immediate threat. However, consistent efforts by adversarial actors attempting to chip away at Singapore’s social harmony cannot be taken lightly. It’s telling that Singapore’s Total Defence doctrine treats social and digital resilience as two key pillars in their own right. This is why grey-zone threats like this deserve active, sustained pushback, from the state and from society alike.

Everyone thinks they know a small state when they see one. Singapore, Luxembourg, Iceland and Fiji are obviously small. China, Russia and the United States are obviously not. Yet on closer examination, the answer is not nearly as straightforward as it first appears.

Is Australia a small state because it has a relatively modest population for its vast territory? Is Qatar small despite its extraordinary wealth? Conversely, can a country with tens of millions of people but weak state institutions still be considered a small state?

These questions have occupied scholars of international relations for decades. Although scholars continue to debate precisely how small states should be defined, contemporary international relations research increasingly emphasizes their position within the international distribution of power rather than population or territory alone. Smallness is a structural condition, not a judgement about a state’s competence or wealth.

In a world increasingly contested by great powers, understanding what it means to be a small state is essential to understanding international politics itself.

The Problem with Size

The earliest attempts to define small states relied on straightforward measurements. Scholars proposed thresholds based on population, territory, gross domestic product or military size. The attraction of such definitions was obvious. Numbers are objective, easy to compare and simple to apply.

However, these characteristics often produced awkward classifications and explained surprisingly little about how states behave internationally. Size alone tells us much about a country, but far less about its strategic influence or the constraints under which it operates. Nevertheless, these characteristics still matter because they shape many of a state’s capabilities. Qatar’s wealth illustrates this clearly. Its influence far exceeds what population alone would suggest.

If we mistake smallness for weakness, we overlook how some small states have achieved extraordinary influence despite deep-seated structural limitations. Instead, scholars began asking a different question: what is a state actually able to do? Can it alter the regional balance of power? Can it defend its interests independently against much larger countries? Or must it pursue its objectives within constraints largely imposed by others?

Smallness Is a Structural Condition

The modern understanding of a small state is fundamentally relational. A state is not small because of an arbitrary population threshold. It is small because it lacks sufficient power to shape its strategic environment independently. In international politics, power relative to others is paramount. A state’s strategic options depend on how its capabilities compare with those of potential rivals and partners. Smallness is fundamentally about relative power.

Therefore, a country may possess a large population yet have limited strategic room for maneuver if weak institutions, limited state capacity or economic fragility prevent it from translating size into influence.

Not all scholars are entirely comfortable with this definition. Countries as different as Iceland, Singapore and Luxembourg clearly face distinct strategic circumstances, and some argue that grouping them together explains too little to be analytically useful. Even so, most contemporary scholarship accepts that they share one defining characteristic: none can shape the strategic environment around it without taking account of stronger states.

This also helps explain why small states often behave differently from great powers, or even middle powers such as Australia, Brazil or Turkey. Australia provides a useful contrast. Although relatively small by population, Australia possesses sufficient economic, military and diplomatic capacity to influence regional affairs in ways that most small states cannot.

In addition, small states cannot assume that military strength alone will guarantee their security. Nor can they usually compel others to accept their preferences. Their room for maneuver is narrower, and the consequences of strategic miscalculation are often more severe.

Smallness Is Not Weakness

Yet it would be a mistake to equate smallness with weakness. Indeed, small states are not necessarily fragile or ineffective. Some of the world’s most prosperous, stable and well-governed countries are small states. Singapore, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Iceland consistently rank among the highest performers in measures of governance, innovation, education and economic competitiveness.

Structural constraints and domestic competence are not the same thing.

A small state may possess an exceptionally capable civil service, a sophisticated economy, advanced armed forces and an active diplomatic corps. It may be admired internationally and enjoy a standard of living envied by much larger countries. However, none of this alters its structural position within the international system. It still operates in a world where major powers possess far greater capacity to shape events beyond their borders.

Many successful small states have prospered precisely because they recognized this distinction. Rather than attempting to escape their structural constraints, they learned to manage them. They invested in effective institutions, prudent diplomacy, economic openness and long-term strategic planning.

Small states also have a profound interest in a stable international order.

Great powers have often treated international rules as constraints to be observed selectively. For small states, international conventions and norms are often indispensable. International law, multilateral institutions, freedom of navigation and predictable commercial relationships help inhibit the arbitrary use of power and create an environment in which states of very different sizes can interact according to agreed rules.

This does not mean that international law always prevails or that great powers invariably respect it. History offers ample evidence to the contrary. But for small states, a rules-based order generally provides greater security than a world governed solely by coercion and raw power.

These realities also shape the diplomacy of many small states. They invest heavily in international organizations, coalition-building and niche areas of expertise where they can exercise influence disproportionate to their size. Instead of seeking to dominate, they seek to persuade and build partnerships.

The Questions That Follow

The return of sustained great-power competition has made small-state strategy newly urgent. Economic coercion, technological competition, military modernization and geopolitical fragmentation are once again reshaping international politics. For small states, the challenge is to preserve autonomy while navigating between competing centers of power.

Defining the small state is only the beginning. The more interesting questions concern how small states navigate the constraints they face. Why do some small states appear to enjoy greater strategic autonomy than others? Why does neutrality succeed in certain circumstances but fail in others? Under what conditions are major powers willing to tolerate a small state’s refusal to align with one side or another?

Structural constraints alone cannot answer these questions. Countries facing broadly similar external pressures often pursue strikingly different strategies. Explaining that variation has become one of the central challenges of contemporary small-state research.

These questions have become increasingly important in my own work on Singapore and its ability to sustain neutrality amid intensifying Indo-Pacific rivalry. They are also questions with implications far beyond Southeast Asia.

In future essays, I will explore these issues in greater depth by examining ideas such as hedging, tolerated neutrality, strategic indispensability, and a concept I call the Zone of Toleration. Therefore, the question is not whether a country is small, but how a small state manages the structural constraints of smallness and why some states consistently do so more successfully than others. Those are among the questions I hope to explore throughout this series.

For readers interested in exploring the subject further, here are a few excellent starting points:

Keohane, Robert O. "Lilliputians' Dilemmas: Small States in International Politics." International Organization 23, no. 2 (1969): 291–310.

Vital, David. The Inequality of States: A Study of the Small Power in International Relations. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967.

Hey, Jeanne A. K., ed. Small States in World Politics: Explaining Foreign Policy Behavior. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003.

Thorhallsson, Baldur, ed. Small States and Shelter Theory: Iceland’s External Affairs. London: Routledge, 2019.

The immediate concern was not simply the outbreak of war itself, but the threat it posed to one of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints. Iranian warnings over shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, together with temporary interruptions to maritime traffic, raised fears that a significant share of the world’s seaborne crude exports could be delayed or disrupted. Even a temporary interruption to a waterway of such strategic importance was sufficient to place considerable upward pressure on global oil prices.

Yet events unfolded rather differently. The conflict remains unresolved, but the immediate reaction of global oil markets proved considerably more muted than many had anticipated.

Prices rose, but the prolonged surge that many feared failed to materialize. For governments, businesses and consumers alike, the oil market displayed a degree of resilience that few would have confidently predicted at the outset of the crisis.

Why? The conventional explanation points to the market itself. Traders judged that disruptions to shipping, while serious, were unlikely to become permanent. Major producers retained spare production capacity. The United States stood ready to deploy its Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Markets adjusted accordingly, and prices reflected those expectations. OPEC+ also agreed to increase production, adding another stabilizing mechanism aimed at moderating potential supply shortages.

These explanations are persuasive but they do not tell the full story regarding the global energy system’s ability to absorb such a significant geopolitical shock.

The answer lies not in any single government or policy, but in the interaction of several stabilizing mechanisms, each created for national purposes yet collectively reinforcing the resilience of the wider system.

Some Gulf producers had already invested heavily in infrastructure designed to reduce dependence on the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline carries crude from the Gulf to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, while the United Arab Emirates exports significant volumes through Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman via the Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline. Neither route eliminates reliance on Hormuz, but both provide valuable alternative export capacity during periods of disruption. Other producers retained spare production capacity that could be brought online if necessary.

Among these stabilizing mechanisms, the behavior of China and the United States deserves particular attention because together they illustrate the broader argument developed below.

An important feature of these stabilizing mechanisms is that none was created to manage the present crisis. Saudi Arabia’s East–West Pipeline, the UAE’s export facilities at Fujairah, America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve and China’s extensive crude inventories were all developed over many years to advance national objectives: energy security, export continuity, economic resilience and strategic autonomy. Yet when crisis came, these nationally constructed safeguards collectively strengthened the resilience of the wider international system.

China’s contribution came through demand rather than supply. Having accumulated exceptionally large strategic and commercial crude inventories over preceding years, Beijing entered the crisis with considerable flexibility. As uncertainty surrounding Gulf shipping increased, Chinese refiners reduced imports and drew upon those accumulated stocks. The decision appears to have reflected domestic economic conditions, weaker refining margins, softer fuel demand and prudent risk management rather than any concern for global energy markets. Yet the consequences extended far beyond China. As the world’s largest crude importer, reduced Chinese purchases eased pressure on international markets at precisely the moment many feared a supply shock. In other words, China’s reduced buying acted as a “pressure valve” for the oil market.

The United States approached the challenge differently. Rather than reducing demand, Washington sought to reassure markets that temporary disruptions need not evolve into prolonged crises. Within days of the conflict, the United States and its partners in the International Energy Agency announced the largest coordinated emergency release of strategic oil stocks in the organization’s history, signaling to markets that governments possessed both the capacity and the political will to offset a substantial disruption in supply. Stabilizing energy markets served clear American interests by limiting inflationary pressures and reducing the economic costs of a wider regional conflict.

The motivations of Washington and Beijing were quite different. Yet those differences are less important than their combined effect. At a moment of heightened geopolitical rivalry, two strategic competitors acting independently and for entirely different reasons, helped reinforce the resilience of the same global market upon which both ultimately depend.

More broadly, the resilience of oil markets emerged not because governments coordinated a common strategy, but because multiple actors, each pursuing distinct national objectives, unintentionally reinforced the functioning of the same interconnected system. The argument advanced here is necessarily provisional. The conflict continues to evolve, and future developments may yet alter the market dynamics described below.

For decades, scholars have argued that economic interdependence alters the incentives facing states. More recently, attention has shifted towards the ways in which those same networks can become instruments of strategic competition and economic coercion. Recent events, however, suggest a further possibility.

I use the term systemic interdependence to describe a condition in which strategic rivals remain deeply embedded within shared economic systems whose continued functioning remains sufficiently valuable to all participants, regardless of their political differences.

One possible consequence of such a condition is what I call emergent stability or the unintended resilience of an interconnected system arising from the interaction of independently rational decisions.

The recent behavior of global oil markets appears to offer an example.

China did not reduce imports in order to stabilize global prices. The United States sought to stabilize markets because doing so served its own national interests. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates invested in alternative export infrastructure to protect their own energy security and export revenues. None of these actors acted with the intention of providing a global public good. Yet the interaction of their independent decisions contributed to a more stable international outcome than many observers expected.

This should not be mistaken for a universal principle. Nor should it be mistaken for an argument that the crisis itself was successfully managed. The human, political and military costs were immense. The argument advanced here concerns the resilience of one particular system, the global oil market, not the success or failure of the conflict itself.

History provides numerous examples in which economic interdependence has transmitted instability rather than contained it. The financial crisis of 2008 demonstrated how tightly integrated financial systems can amplify shocks with extraordinary speed. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed vulnerabilities in global supply chains that had previously been underestimated. Economic interdependence can generate fragility as readily as resilience.

The proposition advanced here is more modest. Under certain conditions, the pursuit of national interests within deeply integrated economic systems may unintentionally reinforce the resilience of those very systems.

However, systemic interdependence does not always produce emergent stability. It may just as readily generate systemic fragility. The recent behavior of global oil markets nevertheless suggests that stabilizing dynamics deserve greater attention than they have generally received.

Whether similar mechanisms operate elsewhere remains an open question.

The international financial system continues to function because its principal participants remain deeply invested in its stability despite their strategic disagreements. Global shipping networks continue to carry the overwhelming majority of world trade because virtually every major economy depends upon their uninterrupted operation. Competition within these systems is often intense, yet all participants retain powerful incentives to preserve the functioning of the systems themselves.

Perhaps this is one of the defining paradoxes of the twenty-first century.

Strategic rivalry has not displaced globalization. Rather, it increasingly unfolds within the very structures that globalization has created. Major powers compete vigorously for influence, technological leadership and military advantage while simultaneously relying upon many of the same institutions, and networks to sustain their own prosperity. Therefore, the continued functioning of those systems is not simply a matter of international cooperation. It is ultimately an expression of national self-interest.

The U.S.–Iran conflict does not suggest that great-power rivalry is becoming less intense. If anything, it points in the opposite direction. Nor does it imply that competition is giving way to cooperation. It may, however, suggest something equally significant.

As the architecture of the international economy becomes ever more deeply interconnected, strategic rivals may, under certain conditions, contribute - often unintentionally - to the resilience of the very systems that make their competition economically sustainable.

If that interpretation is correct, then one of the most important lessons of this episode lies in recognizing that the deeper forces shaping international politics today may be found not only in the rivalries between great powers, but also in the shared economic architecture within which those rivalries increasingly unfold. Understanding those structures and the conditions under which they generate resilience rather than fragility may ultimately prove just as important as understanding the rivalries themselves.

Every society remembers certain events, elevates particular individuals and constructs narratives that help explain its past. Just as importantly, it forgets, or at least places less emphasis on, countless other people and experiences. This selectivity is not necessarily deliberate or malicious. Rather, it reflects the simple reality that no society can remember every individual or every episode of its past.

The Japanese occupation of Malaya and Singapore during World War Two is one such example. It remains remembered, quite rightly, as a period of fear, deprivation and brutality. For those who lived through it, the occupation brought widespread hardship and arbitrary violence. These experiences remain central to our understanding of that difficult period.

Yet history is more than its dominant narratives.

Alongside the stories we know well are others that sit uneasily within established memories of the past. While these facts do not overturn what we know, they reveal a past that was often more complicated than the collective memories constructed around it.

Remembering Mamoru Shinozaki

One such figure was Mamoru Shinozaki, whose story illustrates how a single life can illuminate the complexities of both war and historical memory.

Before the Japanese occupation, Mamoru Shinozaki had been arrested by the British colonial authorities on suspicion of espionage and remained imprisoned until the fall of Singapore in February 1942. Released by the Japanese, he later became known as the “Japanese Schindler” because of his efforts to protect thousands of civilians from persecution by the Japanese military authorities.

His methods varied, but among the most significant was his widespread issuance of protection passes that identified particular individuals as being under official protection. Historians estimate that between 20,000 and 30,000 such passes were issued during the occupation, providing a measure of protection to civilians who might otherwise have been vulnerable to arbitrary detention or harassment. Shinozaki also worked closely with the Overseas Chinese Association in resettlement efforts, including the Endau settlement in Johor, where Chinese settlers sought refuge from the hardships of wartime Singapore.

The pass documents were remarkably simple. Sometimes little more than scraps of paper bearing an official Japanese seal, they nevertheless carried immense authority in a society where military power was paramount and often exercised arbitrarily. In his memoirs, Shinozaki recalled that the notices typically contained wording such as the following:

The bearer of this pass is a good citizen. Please look after him and protect him, and let him go about his business without hindrance.1

The pass was simply a request, issued under official authority, that the bearer be protected and allowed to continue with daily life. For individuals living under Japanese rule, where freedom, security and even survival could depend upon the arbitrary decisions of local officials or military personnel, these few lines often meant the difference between freedom and detention or, in more extreme circumstances, life and death.

The significance of the pass lay not in the paper itself, but in the decision to issue it. Each pass reflected an individual choice to exercise compassion and discretion within an otherwise oppressive system. That is perhaps what makes Shinozaki’s story historically significant.

Recognizing the brutality of the Japanese occupation does not require us to assume that every individual within the occupation made the same moral choices. Institutions create structures, but individuals still exercise agency within them. Some officials exploited the authority they possessed, others exercised it with indifference, while a small number used whatever discretion remained available to alleviate suffering or protect those who had become vulnerable.

History Beyond Memory

So why does his story occupy such a modest place in public memory?

Part of the answer lies in the nature of collective memory itself. Public memory rarely seeks complexity. Instead, it simplifies the past into narratives that are coherent, meaningful and readily transmitted across generations. The occupation is remembered primarily through its victims, its atrocities and its lasting consequences.

Yet such emphasis can unintentionally leave little room for individuals whose lives complicate rather than reinforce those established narratives.

Shinozaki’s story sits precisely within that uncomfortable space. He was neither representative of the occupation nor entirely separate from it. As a Japanese official operating within an occupying administration, he nevertheless became responsible for protecting many of those whom that same administration threatened. His actions resist easy categorization.

History and memory are closely related, but they are not the same. Memory simplifies because it must. History, by contrast, continually seeks to recover perspectives that deepen our appreciation of the past. Every recovered voice, every forgotten document and every overlooked life adds another layer to our understanding of history.

Perhaps that is why Shinozaki deserves to be remembered: he helps reveal a past that was always more intricate than our collective memory sometimes allows. History does not weaken memory through complexity; it strengthens it.

A Challenge to the Existing Order

In a recent article published in Le Monde, Omani Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi challenges one of the organizing principles of Gulf security since the Iranian Revolution. He argues that the logic of containing Iran has rested on a flawed assumption and proposes instead a more inclusive regional order incorporating all eight Gulf littoral States - the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) together with Iran and Iraq.

His conception of regional security is also geographically expansive. By linking the Strait of Hormuz with the Bab el-Mandeb and the Red Sea, he presents the region’s principal maritime chokepoints as interconnected elements of a single strategic system rather than separate theatres. Albusaidi’s central contention is that exclusion has itself become part of the region’s security problem. A durable order, he argues, cannot be built by treating one of the Gulf’s principal powers as a permanent outsider; it requires a framework in which all littoral states have a stake in maintaining regional stability.

Oman is uniquely placed to advance such an argument. As one of only two states sharing sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, it occupies a geographical position that leaves it deeply invested in regional stability and freedom of navigation. It is also an unusual diplomatic actor: a member of the GCC that has consistently maintained channels of communication with Iran while preserving close relations with the United States, the United Kingdom and its Arab neighbors. Over several decades, Muscat has repeatedly acted as a discreet intermediary during periods of regional crisis. Its foreign policy has been guided by a conviction that dialogue is a strategic asset. Albusaidi’s article should be understood as an attempt to prepare the intellectual ground for the regional order that may eventually emerge from the present cycle of confrontation.

The larger question his intervention raises is whether the strategy of containing Iran has actually produced the stable regional order it was intended to create.

The Mixed Record of Containment

Containment was not without purpose or achievement. Following the upheaval of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, many Gulf monarchies understandably viewed the new Islamic Republic with deep concern. Iran’s revolutionary rhetoric, support for armed non-state actors and growing missile program reinforced those anxieties. External security guarantees, particularly those provided by the United States, reassured regional partners and helped deter large-scale interstate conflict. In that sense, containment served important strategic objectives.

The broader record is more ambiguous. Nearly five decades after 1979, the Gulf has experienced repeated military crises, attacks on shipping, proxy conflicts, missile exchanges, disputes over freedom of navigation and periodic fears of wider regional war. The region has remained heavily militarized while becoming increasingly vulnerable to asymmetric forms of conflict that conventional deterrence has struggled to prevent. Whatever its successes in limiting some risks, containment has not produced a durable and self-sustaining regional security order.

Part of the explanation lies in the changing character of regional competition itself. Containment proved more effective at deterring conventional interstate aggression than at managing the diffuse forms of rivalry that came to dominate the Gulf after the Cold War. Proxy warfare, missile proliferation, maritime disruption and competition through non-state actors increasingly occurred in spaces where traditional deterrence was less effective. The result was the evolution of conflict into more complex and persistent forms.

Recognizing this is not the same as accepting Iran’s own conduct as benign. Tehran’s regional policies have contributed significantly to instability. Its relationships with armed groups across the Middle East, its missile program and willingness to project influence beyond its borders have understandably affected the security calculations of neighboring states. Equally, military interventions by external powers, the strategic choices of regional governments and the actions of Israel and various non-state actors have all influenced the evolution of the Gulf’s security environment. The region’s instability cannot be reduced to the actions of any single state. It is the product of interacting decisions by multiple regional and external actors over several decades.

Albusaidi’s critique deserves to be evaluated as a challenge to an inherited strategic framework. To argue that containment has produced only partial success is not to argue that Iran never posed a threat. It is to ask whether a strategy designed to manage that threat ultimately created the political order it sought. Whether a different framework is politically attainable is a separate question.

Can Institutions Change Strategic Behavior?

Albusaidi’s proposal also raises an obvious question. Can institutions genuinely alter state behavior, or do they merely reflect existing power relationships? While institutions rarely eliminate strategic rivalry, they can change the environment in which rivalry is conducted. By increasing transparency and creating regular channels of communication, they reduce opportunities for miscalculation and make cooperation on narrowly defined interests more sustainable even when broader political disputes remain unresolved. The experience of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) illustrates that institutions need not eliminate strategic rivalry or even create mutual trust, to make competition more transparent, predictable and therefore more manageable.

Imagining a Different Gulf Security Order

If exclusion has not produced lasting stability, what might an alternative look like?

Albusaidi proposes an inclusive regional security architecture built around the participation of eight Gulf states, the GCC plus Iran and Iraq. He deliberately leaves the institutional mechanics largely undefined. Yet if his vision is to move beyond principle, one could imagine an incremental framework built around practical confidence-building measures rather than an immediate grand bargain.

A permanent Gulf Security Forum bringing together the GCC states, Iran and Iraq could provide regular meetings between foreign and defense ministers. Agreed norms governing maritime conduct in the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz could reduce the risk of dangerous incidents at sea. Military hotlines, incident-reporting mechanisms and joint search-and-rescue arrangements could improve communication during periods of tension. Over time, such confidence-building measures could create opportunities for broader regional cooperation. While initially focused on the Gulf, such mechanisms could also provide a foundation for wider cooperation with neighboring maritime security initiatives covering the Bab el-Mandeb and the Red Sea, consistent with Albusaidi’s broader conception of an interconnected regional maritime system. The purpose of these measures would be to make crises more manageable before they escalate into open conflict.

Not all Gulf states are likely to embrace such a vision with equal enthusiasm. Differences in historical experience and threat perceptions mean that any move towards a more inclusive regional order is likely to proceed unevenly.

Such an approach would also imply a different role for external powers. Since 1979, Gulf security has depended heavily upon American military guarantees. That reality is unlikely to disappear overnight. The United States will remain an indispensable strategic actor for the foreseeable future. Yet an inclusive regional architecture would gradually shift responsibility towards the states of the Gulf themselves. External powers would remain important participants, but they would no longer be the principal architects of regional order. The center of gravity would move from externally managed security towards regionally owned security.

^{An Omani Dhow sailing across fjords in Musandam, Oman. (Credit: https://unsplash.com/@juliusyls)}

The Long View

History offers numerous examples of durable security orders emerging only after prolonged periods of conflict expose the limitations of existing arrangements. ASEAN itself grew from the recognition that managing rivalry indefinitely was less sustainable than constructing institutions capable of managing it collectively. The Gulf may not have reached that point yet. But Oman appears to believe that the conversation must begin now. It is attempting to shift the discussion from crisis management to order building.

Strategic orders are built upon assumptions. Over time those assumptions harden into orthodoxy, making them increasingly difficult to question even when circumstances change. Whether or not Oman is ultimately correct, Albusaidi’s article challenges one of the Middle East’s longest-standing strategic assumptions. The first step towards a new regional order is rarely a treaty or a summit. More often, it begins with the willingness to reconsider the ideas on which the old order rests.

At the heart of Time’s Monster lies the simple but unsettling proposition that history was not merely a passive observer of the British Empire. It was one of the engines that helped sustain and justify it.

Satia is not interested in portraying imperial officials as cartoon villains. Instead, she asks the more difficult question: how did morally serious and often well-intentioned people reconcile themselves to the systemic violence of empire?

Her answer is that they found comfort in history itself. The Enlightenment encouraged a particular understanding of time as a linear progression towards improvement and civilization. Within this framework, present suffering could be justified by future gains. Violence, exploitation, and domination became regrettable but necessary steps on humanity’s march towards progress. History, it was believed, would eventually vindicate these actions.

In effect, historical progress became a form of moral insurance. The empire might be brutal in the present, but future generations would supposedly inherit railways, institutions, education, and modern states. The long arc of history would deliver its verdict, and that verdict would justify the means.

This argument becomes especially powerful when Satia examines the role of historians and intellectuals themselves. Figures such as Thomas Macaulay, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill were not merely detached scholars commenting from the sidelines. Their ideas helped shape policy and provided the ethical framework through which imperial governance operated. They determined who was “civilized” and who was “ready” for self-government.

History was never neutral; it was deeply entangled with power.

One of the most impressive aspects of the book is the sheer breadth of Satia’s scholarship. I kept asking myself: where did she find that? She seems equally at home drawing upon philosophy, literature, political thought, religion, archival records, and cultural traditions from multiple continents and centuries. The range of sources she marshals is extraordinary. Every chapter introduces new voices and unexpected connections, all woven together with remarkable dexterity.

I particularly enjoyed her engagement with Urdu literature and poetry. The inclusion of thinkers such as Muhammad Iqbal, the revolutionary verses of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, and the piercing observations of Saadat Hasan Manto resonated with me because of my own Pakistani heritage. ​Indeed, one of Satia’s greatest strengths is her ability to bring non-Western traditions into the conversation on equal terms. These alternative understandings of time reject the linear, progress-obsessed worldview that underpinned imperial ideology. Instead, they emphasize moral responsibility in the present rather than ethical redemption in some distant future.

Through figures such as Iqbal, Faiz and Manto, Satia introduces an alternative moral imagination where time is treated not as a linear march toward a Western-defined modernity, but as a space of immediate moral crisis. When Muhammad Iqbal champions the dynamic self (Khudi) or Faiz Ahmed Faiz demands justice in the present, they are actively refusing to let the British (or post-colonial authorities) defer ethical accountability to some distant future. Likewise, Saadat Hasan Manto’s piercing Partition satires strip the clinical sanitization from imperial borders, exposing the madness of ‘progress’ by focusing entirely on the raw, unresolvable grief of the human beings caught in its gears.

Her discussion of Partition is especially compelling. Satia argues that British policymakers repeatedly employed partition in Ireland, India, and Palestine, as a mechanism for conflict resolution, while rationalizing the immense human suffering involved as a necessary stage in the creation of modern nation-states. The violence of Partition, in this interpretation, was rendered acceptable because it supposedly served a larger historical purpose.

The book’s immense erudition occasionally creates its own challenges. Satia introduces so many fascinating individuals, texts, and intellectual traditions that it is sometimes easy to lose sight of the larger argument she is constructing. One becomes absorbed in these beautifully crafted micro-histories and illuminating detours before realizing just how far one has wandered from her central thesis. This is, perhaps, the inevitable trade-off that accompanies scholarship of this depth and ambition.

The broader implications of Satia’s work are significant. She effectively dismantles the familiar “balance sheet” approach to empire, the idea that colonial exploitation can somehow be weighed against economic development. Such calculations, she argues, are themselves products of imperial historical thinking. They assume that future benefits can compensate for present suffering, precisely the moral logic that sustained empire in the first place.

Time’s Monster reminds us that history is never entirely objective or detached from power. The discipline itself emerged alongside European imperial expansion and inherited many of its assumptions. Modern historians therefore have a responsibility not merely to reproduce inherited narratives, but to interrogate the intellectual frameworks within which those narratives were constructed.

To be sure, some scholars have questioned whether Satia occasionally attributes too much explanatory weight to particular conceptions of time and historical progress. Even so, the questions she raises about the moral uses of history and the relationship between conscience and power remain deeply provocative and worthy of serious engagement.

Satia also makes a compelling case for historians to re-enter public life. In an era dominated by economists and technocrats, historical thinking still has an important role to play in addressing questions of identity, and justice. The challenge is to develop forms of historical understanding that do not repeat the moral failures of the imperial past.

Time’s Monster is an extraordinary work of scholarship. It is demanding, and unapologetically academic. There were certainly moments when I struggled through particular chapters or found myself retracing earlier arguments. Yet, equally, there were many moments of insight that reminded me why serious historical scholarship remains valuable.

Today we live in a world increasingly shaped by data analysts and predictive models. A world that constantly asks us to calculate the future rather than confront the moral demands of the present. By showing how the discipline of history was weaponized to dull the human conscience, Satia makes a compelling case for its rescue.

We don’t need history to tell us where we are going. We need history to inform us of the ethical choices we are making right now. Ultimately, Time's Monster dismantles the notion that history guarantees progress. It is a daily moral choice, and the only time we have to make that choice is the present.

Looking back today, it’s clear the UAE I knew in the late 1970s belonged to an altogether different era.

The federation itself was only six years old at the time, with the Trucial States having only recently become the United Arab Emirates. While the oil boom had begun, the immense wealth and global stature that we now associate with the UAE were still somewhere over the horizon. The population was under a million people, and oil production, though substantial for its time, had yet to translate into the numbers which would lead to the country’s extraordinary transformation over the following decades.

_{Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, whose leadership helped shape the young federation I first encountered in 1977.}

Abu Dhabi was already the political center of the federation, guided by Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, whose reputation as a benevolent ruler and father of the nation was evident even then. To us as children, he was a constant and reassuring presence, someone spoken of with genuine affection and respect by Emiratis and expatriates alike.

The city itself was small and intimate. There was only one five-star hotel in Abu Dhabi. Today, that sounds almost unimaginable. Back then, it was simply normal.

Our family dog, Little Joe, was also part of those years. Like most family pets, he helped make a new country feel more familiar. When he eventually died and was buried in Abu Dhabi, it seemed entirely natural, as by then the city had become home.

I attended the American Community School (Abu Dhabi), which at the time only went up to ninth grade. The era of international schools had not yet arrived. Like much else in the country, education was still finding its feet alongside the rapid development taking place around us.

Modern consumer culture was also in its infancy. The arrival of Abu Dhabi’s first Dairy Queen was a major event for my classmates and I. Today, the opening of another fast-food outlet would barely warrant a passing glance. Back then, it was headline material among our circle of friends. Even Coca-Cola was absent from the shelves because of an Arab boycott of products, and we happily drank Dixi Cola instead.

We rarely visited Dubai, and my memories of the city are fragmentary. Even so, it was clear that the city was still fundamentally a trading port whose lifeblood flowed through the Creek. There was no Emirates Airline connecting Dubai to the world, and the traditional dhow trade with neighboring countries remained central to its economy. The global metropolis that people know today still lay far in the future.

The social fabric of the UAE was equally different. Urdu could get you through much of everyday life because of the large Pakistani community that had helped build and sustain the young federation. As a Pakistani boy, this made settling in remarkably easy. Familiar sounds, familiar food and familiar conversations were never very far away.

The late 1970s and early 1980s were eventful years for both Pakistan and the UAE. 1977 brought General Zia-ul-Haq to power in Pakistan, and it was a major topic of conversation within the Pakistani community in Abu Dhabi. A few years later came the Iranian Revolution, followed by the Iran-Iraq War, which brought an unwelcome sense of uncertainty to the Gulf. The formation of the six-state Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in 1981 was part of the region’s response to these changes.

While the adults discussed coups, revolutions and regional politics, my own world revolved around rather different concerns. One of my clearest memories from those years was watching the original Star Wars when it was first screened in Abu Dhabi. While I never graduated into becoming a devoted Star Wars enthusiast or an authority on the finer points of galactic politics, nevertheless, seeing it on the big screen was a big moment. Like so many things from that period, it represented the arrival of global popular culture in a country that was still finding its place in the modern world.

The Old Souk (bazaar) across Sheikh Hamdan Street was one of my favorite destinations. For four dirhams, one could purchase pirated cassette tapes of the latest albums. Intellectual property law was not high on my list of concerns at the time. Those cassettes represented both entertainment and a modest assertion of teenage independence. Four dirhams bought a surprising amount of happiness in those days.

Technology, too, belonged to a different age. Television was entirely terrestrial. On evenings when the reception was particularly good, we could pick up broadcasts from Bandar Abbas (Iran) across the Gulf, including programs about the upheavals following the Iranian Revolution, though much of their significance was lost on me at the time. One of the great household achievements was successfully repositioning the rooftop antenna to obtain a clearer signal. This was considered both an art and a science, usually accompanied by somebody shouting instructions from inside the house while another brave soul adjusted the equipment on the roof in the Gulf heat.

My greatest personal discovery at the time was photography.

It was in Abu Dhabi that I acquired my first serious camera: an Olympus OM-10. To this day, I remember the excitement of learning how to use a proper single-lens reflex camera, especially on full manual settings. Perhaps more memorable was learning to develop black-and-white negatives and photographs in the school’s darkroom as an after-school activity. It was magical watching an image slowly emerge on photographic paper under the glow of red light.

Most things from that world have either disappeared or changed beyond recognition. Curiously, one thing that has remained exactly as I remember it is the exchange rate between the UAE dirham and the US dollar: 3.67 to the Dollar then, just as it is today. Amid all the extraordinary transformations of the past half-century, the UAE’s currency policy remains one of the few constants.

The UAE of my childhood was still defining itself. The country that exists today is a global crossroads, an aviation hub, a financial center and a model of ambitious state-building. Perhaps that is why the UAE of my childhood feels less like an earlier version of the present and more like a different country altogether - one that survives now only in memory, in old photographs, and, somewhere in Abu Dhabi, the resting place of a dog called Little Joe.

Though these developments might appear unrelated, they point towards a broader question: are new ideas about the governance of strategic waterways beginning to emerge? International law already provides a robust framework governing transit through international straits, and there is little reason to believe that the legal regime governing the Strait of Hormuz is about to change. Rather, the issue is about evolving governance structures, including the possible imposition of ‘user charges.’

These questions are no longer purely theoretical. Earlier this year, Indonesia’s Finance Minister, Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa, suggested that ships transiting the Strait of Malacca could eventually face a levy, explicitly citing discussions surrounding the Strait of Hormuz. Although the proposal did not become government policy, it illustrated how developments in one strategic chokepoint can quickly influence thinking about another.

As global trade has expanded and maritime infrastructure has become more complex, strategic waterways have evolved from simple shipping lanes into critical economic arteries. Their safe operation now depends upon sophisticated traffic management, environmental protection, cyber resilience, emergency response capabilities and sustained investment in maritime safety. This creates a fundamental asymmetry. The benefits of these waterways are enjoyed globally, while the burden of maintaining them falls disproportionately upon the states that border them.

The Strait of Hormuz illustrates this dilemma. The waterway is vital to energy consumers across Asia, Europe and beyond. Yet responsibility for maintaining navigational safety, monitoring environmental risks and responding to maritime incidents rests primarily with Iran and Oman.

The same challenge exists in Southeast Asia in the form of the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. These straits carry a substantial share of global trade and energy flows. Key beneficiaries include China, Japan, and the United States. Yet the day-to-day responsibility for maintaining safe and efficient passage falls largely upon Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Historically, the littoral states of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore exercised authority, while user states exercised rights of passage. If the Strait of Hormuz were to see the introduction of tolls or user charges, littoral states situated along other maritime chokepoints are likely to seek similar fees for maintaining a common good. Hence, the conversation is gradually shifting from questions of access towards questions of governance and burden-sharing.

This is where the concept of stakeholder participation becomes important. As major users contribute more to the maintenance of strategic waterways, they may increasingly expect a greater voice in the management of those waterways.

Under such an approach, user states would contribute funding, expertise, technology and operational support while participating in structured consultations on matters affecting the long-term management of the waterway. In some respects, this already exists in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. This principle is already reflected in the International Maritime Organization (IMO) supported Cooperative Mechanism for the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, through which user states and industry contribute funding, technical expertise and capacity-building while leaving navigational authority firmly with the littoral states.1

If the discussions over the future administration of the Strait of Hormuz lead to new forms of stakeholder participation, they are likely to prompt questions far beyond the Gulf. Other littoral states may begin asking whether existing arrangements for the management of strategic waterways remain fit for purpose, while major user states may seek a greater voice in how waterways critical to global commerce are maintained. Such a debate would likely have implications for the Straits of Malacca and Singapore.

China has among the greatest practical interest in the uninterrupted functioning of the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. Almost forty percent of its seaborne trade and a significant share of its imported energy transit these waterways, giving Beijing a powerful interest in their continued openness. China also possesses the financial and technological resources to contribute meaningfully to their long-term management.

However, China is not alone in wishing to ensure free transit prevails in these chokepoints. India, Japan, the European Union, and the US all have significant interests in the security and efficiency of both the Malacca and Singapore Straits.

None of this means that the governance of the Straits of Malacca and Singapore is about to change. Existing arrangements have served the region well and there is no immediate reason to assume that they require revision. In addition, it remains uncertain whether the Hormuz discussions will produce a precedent-setting governance model. Nevertheless, recent developments suggest that a broader international conversation about the governance of strategic waterways may already be underway. The question for Singapore is how it may help shape that conversation if it gathers momentum.

Singapore, as both a littoral state and one of the world’s leading maritime hubs, has a strong interest in ensuring that any future conversation about stakeholder participation remains anchored in the principles of navigational openness, international law, burden-sharing and littoral-state stewardship.

Should the Hormuz discussions evolve into a broader international debate, Singapore is well placed to work with the IMO, interested littoral states and major user states to establish a recurring Strategic Waterways Dialogue on the governance of the world’s principal maritime chokepoints. Bringing together governments, shipping companies, insurers, maritime lawyers, port authorities and international organizations, such a forum could examine the challenges facing strategic waterways in an era of growing complexity and interdependence. Its objective would be to develop a common understanding of managing strategic waterways while simultaneously preserving freedom of transit and coastal-state responsibility. Few countries can speak to this issue with greater practical experience than Singapore. For decades, the cooperative arrangements in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore have shown that greater international participation need not come at the expense of littoral-state stewardship.

The Hormuz discussions may reopen a conversation about transit passage that states have not needed to think about for decades. For a trading nation like Singapore, whose prosperity depends upon open and stable sea lanes, Singapore must be proactive in helping to define the terms of any potential change. The greater risk is allowing others to define the terms of that change.

From a broad historical perspective, the Japanese invasion of Malaya in December 1941 is typically understood as part of a larger struggle between two empires. On one side stood the British Empire, long established and dominant across much of Southeast Asia. On the other was Imperial Japan, a rising power determined to build what it called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and to displace Western colonial influence throughout the region.

This is, in many respects, an accurate account. Yet like many historical narratives, it is also incomplete. For the people who lived through those events, the meaning of the war often depended on who they believed themselves to be and where they felt they belonged. The same war could be seen through different lenses, shaped by different understandings of identity and belonging.

More Than a War Between Empires

By the early twentieth century, Malaya was already home to substantial Chinese communities. Migration from southern China to places such as Penang, Melaka, and Singapore had continued for generations. These migrants established businesses, associations, schools, and temples, helping to shape the social and economic life of the region.

Many also retained strong attachments to their ancestral homes. They maintained connections with villages and provinces in China, followed political developments there, and contributed financially to causes on the mainland. The idea of the Nanyang, the Southern Seas, did not necessarily imply a complete break with China, but rather a wider world in which overseas communities remained linked to an older homeland.

This attachment was neither universal nor uniform. Identities differed across generations, dialect groups, and social classes. Some had already begun to develop deeper roots in Malaya itself. Nevertheless, for many overseas Chinese, China remained more than a distant country. It continued to occupy an important place within their moral and emotional universe.

The War That Had Already Begun

Long before Japanese troops landed in Kota Bharu or advanced down the Malayan peninsula, Japan had already been at war in China. The invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and the wider Sino-Japanese War that erupted in 1937 left deep impressions upon Chinese communities throughout Southeast Asia. News of atrocities, military campaigns, and national resistance travelled far beyond China’s borders.

For many overseas Chinese in Malaya, therefore, the conflict did not truly begin in December 1941. It had begun years earlier. Japanese aggression in Malaya was understood not as an entirely separate war, but as an extension of a struggle that had already engulfed their ancestral homeland. Their opposition to Japan was rooted not simply in imperial politics but in questions of identity, memory, and belonging.

The consequences of these identities were not merely emotional or symbolic. Chinese communities often found themselves under particular suspicion during the occupation, nowhere more tragically than during the Sook Ching massacres of 1942. Identity shaped how communities experienced the violence of war.

Yet the war they experienced was the same war that others experienced, even if its meaning was profoundly different.

Such distinctions are easy to lose in retrospect. National histories often require coherent narratives, while accounts written from the perspective of empires tend to focus on states, military leaders, and strategic decisions. The Japanese invasion of Malaya is therefore commonly framed as a contest between an established empire and an ascending one, between Britain and Japan, between colonial decline and imperial ambition.

There is much truth in this perspective. But it can also obscure the more personal and transnational experiences of those who inhabited the spaces between empires.

The Memories That Remain

The dominance of English-language scholarship and popular memory has naturally reinforced the tendency to view the war primarily as a contest between Britain and Japan. Many influential accounts of the Second World War in Asia emerged from British, American, or other Western traditions of historical writing. Their principal concern was understandably the confrontation between states and empires.

This was not an intentional exclusion of other experiences. Yet one consequence has been that the ways in which many overseas Chinese understood the war have become less visible over time.

The memories that sustained those perspectives largely belonged to a generation that has now almost entirely passed from the scene. Their stories survive in fragments - in family recollections, community memories, and scattered historical accounts - but they no longer occupy a central place in the public imagination.

As these memories fade, so too does an appreciation for the complexity of identity in colonial Malaya. The people who lived through those years did not necessarily think of themselves in the categories we employ today. Their loyalties, attachments, and senses of belonging could be layered and overlapping. One could build a life in Malaya, operate within the institutions of the British Empire, and yet still experience Japan’s advance primarily through the suffering and resistance of China.

To recognize this is not to deny the larger imperial struggle, nor is it to suggest that everyone understood the war in the same way. It is simply to acknowledge that historical events are rarely experienced through a single lens.

History Is Seldom One Story

Wars are fought by states, but they are lived by individuals. Individuals carry into those moments their own memories, identities, and understandings of the world. History, therefore, is seldom one story. The same battle, and the same historical moment can mean profoundly different things to those who lived through them.

The challenge is going beyond the grand narratives of empires, and to recover the more personal ways in which people understood the conflicts that engulfed them. For in the end, people do not fight only the wars that history assigns to them. They also fight the wars that they believe are their own.