You'd be mad to test the Singapore fortress

Anthony Paul, The Straits Times, Asia News Network, Singapore

Singapore has a poorly kept military secret, if the city's taxi drivers, who often double as driving-seat generals, are to be believed. A visitor taking a taxi from Changi Airport will sometimes be told the inside story.

About three minutes past the Welcome to Singapore sign and tree cover, the road suddenly becomes a perfectly straight stretch of several kilometers. In the median strip to your right, low shrubs in large pots have replaced the trees.

If war threatens, you're told, Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) personnel will descend and drag those pots clear.

The squads will simultaneously topple palm trees lining the road and dismantle a parallel line of lamp-posts. Within minutes, Changi will have an additional runway for SAF jets.

Foreign Policy magazine's annual globalization index recently named Singapore Asia's most globalised country -- the most open to visitors, trade and capital flow. But this openness obscures another of the city-state's distinctions -- Singapore is one of the world's best-prepared fortresses.

Defense spending per capita compares with such places as Israel and Kuwait. Sudden mobilizations periodically prove Singapore's claim that at the press of a button, the SAF can field more than a quarter of a million men within hours. As British defense specialist Tim Huxley has written in Defending The Lion City, Singapore is "probably the most densely defended state in the world".

Why so much defense for such a small state?

One obvious response is the island's strategic position, on the main route for vast East Asia-Europe sea traffic.

But another compelling reason is this unusual state's ambition.

Within 10 years, says Asian Demographics, a marketing consultancy, the republic can expect to be Asia's second-richest nation, with a gross domestic product per capita of US$35,020 (S$58,900). (Other forecasts for year 2013: Japan, US$38,987; Hong Kong, US$29,902; Australia, US$22,961; Malaysia, US$5,394.)

To sustain the growth rate needed, Singapore must continue attracting investment and skilled immigrants. Unfortunately, Singapore is "a fine place in a lousy neighborhood", said a former DBS Bank economist. "Though there are no immediate threats, being seen to be able to defend ourselves against any bully is important to investors."

Threat perceptions in Singapore include Malaysia, Indonesia and, lately, terrorists. Further complicating defense issues are those two larger neighbors' Chinese minorities. They tend to look upon predominantly Chinese Singapore as an ultimate refuge.

When mobs began rampaging through Indonesia's Chinese communities in 1998, Singapore feared it might become the destination for literally hundreds of thousands of Sino- Indonesians. The threat failed to materialize, but not before the SAF began extensive preparations to ward off any unacceptably large influx.

Meantime, Singapore continues its up-and-down relationship with Malaysia, which supplies close to half the island's water. Singapore's resultant sensitivity about water security is evident in a passage in From Third World To First, Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew's memoirs.

In a blunt conversation with then Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, Lee noted that Malaysia had guaranteed Singapore's water supply. But if that guarantee were ever breached in "a random act of madness", he told Mahathir, "we would have to go in, forcibly if need be, to restore the water flow".

Prospects of such an armed conflict are extremely remote. But this past weekend, war caught my attention -- dramatic TV reports from Iraq and a Sunday Times article on Defense Minister Teo Chee Hean's concept of "the new type of soldier needed by the 'third- generation SAF' ".

Later in the morning, I visited the Fort Canning bunker. In the fort commander's conference room, I watched wax images of British generals re-enacting Singapore's 1942 surrender to the Japanese as the island ran out of water and fuel.

I asked myself: For all Singapore's chutzpah, what really would be the SAF's chances if war came?

Though clearly impressed by the SAF, author Huxley judges it to be largely a citizen force, "dependent for its personnel on essentially acquiescent rather than enthusiastic conscripts and reservists". The fact that they have never been battle-tested, says Huxley, leaves us with the question: Are SAF personnel really warriors -- or just bureaucrats in uniform?

We won't really know until there really is a war.

But as a former war correspondent (Indochina, the Soviet Afghan war), I take note of what may already be observed: Motivation in combat: The slogan of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point is "Duty, Honor, Country". The word sequence, with "duty" first, wasn't chosen idly. Surveys during the Vietnam war showed the main source of battlefield courage was not so much the official propaganda ("save the world from communism") or even patriotism. It was duty to closest comrades, beginning with the squad and platoon.

SAF reserve units are more tightly bonded than any I have seen. I know of one Beach Road IT company whose ethnically mixed staff were in the same university sports team and are today the core of their reserve unit.

What I saw in Vietnam leaves me with no doubt that duty to comrades who are also their close friends will make their unit more than formidable under fire.

Combat history: Happily brief. But it may be worth noting in the SAF's only combat to date -- the storming of a hijacked airliner at Changi in 1991 -- its well-trained commandos shot dead all four Pakistani terrorists within 30 seconds of entering the passenger cabin.

If I were someone looking for a serious fight with Singapore, I'd ponder the two points above. The SAF gives the impression that it would indeed be madness to test its preparedness.