Tag: foreign policy

Terrorism Is Political Problem, Not A Religious One

Recently, in the aftermath of attacks by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Europe, Singaporean leaders warned against the danger of Islamophobia.

Mr K. Shanmugam, Home Affairs and Law Minister, expressed his fears that non-Muslims in Singapore could start developing a set of attitudes internally towards Muslims as a reaction to terror attacks elsewhere in the world, and noted that there were signs that this was already happening. He urged non-Muslims to reach out and engage Muslims here so as to maintain the nation’s social cohesion.

In a similar vein, Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, Minister for Communications and Information, recently stressed the role of religious leaders in promoting understanding about “how Muslims and non-Muslims can live together side by side in peace and harmony”.

This interfaith approach is not limited to the ministerial level. Teachers in secondary schools and junior colleges that I visit often ask me to include something about the importance of interfaith dialogue in my lectures about the Middle East.

Interfaith dialogue is aimed at keeping the peace in the wake of all the attacks and should be encouraged, but it is equally important that we help the young to understand and historicise the emergence of terrorism.

Singaporean students who I visit often ask me to explain the phenomenon of ISIS, or even of Al-Qaeda, which are in essence not a religious problem and cannot be understood using a religious approach. It is a political problem closely associated with the transformations of the role of the United States, as well as the global political landscape, from the Cold War to a post-Cold War era. Hence, we have to move beyond interfaith dialogue, and adopt a political lens to help young Singaporeans understand this political problem.

An analogy may help illuminate the situation. When, for example, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump quotes from the Bible and portrays himself as an ideal Christian candidate for American evangelical voters, we do not try to understand the problematic phenomenon of Mr Trump only through the lens of Christianity. Rather, the economic problems faced by many working-class Americans and their disillusionment with establishment candidates, Republican or Democrat, are more relevant. Similarly, approaching Al-Qaeda or ISIS only through the lens of Islam misunderstands the nature of the problem completely.

POLITICAL ALLIANCES MATTER

Thus, apart from promoting interfaith dialogue, we need to teach students about how US Cold War-era policies and alliances took on new significance in a post-Cold War world.

For example, US interventions in the Middle East and Central Asia in the Cold War era empowered some parties who consequently turned against US interests in a changed global political context after the fall of the Soviet Union. While these interventions may have made strategic sense during the Cold War, they set in motion other elements that gradually came to acquire a different logic in the post-Cold War world.

A salient example to illustrate this point is Osama bin Laden, who once fought with US and Saudi aid against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, only to “turn against” his former patron on Sept 11, 2001.

In a similar vein, some of the US’ Cold War-era alliances that previously held strategic value against the Soviet Union have transmogrified into strategic liabilities.

For example, Mr Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired US Army colonel and the former chief of staff to then US Secretary of State Colin Powell, has candidly shared his views in multiple interviews that the close alliance between the US and Israel, which made strategic sense during the Cold War era, was now a strategic burden for the US.

In his open letter to the US in 2002, Osama stated that Al-Qaeda’s undertaking of the Sept 11 attacks was motivated by the Israeli occupation of Palestine – this was the first reason given in his letter, among a list of others.

However, Osama previously had few qualms fighting on the side of the US against the Soviet Union during the Cold War in the 1980s. Why, then, was the Israeli- Palestinian issue not a priority for him at that time?

This shows that the resistance to the US that consciously promotes itself as, and claims to be, “Islamic” is not an eternal fact, but is of a very recent vintage that emerged in a changed post-Cold War world that reinterpreted US Cold War strategy antagonistically.

TERROR ATTACKS: POLITICAL, NOT RELIGIOUS, AT THEIR CORE

To understand the emergence of ISIS – an issue experts and specialists are fervently debating over – requires a prior understanding of the background of these developments.

Ultimately, there is no simple cause or reason for the post-Cold War transformations because every event emerged from a context that itself was constituted by a previous context. Nevertheless, the historical vantage point offered by the political framework sketched out above is needed if one wants to recognise that this new pattern of terrorist attacks – all of which should be condemned, whoever the perpetrator – is not religious at its core, but political.

What is missing in many pre-tertiary education systems around the world is this political and historical approach in teaching about the post-Cold War world. Such a curriculum should be implemented at a national level.

European countries and the US have long been models for Singapore, but the recent attacks in Paris and Brussels, not to mention the rise of racism and intolerance in the US, reflect most potently the failure of these societies to integrate their minorities.

This makes it clear that Singapore has to strike its own path, and take a proactive approach to maintaining racial and religious harmony domestically. Singapore is a small and open society; while we cannot avoid the fact that Western media, with its predominance, overwhelms us with its own Islamophobic biases, we can – we must – train our citizens to be savvy in managing the daily influx of such information.

Since 2013, I have been making volunteer visits to secondary schools, junior colleges and the National University of Singapore to give lectures precisely on this topic. Over the years, I have collected hundreds of little feedback slips from the students I have lectured to and exchanged e-mails with their teachers, thereby refining my pedagogical approach and presentation content.

Based on my personal experience lecturing at over a dozen schools in Singapore over the past three years. I would say it is possible to implement this curriculum and for the Ministry of Education to design “just-in-time” resource packages to provide a timely response to this pressing topical issue.

If we are serious about maintaining racial and religious harmony in Singapore, as Mr Shanmugam and Dr Yaacob have exhorted us to do recently, then we have to start with our young, and proactively shift the paradigm for understanding the terrorist threats to the US-dominated world order from a religious one to a geopolitical one.

• Koh Choon Hwee is a PhD student in Middle East history at Yale University. Prior to this, she spent two years in the American University of Beirut in Lebanon working on her master’s.

Source: www.straitstimes.com

May 12, 2016
France Must Not Continue To Marginalise Its Muslim Community
The Friday 13th attacks in Paris killed 130, and was the deadliest terrorist attack to hit Paris since the end of World War II. But it could have been much worse. Had the terrorists succeeded in smuggling bombs or guns into the Stade de France and caused a stampede at the France-Germany football match where French President Francois Hollande was present, the outcome could have been even grimmer. The current high threat alert across Europe represents a fourth crisis on top of the three interlocking crises that the European Union has been grappling with in the past few years – the euro crisis (since 2008); the immigrant influx from the Middle East and North Africa (one million refugees are expected for 2015); and the EU’s geopolitical stand-off with Russia over Ukraine.

Flashback to Sept 13, 2001, after the twin towers collapsed in New York: Le Monde’s front-page editorial (nous sommes tous Americains) pithily summed up the sympathy and identification that French citizens felt for America. France supported Washington’s invoking of Nato’s Article 5 (mutual defence clause), and the United States-led military operation in Afghanistan to flush out Al-Qaeda’s territorial base.

But French backing did not extend to supporting Washington in toppling Saddam Hussein and invading Iraq in 2003. Paris’ 2003 decision to delimit military aims to attacking Al-Qaeda’s resource bases, rather than redraw the political map of the Middle East, was a prudent one. Paris escaped the major terrorist attacks that targeted the European supporters of the Iraq invasion – Madrid in 2004, and London in 2005.

Fast forward to November 2015: Paris is confronted with a crisis of similar proportions to the one then US President George W. Bush faced in 2001. Should France prosecute a limited war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to deny its territorial bases in Iraq and Syria? Or should it go further and ally with the US and Russia to redraw the larger map in the Middle East? Unlike the US, however, France is geographically close to the Muslim world, has a deep colonial history and strong ties in Muslim North Africa and the Middle East, and houses a sizeable Muslim minority.

REASSESS MIDDLE EAST POLICY

In the past week, Mr Hollande has vowed “merciless” attacks against ISIS. France has asked and received support for military cooperation from EU member states. Mr Hollande has met US President Barack Obama and will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin tomorrow, and has asked the United Nations to condemn ISIS. French jets have worked with Russian forces to pound Raqqa, ISIS’ would-be capital in Syria.
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Over the longer term, the heightened state of alert in Europe is likely to see Paris recovering some of its lost leadership in the EU, especially on military security, immigration, border security and diplomatic matters.

The UN’s Climate Change Conference in Paris, to be held from Nov 30 to Dec 11, will be the largest international gathering of ministers and leaders from around the world in Paris in years. This promises to be a nightmare for the French and security services of all the international delegations.

Whatever France chooses to do in its foreign policy, it will have to weigh the consequences of its decisions on its own domestic audience and social cohesion. French people of Islamic faith or Middle Eastern origins are a large and fast-growing minority. Estimated at between 7 and 10 per cent of the total French population, French Muslims far outnumber the older confessional minorities of Jewish or non-Catholic Christian faiths combined, and represent in absolute numbers the largest group of European Muslims in a single EU member state. French Muslims follow events in their countries of origin in the Middle East (mainly) closely, and as historian Jonathan Laurence and political scientist Justin Vaisse argue, they are a growing factor in France’s Middle East policy. Remember that at least five of the Nov 13 attackers were French citizens (and more than 1,400 French nationals are estimated to have joined ISIS).

As difficult as circumstances are, this is perhaps an opportune time to reassess Western policies towards the Middle East, from which a majority of continental Europe’s Muslim population originate. The failure of the international community to resolve the Palestinian crisis is a genuine point of contention among many Muslims worldwide, and there needs to be an honest discussion about this. Other foreign policy decisions, including military strikes against Muslim countries and the continued support for regimes that deny their citizens basic freedoms in the Middle East, must be reconsidered. In fact, to do justice to the victims of the Paris attacks, the Muslim populace in the West and all of Europe’s citizens, there is no better time to engage in these difficult but necessary discussions. We need to move beyond the “they hate us for our freedoms” narrative dominant in the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January this year.

MUSLIMS IN EUROPE

Some commentators have suggested that Islam itself is the source of the complications, and have called for a “reformation” of the faith to suit it to modern times. Others have repeatedly asked Muslims to denounce terrorism and proclaim loyalties to the state. This is unfortunately part of the problem. In perpetuating such discourses, one is already promoting the idea that Muslims are the “other” in Western societies. In asking Muslims not to abide by some of the beliefs that they hold dear, for example, the infallibility of the Quran, what is being asked of Muslims is for them to abandon their very identities. And when the community is perpetually being hectored to “condemn” terrorism, it is as if they are presumed guilty until proven innocent.

Not only can these calls lead to a further sense of alienation or a siege mentality among Europeans of Muslim faith, but they also betray the liberal Western/French values of liberty and equality. No doubt, French secularism is often more muscular than others (for example, the ban on headscarves), but this does not in any way mean that any religious group should be prevented from choosing their lifestyles, as long as they do not violate the laws of the land. How Europeans react to these attacks will be defining for themselves. Will the EU states react to the intolerance of a few radicalised maniacs, with more intolerance of their own, closing off borders to foreigners, or circumscribing the free movement of people, goods and services between themselves? Can Europe remain true to its own history and proclaimed values, by embracing the largely peaceful Muslim population with warmth and genuine tolerance?

MOVING FORWARD

An often-neglected aspect in analyses on terrorism is the role of the ulama, or Islamic religious scholars. Traditionally, Muslim communities have always held their ulama in high regard. They have a pivotal role to play in the prevention of extremist ideologies being spread among young, disenchanted Muslims, by propagating the true version of Islam. Western states would do well to consider empowering the ulama; by this, it does not mean that they need to formally co-opt the ulama, which in actuality could be counter-productive. Perhaps a better approach would be to let the ulama be truly independent; the ulama must be allowed to interact with mainstream intellectuals and policymakers, to debate and openly present dissenting views against the state (and against extremist ideologies like those of ISIS), so that they gain credibility among their constituents. This will also demonstrate to disenfranchised Muslims that if they are frustrated, there are legitimate non-violent ways to express their sentiments, instead of resorting to acts of terror and murder.

Whether one likes it or not, the reality is that Muslims and Islam are here to stay in Europe. It is neither practically feasible, nor morally defensible, to entertain thoughts of a Europe or West without Islam and Muslims. It is best to concentrate efforts on making Muslims identify themselves as full and equal citizens of their countries, rather than as marginalised immigrants or unwelcome foreigners.

The first writer, Reuben Wong, is Jean Monnet Professor in European Integration and Foreign Policy at the National University of Singapore. The second writer, Walid Jumblatt Abdullah, is a PhD candidate in political science, NUS-King’s College London joint degree programme.
Source: www.straitstimes.com
November 26, 2015
US Presses Gay Rights Abroad

HANOI, VIETNAM — As U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, Ted Osius deals with geopolitical concerns like China’s island-building efforts in the South China Sea. But the personal can also be political when Osius introduces his husband, Clayton Bond, and speaks of their adopted children.

“We are here to celebrate family. Family is acceptance. Family is love,” Osius told a cheering throng at a U.S.-sponsored festival last week to promote the cause of gay civil rights across Southeast Asia.

With the constitutionality of same-sex marriage bans the last major outstanding case to be decided this term by the U.S. Supreme Court, some gay rights activists are saying that even a defeat would do little to slow the global momentum of their cause in part because of Obama administration policies — and diplomats like Osius.

As a same-sex couple with children in diapers, Osius, 54, and Bond, 38, are in the vanguard of the civil rights movement known as LGBT — shorthand for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

The Obama administration has pressed the LGBT cause internationally since a 2009 speech by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in which she declared “gay rights are human rights.”

While an anti-gay backlash has grown in the Arab world, Russia and many other nations, the cause of gay rights has made strides globally that once seemed implausible. Voters in Ireland, a Catholic nation, recently endorsed same-sex marriage. Osius is pressing for greater LGBT acceptance in Vietnam, where the first gay pride parade took place four years ago.

Two years ago, the authoritarian government here decriminalized same-sex unions and is now considering broader LGBT issues. The nation has proven receptive to the ambassador’s unconventional family, said activist Le Quang Binh, director of the Institute of Social Studies, Economics and Environment.

“Their beautiful family strikes down many stigmas,” Binh said. “They excite many people, especially youth, to accept differences and respect other people’s choices and rights. Above all they inspire LGBT communities for fight for their rights.”

Osius, a career foreign service officer who helped open the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi in 1995 and is fluent in the language, is one of six openly gay ambassadors appointed by Obama, including one as a special envoy for human rights of LGBT persons. That’s five more gay ambassadors than the one each who served under Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Of the current six, all but Osius were political appointees from outside the foreign service.

Osius also championed gay rights within the State Department. When he entered the foreign service in the mid-1980s, the discovery of homosexuality would result in the revocation of security clearances. Many careers had been ruined before Osius and some colleagues founded a group known as Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies. In 1993, the State Department dropped discriminatory policies while, with greater attention, the Clinton administration applied the “don’t ask, don’t tell” mantra to the military.

Change came in fits and starts. When Clinton nominated Hormel Foods heir James Hormel as envoy to Luxembourg, Republican senators angrily refused to consider him, and Hormel ultimately assumed the post on a recess appointment. A few years later, when openly gay career diplomat Michael Guest was named ambassador to Romania, gays were impressed that then-Secretary of State Colin Powell introduced Guest’s partner with the respect accorded a spouse.

But when Guest retired in 2007, he pointedly criticized Powell’s successor, Condoleezza Rice, on the issue of benefits for same-sex couples. Guest said he “felt compelled to choose between obligations to my partner — who is my family– and service to my country.”

It was at a Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies gathering in 2004 that Osius first met Bond, who had come out a few years earlier at age 24. Two years later, they were married in Canada.

While Osius has a broad portfolio of concerns, Bond, who is on leave from the State Department and is working toward a law degree, has assumed the role of unofficial LGBT ambassador.

Their family reflects diversity in other ways: Osius is white, Bond is African-American and their 19-month-old son and 3-month-old daughter are Latino.

The children are biological siblings. Bond said they were adjusting to life with an infant son when they received word that the boy’s birth mother was again pregnant and wondering if they’d consider a second child.

Bond said they hope to set an example. On a recent day at the U.S. ambassador’s official residence in Hanoi, he proudly watched as workmen replaced the familiar signage on foyer restrooms from men and women to a new symbol for “gender neutral” — an image that depicts a figure divided vertically with a skirt on one side and pants on the other.

“It makes me so happy,” Bond said. “This is all about affirming people’s dignity.”

Source: www.mcclatchydc.com

June 27, 2015
Bilhari Kausikan: Foreign Policy Is No Laughing Matter

Politics in Singapore is becoming more complex.

Basic assumptions and policies are being challenged, not just by opposition parties but also by civil-society groups and ordinary citizens. There is nothing particularly surprising about this. It is a natural consequence of democratic politics and a more educated electorate and we will just have to learn how to deal with it.

Foreign policy, too, will inevitably be drawn into domestic politics. The first signs are clear but not promising. In 2013, for example, an opposition MP who should have known better than to play with fire asked a question about Singapore’s Middle East policies that could have stirred up the feelings of our Malay-Muslim ground against the Government. Fortunately, the Foreign Minister could easily demonstrate that the Government had been consistently even-handed in its relations with Israel and Palestine and that the Arab countries understood our position and had no issue with Singapore.

Such irresponsible attempts to use foreign policy for partisan advantage are dangerous. At the very least, they degrade the nimbleness that small states need to navigate an increasingly fluid and unpredictable environment. But they are not the only challenge.

Tussle for influence

IT IS in the nature of international relations that countries will continually try to influence the policies of other countries, openly through diplomacy, but also through other means.

As Singapore’s political space becomes more crowded, with civil-society organisations and other advocacy groups as well as opposition parties vying to shape national policies, multiple opportunities will open up for foreign countries to try to cultivate agents of influence. Those targeted will not always be witting.

And try they certainly will.

The United States and China are groping towards a new modus vivendi between themselves and with other countries in East Asia. These adjustments will take decades to work themselves out. Competition for influence will hot up.

The challenge for all countries in East Asia is to preserve the maximum range of options and avoid being forced into invidious choices. Both the US and China say the region is big enough for both of them, implying that they do not seek to make other countries choose. Their behaviour, however, already suggests otherwise.

I doubt they will eschew any instrument in their quest for influence.

As the only country in Southeast Asia with a majority ethnic-Chinese-origin population, and with arguably the most cosmopolitan and Westernised elite, Singapore faces unique vulnerabilities.

Chinese leaders and officials repeatedly refer to Singapore as a “Chinese country” and argue that since we “understand” China better, we should “explain” China’s policies to the rest of Asean. Of course, by “understand” they really mean “obey”, and by “explain” they mean get other Southeast Asian countries to fall in line.

We politely but firmly point out that Singapore is not a “Chinese country”.

But China seems incapable of conceiving of an ethnic-Chinese-majority country in any other way. The concept of a pluralistic, multiracial meritocracy is alien to them.

Singapore cannot do China’s bidding without losing all credibility with our neighbours and other important partners like the US and Japan. And if we were ever foolish enough to accept China’s designation of us as a “Chinese country”, what would it mean for our social cohesion?

This mode of thought is deeply embedded in China’s cultural DNA and will not change. China still has a United Front Work Department under the Communist Party’s Central Committee. As China grows and becomes more confident and assertive, this instinct will probably become more pronounced. It would be prudent not to discount the domestic resonance that this could have.

Any attempt to garner influence by one major power will inevitably provoke a counter-reaction from other major powers.

Singapore’s brand of democracy already sits uneasily with many in the West and, indeed, with some members of the Singapore elite. In the late 1980s, an American diplomat was expelled for trying, with the support of his State Department superiors, to interfere in our domestic politics by encouraging the formation of a Western-oriented opposition party.

More recently, a European diplomat had to be warned for encouraging some civil-society groups and opposition figures to pursue agendas that he thought were in his country’s interests.

Diplomats legitimately meet a variety of groups and individuals – in government, the opposition and in civil society – in order to better understand the countries they are posted to. Our diplomats do so too. But the line between legitimate gathering of information and trying to influence domestic politics is thin. Western diplomacy is infused by a deep belief in the superiority of their values and too often motivated by a secular version of missionary zeal to whip the heathen along the path of righteousness. Some Singaporeans already find it fashionable to ape them; unscrupulous local politicians or “activists” may find it convenient to aid and abet them to advance their own agendas.

Neither the Chinese nor the West are going to change their reflexes. We will just have to be alert and firm in dealing with them. An informed public will be less vulnerable to influence by external parties or their local proxies.

Debate informed by realities

BUT most Singaporeans are not very interested in foreign policy, which they regard as remote from their immediate concerns, and do not pay much attention to international developments. When something catches their attention, it is usually only cursorily and superficially.

It is crucial that domestic debate about foreign policy be conducted within the boundaries defined by clear common understandings of our circumstances, chief of which is the inherent irrelevance of small states in the international system and hence the constant imperative of creating relevance for ourselves by pursuing extraordinary excellence.

Countries with long histories instinctively share certain assumptions that bridge partisan divisions. But we are only 50 years old; a mere blink of an eyelid in a country’s history.

And even Singaporeans who profess an interest in foreign policy can be breathtakingly naive about international relations and astonishingly ignorant about our own history and the realities confronting a small, multiracial country in South-east Asia.

More than a decade ago, I was infuriated when a journalist – a person whose profession was presumably to inform and educate Singaporeans – told me that there was no “national interest”. Please note that this was not disagreement over what constituted our national interest in a particular case – it is quite in order to debate this – but over whether there was such a thing at all.

More recently, I was flabbergasted when a Singaporean PhD candidate in political science in a local university asked me why Singapore could not pursue a foreign policy like that of Denmark or Switzerland.

It was quite a struggle to remain calm and reply blandly that it is because Singapore is in South-east Asia, not Europe, and the circumstances of these regions are obviously different.

If a PhD candidate could ask such a silly question, I shudder to think what the average Singaporean understands of our circumstances. It does not help that the political science department in at least one of our universities is staffed mainly by foreigners whose understanding of our region and circumstances is theoretical if not downright ideological.

Knowledge of our history should not be only a matter for specialists. The puerile controversy over the 1963 Operation Coldstore and whether those detained were part of the communist United Front exposed the extent to which the public lacuna of understanding allows pernicious views to gain currency. Historical narratives must, of course, be constantly revised. But critical historical thinking is not just a matter of braying black when the established view is white.

I can understand academics wanting to enhance their reputations by coming up with novel interpretations. But the recent debate over the detentions was more than a mere academic exercise: For some, it was a politically motivated, or at least politically hijacked, attempt to cast doubt on the Government’s overall credibility by undermining the Government’s narrative on one particular episode in our history.

Young Singaporeans who have known only a prosperous Singapore do not understand how unnatural a place this is; they are sceptical when we speak of our vulnerabilities, regarding it as propaganda or scare tactics designed to keep the Government in power.

In the long run, a successful foreign policy must rest on a stable domestic foundation of common understandings of what is and is not possible for a small country in South-east Asia. This does not yet exist. We have not done a good job of national education. What now passes as national education is ritualised, arousing as much cynicism as understanding. And we are paying the price for de-emphasising history in our national curriculum.

Some steps are now being taken to rectify the situation, including in the civil service which, the foreign service aside, generally has yet to develop sophisticated foreign-policy instincts.

But these steps are still tentative, sometimes executed in a clumsy manner that does more harm than good, and, in any case, will take many years to have an impact on the public’s understanding. Social media is a new complication. It conflates and confuses opinion with expertise, and information with entertainment.

Extreme as well as sensible and balanced views can be widely disseminated on social media; indeed, the former probably more widely than the latter because netizens generally find such views more amusing. But foreign policy is no laughing matter.

Or at least it ought not to be, if we are to survive as a sovereign state to celebrate SG100.

The writer, a former permanent secretary for foreign affairs, is now ambassador-at-large. He has also held various positions in the ministry and abroad, including as Singapore’s permanent representative to the United Nations in New York and ambassador to the Russian Federation.

Source: www.straitstimes.com

June 8, 2015
Ambassador-At-Large: Being Small Is A Problem For Singapore

In a speech at the Institute of Policy Studies’ annual Singapore Perspectives conference on Monday (Jan 26), Mr Bilahari Kausikan, Ambassador-at-Large and former permanent secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, explained why being a small country in South-east Asia is not as simple as it sounds for Singapore.

Mr Kausikan’s full speech is below:

What does “sovereignty” mean to a small country such as Singapore? We did not seek independence, but had independence thrust upon us. I have been told that Mr Lee Kuan Yew once said “small island states are a political joke”.

I cannot trace the source of that quote and if anyone can help I would be very grateful. But even if apocryphal, it implies a concept of sovereignty based on which our founding fathers sought independence within Malaysia rather than alone.

I suspect it was difficult for that generation to even conceive of Singapore apart from what was then called Malaya. Obviously, and thankfully, that concept of sovereignty proved mistaken or was rendered mistaken by the Herculean efforts of our pioneer generation.

The concept of sovereignty is constantly evolving. Rather than try to define the elephant, I propose to take its existence for granted and instead consider what sovereignty means to Singapore by deconstructing a single sentence: “Singapore is a small state located in South-east Asia.”

This seems straightforward, but is it really? What do we mean by “small”? We are, of course, a physically small country. A moderately athletic person could without too much difficulty walk across it in a day. But as a trading centre, as a logistics hub, as a port and airport and as a financial centre we are far from “small”. In trade, connectivity and finance, among others, we loom quite large internationally, far larger than our physical size may lead one to expect.

Sir Stamford Raffles established modern Singapore as a trading centre in 1819. Some recent archaeological studies suggest we may have been a significant trading centre since the 14th century, even before the concept of sovereignty in its current form existed.

Trade requires connectivity, logistics and finance. Of course, we today perform these functions at a far higher level of sophistication and complexity than in the past. But the point is that they are essentially similar functions and we have performed them as a British colony, as part of Malaysia and only in the past 50 years — which is but the blink of an eyelid in the sweep of history — as a sovereign and independent country.

There is, therefore, no reason to assume that sovereignty and independence are necessary conditions for us to perform such functions. We could conceivably do so even if our independence and sovereignty comes, by some blunder of policy, accident of politics or malicious whim of the gods, to be severely compromised.

SIZE MATTERS

Size — physical size — matters and small states are intrinsically irrelevant to the workings of the international system. It is impossible to conceive of a world without large countries such as the United States, China, India, Indonesia, Brazil or Russia, or even without medium-sized states such as Australia, Japan, France or Germany.

But the world will probably get along fine without Singapore as a sovereign and independent country. After all, it has only had to put up with us for 50 years. For small states, relevance is not something to be taken for granted, but an artefact — created by human endeavour, and having been created, preserved by human endeavour. The creation and maintenance of relevance must be the over-arching strategic objective of small states.

The majority of states are small. Slightly more than two decades ago, Singapore established the Forum of Small States (FOSS) at the United Nations; “small” being somewhat arbitrarily defined as having a population of 10 million or less. It now has 105 members out of a total UN membership of 193 states. The international relevance of many members of FOSS is defined primarily by their vote in the UN. A vote in the UN is only that; not to be sneezed at, but still only one vote. Singapore is exceptional as a small country in that our international identity and relevance is something more than only our UN vote. We have options beyond our single UN vote and that is why we were able to establish FOSS in the first place.

How do we create relevance? There is no magic formula. What makes us relevant vis-a-vis country A may be irrelevant vis-a-vis country B and, in any case, may become irrelevant to both A and B as well as C in a week or a month or a year or a decade. What is relevant will eventually become irrelevant and must therefore be continually refreshed.

The world is constantly changing and since the world will not change to suit our conveniences, we will have to constantly adapt to it. Since the future is unknowable, adaptation requires nimbleness of thought and action; and thought and action based on a clinical — some say cold-blooded — understanding of the world as it is and not as we think it ought to be. Even if we hope to change the world we must first understand it as it is because hope, however fervent, is never enough.

The bedrock of relevance is success. I have always told our foreign service officers that if Singapore’s foreign policy has been successful, it is not because of their good looks, natural charm or the genius of their intellect; the most brilliant idea of a small country can be safely disregarded if inconvenient, whereas the stupidest idea of a large country must be taken seriously. In fact, the stupider the idea the more seriously it must be taken because of the harm a large country can do. If we succeed, it is only because Singapore as a country is successful. Singapore’s success invests our ideas and actions with credibility.

Success must be defined first of all in economic terms. Will a barren rock ever be taken seriously? I know that it has become fashionable in certain circles to claim that economic success is not everything and that there are other worthy goals in life. I do not disagree as far as individuals are concerned. If any of our compatriots chooses to drop out of the rat race and devote his or her life to art or music or religion or even to just lepak (relax) in one corner, I respect their choice and wish them well.

But the country as a whole does not have this luxury. A world of sovereign states is in fact a rat race, and often a vicious one, in which the weak go to the wall. There can be no opting out for a sovereign state. And to be crass about it, small countries will always have fewer options than large countries, but rich small countries have more options than poor small countries and that tilts the scales in our favour.

This is crucial because a small state cannot be only ordinarily successful. If we were no different from our neighbourhood, why should anyone want to deal with us rather than our larger neighbours who, moreover, are well endowed with natural resources? To be relevant, we have to be extraordinary. Being extraordinary is a strategic imperative.

LOCATION MATTERS

And that brings me to the second part of the sentence with which I began. Singapore is not just a small country, but a small country in South-east Asia; not the South Pacific or South America or Europe or, thankfully, the Middle East. This seems obvious, but I think is nevertheless insufficiently appreciated, even by those who ought to know better.

A year or so ago, I was flabbergasted and disturbed when asked — asked in all seriousness and not only to take the mickey out of me, which would have been acceptable — by a Singaporean PhD candidate in political science, why Singapore could not pursue a foreign policy akin to that of Denmark or Switzerland. The question aroused all my prejudices about the academic study of international relations. It makes a vast, and I thought, glaringly obvious difference where a country is situated. That a Singaporean PhD candidate, who presumably knew something about her own country as well as the subject she was studying, could ask such a question made me worry about the future of our country.

South-east Asia is not a natural region, by which I mean a region that can be defined by something intrinsic to itself, as, for example, Europe can be defined as heir to Christendom and the Roman Empire. The main characteristic of South-east Asia is diversity, which is another way of saying that there is nothing intrinsic to it.

There are obvious differences of political form and levels of economic development. But the most important diversities of South-east Asia are visceral: Diversities of race, language and religion. These are the roots of political tensions within and between the countries of South-east Asia.

The Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) was intended, among other things, to mitigate these diversities to ensure a modicum of order and civility in inter-state relationships in a region where this was not to be taken for granted. ASEAN has been reasonably successful. But ASEAN can never entirely erase these primordial diversities because race, language and religion are the essence of core identities.

WHAT MAKES SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE?

Singapore defines itself as a multiracial meritocracy and we organise ourselves on the basis of these principles. We are not perfect — there is no perfection to be found this side of heaven — but we take these principles seriously. They are what make Singapore Singapore. They also make us extraordinary because our neighbours organise themselves on the basis of very different principles.

This is most obvious in the case of Malaysia. It was the irreconcilable contradiction between fundamentally different political philosophies that made it impossible for us to remain in Malaysia and, no matter how closely we cooperate — and despite occasional spats, we do cooperate very closely in many areas — will make it impossible for us to ever be part of Malaysia again unless Malaysia abandons its basic organising principle. And if you believe that will happen, there is a bridge I can let you have really cheap.

The essential issue is existential; not what we do, but what we are: A Chinese-majority country with neighbours whose own Chinese populations are typically a less-than-fully-welcome minority and whose attitudes towards their own Chinese populations are too often projected upon us.

A Chinese-majority multiracial meritocracy that has been extraordinarily successful compared with its neighbours is often taken as an implicit criticism of differently-organised systems. That we are a tiny speck on the map and have hardly any history to speak of is an additional affront.

The intensity of such attitudes waxes and wanes; it manifests itself in different ways, at different times. But it never disappears, because it is the structural consequence of the dynamic between two types of systems. Being extraordinary does not make us loved, but it is the price we must pay for survival and autonomy.

In different forms and various degrees, such attitudes exist throughout South-east Asia, and in China, Japan and even in Western countries such as Australia and the US. Examples spring to mind all too readily, but diplomatic prudence does not permit me to elaborate.

Of course, none of this is intended to imply that we cannot work with our neighbours or any other country; obviously we must, obviously we can and obviously we do and indeed, I dare say, we do so quite well. But these complexities are never going to go away and we ignore or deny them only at peril of compromising our autonomy, that is to say, our sovereignty.

I believe that matters are going to get even more complicated because the external environment and our domestic environment are both changing, and external and internal complexities will act and react with each other in ways that cannot now be predicted.

There are already signs of foreign policy being used for partisan political purposes. This is probably inevitable. Domestic debates over foreign policy are not necessarily a bad thing provided they take place within parameters defined by shared assumptions. Otherwise, it is playing with fire. At the very least, it degrades the nimbleness of our responses if we have to argue everything out anew from first principles.

MORE CRITICAL THINKING NEEDED

Shared assumptions come naturally, almost unconsciously, to countries with long histories. But with only 50 years of shared history, I am not entirely confident that this is the case in Singapore. There is something of an intellectual vacuum that is being largely filled by nonsense.

We need to be better at educating ourselves about our own history. We do not, in my opinion, do a good enough job and the recent debates about our own political history are, unfortunately, notable only for their utter vacuity.

What passes for critical thinking about our history is too often simply crying white if the establishment should say black. And social media exacerbates the situation by conflating information with opinion and treating both as entertainment.

As our domestic political environment becomes more complex with not only traditional political parties, but civil society organisations and advocacy groups contending in the policy space, opportunities for external influence will multiply.

Since the beginning of recorded history, states have always tried to influence each other, sometimes by covert means, but also legitimately and openly through diplomacy. The lines are not always clear and likely to get even more blurred. The enthusiasms of some, mainly Western, diplomats to whip the heathen along the path of righteousness have already occasionally led them to cross the boundaries of legitimate diplomatic activity.

More fundamentally, market forces are creating economic spaces that transcend national boundaries, most notably between China and South-east Asia. This is to be welcomed on economic grounds, but will have political and strategic consequences. It is redefining Westphalian notions of “state” and interstate relations and is stressing ASEAN as powerful centrifugal forces pull members in different directions.

As the only Chinese-majority country in South-east Asia, it could pose special challenges for Singapore. Already, Chinese diplomats and officials too often refer to Singapore as a “Chinese country”. We politely, but firmly, tell them that they are mistaken. And we will continue to do so. But the implications are worth pondering.

Source: www.channelnewsasia.com

February 2, 2015