Blog Posts by Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh

Undertakers and hospital staff carry the dead body of the Indian rape victim into a van as they leave Mount Elizabeth Hospital. (REUTERS/Edgar Su)

COMMENT

As 2012 draws to a close, most Singaporeans’ hearts are filled with sadness, not joy.

All the triumphs and moments of elation this year—from our country’s first individual Olympic medal in more than 50 years to the broader Asian pride we feel every time somebody horses around to the Gangnam Style—have been rightly overshadowed by the shocking, abhorrent gang-rape of Amanat (not her real name), the young Indian student who passed away in Singapore after having been flown here for medical treatment from Delhi, the scene of the crime.

As we wipe away our tears, and search our souls for answers, many Singaporeans, in a philosophical mood, have come away feeling rather proud about Singapore, particularly the way we treat women. Our attitudes are buttressed, so the argument goes, by our strict laws here. Minister K Shanmugam has said that he cites cases like Amanat’s “in discussions with people who want the death penalty abolished”.

But all this Singaporean triumphalism misses

As Singapore has been doing, it should continue to push the boundaries of high-technology military research. (Getty Images)

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(This is a continuation of “Singapore’s outdated national security policies”)

If Singapore’s security threats have indeed evolved over the years—and no longer includes “potentially hostile Muslim neighbours”—then the country needs to adapt, and prepare itself for today’s main threats: pirates and terrorists.

In order to combat them, Singapore needs a good Navy, Coast Guard and Counter-terrorist units. But it does not need many large traditional divisions of the Army, including Armour, Infantry and Guards.

One could argue that Singapore does not need an Air Force either. But given its tiny size, it might be prudent to maintain the highly-efficient Singapore Air Force as an additional deterrent to would-be aggressors, especially since it is conceivable that a terrorist attack could be airborne.

Finally, as Singapore has been doing, it should continue to push the boundaries of high-technology military research. Drones, unmanned vehicles, robots, and other futuristic weaponry

Time to overhaul Singapore’s national security policies. (AFP file photo)

By Sudhir Vadaketh

COMMENT

Singapore’s national security policies are outdated and in dire need of revision. These policies are heavily influenced by the paranoia of the 1960s, when a vulnerability fetish gave rise to a siege mentality amongst Singaporean leaders that persists till today.

One archaic assumption is that Singapore should maintain a military alliance with Israel to protect itself from its main security threat—potentially hostile Muslim neighbours. This harks back to the mid 1960s, when Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first prime minister, looked across the world and realised there was one other state that had faced and repeatedly overcome a similar national security challenge—being “a tiny minority in an archipelago of 30,000 islands inhabited by more than 100 million Malay or Indonesian Muslims.”

Lee’s decision to seek help from the Israelis was defensible then, given that Singapore had just been thrown out of the Federation of Malaysia in 1965, and that Indonesia under