It gives me great pleasure to write the Foreword to this collection of thoughtful essays written by my good friend and high school classmate, Daljit Singh.

Daljit and I were classmates at Raffles Institution, from 1952 to 1957. He was one of the top students of the school. After completing his university education, he joined the civil service and served in several senior positions. Daljit has always had a scholarly inclination and it was therefore natural for him to transit from the civil service to the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. At the Institute he has been the editor of Southeast Asian Affairs, the prestigious annual review of the region, and of other scholarly publications; the convener of various conferences and seminars; and a security analyst and commentator on trends and developments in the relations between States in Southeast Asia, Asia and the world.

This book contains thirty-seven essays written by Daljit Singh between 1991 and 2009. They were originally published either in Singapore or in the International Herald Tribune. Although I had read the essays when they were first published, I have enjoyed reading them again, partly because of their enduring merit and partly because the author has wisely organised them into four parts. In this way, one is better able to appreciate the coherence and continuity of the author's worldview and his thought process in following the evolution of a situation, for example, the war in Iraq, over a number of years.

Part I of the book contains nine essays on Southeast Asia and regional security after the Cold War. The essay on Myanmar, although written in 1994, is still relevant today: “Solutions to Myanmar's problems will have to be found by the Myanmar people themselves. Outsiders can only encourage or discourage certain trends … The isolation of the regime and the suspension of aid have not succeeded in getting it to change its mind, let alone remove it from power … Some form of political evolution is required for stability and progress.