Dear Brothers Mushahid and Bakri:

I have just finished reading Kishore Mahbubani’s Beyond The Age of
Innocence (Cambridge, Mass: PublicAffairs, 2005). Although I would
dispute the use of the word “Innocence” when it is used with regard
to US Foreign Policy, I like his overall message.

It is, in my view, an excellent personal tour de force on foreign
policy befitting his standing as one of Singapore’s outstanding
diplomats. Well written in simple and direct English (I did not have
to use the Oxford Dictionary at all) and carefully researched, Kishore
is at his subtle best, balancing the need to be politically proper,
and the need to honestly state his position on US relations with the
rest of the world.

His chapter on “America and Islam” is one of the best I have seen
written and read by a non-Muslim intellectual-scholar on the state of
US relations with the Islamic World. I fully endorse his view that the
US must cultivate relations with the moderate and liberal Islamic
states on a long term basis. Condi Rice should take heed.

Modern and moderate Muslims, and I quote him (page 73)”as follows:

…”want their societies to be economically and politically compatible
with the West [US and Europe, I add], while remaining in social and
spiritual terms true to their Islamic heritage. In short, they want to
trigger both the equivalent of a renaissance and a rationalist
enlightened movement in the Islamic world. They would make ideal
partners with the West. But the West has not helped them. In stead the West has in recent decades helped those who suppress them”. America continues to support repressive regimes in the Middle East, for example.

Countries like Pakistan (it has been used and then ignored by the US too often), Turkey, Indonesia, and Malaysia have been somewhat marginalized because American interests have been diverted elsewhere in the pursuit of its narrow national interest as the remaining sole superpower. America will not broach any competitor. America must learn to be a reliable partner as this is the only way that trust can be built with the rest of the world.

I strongly recommend Kishore’s book to you. Regards, Din

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