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Foreign policy cannot be ‘tool of partisan politics’

SINGAPORE — Expecting Singaporeans to one day be debating about the country’s foreign policy, former Permanent Secretary (Foreign Affairs) and career diplomat Bilahari Kausikan yesterday warned against the use of foreign policy as “a tool of partisan politics”.

SINGAPORE — Expecting Singaporeans to one day be debating about the country’s foreign policy, former Permanent Secretary (Foreign Affairs) and career diplomat Bilahari Kausikan yesterday warned against the use of foreign policy as “a tool of partisan politics”.

“Foreign policy will sooner or later be the subject of domestic debates,” said Mr Kausikan, now an Ambassador-at-Large. “This is not necessarily a bad thing, provided — and this is a crucial condition — foreign policy debates occur within nationally agreed parameters of what is and is not possible or desirable for a small country.”

Speaking at a conference to mark former Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew’s 90th birthday, he noted that “already and all too often, I see the irrelevant or the impossible being held up as worthy of emulation”.

He added: “I see our vulnerabilities being dismissed or downplayed; and I see only a superficial understanding of how the real world really works in civil society and other groups who aspire to prescribe alternate foreign policies.”

During a question-and-answer session which followed his speech, Mr Kausikan was asked to elaborate on his observations. He cited “the last few parliamentary sessions” where Members of Parliament raised questions on the haze and the situation in the Middle East “that to my mind very clearly had a political agenda”.

He added: “We have to be nimble in order to take advantage of opportunities or get out of harm’s way. If we do not have a basic consensus on fundamentals — which I don’t see because there’s a different generation now — if we cannot resist the temptation to use foreign policy as a partisan political tool, you will lose that nimbleness with great dangers.”

Mr Kausikan did not refer to specific questions tabled by the MPs. Nevertheless, earlier this year, Workers’ Party MP Pritam Singh, for instance, had filed a question in Parliament to ask if Singapore’s abstention on the United Nations vote, which elevated Palestine to a non-member observer state, increases its vulnerability to terrorists sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.

In his speech, Mr Kausikan said that “inevitably”, there is the question of whether Singapore can continue to be “internationally effective and relevant in a post-Lee Kuan Yew era”. He revealed that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had commissioned a study “on how Singapore could continue to have a close relationship with China after Mr Lee’s network of personal contacts with Chinese leaders was no longer available”.

Mr Kausikan said: “The conclusion was — have more Lee Kuan Yews! This was not exactly very helpful.”

However, he said that he was “not entirely pessimistic”. Noting that Mr Lee had relinquished executive authority more than 20 years ago, he said that Singapore will remain internationally relevant so long as it is successful “and we do not lose the habits of mind — supple, pragmatic, disciplined and unsentimental long-term thinking focused on the national interest”.

These were the “core principles and the clarity of expression that Mr Lee instilled in what is today a far more institutionalised foreign policy system”, he said.

Ambassador-at-Large Chan Heng Chee, who was Ambassador to the United States from 1996 to last year, noted how Mr Lee sees Singapore’s role as a “moderator” between US and China. “He sees his role as balancing the two powers to keep them on an even keel. Mr Lee was sometimes speaking up for one side and, at other times, for the other.”

Citing a speech Mr Lee made at the University of Singapore in October 1966, Prof Chan said Singapore’s foreign policy must encourage “major powers in the world to, if not help us, then at least not harm us”.

Also, the Republic must always offer the rest of the world “a continuing interest in the type of society that we project” and it must “always have overwhelming power on our side”, she said.

Mr Lee had said that Singapore should “seek the maximum number of friends with the maximum capacity to uphold what our friends and ourselves have decided to uphold”, she recalled.

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