SINGAPORE: While the United States and Soviet Union were caught in a state of “mutually assured destruction” during the Cold War, the US and China could now be in a dynamic of “mutually assured disruption”, said Prime Minister Lawrence Wong on Monday (Jun 8).In such a relationship, “any attempt by one side to impose restrictions on another will trigger a response from the other side, and in the end both parties will be worse off,” said Mr Wong.Given this new dynamic, he said he hopes it provides a stabilising factor between both sides and an incentive for them to manage their differences well.Mr Wong was speaking during a dialogue session as part of the Singapore Press Club’s Eminent Speaker Series, held at the SPH Media News Centre’s auditorium in Toa Payoh.
While it was good that the leaders of US and China, presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, met recently in a summit that went well, “it doesn’t mean that all the problems are resolved”, said Mr Wong.“In fact, there continue to be significant differences between the two countries. But increasingly, both sides, I feel, will have to recognise that they have to coexist with one another. The two economies are just too deeply intertwined,” he said.“It reminds me of what happened during the Cold War, when people talked about MAD – mutually assured destruction. Perhaps now there is a similar dynamic happening, a different type of MAD – mutually assured disruption.”
