SINGAPORE @ 50: The past, present and future of the defence of Singapore

With 50 years as the military instrument of a sovereign Singapore, now is about as opportune a time to reflect on the contributions the Singapore Armed Forces has made to Singapore’s national security, and to ponder its future. The essential question that needs to be asked at this point is this: is Singapore today as, if not more, secure than it was in 1965 when independence came suddenly?

Why is this important? As colleague Kwa Chong Guan wrote recently in The Straits Times, “an even younger generation born after the Cold War, who take Singapore’s sovereignty for granted and do not necessarily buy into the idea of Singapore’s vulnerability. Serving national service has convinced them that the SAF is indeed a formidable armed force quite capable of defending Singapore, but the accompanying National Education narration of Singapore’s history has not convinced many, who see the nation’s fragility as ‘propaganda’.” In other words, the idea of a vulnerable Singapore is apparently being challenged. If so, then it becomes valid for us to ponder the contribution that the SAF has made towards the security of a sovereign Singapore.

I argue here that it is difficult to determine whether or not the SAF has actually contributed to the national security of Singapore, but that is not to denigrate the SAF itself. Rather, it boils down to a basic and universal conundrum of its strategy of deterrence: deterrence cannot be shown to have worked; it can only be shown to have not worked. Just because nothing happened does not mean we can attribute it to successful deterrence.

Charting the Evolution of the SAF

The SAF today calls itself the third-generation SAF—or 3GSAF for short. That presupposes that there were two distinctly different manifestations of the SAF preceding the 3GSAF, of course; and to be fair, when we look at the evolution of the SAF’s strategic doctrines—from the “poisonous shrimp” of its nascent days, to the more recent “porcupine”—we can begin to see very different images of the SAF emerging.

The first-generation SAF was closely aligned to the strategic doctrine of the “poisonous shrimp”, the metaphor being attributed to the first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew. In the words of Richard Deck, this strategy envisaged a “Stalingrad-style defence of the city-state”—junction by junction, block by block, room by room, if necessary. It was a strategy of pain being inflicted on a would-be aggressor: Singapore would end up being swallowed up, but it would thereafter create the most severe pain on this aggressor thereafter. Should this would-be aggressor seek to avoid such pain, the strategy suggested that it should avoid swallowing up Singapore.

As I have argued elsewhere, the problem with the poisonous shrimp strategy was that it was essentially defeatist. For the strategy to work, Singapore had to be swallowed up, Singapore had to be defeated in the first place. In any case, by the 1980s, the SAF had grown sufficiently, and importantly—at least in the domain of land operations—was already implementing combined arms operations doctrines not entirely dissimilar to mature conventional warfighting armed forces elsewhere. This was the second—generation SAF, one likened to a porcupine. Indeed, in 1983, then-Defence Minister and subsequently Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said Singapore needs the capacity to “keep our threats from any direction” and essentially enunciated the porcupine strategic doctrine.

By the 1990s, however, another major shift in doctrinal thinking was becoming apparent. Starting with the construction of the SAFTI Military Institute, in which officer education and training across all the services would be held, there was a conscious move towards joint operations, a concept that was gaining global traction. Simultaneously, there were other interesting developments, this time away from combat platforms and towards C4ISR capabilities—a lot less sexy, but probably more important—all of which heralded the emergence of a new manifestation of the SAF, this time leveraging on information processing and communications technologies. This culminated in the formal enunciation of a 3GSAF vision. As I have argued elsewhere, the metaphor also evolved—from poisonous shrimp, to porcupine, and now to dolphin.

Threats to Singapore’s National Security

The essential question that needs to be asked, at this point, is the extent to which Singapore was indeed vulnerable to security threats, whether state-based or otherwise, and the subsequent extent to which the SAF’s existence had anything to do with these threats remaining imagined rather than real. I want to be clear at this point: by saying these threats were imagined rather than real, I am saying that these threats never actually did anything to undermine Singapore’s national security.

The SAF has never openly enunciated its threat perceptions, preferring to maintain a declaratory strategy of generalised deterrence. Lee Kuan Yew, in his memoirs, was rather more explicit, mentioning specifically Malaysia—the first Malaysian Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, told Antony Head, then UK High Commissioner to Malaysia, “If Singapore’s foreign policy is prejudicial to Malaysia’s interests, we could always brign pressure to bear on them by threatening to turn off the water in Johor.” Lee Kuan Yew mentions Malaysia again in the second volume of his memoirs, referring to threats to turn off the water as a “random act of madness”. Indeed, the chapter focusing on Singapore’s relations with Malaysia carries a revealing title: “Ups and Downs with Malaysia”.

In somewhat contrasting light, Indonesia’s place in Singapore’s strategic calculus is less problematic. There have been problematic episodes in the bilateral relationship: Konfrontasi, the 1964 bombing of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank branch in Orchard Road and the subsequent execution in 1968 of the two Indonesian commandos responsible for this incident, and more recently, the Indonesian Navy’s decision to name a recently-acquired corvette, the KRI Usman Harun, after the two commandos. That being said, the relationship has been depicted, by Lee Kuan Yew at least, as being on an essentially upward trend; the title of the chapter examining relations with Indonesia in Lee’s memoirs is entitled, “Indonesia: From Foe to Friend”.

Even without such pronouncements, it does not take a strategic genius to conclude that the Singapore strategic calculus places Malaysia and Indonesia front and centre in terms of where threats to Singapore’s national security are likely to emerge, however improbable they may appear to be. The Indian strategist Kautilya, in his Arthashastra, proposed the notion of the Mandala, in which countries that are immediately contiguous are where the “natural enemies” resides. Note that this Kautilyan concept does not equate “contiguous neighbour” with “enemy”. Rather, the argument is that if enemies to the state were to emerge, it makes sense that such enemies would emerge from contiguous neighbours. Given that Malaysia and Indonesia are Singapore’s contiguous neighbours, they fall within the Mandalic circle of “natural enemies”. It does not mean that Malaysia and Indonesia are indeed Singapore’s enemies, a point that bears repeating!

Of course, there have been, and continue to be, non-state actors who can potentially threaten Singapore’s national security as well. In the early days of Singapore’s existence as a sovereign state, the Communist problem was closely interwoven with the problem of ethnic tensions and riots. The Communist problem apparently re-emerged in the 1980s with allegations of Marxist conspirators having penetrated the Catholic Church in Singapore. More recently, the non-state actor that has commanded much attention has been violent extremism in the form of actors such as the Jemaah Islamiya and other terrorist actors. Indeed it is possible to argue that the most immediate threats to Singapore’s national security—but a national security defined differently—have come from such non-state actors.

All this then begs the question, what exactly is this “national security” that is purportedly being threatened? Because it is possible to argue that the two categories of threats—state and non-state actors—each pose very different threats. We tend to associate state-based actors as posing existential threats to states, although not all wars are fought over the right to existence. We tend to associate non-state actors as posing threats to aspects of national life, although one can argue that a Communist actor threatens the very nature of the state, as it exists at the point in question. But were Malaysia and Indonesia therefore posing existential threats to Singapore? It is possible to argue that while Singapore remained dependent on Malaysia for the majority of its potable water, Malaysia might have fulfilled the role of existential threat. Indonesia’s sheer size, relative to that of Singapore’s, almost guarantees its status as another potential existential threat.

That being said, Singapore has become self-sufficient in terms of its sources of potable water, which therefore removes what was Lee Kuan Yew the only casus belli of a potential war with Malaysia. Furthermore, for any country to pose as a potential existential threat to Singapore, we need to examine the capacities of that country to project military power against Singapore in a manner that would threaten Singapore’s existence. And in this regard, both Indonesia and Malaysia, at least today and for the foreseeable future, lack the physical capacities to project such military power against Singapore that would threaten the latter’s existence. In other words, even if either of these states wanted to be an existential threat to Singapore, both probably lack the physical capacity to act on such intentions.

In the case of non-state actors, they tend to lack the physical capacity to pose as existential threats. What non-state actors, and terrorist actors in particular, are capable of doing is disrupting the national life of the state. Does this constitute a threat to national security though? Presumably, if the citizens are sufficiently cowed by terrorist activities to demand of their governments an end to whatever policy the terrorists were militating against, this constitutes a threat to the ruling party’s capacity to realise its desired political end-states; but the extent to which these constitute threats to national security is something my other colleagues here are better at addressing.

Debating Singapore’s Vulnerabilities

If we can accept the argument thus far, it is therefore possible to debate the extent to which Singapore is indeed vulnerable, and vulnerable to what threats.

No doubt most of us reach for size as the first indicator of potential vulnerability. And physical size is a simple and straightforward argument, after all, surely? The larger the state, the more natural resources it has, the larger its population, the more secure that state potentially is. Physically large states have strategic depth, they can in war trade space for time if necessary, even if policy makers are loath to allow any part of their electorates to suffer the deprivations of war. Large populations provide large reservoirs of human resources from which military personnel can be recruited and trained for war. Abundant natural resources, especially agricultural resources, provides sustainability and wealth from which to build the military instrument. Conversely, Singapore suffers a trifecta of geostrategic vulnerability, apparently: it is physically very small, has no natural resources to speak of, and has a dwindling population from which the human resources needed to build the SAF can be drawn.

But it may not be quite so straightforward as that. Yes, Singapore is a small state; in fact the correct term is microstate—defined in terms of both population and land mass. That being said, there are 19 other states that are smaller than Singapore, and surely not all these states espouse a narrative of geostrategic vulnerability.

Furthermore, it is already beyond doubt that the SAF is the most modern, most technologically advanced and well-equipped of armed forces in Southeast Asia. Of course, strategic effectiveness is not determined solely by such material considerations, that there are fundamentally important non-material considerations—the degree of professionalism, extent of education and training, morale and elan—that will together determine strategic effectiveness. These are, absent recent combat performance, a matter of reputations, and in this regard, it is worth acknowledging that the SAF has earned a reputation for being professional and well-trained. By all accounts, in other words, the SAF may very well be a military organisation you do not want to tangle with!

Plotting the Path Ahead

In other words, so far so good for the SAF. The difficult question is what lies ahead.

For the SAF, it may be sailing into a potential perfect storm generated by adverse socio-political, economic and technological conditions. The socio-political conditions are challenging enough as it is. The political landscape is likely to change, as evidenced by recent political developments in Singapore—witness the last general elections and the Ponggol East by-elections and other political demonstrations and events. The population is also changing—increasing ethnic diversity brought on by recent surges in immigration, amongst other things—and its impact on the amount of human resources the SAF will be able to draw on is something that needs to be examined. There also seems to be apparently contradictory evidence regarding the sacred cow that is military conscription: some surveys suggest very high levels of popular support for the policy, but specific incidents suggest a bleaker future driven by a “who am I defending” questioning.

The economic landscape is also changing. Influenced in part by the changing socio-political landscape, there is evidence of increasing societal dissatisfaction with the idea of economic-growth-at-all-costs. Furthermore, with a maturing developed economy, spectacular double-digit economic growth rates are almost surely a thing of the past, and this will have a direct impact on growth rates of defence budgets in the years to come. This would not be an issue were it not for adverse conditions in the military-technological landscape as well. The SAF’s well-publicised technophilia results in a defence acquisition policy that focuses on the most cutting-edge, the best possible technological capabilities. However, there is no such thing as cheap and good; cheap and good are mutually exclusive conditions. How much airpower can US$1 billion buy? If you are buying F-16s, about 50 platforms right now. If you are buying F-15s, about 20 platforms. If you are buying F-35s, less than 10 platforms. This is what defence economists refer to as structural disarmament. And for the SAF, structural disarmament is almost surely an issue that it will have to face in the future.

What all of this means for the SAF is something that no one has answers to. But this perfect storm that lies ahead does suggest a somewhat different—possibly even radically different—SAF that we are going to see. What this means for Total Defence? Your guess is as good as mine.