The somewhat inelegantly termed “trilemma” — the trade-offs among the trio of policy objectives of energy security, environmental sustainability, and economic competitiveness — has given rise to much study and even more contention. The many examples of policy initiatives in various countries discussed in this book give evidence to the costly failures that can result from poorly thought out or populist solutions to energy sector issues, with unintended consequences for social welfare. In many cases, the scale of perverse effects has been such that the very purpose of energy policy is subverted. It is the contention of this book that policy objectives need clear delineation and focus, so that appropriate actions can be formulated and implemented when necessary in a manner which minimizes unintended consequences. The concluding remarks below summarize the arguments offered in earlier chapters on the “three E's” confluence of energy security, environmental sustainability, and economic competitiveness. These remarks end with an impressionistic scorecard for Singapore's performance in achieving its energy policy objectives.

ENERGY SECURITY

“Energy security” is a term that has long bedevilled energy policy debates among politicians, businessmen, and academics. Indeed, the term is evoked by players across the policy spectrum, from the more extreme “green” non-governmental organizations (NGOs) whose constant refrain is of the risks of cataclysmic climate change, to the many business groups and public or private resource owners and users with vested interests across the energy value chain. Being so contested by different political and economic constituencies, the term carries its multi-hued meanings to the point of contradiction. Hence, the call for enhanced energy security is often invoked to support conflicting policy positions. In the United States, proponents of subsidies for alternative energy and electric vehicles invoke the mantra of energy security as forcefully as the politicians who support their local coal-fuelled power stations. While both positions claim to reduce America's dependence on energy imports, their approach to climate change issues could not be more opposed.

In the long climate change negotiation process since the Kyoto Protocol, which was adopted in 1997 and entered into force in 2005, the key areas of contention regard not only the apportionment of national responsibilities and obligations in emission reduction activity, but also the rules governing the raising and distribution of public and private finance. At stake are not only questions on which country (or group of countries) does what in curbing emissions and preparing to adapt to climate change impacts, but also which countries are net recipients of climate finance and which are net contributors and by what amount. An agreement on climate change finance is now viewed as critical to the success of the ongoing United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations that aim to reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, it is only in the aftermath of the Fifteenth session of the Conference of Parties (COP15) that was held in Copenhagen in 2009, that climate change finance assumed a central role in the negotiations over climate change.

Climate change finance played a relatively peripheral role in the negotiations over the Kyoto Protocol. Although under the UNFCCC, Annex II countries (which include only the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD] members of Annex I) are required to provide climate-related finance to developing countries, this did not really become a pivotal issue since the developing countries had no emission reduction targets that required financial support. The only issue as far as finance was considered was how the Annex I mitigation targets could be achieved in a cost-effective manner. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which allows Annex I countries to meet their mitigation obligations by financing emission reduction projects in developing countries, has been the main vehicle for financial flows to developing countries. Primary CDM flows peaked at US$6.5 billion in 2008, but have since declined to US$2.7 billion in 2009 and US$1.5 billion in 2010 as the Kyoto Protocol nears its expiry year of 2012.

The question as to whether “country competitiveness” is analogous to that of a firm's competitiveness is often assumed away, and policymakers in the United States, Europe, and Japan routinely talk of national competitiveness. Among economists, however, there is no consensus on how to measure, explain, and predict international competitiveness of countries, and “perhaps none is warranted”. In assessing the potential impacts of emission mitigation policies on countries, the term “competitiveness” is used here in reference to firms in key internationally competing industries such as shipping, aviation, and oil refining and trading rather than to any concept of an aggregate “national competitiveness index”.

Shipping, civil aviation, and oil refining and petrochemicals are three key areas of interest for Singapore, which are the subject of intense negotiations over emission reduction initiatives at the global industry or sector-specific levels. These are all industries of major significance to Singapore's role as Asia's leading transport and oil hub. Policies aimed at emissions reductions, be they local, regional, or global, will necessarily impact these key tradable goods sectors. Parallel to the post-Durban negotiations over larger strategic issues of national emission reduction targets, financing, and technology, the shipping and civil aviation industries will be subject to intense negotiations within the specialized bodies of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Petroleum refining and petrochemicals, as one of the major energy-intensive, heavy industries competing in global commodity markets such as steel, cement, and primary metals, is also subject to strong “level playing field” advocacy for arriving at global sectoral agreements rather than as a subject of different national emission regulations.

SHIPPING

The port of Singapore has been amongst the top five busiest ports in the world for several decades. The American Association of Port Authorities in 2009 ranked Singapore as the world's busiest container seaport on the basis of the total number of actual “twenty-foot equivalent units” (TEUs) transported through the port and second, after Shanghai, in terms of total cargo volume. Singapore consistently ranks as one of the world's top competitive ports, in terms of tonnage and port efficiency. The Kyoto Protocol assigned responsibility for reducing bunker greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to the IMO, an agency of the United Nations. The IMO has focused on technical discussion around standards such as fuel efficiency, fuel quality, slow steaming, etc.

The final fourteen years of Ne Win's life were marked by initial crisis, eventual withdrawal into meditative peace, and final farce. The crisis had been ignited the previous year when Ne Win had admitted that the regime he had led for twenty-five years had reached a dead end and that reforms of a significant, but still ill-defined nature, were essential. He was perhaps hesitant to introduce radical economic and political reforms because of uncertainty about the consequences and regret at the loss of the socialist ideal which his leader, Aung San, had established. The decision to demonetize the kyat for the second time in two years, after pledging not to do so, had removed the last vestiges of faith in the government's promises, at least among those who were directly affected, a large swathe of the population.

For the politically aware public, the humiliation their nation received by being officially declared a “Least Developed Country” by the United Nations, together with other international mendicants, removed the final shred of faith in the Burmese Way to Socialism. In the resulting mood of despondency and despair, with factories closed or on short time due to shortages of spare parts and raw materials, and the shelves in shops bare, it took little to set off public outrage. Moreover, there were those who saw opportunities in the crisis to remove Ne Win and his regime, both on his political left and right. Even many of the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) faithful were disillusioned, as were some of the security forces, despite their continued loyalty to the government and the chain of command. This was made clear to Ne Win in a report submitted to him by U Tin Aung Hein, a highly respected figure in the government and the party. In the report, he detailed how the party had, over time, become ossified and ineffectual, despite the revolutionary intentions of its inspiration. For the younger generation, those born after 1962, who knew little of the history that Ne Win often recounted, past battles counted for little; it was present difficulties which mattered.

Two years after seizing power, Ne Win had settled into the job he had created for himself. There was no going back to the old parliamentary system. The die was cast. National unity and preservation of the state depended upon him, he concluded, and the tools he had available to him, primarily the army. But Ne Win saw himself as a political figure, not just a military leader, and therefore developing the Party became part of his plans for building a new, socialist, secure Myanmar in a hostile environment. That hostile environment included not only foreign states with, if not designs on Myanmar, at least a keen interest in what happened in the country. It also included personal enemies that he had made not only as the general who led the army in the civil war but also as the political figure who had decided his old colleagues were not up to the tasks they were given.

Ne Win and Daw Khin May Than had taken no medical treatment or foreign trip in 1963, but in 1964 they were able to take a two-month holiday. Busy as he was with governmental affairs, his life, while hectic, began to settle to a routine. He called fewer and fewer meetings of the Revolutionary Council, often deciding matters directly with the relevant ministers or officials on his own. He encouraged ministers not to interfere in the work of other ministers but to stick to their own affairs. Mired in much detail, he was unable to keep track of the activities of some of his colleagues, particularly Brigadier Tin Pe and Colonel Than Sein, who were responsible for economic affairs. When he was in Yangon, his day normally began at about 6:30 in the morning. Daw Khin May Than rose before him to read the newspapers and listen to the English and Burmese services of the BBC as well as Myanmar Athan. He also read the Burmese newspapers before they met for breakfast at 8:15 Daw Khin May Than would then brief him on world news.

Not surprisingly, war and the threat of war, in all their varieties, punctuated the life of General Ne Win. After all, warfare is the trade of the military. War also creates strange alliances. Alliances of partners who have fundamentally conflicting goals place great strains on the relationships formed. These strains grow out of not only conflicting goals, but contradictory understandings of the history and nature of the societies from which and over which they are contesting, even if they are nominal allies. If the relationship between the Burmese Independence Army and their Japanese mentors deteriorated to disgust and then hatred in less than a year, the British and the Burmese had had thirteen decades to grow to dislike each other by the end of the Second World War. Ne Win, who had started his political career as an acolyte of one of the most radical nationalist leaders of the Dobama Asiayon, had now to serve under, take orders from, and accept the terms of service of the organization he had sworn to remove from his country, the British colonial state and its armed forces. However, conditions change as politics evolve, and while at the beginning of the next phase of Ne Win's career he may have felt he was working with his enemy, by the end he had learned to work with the British and even adopt some of their ways, if unwittingly.

In September 1945, Colonel Ne Win and other officers of the Patriotic Burmese Forces (PBF) were once more rebranded. From being officers of the Minami Kikanof the Japanese Imperial Army, to being officers of the Burma Independence Army (BIA), the Burma Defence Army (BDA), the Burma National Army (BNA), followed by the Patriotic Burmese Forces (PBF), they were sworn in as loyal officers of His Britannic Majesty's Army in Burma. Ne Win was Burma Commission Number Two, with Number One being Bo Let Ya. This was the result of decisions finalized at a conference held at the headquarters of the Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia, Lord Louis Mountbatten, in Kandy, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), which was, in turn, required as a result of the earlier Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League (AFPFL) resolution at the Naythuyein meeting that Aung San had convened in August.

Comrades and Countrymen,

You have known by now with what aims the Burmese Army has come into existence and of what stuff it is made. Its one and only aim is to fight for Burmese freedom and it is to that aim that practically the whole of Burmese Youth have dedicated their lives. You have also seen that it is a united front put up by all the indigenous races that call themselves Burmese. Thus it is that the Burmese Army which is composed of the Burmese, Shans, Kachins and Karens has been looked upon by all as not only the hope of the country but also as its very life and soul. For it is this Burmese Army which has, in the name of the People's Freedom Army, declared war on the Fascist Japanese and is actively engaged in fighting them on the Burmese front. Bitterly have they fought for the liberation of their soil from Fascist clutches and as bitterly with they continue the fight till that menace is completely eradicated. And it is our purpose here no less our duty to tell the people in as clear and simple words as possible the reason for the step we have taken. We wish every single Burmese to understand that in taking this historic step, the Burmese army is neither guided by sheer irresponsibility of youth, as their enemy has been inclined to attribute, nor is it a meaningless, opportunist movement some of the people have tried to make out. Members of the Burmese Army will certainly not let their blood and sweat flow so freely nor let their wives and children suffer mortal agonies at the hands of the Japanese Military Police nor let the Burmese villages go up in flames without having a firm conviction in the righteousness of their action.

We were not unawares of what terror and ravages Japanese Fascism has wrought in China. At the same time, we as realists believed that without the help of a foreign power, in those days, we could not successfully struggle against the British and achieve our independence. It happened that in view of the international situation prevailing then, Japan was and could be only foreign ally we could look up to.

Five years after seizing power, Ne Win had experienced many frustrations and disappointments. He readily admitted that the economy was dysfunctional, that the government had no adequate development plans, that its statistical base was woefully inadequate, that rice production was falling, and the men upon whom he was relying to build a socialist economy did not know what they were doing. But still he pressed on and did not change course. His underlying motive for the revolution that he had created could not be achieved by turning back. Burma had to be pulled up by its bootstraps and self-government restored. Moreover, Burma existed in the midst of a hostile world. The Americans were deep into their Southeast Asian quagmire, with the battle in Laos and Vietnam threatening Cambodia. Thailand, sanctuary to Ne Win's political and insurgent opponents, was locked into the American embrace. Myanmar apparently had amicable relations with its other neighbours, Pakistan, India and China, but the world was an uncertain place and no one could predict the future. As during the previous two years, so through the next few, Rangoon was occasionally a venue for quiet diplomacy to attempt to resolve the wars in Indochina. Ne Win stayed as far from such diplomacy as possible and claimed he was not in the habit of consulting with United Nations (UN) Secretary General U Thant, or anyone else, over the war in Vietnam or other matters. Preserving his neutrality in the Cold War came above all else.

Nevertheless, this did not mean that he did not take his responsibility and opportunities as a statesman on the world stage seriously. When U Thant visited Yangon in February and March 1967, he arranged, via the Soviet Undersecretary at the United Nations, Alexi Nesterenko, to have a secret meeting with North Vietnamese representatives in Yangon. North Vietnam, of course, was not a member of the world body. As Thant recalled in his memoirs:

Bo Ne Win was in the forefront of the Burma Independence Army (BIA) when it crossed the border from Thailand back into his homeland in January 1942. He had left a scant half year before.1 Ne Win's party, including two Japanese majors and three other members of the Thirty Comrades, were the first to cross the Thaungyin River (Sop Moei in Thai) which forms the Thai–Burma border at that point. They did this by raft, with Ne Win being ceremoniously lifted on to Burmese soil by the Japanese officers. The two Japanese then returned to Bangkok, leaving the Burmese to proceed on their own, after changing from Thai to Burmese clothing. Across the river, they passed through Kayin and Thai villages. Their presence evoked some suspicion and curiosity about who this motley group was and what they were doing.

Eventually, they took a boat down the Thanlwin (Salween) River, but this was not until after Ne Win's attempted disguise as a forest officer searching for an elephant was doubted by a village headman who threatened to disarm the group until he was told the truth about their mission. One night they stayed at the monastery of a pro-Thakin monk, U Zawkita, but were rejected by another monk when seeking refuge at his monastery in order to avoid a police patrol. The party then divided, with his three colleagues leaving for Pyinmana, Pyay and Bago, while Ne Win headed to Yangon. Each was to find and encourage members of the resistance to the British they hoped to raise from among their nationalist associates from the Dobama Asiayonand the Students Unions (Maung Maung 1969, pp. 101–3). They moved stealthily into yet British held territory and, evading arrest, and made their way towards the Ayeyawady Delta, east of Yangon. The Japanese army was then approaching the Sittaung River where the defending British would suffer a major disaster in February when the only bridge across was blown before many of the retreating Indian and British troops had crossed, thus further weakening their defence of Yangon.

Ne Win entered Yangon on 2 February, more than a month before the Japanese army.

By 1972, opposition to Ne Win's revolution appeared enfeebled, but still a nuisance and a potential threat. No one could predict the future but, as ever, yesterday's enemies might be tomorrow's assets. As Ne Win had by 1972 been fighting on all sides for thirty years — against imperialists, fascists, communists, separatists, racists, religionists, capitalists, chauvinists, and the merely misguided — he could cope with nuisances, though they and other irritations apparently undermined his health and equilibrium. The tensions of the previous five years appeared to have been weathered. Though the Chinese were still providing support for the Burma Communist Party (BCP), the party itself generated little enthusiasm amongst the majority of the population, and the rebellion was kept going only with the assistance of ethnic separatists and Chinese-dominated border minorities. Still, small urban cells persisted amongst the students and intellectuals. The attempt by U Nu and his Parliamentary Democracy Party (PDP), the old right of Myanmar, had failed to rally the people to its banner and the Americans and the British, while they may have considered the possibility of supporting Nu's movement briefly, had realized the futility of that option. Better not to stir the cauldron of Myanmar politics for fear of losing the country's neutrality in the Cold War.

Nu's link with Karen and other separatist forces had damaged his credibility with the majority of the population, and the Karen National Union (KNU) and its armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), though still a potent insurgent force, was in no position to threaten Ne Win's regime. India was reassured of Burma's neutrality in its conflicts with Pakistan and China, and when pressed to decide, had proven that its neutrality was tempered by realism, as in the recognition of its new, and troublesome protégé, Bangladesh. Ne Win's radical brand of neutralism, though paying a heavy price in terms of delayed economic development, was ensuring peace for the overwhelming majority of the population. That peace and stability was welcomed by many then as a respite from the chaos of the previous decades. Most who were adults in the early 1970s had lived through the turmoil of the Second War World, the resistance, and the Civil War.

Despite his more than six decades in the public eye, relatively little is known about General Ne Win's youth and the formative years before he launched the military and political career whence his legend stems. There is much speculation about various aspects of his early days, as is to be expected of one who lived a long and controversial life. He provided little assistance to would-be biographers and kept the private information revealed about his life limited. Consequently, rumours and allegations abound but hard facts are rare. Even his date of birth remains wrapped in mystery, as there are several in circulation.

According to Dr Maung Maung, his only official biographer and a close associate from the 1940s until his own death in 1994, General Ne Win, named Shu Maung at birth, was born on 24 May 1911, a Wednesday, at Paungdale in Paukkaung Township and Pyay District of what is now Bago Region (Maung Maung 1969, p. 26). Who's Who in Burma 1961 places his birth date ten days earlier, on 14 May 1911, a Sunday, as does Ne Win's entry in the list of candidate members of the Central Committee of the Burma Socialist Programme Party at the 1971 Party Congress. The former date was generally favoured in most English-language international media accounts of his life. However, his younger brother, U Thein Nyunt, himself born in 1927, states that his sibling was born on 6 July 1910, on the 15th day of the month of Waso, 1272, in the Burmese calendar, also a Wednesday, just after six o'clock in the evening. His children concur with their uncle on the date, 6 July. U Thant also records that baby Shu Maung was born in 1910, not 1911. It is universally agreed that he arrived in a little village then called Aung Thwe Ma Sha, now known as Kyaung Su, a short walk from Paungdale. Kyaung Su is a small settlement which has since moved further from Paungdale, but the original site still has a small Buddhist pagoda and a now dry well, as well as a new railway station for Paungdale.