Realism and Interdependence in Singapore's Foreign Policy by Narayanan Ganesan

Author:Narayanan Ganesan [Ganesan, Narayanan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781134267507
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2005-10-18T00:00:00+00:00

7 Economic and defence diplomacy

It is arguable that economic and defence diplomacy are perceived by the Singapore government as crucial to the survival and sustenance of the country. Economic diplomacy is meant to augment domestic capital and industry. It is a major source of investment and employment in Singapore. Such augmentation is intended to provide for the material aspirations of the country’s population – an important source of performance-based legitimacy for the PAP government. It is also intended to ensure Singapore’s national viability and sustainability in the long term, given the country’s early preoccupation with the theme of survival. Accordingly, economic diplomacy is meant to enhance Singapore’s continuity as an independent and prosperous state.

Defence diplomacy, on the other hand, derives from a different philosophical motivation. Whereas economic diplomacy is meant to enhance viability, defence diplomacy is essentially a defensive enterprise. In other words, defence diplomacy is meant to allow the country a measure of strategic depth where none exists in terms of land area. Accordingly, although motivated by a deterrence strategy that may involve offensive or pre-emptive action, Singapore’s defence diplomacy is meant to preserve the country’s sovereignty and territoriality. Hence the motivation is defensive in the first instance.

Both forms of diplomacy are central to Singapore’s well-being. They are also publicly articulated and supported by government policy pronouncements. Although both forms of diplomacy obtain for most states, their importance is exaggerated in the case of Singapore. In terms of objective considerations of size and influence and perceptional considerations of viability, both forms of diplomacy are viewed as fundamental to the state’s survival. Given their importance, the Singapore government employs a broad range of instruments to further economic and defence objectives, although philosophical presuppositions motivating such behaviour may not be consistent or congruous. After all, economic diplomacy derives from the tradition of complex interdependence and cooperation that tends towards liberal institu-tionalism. Defence diplomacy, on the other hand, is anchored well within a realist and state-centric orientation towards international relations. As a result, when both policies are placed alongside each other for comparative purposes, they may occasionally appear to be dysfunctional. On the other hand, these seemingly dysfunctional and contradictory policy pronouncements are easily reconciled by policy elite as necessary for the maintenance of both peace and prosperity. After all, peace is a necessary condition for the achievement of prosperity. In this regard, whereas the philosophical conditions that motivate economic and defence policies may appear self-contradictory, they are in actual fact interactive with each other. Hence peace allows for the pursuit of prosperity, and prosperity in turn allows for large defence outlays. Consequently, Singapore regards economic and defence policies as mutually interactive at the practical level rather than philosophically dysfunctional at the abstract level. It is the interaction between these two policies that has yielded the PAP government its successful cocktail prescription for national viability in the long term. In addition, trade and economic policies, with rare exceptions, are decoupled from foreign and defence policies. Such a decoupling, it may be remembered,

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