”Headline of the month” at the Straits Times office. My piece, but not my headline, unfortunately.
Op-ed published in Today, Jan. 30, 2013
John Kerry, then director of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971
By Tom Benner
Last Thursday, I took a flight to Hanoi. An American tourist in Vietnam, I know, is a remarkably unremarkable thing, but for those of a certain age, the past poses questions for the present.
That same day in Washington, confirmation hearings began for Senator John Kerry to become President Barack Obama’s Secretary of State. And a few days from now, former Senator Chuck Hagel comes up for his confirmation as Secretary of Defence.
Before they become the two top members of the United States’ foreign policy team, Mr Kerry and Mr Hagel face the scrutiny of a third senator, Mr John McCain, a key figure in the nomination process and a respected foreign policy sage.
The three men have a war in common. Back in 1969, Mr Kerry was commanding a riverboat in South Vietnam. Mr Hagel had just served in the same infantry squad as his younger brother, Tom. Mr McCain was two years into his five-and-a-half year stint as a prisoner of war in Hanoi.
That same year I was 10, growing up in the safety and comfort of a small American town. Only occasionally did I hear the word Vietnam, generally in the context of someone we knew, a cousin we loved or friends of my older siblings, getting sent there. Continue reading …
Posted in Singapore
Op-ed published in Today, Jan. 4, 2013
US President Barack Obama may have obtained a fiscal deal that he could live with, but his administration must now begin to prepare itself for ‘March Madness’ – the debate over the debt ceiling. Photo: Reuters Copyright © MediaCorp Press Ltd
By Tom Benner
The United States fiscal cliff – an end-of-year deadline for automatic federal tax increases and across-the-board spending cuts, set by leaders frustrated by their own inability to fix America’s budget problems – has been averted.
That is good news in the short term, because the fiscal cliff plan threatened to push the country back into recession. The trouble is, not much really got solved.
There are several ways of looking at the fiscal cliff deal that passed this week.
From a policy perspective, all the big issues were left for another day. There is no agreement on raising the debt ceiling, heading off the threat of a government shutdown and reaching long-term debt stabilisation. Continue reading …
Published in The Straits Times and AsiaOne, Tuesday Jan. 1, 2013
By Tom Benner
SINGAPORE, as we all know, is filled with streets, schools, hospitals and businesses named Stamford or Raffles, after Sir Stamford Raffles, the acknowledged founder of the place.
A new book sheds new light on the man, his exalted place in history, and the dark side of British colonialism. Yet despite it being the top-selling title at last month’s Singapore Writers Festival where it made its debut, the book has yet to prompt much in the way of a Raffles re-evaluation.
There is time for that; in the years leading to the 200th anniversary of the 1819 founding of modern Singapore, Raffles is sure to get a sizing-up by modern standards. Continue reading …
By Tom Benner
The top-selling book at the recent Singapore Writers Festival offers a controversial reassessment of Singapore’s founding father. Sir Stamford Raffles comes off as the brutal face of British imperialism – far from the high-minded English gentleman and heroic figure of popular conception – in Tim Hannigan’s new book Raffles And The British Invasion Of Java.
The author, who will discuss the book at Select Books on Armenian Street in Singapore on 15 December 2012 at 5 pm, portrays Raffles as a wildly ambitious opportunist who could be manipulative, devious, thieving, jealous, and petty.
Hannigan, a British-born freelance journalist and photographer who divides his time between Cornwall, UK, and Indonesia, says he was motivated to write the book by a commonly held view among Indonesians that their country would be more advanced today – more like Singapore – had it been colonised by the British, not the Dutch.
The short-lived and largely forgotten British period of Indonesian history started with the Raffles-led British seizure of Java from the Dutch in 1811. With Raffles assuming the post of lieutenant-governor at age 30, the turbulent, five-year rule known as the British Interregnum was marked by thievery, brute force, and wanton destruction, Hannigan asserts. Continue reading
Posted in Singapore
Tagged Books, British colonialism, History, Singapore, Sir Stamford Raffles
Op-ed published by International Network of Street Papers and Spare Change News, Dec. 5, 2012
By Tom Benner
Republican uber-strategist Karl Rove’s election-night meltdown on live television put a human face on the GOP’s willful self-delusion. Mitt Romney, who didn’t prepare an Election Night concession speech, ran a campaign based on yesteryear’s party values, policies, and world view. “It’s not a traditional America anymore,” moaned Fox News conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly.
The wake-up call was overdue. For the sake of a vibrant American two-party system, the GOP needs to change with the times and regroup into a party that matters to more than just the conservative entertainment complex.
That includes embracing modern demographics, expanding the party base beyond Tea Party extremists and the very rich, and some serious soul-searching over how the once-proud Party of Lincoln can be relevant in the 21st Century. Continue reading
Op-ed published in Today, Nov. 22, 2012
Coming from a Boston native, the bus and rail system here is a pleasure to use, very reasonably priced; any inconveniences and breakdowns cannot compare to those in Boston. TODAY FILE PHOTO
Copyright © MediaCorp Press Ltd
I moved from Boston to Singapore a few weeks ago, and I can’t help but compare the two places. As someone who is interested in public policy and how it can enhance quality of life, I noticed a few things right away that work on Singapore’s behalf.
GETTING AROUND
In Boston, the much-maligned mass transit system is immortalised by the old folk song Charlie on the MTA, about a man who boarded the subway but didn’t have the nickel to pay the exit fare. So he rode the subway for good, his wife throwing a sandwich through an open railcar window to him each day at the Scollay Square station. He was, as the song goes, “the man who never returned”.
Investing in affordable and efficient mass transit just isn’t as big a priority in Massachusetts – too much competition and political influence from the suburban car crowd who insist on highways that are well paved, well maintained and well patrolled. Continue reading …
Posted in Singapore
Op-ed published in Today, Nov. 21, 2012
US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visiting the Shwedagon Pagoda in Myanmar on Monday. REUTERS
Copyright © MediaCorp Press Ltd
By Tom Benner
Critics in the United States and around the world offered plenty of reasons why President Barack Obama shouldn’t have gone to Myanmar on Monday.
Some called the visit premature, saying the country’s military junta has yet to atone for decades of human rights atrocities. Others worried it will be counterproductive, leaving the relatively new, nominally civilian government feeling complacent as political prisoners remain locked up. Ethnic and religious violence continues to make headlines and worry the global community.
Instead of listening to the naysayers, Mr Obama seized a historic opportunity in Myanmar and history may bear him out. Continue reading…
Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke in Singapore on Saturday, telling her audience at Singapore Management University that with the war in Iraq over for the U.S. military and the war in Afghanistan winding down, US foreign policy in the second Obama term will emphasize economic solutions to strategic challenges over military might. The US secretary of state cited Singapore as an example of an emerging power that is prospering because of its GDP, not the size if its army.
“Today the non-stop flow of people, goods, and capital through this small nation is proof that a country does not need to be big to be mighty, to be respected, to be a real leader,” reads the text of Clinton’s prepared remarks. “Every country wants to do business in Singapore, so every country has a stake in cultivating good relationships with Singapore.
“With only 1/60 of the population of the United States, Singapore is our 15th largest trading partner. More than 2,000 American companies base their regional headquarters here. Two-way trade exceeded $50 billion for the first time last year. And U.S. direct investment surpassed $116 billion over the last decade. That makes Singapore’s security and stability a vital interest for the United States. This connection between economic power and global influence explains why the United States is placing economics at the heart of our own foreign policy. I call it economic statecraft.” Continue reading
Comedian Par Par Lay, a former political prisoner under Burma’s military regime. (Photo: flickr/scotted400)
President Obama comes to Myanmar on Monday with the country at a crossroads, poised for a huge transition into what some consider the next Asian economic frontier. After five decades of military rule and international pariah status, Myanmar (also known as Burma) shows signs of becoming a politically open society and an emergent economic powerhouse, with major corporations and investors looking to capitalize on the expected boom.
One Singaporean I spoke with, a businessman who travels there regularly, sees Myanmar, a nation of 60 million, as the center of gravity for the Asian economy in a decade’s time, in part because of its strategic location between India and China. No country is better physically situated to capitalize on its vast wealth of natural resources, including petroleum, natural gas, timber, tin, fisheries, and the potential to again become one of the world’s top rice exporters.
Others see Obama’s visit in highly political terms, as another move in the pivot toward Asia and a strategy designed to check an increasingly assertive China and its sway over Myanmar as the latter seeks new openings to the West. Obama’s November 17-20 Southeast Asian tour also includes stops in Cambodia and Thailand, with Myanmar the trip’s historic highlight, the first visit by a sitting American president and a clear signal of US engagement and encouragement for its democratic advances. In Yangon, Obama will meet two of the dominant players in Myanmar’s democratic changes — reformist President Thein Sein, who took office last year, and pro-democracy opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose release from house arrest and election to parliament is a highly visible symbol of the new openness. Continue reading
Posted in Singapore
Tom Benner Reports 