Peninsular Malaysia is many hundreds of times bigger than
Singapore. Now add to this land mass the territories of Sabah and
Sarawak. And then think of the borders they share with Thailand,
Indonesia, Brunei, Singapore and Philippines - all of whom at one
time or another were hostile to Malaysia. Thinkof all the thousands
of miles of coastline, land, sea and airspace they have to
defend.
And then compare little Singapore to that.
Should it be surprising that Malaysia needs a much, much bigger
armed forces than us? And yet, the truth is opposite: Singapore has
a much bigger and modern armed forces than Malaysia.
So it should not surprise anyone that they NEED to address this
imbalance not because they want to invade us, but quite simply,
Malaysia is a big juicy piece of poorly-defended meat.
The only thing going for them is that there are no real foreign
threats - for now. But there are always the threat of internal
rebellion etc. And even for that, they would need more equipment to
be effective.
Many countries do not maintain a large armed forces during
peacetime but have the ability to mobilise large numbers of both
men and material quickly during emergency. Malaysia does not. One
of its problems is that the ethnic Chinese Malaysians do not
normally join their army. But the total ethnic Chinese population
in Malaysia is about 45%. In terms of material, that's the problem
they are now trying to address.
But even in their procurement programs someone here pointed out
rightly that they seem to be buying randomly and have a mad variety
of equipment. And they also have only a few token pieces of each
weapon. So it seems they are out to put on a show. If you just look
at the variety of weapons they have or are going to purchase, it
seems like... WOW!!! And then you find they have merely 20 pieces
of this, 40 pieces of that etc.
Whereas Singapore seems to buy in bulk. We have mainly the F-16 for
now but I think we have 50 or more of them? We don't even have
enough airspace for this many aircrafts. And our AMX-13s - small
little buggers compared to their 50 PT-91 but hey - we have 300 of
them. We apparently also have 100 Centurions. And it goes
on...
Even in terms of manpower in the military, we easily outnumber them
3 to 1.
So who started the arms race?
I think Singapore is doing a good job of being the "poison shrimp"
by being so well-armed. We must be the most heavily-defended piece
of real estate on earth. Maybe even the DMZ in Korea has less
troops and weapons.
We are bristling with weapons and live on an overcrowded island.
And we Singaporeans are a rather cocky and aggressive lot, let's be
honest. This combination cannot be something Malaysia feels secure
about.
Although I am not saying their armed forces is a write-off, we
should not view their weapons procurement as a threat meant
specifically for us. It is really a deterrent against us and their
other neighbours.
So relax, no need for paranoia for the ones sleeping badly at night
should be our neighbours, not us.
Underneath all their recent bravado - what the Malaysians are
hiding is the fact that they are woefully underarmed for too long.
Seeing the near disintegration of Indonesia recently and its
humiliation in Timor must be a wakeup call for them.
