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Singapore Strategic Perspective
From 1959 to 1989, Singapore developed a defensive
security
outlook that emphasized the maintenance of strong military
and
civil defense organizations, cooperative military
relations with
other members of the ASEAN, the Five-Powers Defence
Agreement; and
other noncommunist states. In 1989 less than 10 percent of
Singapore's population was over the age of 50 and could
recall the
Japanese invasion and occupation. Although Singapore had
not had to
combat an insurgency or defend itself against a hostile
neighbor
since the Indonesian Confrontation ended in 1966, the
government
frequently addressed such issues as Vietnam's 1978
occupation of
Cambodia in order to highlight the vulnerability of small
countries. Public opinion polls taken in the 1980s
indicated that,
although most citizens supported having some form of
national
service, many questioned the need for their leaders'
"siege
mentality." By 1989 as Lee Kuan Yew prepared for what he
hoped
would be a smooth transfer of power to a younger
generation,
Singapore's strategic perspective appeared to place
increasing
emphasis on regional developments that augured well for
improved
regional security rather than on any threat to the country
posed by
communist expansion in Southeast Asia
(see Foreign Policy
, ch. 4).
Data as of December 1989
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