Foreign Affairs

Reach out to the world
Singapore uses its best diplomatic skill to bring nations across oceans together; being small helps.
Nov 28, 2000

Historically, no other leaders have travelled the world as often as Singapore's, not Bill Clinton, not Tony Blair, not Yoshiro Mori.

An unspoken job description for prime ministers and his cabinet in the Republic should have this line: Must be prepared to fly to anywhere at least once or twice a month.

The reason is traditional. Singapore is an international city, which survives on world trade. Whether its people live well or badly depends more on outside than internal factors.

So Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and his team need to forge friendship with leaders, and potential leaders, in major nations.

The world is a big place. Besides, foreign businessmen will always want to hear from them, not just senior officials, so they can gauge their ability and sincerity before investing big-time.

Besides, if you want to compete with the world, you'd better know what every one else is doing. These personal visits allow them to identify new trends in politics, business and technology abroad, explore opportunities and bring back good ideas for local use.

From the Germans, Singaporeans learned some the best methods of training technicians; from France, how to build underground ring roads, and Israel, how to bring out the best from gifted children, and so on. They picked up ideas from communists and capitalists, East or West.

All these were before the 1997 financial crisis, which indirectly plunged the region into instability and soured a promising move towards free trade.

The biggest danger is its giant neighbour Indonesia sliding day after day into chaos and threatening to spill over into the region. It's not the only one.

What does Singapore do when it perceives dangers? Answer: Reach out to the world. It has strengthened old friendships and built new structures for protection.

This is what has been happening. To counter what it sees as a rise in risk factors, Singapore has been purchasing high-tech weapons, increase military preparedness, step up military exercises with its partners in Asean and the Five Power Defence Arrangements (Australia, Britain, New Zealand and Malaysia).

It is striving to strengthening Asean, Apec and other institutions, consolidating bilateral friendships and promoting up new groupings between east and west and east and east, politically, militarily and economically.

All these need a lot of diplomacy, quiet and sustained, that newspapers do not report in details. In recent years Singapore leaders have been living increasingly off their suitcases.

Now hardly a week passes by without one or another Singaporean leader going abroad (or receiving a high-level visitor). Sometimes half the cabinet is away.

When Singapore was part of a Malaysia under threat of attack from Sukarno, the Singapore leaders were given the task of marshalling world, especially non-aligned, support, a strategy that paid off. And when Vietnam invaded Cambodia, Singapore worked feverishly in the UN to organise condemnation votes.

This has been its formula for survival since independence. When you're small, you make as many friends as possible, join as many groupings as you can. And when you're threatened, you reach out to the world.

One example is the China-Taiwan conflict. Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew sees it as Asia's biggest potential for war that may involve America.

For a decade, Mr. Lee has played the unofficial middleman to try to ensure everyone, including Washington, does not misread the other side.

As Asean weakened following the 1997 financial crisis and Indonesia descended into chaos, I noticed Singapore's foreign policies transforming from a passive, we're-too-small-to-change-things attitude to an active, take-charge strategy to unify a floundering Southeast Asia and build ties with others.

But it is done without public fanfare. Some columnists call the new Singapore as the world's latest "soft power" which means that its wealth and quiet diplomacy is giving it influences far larger than its size.

If you ask PM Goh, he will disavow the compliment or that it has any regional leadership ambitions. A high-profile global role is not Singapore's style, and certainly not Goh's. Its active participation will remain behind doors, not acclaimed.

Now with Indonesia in trouble and the leaders of financial-hit countries of Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines under strong pressure, Asean is floundering. If Indonesia breaks down, Asean may be finished. It has, without exaggeration, reached a watershed.

Being host to the Asean summit gave Singapore the chance to take the initiative to unify the 10 members and keep things together. It is pushing ahead a plan for an electronic-Asean and build (Malaysia's proposal) an Asean rail-line.

It will soon announce an initiative to develop human resources to help poorer Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

But the real success is building bridges with stronger regions hoping for a helping hand. Four years ago, Goh initiated the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), building a structure for mutual cooperation between the two continents.

In Singapore, he got the approval for a similar relationship, this time between Asean and the hotter northeast Asian countries of China, Japan and South Korea. Singapore itself is moving up closer to South American countries like Mexico and Chile.

Recently it won a seat in the United Nations Security Council, giving it another international role.

With the souring of the world's move towards free trade, The Republic has helped set the pace for a series of bilateral - and later maybe trilateral or larger - free trade agreements until they are replaced by a global regime.

Singapore lives on world trade. It has freed up several sectors, including telecom, banking, insurance, stock market in preparation for global free trade only to learn that it is unlikely to materialise for years. It fears being left behind.

So its ministers have been pursuing bilateral arrangements as a temporary substitute with major trading countries, starting with New Zealand. Similar pacts are on the way.

Talks are proceeding with Australia, Canada, Chile, Japan, Mexico and the US. Apart from manufactured goods, they will cover services, information technology and even people.

I first reported about the leaders' busy travel diaries five years ago. For decades, there has been an unwritten policy about cabinet flying. If the delegation were too large, involving say the prime minister and a number of ministers, the team would be split up into two flights.

It was a pragmatic preparation in case something went wrong. The Prime Minister and his deputy will not fly on the same plane.

In 1994, for instance, PM Goh visited 13 countries, with some trips made within days of each other. This was almost double the seven journeys in 1993. During the same time, SM Lee travelled to 12 countries, compared to 10 in 1993.

Foreign Minister S Jayakumar accompanied Goh on seven trips and did nine more on his own. Other ministers did a total of 78 official journeys, up from 40 in 1993.

When he was prime minister, SM Lee had spent a lot of time developing ties with politicians and businessmen. In America, he would rub shoulders with multi-national CEOs and Congressmen - then swing around to Europe and Japan for a similar purpose and, of course, Asia.

Today at 76 his travel plans have not declined. His successors are carrying on the tradition today - but with a great emphasis on Asia these days. So will their successors.

Seah Chiang Nee