S Rajaratnam on Singapore

The following sections are included:

• Contents

• Acknowledgements

• Foreword

• Selection of Photographs

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The following sections are included:

• Framework of Singapore's Foreign Policy

• Singapore as a Global City

• Balance of Power

• ASEAN

• Singapore at the United Nations

• Relations with Superpowers

• Relations with China

• Relations with Neighbouring Countries

• Conclusion

I would first like to state that when we come to talk about the foreign policy of a country, there are two senses in which we can do so. We can identify its foreign policy by the statements of principles and objectives propounded by the leaders of a country. These are generally very reassuring and infused with high moral purposes, but these do not necessarily constitute the foreign policy of the country involved….

World domination is an impossible goal. No single nation however big and powerful can dominate a world of some 140 interdependent nations and embracing some four billion people. It is true that in the past great conquerors have ruled over vast empires and proclaimed themselves world rulers. In fact these empires embraced only a fraction of the earth's surface and even then they dominated only those portions of the empire where their soldiers or administrators could enforce authority….

The close of a decade is conventionally an occasion for a retrospective assessment of the past to discern what the future holds for us. The 1970s, by all accounts, has been the most disastrous decade for mankind since the end of World War II. In comparison with it, the preceding two and a half decades were years of steady achievements for most of mankind and even those who experienced disappointments and setbacks were hopeful that, given time and effort, they could correct their errors and join the mainstream of progress and advancement….

I would like to begin by stating four laws to help us see through what may be the most crucial decade of the 20th century. These apply as much to foreign policy as to domestic policy. There are other laws but they will fall into place if we adhere firmly to these four laws….

When this conference was first mooted it was suggested that in order to prevail upon the Vietnamese to attend, we should eschew dealing with the political and military causes that underlie the refugee problem. Though this undertaking was given the Vietnamese together with their friends have nevertheless elected not to attend. This being so there is less reason for us to pretend that things are not what we know they really are….

I shall state my assessment of the Non-Aligned Movement in three short sentences. Its past is one of which we can be justly proud. Its present condition however does it no credit. And finally if it persists in its present course, its future will be one of shameful oblivion….

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The following sections are included:

• Introduction

• Ideational Sources of Mr Rajaratnam's Foreign Policy

• The Formation and Role of ASEAN

• ASEAN's Achievements

• Limitations of ASEAN

• Future Prospects for ASEAN

First of all, on behalf of my Delegation and the Government of Singapore, I would like to thank the Government of Thailand and its people for hosting this Conference of what is today, five countries and in the course of years to come of many more countries of Southeast Asia. Secondly, on behalf of my Delegation, I would like to extend particular thanks to our Chairman for the tactful, judicious and patient way in which he guided our not always coherent deliberations towards a more than successful conclusion. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the officers who did excellent work in translating our intentions into more concrete form by way of documents and papers….

I remember reading an essay many years ago about a famous world traveller who had lived all his life next to the British museum and who eventually died without ever having visited this renowned museum. Because the museum was so close to his home, he had postponed visiting it in the belief that he could visit it any time….

We are meeting here to commemorate the first anniversary of the Bali Summit in a way that augurs well for ASEAN. At Bali our Heads of State and Government directed that ASEAN, after ten years of discussion and resolution making, should take a bold and decisive step in the direction of greater regional cooperation. Prior to this, our efforts at regional cooperation were modest and not very demanding….

Ten years ago the five ASEAN states were disparate nations going their separate ways and unaware that they had common interests over and above national interests. But since then the concept of ASEAN has had impact on the popular imagination even though very few of us can define it with any precision. Certainly any suggestion of scrapping ASEAN would today cause considerable dismay and deep anxieties — which the dismantling of ASA and SEATO did not. The reason for this is that, unlike ASA and SEATO, ASEAN's mainsprings were indigenous. It was the natural response of independent states who realised that the protective role of Western powers would sooner or later be ended and that therefore the ASEAN states must become more self-reliant. The mobilisation of regional resources and regional solidarity they instinctively felt was the answer to problems of prosperity and national integrity….

The world of 1967, when ASEAN was launched, was a world vastly different from what confronts us today and from what we will encounter the next ten years. The assumptions and certainties of 1967 are no longer valid….

Ten years ago, the ASEAN states expected that the end of Western presence in Southeast Asia would not take place until the 1980s — possibly the late 1980s. There was time enough, we felt, for ASEAN consolidation. So until two or three years ago, the pace of ASEAN consolidation was leisurely….

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, founded ten years ago, is an effort by over 220 million people, through collective effort, to become more self-reliant economically and politically. It is not the aim of ASEAN to become an autonomous, closed economy. Such a goal is neither desirable nor feasible. The interdependence of nations, even if a cliche, is an inevitable process of history. Interdependence requires that national economics come to terms with the imperatives of a global economy. Unfortunately at the moment most nations, including the rich industrial nations are refusing to come to terms with this reality by a return to economic nationalism. The consequence is that both national economies and international economy are drifting into greater instability and endemic crisis….

ASEAN is of the future. Not many of us fully appreciated this when it was launched 11 years ago. For some of us it was perhaps no more than an instinctive response to immediate fears and passing problems generated by the convulsions of the war in Vietnam. Some saw it as no more than an anti-communist front….

This meeting of ASEAN Foreign Ministers is perhaps one of the most crucial in its 12-year history. It is certainly crucial for the 240 million people of ASEAN who have placed their fate and fortunes in our hands. Our first responsibility is to the 240 million. We are here to protect them, not the Vietnamese. It is also crucial for our region as a whole. Never before in all the meetings of Foreign Ministers I have attended have I had the feeling that we would be making irreversible decisions that would chart the course, for better or for worse, for our peoples. The consequences of our decisions will be felt, not in the remote future, but within the next year or two. It is as close as that….

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The following sections are included:

• Defining and Positioning Multiculturalism

• Rajaratnam's Multiculturalism

• Singapore's Current Multiculturalism vis-a-vis Rajaratnam's

• Conclusion: Echoing Rajaratnam's Multiculturalism?

I think we should have a clear idea of what we mean by culture. Culture is one of those words which everyone uses quite freely but without knowing precisely what it means. Perhaps culture is not the only word about whose meaning people are vague. There are other words — like democracy, socialism, communism, liberty, justice and so on — equally vague and, because they are vague, a lot of misunderstandings and superstitions are perpetuated about them.

What exactly is a cultural approach to politics, you may well ask? Politics is politics and what has culture to do with politics?…

One of the problems of the seventies is how to convert a society of transient immigrants into a community of permanent settlers….

According to the Commission, it would appear that minority rights were sought after not because the minorities fear the majority, but because they wanted more rights than the majority….

It is true migrations of people have taken place from time immemorial and Singapore is an example of a country created by wandering migrants who have unpacked their bags….

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The following sections are included:

• The Romance of Anti-Colonialism

• The Tragedy of Separation

• The Irony of a City-State

• From Story of the PAP to the Singapore Story

• Conclusion

The following sections are included:

• The Birth of the PAP
• Ending Colonial Rule
• Rendel Stage
• Violence or Non-Violence
• Right-Wing Pressure
• Hock Lee Bus Strike
• Communist Adventure
• Tanjong Pagar By-Election
• The Purge
• City Council Elections
• Re-Organisation and Expansion
• The SPA
• Whether to Fight to Win
• The Secret
• General Elections
• Backdoor Negotiations
• The Run In
• “Ultra-Leftist” Treachery
• Landslide Victory
• Success of Open Conspiracy
• Detainees
• Empire Dream
• To Resign
• The Communist Plot
• Merger and Malaysia
• Anson By-Election
• The 13 Defectors
• Referendum
• Brunei Revolt
• Indonesian Confrontation
• Moshi Conference
• Malaysia Agreement
• 1963 General Election
• Moment of Truth
• Federal Elections
• Communal Propaganda

The following sections are included:

• Entrepot Trade
• Independent Singapore
• Dynamic Economies
• Global City
• Modern Technology
• Urbanisation
• Global Cities Interlinked
• Predictions Wrong
• Not A Regional City
• Port
• Air Communications
• International Financial Network
• Multi-National Corporations
• International Production
• Global Economic System
• Interdependence
• Other Implications

I think I should begin by declaring what vested interest, if any, I have in the Singapore of the year 2000. Regrettably I have none. The probabilities are that I may not be around to ring in the new century but if through a genetic windfall I should be given a reprieve you can take it from me that even then for all practical purposes I will be nearer eternity than the year 2000….

Let me begin with the positive aspects of why it is necessary for a people to have an awareness not only of their present and future but also of their past. Each has its uses. The proper use of the past was forcefully brought home to me when a few years ago I visited Warsaw as a guest of the Polish government. What I learnt then explains to a considerable degree why the Poles are today stubbornly and so far successfully defying the demands of a superpower which claims to share a common communist theology with them. In the case of Poland we have a pertinent illustration of the proper uses of the past….

My address is not going to be a chronology of the events that led up to the birth of an independent Singapore in 1965 for the simple reason these have been adequately detailed in numerous books, scholarly monographs and articles, TV documentaries and most of all in the excellent and carefully researched papers submitted for this seminar by Pre-U participants. This being so, chronological history, the "who, what, when and where" presentation of history can be no more than a carefully disguised plagiarism. We all know by now the major actors and also the minor comedians who participated, with varying degrees of usefulness, in the birth of an independent Singapore. We all know more or less what happened and where and when….

Until very recently Singapore's past was a matter of supreme indifference for most Singaporeans simply because they believed this island never really had a history worth remembering. For the immigrant Chinese, Malays, Indians and the British colonisers, Singapore history was merely an extension of the history of the lands from which they emigrated some 170 years ago. Their ancestral lands had proven histories not only stretching back thousands of years but also boasting of a wonderous heritage which each immigrant community was convinced was God's gift to mankind. For a Singapore Chinese, evidence of his superior place in God's scheme of things were such monuments as the Great Wall or the Imperial Palace in Peking, arresting Chinese bronzes and ceramics and of course a Chinese literature and philosophy receding into the mists of time itself….

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Sinnathamby Rajaratnam was born in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, on February 25, 1915, the second child of Sabapathy Pillai Sinnathamby and his wife. His father had wanted him to be born there for auspicious reasons after the premature death of his older brother. He was then brought back to Malaya and raised in Seremban where his father was a foreman at a plantation….

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The following sections are included:

• About the Contributors