Nice try, everyone

The Straits Times, February 16, 2007

By Janadas Devan


PICKING ON SINGAPORE

FORMER Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad said of Singapore on Thai television recently: 'You'll get nowhere with them either being nice or being tough, they only think of themselves.'

That statement is only partly true: It is certainly important for a small country like Singapore that large countries, near and far, know they cannot get anywhere with it by being 'tough'. What that means is that they realise they cannot bully Singapore, for that is what 'being tough' means here.

Since refusing to be bullied happens to be Singapore Foreign Policy 101 - a line the country's leaders established within a minute of 10am, Aug 9, 1965, when Singapore became independent - it is excellent that Tun Dr Mahathir can recognise it so readily. It means Singapore has adhered to this line so consistently over 42 years that its obviousness is obvious - even to Tun Dr Mahathir.

What Tun Dr Mahathir does not seem to realise is that he could easily have smudged this line, converted it into a scratchy wiggle, if he had been 'nice' to Singapore.

You want water? Sure, we'll give you as much water as you want, way beyond what an internationally recognised treaty obliges us to supply, for 3 sen per 1,000 gallons - or less if you wish.

You want a common market with Malaysia, as you were promised before you joined the federation in 1963? No problem at all. Your air force wants to fly through our airspace to get to their training areas over the South China Sea? Sure, since it costs us nothing.

What if Tun Dr Mahathir and his predecessors had done all that? To begin with, Singapore may never have felt it necessary to go it alone in 1965, may never have indus-

trialised in order to leapfrog the region and link up with the rest of the world, may never have become anything more than an entrepot trading post for the region.

It would not have converted almost the entire island into a water catchment area, and developed Newater and desalination so as to become self-sufficient in water in the near future. And its air force pilots would not have become so expert in making sharp right turns immediately upon take-off, and sharp left turns soon after, to get to their South China Sea training areas. I am told those are handy skills to have for dogfights.

'Challenge and response' - that is the primary mechanism by which civilisations have emerged throughout history, said the historian Arnold Toynbee.

Why did the resource-poor North defeat the resource-rich South in the American civil war? Quite apart from the fact that right was on its side, eking out a living was a tougher proposition in the North and it was forced to industrialise earlier.

As the Greek poet Hesiod put it more than 2,700 years ago: 'The price of achievement is toil; and the gods have ruled that you must pay in advance.'

'You'll get nowhere with them either being nice or being tough' - no, that's not quite it, Tun Dr Mahathir. Singapore became tough in large part because you and your ilk were never particularly 'nice'. You might have enfeebled us if you had smothered us instead with treacly love. We should thank you for desisting.

Some sections of the Indonesian establishment have yet to catch up with the partial lesson Tun Dr Mahathir has learnt. The aim in banning the export of Indonesian land sand to Singapore was to pressure the Republic on some bilateral matters, especially the negotiations over an extradition treaty.

The calculation was: Sand is a natural resource; Singapore doesn't have any of it; so deny Singapore the sand it desperately needs and it is bound to fold.

It is the kind of calculation that resource-rich countries, especially, are prone to make, only to discover (too late, usually) that human ingenuity is the most valuable resource and it tends to thrive when it is denied easy access to natural ones. Challenge and response works on this front too.

Some Indonesians have expressed surprise in private that Singapore has not been panicked by the sand ban. They did not realise that the country's reclamation projects are mostly near completion; that there are other sources of sand for construction purposes; and, most importantly of all, that they did Singapore a favour by not being 'nice'.

The not-so-secret secret in Singapore is that construction is among the least technologically sophisticated sectors in the country. Nothing would be better calculated than the denial of sand to force this sector to upgrade, use other materials in place of sand, and become less labour-intensive. Challenge and response - it never fails.

The sad thing about all this is that our neighbours should be focusing less on challenging Singapore and more on the challenges that Asean as a whole faces.

As The Economist noted recently in commenting on the series of bilateral Asean spats with Singapore as the object of blame: 'It is hard to avoid the suspicion that the little country's unforgivable offence is being richer and more successful than its neighbours, and being not particularly apologetic about it.'

But this 'little red dot' cannot possibly make Indonesia, Thailand or Malaysia poorer or less successful. China and India can - and it is those countries, not Singapore, that they should focus on as existential challenges.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono realises this, which is why Jakarta has supported strongly the formulation of an Asean Charter as a means of hastening Asean's integration, economically as well as politically.

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi and his deputy Najib Razak realise this too, which is why the latter has dismissed the bizarre claims of the Johor Menteri Besar, in the teeth of all the hydraulics laws known to man, that the reclamation works around Singapore's Tekong island had somehow caused the recent floods in Kota Tinggi and Batu Pahat in his state.

Singapore has shown over 42 years that it can survive by leapfrogging the region and linking up with the rest of the world. It can go on doing this if necessary.

The region as a whole, however, cannot leapfrog itself for it is stuck here forever, sandwiched between two rising giants, China and India.

Those are the challenges. Respond as one, for goodness' sake, instead of posing these incessant challenges to Singapore.