Mr Lee made S’pore matter to the world

Reading and watching the tributes for Mr Lee Kuan Yew from round the world last week in the newspapers, online and on television imbued me with a sense of pride and security that Singapore matters to the world.

By dint of our size, we should have mattered little.

In global affairs, where there are no permanent enemies or friends, a country’s relevance to the international community matters.

We need not look far into history to see how fragile states are left failing because they have become less relevant. This is a world where global intervention in fragile states is selective, determined by vested interests.

Syria, South Sudan and Somalia were left to their own devices while the Western powers intervened in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait. Should Singapore turn into a fragile state, would any country come to our aid if we are not relevant?

In this uncertain world, Mr Lee secured our standing on the global stage. As we mourned his passing, we witnessed heartfelt symbolic gestures that spoke volumes in international relations. India, for example, declared a day of national mourning.

Various Asia-Pacific state leaders came to pay their last respects to him, which demonstrated to Singaporeans a sense of regional solidarity.

I noted, however, the absence of United States President Barack Obama and United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron, who had attended Nelson Mandela’s memorial service.

Likewise, for all the admiration Gulf state leaders have for Mr Lee, many of them were not here. The hard truth is that we are pathetically small to truly matter.

Unless we continue to cultivate and maintain our relevance to the world, and continue to have a strong deterrent force and military capable of defending what we cherish, we can go the way of a fragile state.

This is neither an alarmist nor inconceivable thought because we are an unnatural island-state that should not have mattered to the world.