The story out there is that we become soldiers because the British ditched us in 1941. Singapore- a colony, reliant on the mighty English. Yet it was our grandmothers who were raped when the Japanese came to invade. So when our teenaged boys bear arms today, it is with salient awareness that we do so because we want Singapore to be free (to be free, ya).
Yet reality could not be more divergent. World War II was the war between the exclusive nation state. Aryan supremacists, Japanese militarism, fascist Italy, Thaification. It was a quest for empire to benefit the people of the nation. Hitler fought for Anchluss and Lebensraum. The Co-Prosperity Sphere was a big farce. Southeast Asian resources were all diverted back to Japan to support the war effort. It was Darwinism in international politics, fought based on the notion of the nation state.
Today, nationalism in Europe is a dirty word. Germany is on the ascent again, booming in the European Union, yet it does not sing über alles in der welt. This notion permeates the German psyche, influencing actual policy. Despite clearly being a member of the Western alliance, Germany abstained from the vote to establish no-fly zones in Libya because it was shunning its militarist, nationalist past. It leads awkwardly in the EU today, because of WWII legacies. European politics today is still shrouded in a cloud of political correctness.
The atmosphere in Asia today could not be more different. Pakistan and India, China and Japan, China and Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia, Malaysia and Singapore. The lines on the map are drawn in permanent marker, the Asian Schengen highly unrealistic. Yet despite this heightened state of nationalist sentiment (not unlike Europe of the 1930s), war has been largely replaced by diplomacy. An alphabet soup of regional summits, groupings and treaties have showed an Asian commitment to peace despite the deep divisions between each country.
It is thus in this context that Singapore conducts its foreign policy. Asia has as much historical baggage as Europe, ties still as sensitive. Yasukuni visits still trigger massive demonstrations in front of Japanese embassies. Border skirmishes in the past decade are aplenty. In the 21st Century though, the prospect of all-out war is frankly, unpalatable. The Middle East is hardly a model for the Asian renaissance. GDP growth figures remain paramount amongst Asian politicians and war would mess all that up. No, Asian politicians will replace war with diplomacy and live peacefully and (more importantly) wealthily.
Yet diplomacy functioning atop a region rive with historical baggage is difficult. Instead of a convergence in national interests that produced the European Union, ASEAN instead adopts the ASEAN Way, a philosophy that emphasizes similarities and sweeps differences under the carpet. Raison d’etat is distinct from regional integration. Yet these vastly different forces are moving at the same speed. The result is finely-tuned foreign policy and calibrated diplomacy to avoid a massive collision.
This is where our army comes in. Soldiers today don’t take up arms to fight the boogeyman. There is no boogeyman, the Japanese in 1941 no longer exists. Instead what we face is a chessboard with more than a dozen players, none of them trying to capture Kings, but none of them willing to let their bishops go either. Asian diplomacy is a delicate dance.
And without our army, we have no insurance against a chess player who miscalculates. Without our army, we wouldn’t have that many chess pieces in this overcrowded chess board. An effective deterrence allows a wider range of options for effective foreign policy. National service is about securing the concepts of “independence” and “freedom” but it is also more than that. It is about realpolitik, enabling Singapore to navigate the treacherous geopolitical landscape with deeper resolve.
So yes, we become soldiers so that we won’t be invaded again. Yet the impetus for national service is far more complex, and soldiers today should know why we do the things we do.
