A few days after kicking Singapore out of the federation in 1965, Malaysia’s leader Tunku Abdul Rahman had a news conference to discuss the traumatic political divorce.

The avuncular aristocrat was typically chirpy as he compared the Singapore bust-up to a failed affair of the heart. ‘You meet a pretty girl, fall in love, woo her, even marry the girl’, said the Tunku.

But if it doesn’t work, well, divorce the girl. ‘Or poison the girl. Poison the girl!’ laughed Malaysia’s Prime Minister.

The tape of that 1965 news conference sat in the archive of the ABC’s Singapore Bureau. As the ABC’s Southeast Asia correspondent I used the Tunku audio in a program I made for Radio Australia in 1990—the year Singapore turned 25 and Lee Kuan Yew stepped down after 25 years as Prime Minister.

The point was easily made. Singapore hadn’t been poisoned; indeed Singapore’s defence policy is to make itself a ‘poison prawn.’ As one of LKY’s Foreign Ministers observed, Singapore wants to be at the table, not on the menu.

Success was what amazed that tough old pessimist, LKY. Empires, he had seen, can crumple quickly—the Brits and the Japanese taught him that lesson in vivid, personal ways during WWII. Even the mightiest power can lose wars—he was astounded at Vietnam. And important countries can be capricious and dangerous, as Sukarno often showed. All that fits the pessimist, realist mindset. It was Singapore’s success that surprised because it didn’t follow the Hobbesian script.

Lee never relaxed. He stepped down as leader in 1990 but stayed in Cabinet and stayed as the power monitoring the power. In 1990, the agonising choice between beloved country and beloved son was made in favour of the beloved country. The beloved son had to wait a further 14 years before he became the third prime minister of the beloved country.

I was back in Singapore last week as ‘Asia’s miracle city state’ prepared to celebrate the 50th birthday of the unplanned, ramshackle moment of creation on 9 August 1965—the short marriage to the Malaysia federation had exploded and LKY was in tears. As is almost proper, there are striking moments of symmetry in LKY’s personal history and that of his nation. Three of note:

1) Lee had his 40th birthday on the day Singapore became part of Malaysia in 1963 for the poisonous experiment at federation

2) Lee stepped down as PM in 1990 on Singapore’s 25th birthday

3) Lee died in 2015 in the year of Singapore’s 50th birthday

At the National Day festivities next Sunday, there’ll be an empty chair on stage for LKY. The symbolism of that empty chair can be worked in all sorts of ways. The surge in emotion since Lee died in March means the departed leader is again a potent political force, while some of his negatives have gone to the grave with him. The grizzled taxi drivers are being much nicer about the old man. Young Singaporeans seem to remember a stern but helpful uncle rather than a martinet.

With the previous elections in 2006 and 2011, the schedule says the next poll is due in 2016. But with new electoral boundaries just announced, the People’s Action Party (PAP) is positioning to hold the election this year to cash in on the ‘LKY dividend.’ In death, Lee offers one more service to the PAP.

As Rachel Chang wrote in the Straits Times, the PAP has purged itself of some of LKY’s knuckleduster habits to make itself more palatable to modern Singapore:

‘There would be no LKY electoral dividend if the PAP had cleaved to the axioms he forged instead of being ready to remake itself for a new generation. The ways in which the ruling party has evolved can allow a new generation to appreciate Mr Lee’s legacy from a place that’s largely freer of his imperfections. Despite all this, Mr Lee’s impact on the vote even in death—which is likely to be as influential as it was in life—should give the ruling party pause. The “LKY dividend” is likely to pay off only in this coming general election. But the great man’s shadow will loom over many to come.’

LKY said the job of a Prime Minister is to galvanise and inspire. No doubt about Lee’s ability, in life, to galvanise. As Singapore looks out from its 50th birthday, the question now about the dead leader is what inspiration he can offer to his country’s future.

Kicking off today’s round-up is an infographic on the world’s major oil trade flows. No surprises, the Middle East tops the list with the 850.1 million tonnes of crude oil flowing out of the country in 2014. It’s also a useful snapshot of the major oil suppliers, consumers and trade routes—note Indonesia’s role, for instance, as a strategically important transit state, which brings us to maritime security …

Malaysia has been the latest Southeast Asian nation to have Chinese coast guard vessels encroach into its waters, with Prime Minister Najib Razak lodging a formal diplomatic protest in response. Despite the protest, like other ASEAN states, Kuala Lumpur must carefully balance between asserting its sovereignty and keeping ties with its largest trading partner cordial. RSIS senior fellow Oh Ei Sun notes a few factors, including renewed American strategic commitments and domestic politics in Malaysia, in explaining Razak’s firmer stance. Meanwhile, The Diplomat‘s Prashanth Parameswaran argues that Malaysia is still ‘playing it safe’ with China, but its reactions on these encroachments are slowly hardening.

Also, the Australian Navy’s Sounding Papers series has a new addition by Geoffrey Till on Indonesia as a growing maritime power and its implications for Australia.

If you’re interested in broader Asia–Pacific security dynamics, check out the transcript of VietNamNet‘s Hoang Huong interview with Malcolm Cook and Le Hong Hiep about the Vietnam’s position on East China Sea disputes, the US rebalance, ASEAN and China, and Sino-Japanese relations.

Turning now to nuclear matters, Carnegie Endowment’s Alexei Arbatov has a new report that asks, is it the end of history for nuclear arms control? He argues that the absence of negotiations on nuclear arms reduction and nonproliferation mechanisms coupled with eroding treaty structures due to political and military-technological developments sound a death knoll for the arms control regime. Alarmist or not? Keep reading here.

In subcontinental news, India and the US signed a Defense Framework in early June which renews their 10-year defence arrangement and expands cooperation in maritime security, joint exercises and intelligence sharing. For more details on the deal and the significance of its timing, check out this DW brief. And for more on how this defence agreement fits into broadening Indo-American ties, read Ashok Sharma over on The Conversation.

In the New York Review of Books, Ahmed Rashid writes a provocative piece entitled, ‘Why we need al Qaeda’.  For another take, here’s a recent report co-authored by ASPI’s Tobias Feakin and King’s College’s Benedict Wilkinson on why al-Qaeda should remain a key focus of counterterrorism efforts.

Lastly, Team Strategist is preparing for the zombie apocalypse—are you? And if you don’t already know how devastating it’ll be, The Oatmeal will inform you. Meanwhile, read James R. Holmes for essential advice on counter-zombie warfare. Start planning, people!

Podcast

For more on what the updated US–India defence agreement means for both countries as well as US ties with Pakistan, check out this week’s cogitASIA podcast featuring CSIS India expert Richard Rossow as well as Colm Quinn with the Asia–Pacific region’s major developments (15mins).

Events

Canberra: Foreign Minister Julie Bishop will deliver the keynote speech on MIKTA as a new model of partnership at an event co-hosted by the ANU and the Korean Embassy on Wednesday 24 June at 9.20am at the ANU’s University House, register here. The session also includes presentations by the Ambassadors for the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey.

 

Chinese President Xi Jinping has been a busy man of late. Fresh from a whirlwind tour of central Asian states and international summits in September, he’s been on the road again—this time to Southeast Asia.

The Southeast Asian tour included official visits to Indonesia and Malaysia and the APEC conference in Bali. Xi signed economic agreements with Indonesia and Malaysia, while stressing the resurgence of a ‘Maritime Silk Road.’ Rhetoric of shared prosperity, growing mutual trade and ‘win-win’ situations was accompanied by a proposal for an Infrastructural Development Bank, all of which we were told would contribute to a new ‘diamond decade’ in China–ASEAN relations.

Everything seems to have gone according to plan in Southeast Asia. But did it?

Let’s return to late August this year. After a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Beijing, Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman announced that Xi would visit Malaysia in October, spending 4–5 October in Kuala Lumpur and 5–6 October in Sabah. The planned visit was reported in the Malaysian press and the Sabah Chinese community began anxiously preparing for the occasion. However, cancellation of the Sabah visit was informally announced on 6 October, without explanation. Read more

In my last post, I outlined the development of the long-standing defence relationship between Australia and Malaysia. While there is strong history between both militaries, the difference in the ways in which they are utilised accounts for, in part, the limit to how close a defence relationship there can be. Here, I examine additional factors impacting on Australia–Malaysia cooperation.

First is the issue of defence budgets; both countries are facing the issues of limited budgets for their militaries which in turn affects their capability for future training, particularly when having to deploy assets out of country. Indeed the RMAF’s non-participation at this year’s RAAF Pitch Black exercise in Australia was due to a lack of funding. It might be expected that both militaries may have to curtail some of their activities in the future in order to accommodate the budget.

Second, further expansion of training and cooperation may largely be moot due to the existing commitments of both nations. All three services of the ADF are heavily involved with Australia’s global missions and, with the presence of the US military in Darwin, the ADF will add additional joint exercise and training activities to its schedule and thus be limited in what it can provide in regard to other bilateral military cooperation and training. In Malaysia, the Royal Malaysian Navy and RMAF face the problem that their forces are undersized for patrolling Malaysia’s extensive maritime waters and airspace and as such are heavily committed, which limits the assets and personnel available for cooperation and training with foreign forces. The Malaysian Army, given its size, could easily accommodate an increased scope of military exercises with its Australian Army counterparts in the form of company- or battalion-sized mechanised, armour or artillery exercises. But the fact that both countries have sufficient training areas for such in their respective countries means that neither army can justify the costs of shipping heavy equipment and troops overseas for an exercise, particularly in an era of budgetary restraint. Read more