On pages 161 to 165 of his book, Barnett gave five criteria for measuring connectivity. [1] So instead of having to determine if something with Core or Gap, and living with absurdities (Israel being in the “bad” side but North Korea being in the “good” side, for example), there were sub-categories for nastiness, shortness, brutality, etc.

In the same way, DeAngelis should break up “Resilience” into meaningful sub-category. So there might be high Economic Resilience and Social Resilience, say, but little geographic resilience. (He may have already done this, but I have not seen it.)

[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2006/05/14/redefining-the-gap-7-the-pentagon-s-new-map.html

My argument is that a truly resilient Singapore would be a Singapore whose assets are truly portable in the event of a catastrophic attack on the single point of failure. The same applies for Israel. Militant Islamists are distributed; Israel is not.

Many aspects of United States strategic thinking still follow the “put all your eggs in one basket and guard it heavily” line of thinking. My point is that when nukes become ubiquitious, resiliency means being distributed.

I enjoyed reading your post [1] a lot. I especially liked the discussion on skilled immigration to Singapore — many American engineers face similar hardships, so it is interesting to read a parallel case.

I have two questions, both out of ignorance

“Of course, there is a price to be paid for this kind of strategy. That price came at the expense of having the small and medium enterprises that can hold the economy in times of recession.”

How did Singapore fair during the Asian troubles of the late 90s?

“The weakness of the strategy is that in times of economic recession, Singaporeans cannot fend for themselves and subject to retraining and low wages.”

It's somewhat of a circular questions, but are low wages or (artificially?) high prices a greater burden for Singaporeans?

[1] http://sgentrepreneurs.com/commentary/2006/08/28/reprise-singapore-resilient-strategy/