VI - Conclusion and Prospects

Summary

What emerges from this study is that

1. • there is unanimity of interests among the United States, Singapore, and India over meeting the existential threat of terrorism;

2. • there is no such unanimity over the issue of the rise of China, which the United States views as a potential competitor, India as a rival, and Singapore as an essential player in an emerging Asian balance of power;

3. • there is disagreement over the issue of the spread of democracy, which is an integral part of American grand strategy, is of possible but peripheral interest to India, and is not a policy goal at all for Singapore.

Hence, a political and strategic triangle will emerge among America, Singapore, and India to the extent that the United States, the dominant global player, is able to prioritize its interests in Asia so as to continue to lead the War on Terror; continue to act as the offshore balancer in an Asia marked by China's rise; and harness its efforts for democratic peace to the pursuit of these goals, instead of making democratic peace the objective of those goals.

As for the first point, the challenge facing the War on Terror would appear to lie in unpacking the notion and lightening the load that it carries by dropping from its agency expensive assumptions made about regime change and democracy-building. The Muslim (and non-Muslim) anger that the United States has attracted is caused, not so much by the prosecution of the war as by the incorporation into it of the drive for regime change in Baghdad and the installation of a democratic regime. These are two separate goals that serve merely to complicate the war. If the war has to succeed, it must remain focused on preventing the ability of religious insurrectionists from subverting the global order. Anything less would mean defeat in the war; striving for anything more would be to fight another war that, right or wrong, is another thing.