Baer,
For now, dealing with terrorism remains in the infant stages when
it comes to regional cooperation - I'm still waiting to see if the
overall emphasis will revert back to counterinsurgency (ala the
Confrontation era).
Back to conventional defence strategy: If you've noticed, I
purposely stated it as "military security treaty" - you'll need to
establish that form of formal alliance before Seibeisuaykia's
(wrongful) notions can come to pass.
What the heck, now that I'm in the mood ....
Seibeisuaykia,
Singapore's relied more on MOUs when it comes to creating bilateral
ties &, even when things have progressed on to signed
agreements, we've been careful not to overcommit or overaccomodate
to an extent of indirectly antagonizing our neighbors. Especially
any perceived attempt at siteing foreign bases locally. I mean, we
do provide faciliation offices, maintainence/resupply means, even
R&R, for visiting troops, but they're certainly not on the
military/economic scale of the British & its Naval Base days at
Sembawang (ask your pa or grandpa).
Much of the ongoing tactfulness is due to historical baggage &
geopolitical realities:
>> Foremost is the survivalist instinct or so-called siege
mentality: the initial "poisonous shrimp" analogy (small but
indigestable by predators), subsequently displaced by the Total
Defence concept (partially hinting at preemptive capacity as
effective deterrence).
>> Background is our constant juggling of the existing
multipolar balance of power, both within SE Asia (Malaysia &
Indonesia) & also the larger Asia-Pacific area (notably China
& Japan). That's why we joined SEATO as part of Malaya, then
tried to maximize AMDA's unique arrangements (KL's "non-aligned"
stand discouraged British staging posts locally for SEATO purposes)
during the Self-Government & then Merger eras.
>> Attitude is an underlying mistrust of overdependence on
other countries, esp. post-'65. Singapore's 1st attempt at
joint-military cooperation (to foster bilateral trust with
Malaysia) was provided for under the Separation provisions, but it
quickly crumbled & hasn't recovered since. The only
quasi-military security treaty we have today is the FDPA, initially
designed to replace AMDA but, from the local perspective, is
realistically "valued" most of all as a neutral platform to build
security cooperation/confidence across the Causeway! (Beyond the
golf games between senior officers, that is.) There's also an
argument to be made that the ANZAC links are also comparatively
more "precious" than the US's, since historically they, along with
Britain, have deployed individual infantry battalions here until
the '70s & '80s (under the FDPA, indirectly to aid our
"poisonous shrimp" strategy).
[I also recall reading somewhere that Singapore has some unease
about "too-friendly" US military ties, esp. since they're reluctant
to reciprocate by sharing or transferring some of technology &
arsenal.]
In short, we have what Tim Huxley calls a very "opaque" defence
strategy: train primarily to deter, except there's no explicit
rival enemy (officially anyway); exponentially encourage military
cooperation & strategic relationships for shared-partner
stability, yet fear being swallowed by bigger entities (even the
idea of a ASEAN-level military force); occasionally impatient with
the pace of regional joint-service training (with Malaysia
particularly perceived as the reluctant partner), while attempting
to suppress, or at least downplaying, our "seige mentality". The
American presence in this part of the world is of paramount
importance to us, but the regional subtext is just too
sophisticated for us to ally unreservedly with them, like certain
countries do.
