There is a delicious anecdote about a meeting in November 1968 at Harvard University, at what later became the Kennedy School of Government. Some professors were railing against the war in Vietnam and then US President Lyndon Johnson.

Singapore’s then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, in Harvard for a sabbatical of five weeks, on being invited to give a response, said tersely, “You make me sick”, before proceeding to give a clear and concise summary of why America had to stay the course and provide security against the communists bent on undermining South-east Asian nations.