Threats can spring from 'rational' action

The Straits Times, February 12, 2007


MR KOO Zhi Xuan made a valid point in asking whether we might not decrease the defence budget with circumspection to reallocate the funds to other needs ('Not slaughtering sacred cow but taking away some food'; ST, Feb8).

It is the arguments he uses in support of his position that are hair-raising.

Mr Koo consigned as sensationalist any attempt to link our 'occasional quarrels' with neighbours and the size of the defence budget.

It is not being too generous, he said, to 'to assume that most of our neighbours' leaders are rational people'.

Twenty years ago, what started as a diplomatic spat over the visit of the Israeli President changed the climate with our closest neighbour from 'normal' to 'hostile'. And it happened overnight.

Things escalated to the point where there was a highly agitated mob at the other end of the Causeway.

Suddenly, we became, in the popular imagination of our neighbour, the 'Zionist agent of the East', ready to do to some of our neighbours what Israel did to Palestine.

Exactly what was so rational about this extrapolation from a 'minor disagreement' remains anybody's guess, but the hostility and sense of threat were real.

Suppose a neighbouring country, which thinks we are listening to its military secrets conveniently discussed over mobile phones, is tempted to send its warplanes to 'buzz' us.

Suppose another, which could not care less about our economic performance but never liked us anyway, is tempted to conduct naval exercises just outside our territorial waters.

Half of the reason why neither of these scenarios has happened may perhaps be attributed to the rationality in which Mr Koo has such faith.

The other half is likely to be a 'look deep, strike deep' capability that will never come cheap.

Wong Hoong Hooi
ST Forum