Few Asian geopolitical observers are as controversial or as widely quoted as Bilahari Kausikan. After nearly four decades as a diplomat, Bilahari—as he is always known—now acts as roving Singaporean intellectual, willing to speak truths from which others in Southeast Asia often shy away. His is a blunt and unsentimental brand of realpolitik in the tradition of Singapore’s founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, a leader for whom he worked as a young foreign service officer.

Born to an ethnically Chinese mother and an Indian-born diplomat father, Bilahari grew up in Singapore, his childhood interspersed with trips to visit his father on diplomatic postings in Australia and Indonesia, where he served shortly after the 1963 to 1966 Konfrontasi period of conflict between Indonesia and Malaysia—a period that also saw Singapore’s own independence from Malaysia in 1965. Having left school and university, Bilahari tried his hand first as an academic, studying for a PhD at Columbia, then dabbled in journalism. Eventually he followed his father into Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs—although he says he did so only accidentally, having run out of better options.

• Tags: Bilahari Kausikan, Issue 29, James Crabtree, Singapore