How Singapore’s ‘smart power’ can inspire China-US relations in the run-up to the Trump-Kim summit

Next week, it now seems, the American president will be in Singapore, along with the North Korean leader. Both are famously quirky. Is Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong worried? I recently visited Lee, host of the monster summit that – on the off-chance all goes well – could trigger a process for taming the tenor and changing the geopolitical shape of East Asia. Lee, only the third prime minister since the city state’s founding and the elder son of the late Lee Kuan Yew, parried my questions from his office in the Istana presidential mansion.

My goal was to understand his take on Sino-US relations, even though, at this writing, North Korea’s ally, Beijing, won’t officially be attending the Korean summit. “I suppose [the choice of Singapore] shows that we are friends with them [North Korea and the US] and they believe we can do a good job of it,” said Lee.