This book is a collection of lectures Kausikan delivered as the SR Nathan fellow for 2016. The background of the lectures is the work of a foreign service officer in Singapore - a tiny, yet exceptional island surrounded by larger, potentially difficult neighbours.
Kausikan was a 2nd generation Singaporean government servant. He served as a junior officer under Lee Kuan Yew and SR Nathan, the first Foreign Minister. Much later in his career he became the Perm Sec of the Foreign Ministry, and is now, in his retirement, an Ambassador-at-Large of Singapore. His stories of the Singaporean foreign service in the early days seem a little like the Wild West, where nobody had much experience and they were all learning as they went along.
The main themes of Kausikan’s lectures here are that of education. Kausikan’s goal is to educate the public on the realities that bind Singapore’s foreign policy.
Despite being a civil servant (or perhaps because he is one), Kausikan is staunchly pro PAP. He says that Singapore being parochial isn’t a good thing, yet displays many such behaviours throughout the lectures. He says debate is good, but shoots down opposing viewpoints (by opposition politicians, by academics like P.J. Thum) as ‘stupid’.
Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed these lectures. I find Kausikan hugely entertaining and very educational; the q&a segments in particular resembled very much an uncle in a kopitiam holding forth about the world, insulting every other country under the sun. Except this is one of Singapore’s Ambassadors at Large, and likely knows what he is talking about.
Bilahari opens with the premise for this series of lectures: that while in the past Singapore’s foreign officers could operate without public scrutiny, this is not desirable in the long run and less tenable in the today’s complex world. His lectures are intended to educate Singaporeans on the parameters that many in the foreign service and civil service understand as constraints on Singapore as a small island state. He thinks these constraints aren’t well understood within the public.
Before he begins, Kausikan makes 3 general points about foreign policy.
In short, Kausikan thinks the main difficulty of being good at foreign policy is the ability to ensure your mental frameworks map well to reality. The worst kind of error is when you believe absolutely that your beliefs and ideas are completely true, and there are no alternatives. This is the most dangerous error, and the most likely to be committed, because of a higher than usual level of uncertainty in international relations.
This segues into the main topic of this lecture. Why is there a high level of uncertainty and ambiguity? The reason is the end of the Cold War.
The Cold War made international relations simpler because it had a well defined structure. The danger of the Cold War drew the structure in sharp focus. Clarity and danger created order: the superpowers couldn’t afford to fight directly with each other. Instead they conducted proxy wars. This meant that as long as you were prudent, and a little lucky, it was clear to a nation state playing at the periphery how to position itself to keep out of the way of the superpowers and to stay out of proxy wars.
That clarity ended after the Cold War ended.
For a brief moment it seemed like one country controlled the levers of the world. The Western side of the Cold War conflict was an American creation, and both sides claimed universality of worldview. With the Soviet side gone, American power, ideas and institutions ruled supreme, and led to a declaration from some quarters of “the end of history”. But that didn’t last, with the failures of the recent wars in the Middle East and the meltdown on Wall Street.
Without global structure, global leadership is diffused. It becomes difficult to deal with international problems: refugees, nuclear proliferation, climate change.
Some now think, with the G20, that we have a entered a multipolar world. Kausikan rejects this idea. Says that the US is the only truly global power, but now one where its limits are self evident.
Kausikan also rejects Ian Bremmer’s idea that we are in a G0 formless world. The US order is fraying, but still exists; and the G20 coexists with many other international institutions like the UN and the World Bank and the IMF. These structures aren’t going away.
Kausikan now reviews the various places power lies:
American power still exists. But it cannot lead alone. While the US also did not lead alone during the Cold War, today the lack of similar danger gives no reason for other countries to accept US leadership except on an ad hoc and partial basis. So: lots of ambiguity.
Europe: the end of the Cold War has made clearer the differences between American and European values. The most liberal American is less interventionist (in terms of government) than the most conservative European. Kausikan then attacks the overly idealistic concept of the EU, and says that is doomed to fail. These arguments are not new; LKY is known for saying the same for decades. A supranational organisation is too far ahead of its time, and now Europe is grappling with its internal problems. It will have to come to terms with its failed ideals. Kausikan sees this as the ultimate manifestation of mental model being too far from reality. Therefore, Europe is not a major global geopolitical force any longer.
America’s east Asia allies: Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea … these can only play regional roles, with sporadic responsibilities elsewhere. But even in east Asia their power is threatened by an ascendant china.
What about BRICS? Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa? Kausikan points out the term was crested as a marketing strategy by a fund manager. Not a real geopolitical concept despite having a bank and some meetings.
Russia: dissatisfied power, smouldering with resentment at the loss of its superpower status. Kausikan thinks the US and Europe made a strategic mistake in mistreating Russia at the end of the Cold War. For now, Russia is still powerful, has the political will to protect its core interests (e.g. Syria and Ukraine). But economically and demographically on the downward trend, and without a coherent global vision for itself. Kausikan doesn’t think that they have a role to play in Asia, (he mentions elsewhere that without a Pacific fleet they are irrelevant in Asia, and their current trajectory is that they’re likely to become junior partner to China)
India unlike Russia is not dissatisfied. It has always had a global vision of itself, but that vision makes it wary of playing a major power’s game. India has a long history, and Kausikan thinks they are on the upward trajectory. But because India is so large and so complex to govern, its preoccupations will be mostly inward. Its external preoccupations are mostly with Pakistan. It has ignored China for decades after a disastrous border war with them, and doesn’t really know what to do with regard to China now that it cannot afford to ignore them. It has been hyping a relationship with Japan, but Kausikan thinks geographic realities will mean this never amounts to much.
China: ooh, China. Any new global order will likely have US China relation as its main pillar. But we are not yet a G2 world (nor is a G2 world a foregone conclusion). 3 points about this relationship, in service of Kausikan’s point that the world is ambiguous:
And so we have the world as it is today: an ambiguous, unclear map of relationships where no major power is necessarily a friend, an enemy or truly neutral with each other. Kausikan thinks this will last for decades.
Why did we end up in this world? Why was the promise of a post Cold War world not fulfilled? Kausikan argues that one key factor was the attitudes of the Americans at the end of the Cold War. They were nakedly triumphant, confident of the universality and superiority of their beliefs, which made it harder for the world to accept American leadership.
Whereas, with time, it became clearer that America mixed up the end of the Cold War with the fall of the Soviet Union. Kausikan thinks history has shown the former to be triggered by events that happened in Germany, and the latter by Gorbachev’s failed attempt to reform the Soviet Union. Americans have little part to play in the direct events.
(I think this part of Kausikan’s argument is the weakest, but to be fair he was near the end of his lecture. Can’t resist quoting this bit, though: in his 1992 State of the Union Address, George HW Bush declared “By the grace of God, America won the Cold War … A world once divided into two armed camps now recognises one sole and preeminent power, the United States of America. And this they regard with no dread. For the world trusts us with power, and the world is right.” Later, in his memoirs, Bush says that it is likely the Cold War would have ended regardless of whatever the Americans might have done.)
Kausikan’s point about post Cold War American failure is to illustrate ‘the stubborn persistence of mental frameworks, irrespective of appropriateness and in defiance of empirical evidence … (this) universalist impulse still lingers … and continues to have real effects on policy.“ Inappropriate mental frameworks may not matter much when the world order is settled. They matter a great deal in an ambiguous world.
The basic strategic challenge facing all countries in this world, then, is how do we position ourselves to preserve the widest range of options and avoid being forced into invidious choices? There is no longer any clarity in the world order. This is the primary challenge of Singapore’s foreign policy.
US-China relations, Bilahari thinks, will be the central pillar of any new post-Cold War international order. It is a complex, if mature relationship. (As of 2016, it's been 44 years since Nixon's visit to Beijing). Bilahari uses 'groping' in the title of this lecture because the entire process of finding a new accommodation between the two powers will be slow. Wouldn't happen decisively around a table.
Bilahari's aim for this lecture is to sketch in broad strokes the issues that will have to be confronted in the process of finding a future accommodation between the two great powers. In particular, he wants to talk about the roots of the strategic distrust between the two. If no resolution is found for these roots, no amount of cooperation on issues will result in a stable equilibrium of power.
The most persistent misunderstanding between the Americans and the Chinese is that economic reform will lead to political reform. In the 19th century, many Americans believed that trade with China was 'our manifest destiny under the invisible hand of divine providence' (this by John K. Fairbank, an American historian of China). To some degree, this illusion persists.
Today the dominant attitude is to regard China as a threat.
Not Clash of Civilisations
While US-China relations are complex, Bilahari takes pains to point out what it isn't – it isn't a 'Clash of Civilisations' (from Wikipedia: the idea that people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in a post-Cold War world.)
To refute this, Bilahari points out that everyone is a hybrid today. There are no longer any pure civilisations.
For the last 200 years or so, the challenge of the non-western world is to adapt to a western defined modernity. (The very concept of the modern is Western). But now that China has achieved modernity, it is redefining what it means to be 'Western' and modern. China is communist and successful. Its success has provoked changes everywhere in the West, but the most changes have been in Europe – Bilahari points out the price Norway had to pay for giving Liu Xiaobo the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 and the spectacle of European leaders travelling to Beijing to ask for help during the Eurozone crisis as examples of just how much the idea of 'Western modernity' has changed. The West is adapting to this idea that they no longer have a monopoly on the 'modern'.
If there is any form of Clash of Civilisation, Bilahari suspects it would be between parts of the Islamic World vs all else who has adapted to the Westphalian world order.
Economic development
It is important not to see this as proof of a rising China and a 'declining' US. This is a false dichotomy.
China's growth is incredible, though bound to slow. But even slowing, it still generates additional GDP that is equivalent to 80% of Indonesia's current GDP. The CCP has a record of adaptability; don't think low growth will mean they will fail.
The US does not need to be in decline, and it is wrong to just focus on the political shenanigans happening at the capital. The most significant developments of America can well happen in the states, in American corps, on Wall Street and in research labs and universities in the country. Bilahari reminds us that those who have underestimated American creativity and resilience has come to regret it.
Therefore we should ignore all attempts to frame the two powers as China, a rising economic power, causing the economic decline of the US.
Military Engagements
The US is prominent in most indices of power and will likely to remain so. One such index of power is the military. Yes, China will eventually become powerful enough to match the US in East Asia. This will have important implications for the disputes in the South China Sea (to be covered in the next lecture). But Bilahari thinks the probability of war is low. The next few segments cover why he thinks the probability of war is low:
1) Internal preoccupations > external preoccupations
The reason is that the preoccupations of the superpowers are internal, not external. The CCP's main preoccupation is with the survival of the CCP so they know that any outcome of a war with the US – win, lose or draw, is likely to jeopardise the power of the CCP, and so they will be careful.
On the US side, there is a tendency for America to withdraw after periods of intense external engagement. But the US is not likely to completely withdraw; the world has a nasty habit of intruding. But while the next President will talk and act tough, he cannot ignore the national mood, which is not for war.
Side note: does Trump really act on the national mood? Hmm.
2) Debunking the Thucydides Trap
Bilahari rejects the idea that the US and China will fall into the 'Thucydides Trap'. (From Wikipedia: the idea that an established power fears a rising power, and this leads to war). This trap ignores human agency: to recognise that there may be a trap might go a long way in avoiding it.
China will soon acquire a credible second strike capability, if it doesn't already have one. If and when this happens, it could shift the power relation to be more 'Mutually Assured Destruction', which will then have the effect of freezing the international order as during the Cold War.
3) New Cold War?
Could a New Cold War happen between the US and China? Bilahari thinks not, or at least that it isn't the right metaphor to describe future tensions. The reason: the two sides are not locked in a universalist ideological split. Both the US and the Soviet Union made claims to the universality of their system, which led to a zero sum game; China makes no such claim today.
China also does not seek to upend the current international order. While it isn't 100% happy with it, it isn't yet a revisionist power. (The SCS being an exception). It is likely to continue working within the international institutions we have today because it most benefits from it.
Also, it is quite futile to have one power try to contain the other economically. It was doable with the Soviet Union because they pursued autarky (economic self sufficiency). But with China today, both superpowers are currently too embedded up in global economic networks to be containable.
4) An economic argument against war
Bilahari also thinks that the US and China won't go to war because both superpowers know they can't achieve their basic national goals without the other. He thinks (hopes?) that the degree of interdependence will create a self-correcting dynamic.
This argument will be compared to the interdependence of Europe during WW1 and WW2 – Europe was economically interdependent, but still went to war. People argued at the time that it would be stupid enough to go to war, because it would be economic suicide. And yet still both World Wars happened.
Bilahari thinks things are different now, because the global supply chain did not exist during the time of the world wars. Today the degree of interdependence is much, much higher, and so the interests of big corps and of countries are more inclined to cooperation as opposed to war. Perhaps this will act as an economic mutually assured destruction.
Sidenote: Bilahari himself notes that this is just a hypothesis; he is too lazy to make a strong argument. There is no doubt he believes it. But I think it can really fall either way. History has followed stranger paths than that of nationalism overriding economic logic.
A New Type of Major Power Relations
With the above arguments, we can see the parameters within which US and China seek an accommodation is narrower than what we might be led to expect if we just listen to academia and the media.
China and the US cannot contain each other in East Asia. China has said that they want a 'new type of major power relations' with the US in this region. So now the main problem is to delineate the roles.
More recently, President Xi Jingping has proposed 'One Belt, One Road'. While this is an economic vision, it has geopolitical implications; it can be understood as an ambition for a Sinocentric Eurasian order. But this order will always include the US.
Why? Well: consider that it is impossible to displace Japan from the region. If the US-Japan alliance is weakened, Japan may decide to go nuclear, and has the ability to do so quickly. If Japan goes nuclear, South Korea has the capability to follow; the US quashed such thoughts in Seoul in the 70s, but they have never entirely disappeared. This Japan, Korea nuclear complication is the strongest argument as to why the US can't be excluded entirely from the region. Bilahari thinks that China does not want these serious complications; therefore they won't seek to completely exclude the US. But they do want to reclaim their central historical role in East Asia from the US. How to do it without provoking a response from Japan and South Korea is a matter of fine judgment, one where mistakes are costly. .
A Challenge to the Western Sense of Self
Many of the West find the rise of China unsettling because it punctures the western myth of the universality of its political values. China thrives despite not being a democracy. This goes against America's sense of self, 'it's Shining City on the Hill' narrative.
We'll see more of this in the 4th lecture, but for now Bilahari asserts that 200 years of shaping the basic structures of international relations has made the West think they are superior. They mask this attitude, of course, and camouflage it with the talk of 'human rights', 'universality', 'democracy' and 'good governance'. But the West has long used these arguments to meddle with the affairs of the weak, and China regards them with some suspicion.
Here we get to the core problem between US China relations. In senior level discussions, China has suggested to the US that they would like US agreement to 3 broad elements:
The US's reluctance to imbue CCP rule with legitimacy is worrying. This is because China is in a delicate position today: it needs to loosen the center's grip on the economy, for growth reasons, while preserving CCP rule. So as long as American leaders make pronouncements towards China based on the 'universality' of human rights and the like, Chinese leaders will regard all such remarks with suspicion, through the lens of how such pronouncements affect the survival of their own rule.
China stinks at diplomacy
On the other hand, China does not seem to understand that their attitudes can evoke distrust. China now relies on nationalism instead of communist ideology to legitimise its rule. This nationalism isn't very problematic per se – after all, America is also a very patriotic country. But the problem is the way they treat it.
The source of Chinese and American nationalism is the sense of exceptionalism. The difference:
Bilahari notes there is ample historical precedence for this world view. China did think itself as the central kingdom for centuries, after all. The problem is that now Chinese diplomats and leaders believe they are entitled to have their superiority acknowledged. This is a problem in Sino-Japanese relations, in Sino-Russian relations, in Singapore-China relations, and in Sino-Indian relations.
China has been good at using history as a tool of statecraft. They have kept alive the hate of the Japanese, despite Chairman Mao himself forgiving the Japanese post-WW2. They do this because the narrative they sell their citizens is that the CCP is the champion and redeemer of a victimised China (e.g. 100 years of shame) ... and that therefore they are legitimate rulers.
This traps them. The risk of war is conflict by accident, not war by design. If a conflict pits them against the foreigners acting against Chinese interests, their historical narrative of 'CCP as defender of Chinese pride' may force them down paths they do not want to follow.
A final point
The US and China can only come to a stable relationship if they operate in the same frame of reference. Bilahari thinks they currently do substantially operate in the same frame, but not entirely.
An example of this is Obama calling out the Chinese actions of setting up Surface to Air missiles in the Paracel islands as 'old style of might makes right ... instead of using international laws to establish claims'. Obama's use of the term 'old style' betrays the idea that the US is operating in some current modern model of International Relations, and China is stuck in the past century. This is ridiculous because diplomacy is about working through the eyes of your counterpart. Why complain about a competitor working using a different frame of reference? Why assume everyone should adopt your own frame?
This is a sign of the US missing the mental framework that China uses to see itself. They are not yet working in the same frame of reference. And until they do, everyone will have to leave with greater uncertainty as the two great powers grope to a stable relationship with each other.
This lecture takes the broad trends in the past two lectures, and focuses them on how they are playing out in SEA. In particular, US-China competition affects ASEAN directly, as disputes in the South China Sea has emerged as a proxy for the larger strategic adjustments playing out between the US and China in East Asia.
What does the US and China want? Beijing wants to reclaim something of its historical centrality in East Asia. The US says it wants to remain an East Asian power.
What are the strategic challenges for the US and China?
China: how to shift the US from the centre of the East Asian strategic equation, without provoking responses from the US and Japan that would threaten CCP rule.
US: how to accommodate China, while reassuring friends and allies that it intends to hold its position without going into conflict.
This lecture takes the broad trends in the past two lectures, and focuses them on how they are playing out in SEA. In particular, US-China competition affects ASEAN directly, as disputes in the South China Sea has emerged as a proxy for the larger strategic adjustments playing out between the US and China in East Asia.
What does the US and China want? Beijing wants to reclaim something of its historical centrality in East Asia. The US says it wants to remain an East Asian power.
What are the strategic challenges for the US and China?
China: how to shift the US from the centre of the East Asian strategic equation, without provoking responses from the US and Japan that would threaten CCP rule.
US: how to accommodate China, while reassuring friends and allies that it intends to hold its position without going into conflict.
The SCS conflict isn’t the most important issue in US-China relations, but is today the issue where the parameters of US-China competition is most clearly defined. The region will draw conclusions about American resolve and Chinese intentions from this issue.
Some background: ASEAN from the perspective of a Singaporean diplomat
ASEAN is a mechanism for managing external pressures and preserving the autonomy of its members by ensuring a certain amount of cohesion, order and civility in their relationships. The org is a Cold War construct. It has problems today, as the Cold War is long over.
The main problem with ASEAN is that it has extremely diverse member states. This diversities are differences of race, language, and religion, which define core identities and domestic politics. Therefore there will always be a tension between the domestic politics of member states, intra-ASEAN relations, and the interests of external powers.
Example of this: Konfrantasi (an undeclared war by Indonesia against Malaysia and Singapore) was driven by Indonesian domestic politics.
ASEAN can only work by consensus, and largely informally. Any other mode of decision making risks rupture with unpredictable consequences. The premise on which ASEAN works is the consensus of always having a consensus: even when there are goals that they know cannot be fully realised, they will still emerge with a consensus of nice statements. ASEAN also has a principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of each others nations. The upshot of all this is that ASEAN has a tendency to agree on nice words with no real world impact, which Kausikan thinks is an unavoidable price to pay for having any sort of regional mechanism.
What is the drawback of this? Kausikan thinks this tendency to have nice words easily morphs into self-delusion and wishful thinking.
Example: ZOPFAN. ZOPFAN is a completely delusionary notion that regional security can be secured by excluding the major powers from ASEAN. How to persuade the major powers to do so? What to do when they refuse? Nobody knows. ZOPFAN also completely sidesteps the fact that China can’t be excluded from the region, because it is geographically contiguous to SEA.
ZOPFAN has been irritating to Singapore. In the Cold War, small nations needed to be aligned with the major powers on strategically chosen issues; simplistic neutrality or non-alignment was dangerous as Sihanouk’s Cambodia and Souvanna Phouma’s Laos discovered at great cost to themselves. Instead, what you needed to do was strike a balanced relationship with all the major powers without getting embroiled in their quarrels. Because of this, S Rajaratnam nearly walked out of the 1967 Bangkok meeting that created ASEAN, before they added a clause declaring that all foreign bases in SEA were ‘temporary’. (Singapore then had British and American naval bases, for protection).
Various member states like ZOPFAN for different reasons. Indonesia in particular likes it because it believes ‘regional solutions for regional problems’ means ‘Indonesian solutions for regional problems’. Jakarta thinks that its size means that it has a special position in major power calculations. Kausikan doesn’t think so, and thinks that the major powers are happy to nurture this illusion because they can use it.
Regardless, ZOPFAN has shifted a bit. In recent years, various member states have signed MOUs or deals with the various major powers, due to the growth of China’s ambitions, and the SCS problem.
Bilahari spends the entire first part of this lecture on ASEAN because he thinks these truths about ASEAN still aren’t well understood, despite 49 years after its formation. Not to say that ASEAN is useless - it’s done good: no war between members, as a group they have leveraged their relationships with major powers to their advantage without being dragged into their conflicts.
But after the clear structure of the Cold War gave way, ASEAN unity began to crumble. Indonesia ignored the common ASEAN position on Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia and started direct negotiations with Hanoi, thinking it was a privileged interlocutor. ASEAN today is even more difficult to manage, as all 10 countries has made arriving at consensus more difficult. The lowest point was the failure of the 2012 Foreign Minister’s Meeting to issue a Joint Statement on the SCS.
Today, the SCS issues place ASEAN in the midst of US-China competition. Both sides pay a lot of lip service and attention to ‘ASEAN Centrality’. There are many China-ASEAN and US-ASEAN meetings in the past few years. Kausikan thinks it is dangerous to believe ASEAN is truly central. The US and China simply use ASEAN-led multilateral forums as a secondary forum to engage each other. Instead, a pragmatic approach would be to see them as they are: ASEAN forums are an arena for the US and China; they work best when they don’t work too well – if ASEAN becomes too dangerously effective in foiling the major power plans, they would not hesitate to divide ASEAN as China did in 2012. In the meantime, these ASEAN forums-as-arenas are still useful because they allow member states a tiny amount of influence on the major powers.
China and ASEAN
The main problem is the sheer asymmetry of power that China has against ASEAN member states. It has used aid, trade and investments as juicy diplomatic carrots, and the possibility of a major power securing sovereignty by superior force a background threat. It continues to engage ASEAN on a Code of Conduct for the SCS but in a barely convincing way; China often holds discussion on the COC hostage to ASEAN staying away from positions on the SCS that displease China.
Chinese diplomats are quite passive aggressive, and usually hammer home the idea that if ASEAN-China relations suffer while ASEAN mouths are stuffed with delicious Chinese cake, or if they do not bow to some trivial demand by the Chinese, it is ASEAN’s fault alone. The idea is to force acceptance of China’s inherent superiority.
China recognises this approach has produced a lack of trust between member states and China. And this passive-aggressive approach has begun to backfire. ASEAN states are beginning to push back against China’s assertiveness. Vietnam has shifted to the US and Japan to balance with China. Indonesia has said it would deploy some of its most advanced military assets to the Natunas. At the last ASEAN summit, 2/3 of China’s proposals – the cookies that China gives out at these events – failed to gain acceptance.
However nobody in the region can ignore or shun China. It is still a major power in the region, and ASEAN cannot shift too far towards the US.
China’s interests
The truth is that Beijing probably does not consider the cost China’s actions have on relations with ASEAN unbearably high. China has strong interests in the SCS affair. What are those interests?
Resources? No. Resources can be shared without prejudice to claims of sovereignty, as China itself has suggested.
Legality in the eyes of International Law? No, China does not acknowledge that many areas contested by ASEAN members are in dispute. In a Singapore lecture, President Xi asserted that "The SCS islands have been China's territory since ancient times." China doesn't recognise the decisions of the Arbitral Tribunal on the case of the Philippines under UNCLOS. Kausikan doubts China regards the disputes a legal matter, although they have occasionally employed the vocabulary of international law to support its position. Instead, they have been inconsistent, and more often than not used history to back their claims.
Military advantage against the US? No, this cannot be. In the event of a war, the artificial islands and the military assets on them will be vaporised within minutes, and shouldn't materially affect the outcome of any war. War is not in Beijing's interests, and it has kept its actions in the SCS below a certain threshold so as not to provoke direct US action. (The idea of the islands being deterrents related to Freedom of Navigation (FON) is something we will talk about later).
No, it is China's use of history that gets us to the crux of the matter.