Dr John Chipman, Director-General and Chief Executive, IISS
This morning we had a tremendous keynote address and two plenaries. The subjects become a little more specific this afternoon. We have a very important subject to discuss, which we have styled ‘strategic reassurance and deterrence in the region’. Of course, it is the obligation of the ministers here present to interpret that title as they think proper, given their own particular interests and policies in the region and, where relevant, beyond it. ‘Strategic reassurance and deterrence’ is a phrase sometimes used in the language of international strategy, but there are others that can define the activities in the service of peace and stability that are desired by all.
One of the important features of this Manama Dialogue, as is the case of the sister dialogue that we run in Singapore, the Shangri-La Dialogue, is to ensure that the perspectives coming from the region are blended, as is useful, with the perspectives from other regions. We at the IISS are particularly proud of the three individuals we have been able to gather this afternoon to deal with this subject. I might just make a brief introduction of each of the speakers in turn, and then invite them to take the podium. The form again will be the same: we will invite them to make some formal remarks but they, as much as you, will be keen on the ensuing dialogue that their comments, I am sure, will inspire.
The first person I will ask to address the floor will be the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence of Singapore, DPM Teo. Many of you will know that, since 2002, we have run a dialogue in Singapore, styled the Shangri‑La Dialogue. When we began it, it was the first example of defence ministers in the Asia‑Pacific meeting simultaneously in a multilateral format – a habit that is now increasingly engrained in the region, which is finding its own institutional forums. We are hugely honoured to have Singapore as the host country of that Shangri‑La Dialogue, and it is a special delight given the comments made earlier today about the links that should emerge about the Gulf region, the Middle East in general and the Asia‑Pacific, for the host country of the Shangri‑La Dialogue to be with us here at the Manama Dialogue. Their experience of this subject is very interesting.
We are really delighted to have His Highness Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed. If I might begin with a personal comment, I was honoured to meet the minister when he was the last Minister of Information of the United Arab Emirates. We enjoyed speaking on a number of occasions. Everybody has seen the vigorous diplomacy that the UAE has engaged in, not just regionally or internationally, but globally, during his tenure as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Many references have already been made at this meeting on UAE diplomacy and its extroversion over the last several years.
It is an equal delight to have Dr Liam Fox with us, the Defence Secretary of the United Kingdom. This completes a quartet of participation that Liam Fox has had at IISS events, because he has spoken at the Shangri‑La Dialogue, the Global Strategic Review, here at the Manama Dialogue and at the IISS headquarters in London. We are delighted by his faithfulness to this dialogue process and look forward very much to his remarks.
With those prefatory comments, may I now invite the Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore to take the floor?
Teo Chee Hean, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, Singapore
Thank you, John. Your Royal Highnesses, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon to all of you. I would like to thank our hosts in Bahrain, the Crown Price Salman and our host Sheikh Khalid, for the warm hospitality that has been extended to all of us. I am extremely pleased to be here on this panel with Secretary Fox and Minister Abdullah, and to see other friends and colleagues in the audience, many of whom have been to Singapore for the Shangri‑La Dialogue.
The issue of security in the Gulf as well as the larger Middle East is important not just for countries in this region but also for the larger international community. Indeed, what has drawn all of us to this Dialogue is the recognition that the complex security challenges we face today require multinational and cooperative responses that involve all the stakeholders. The question before us at this session is strategic reassurance and deterrence in the region. How do we maintain peace and stability, and is it possible to build trust and cooperation out of differences and conflict?
Sheikh Khalid, in his remarks this morning, talked about connectivity in ASEAN and how we do things in ASEAN. I will use that as the peg on which to speak this afternoon. I will analyse the experience of Southeast Asia as it faced and overcame serious security challenges through the 1960s to the 1990s, and then rely on your wisdom and knowledge to see if there are useful aspects of diplomacy and deterrence that could have been used, and might have been useful, in the context of this region.
Let me paint the backdrop. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, was established in 1967. At that time, the region and ASEAN’s five founding members – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand – faced numerous challenges. Apart from Thailand, the other four countries were new to statehood, having gained independence in the years following the Second World War. There were differences, territorial disputes and even conflict between several of the member countries. The ASEAN five made up only half of the 10 countries in Southeast Asia. Casting a shadow over the whole region was the Cold War.
Through the late 1960s and early 1970s, the war in Vietnam was heating up. Southeast Asia was split right down the middle along ideological lines. In 1975, the North Vietnamese Army captured Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and reunified Vietnam, but this did not bring peace and stability. In December 1978 Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia, and in February 1979 China attacked Vietnam along their common border. The Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia raised the fear that other countries in the region would succumb and fall like dominoes.
At the UN Security Council, the permanent members were divided. China demanded the censure of Vietnam; the Soviet Union asked that China be condemned for aggression; the US called for the withdrawal of Chinese forces from Vietnam and of Vietnamese forces from Cambodia. In the face of these challenges, the ASEAN countries had to put aside their differences and work together to prevent conflict from spreading. Militarily, the ASEAN countries were not strong enough to ensure stability in the region. A combination of deterrence and diplomacy was therefore needed. ASEAN countries helped bolster Thailand’s military deterrence, as it was the frontline ASEAN state neighbouring Cambodia. ASEAN supported the Cambodian resistance movement and its government in exile. At the same time, ASEAN sought to take the diplomatic initiative and not just leave it to others, to shape the outcome and to galvanise the international community against the invasion, including through mobilising opinion at the UN.
In November 1979, the UN General Assembly adopted an ASEAN‑initiated Resolution, calling for immediate Vietnamese disengagement from Cambodia. The Resolution also called on all states to refrain from acts of aggression against, and interference in the internal affairs of, states in Southeast Asia. Through patient and arduous efforts over a decade, starting from 1979, ASEAN’s deterrence and principled diplomacy gained international support, and the conflict in Cambodia was contained. Essentially, the principles that were outlined in that 1979 UN General Assembly Resolution were the ones that were used to settle the situation. Vietnam withdrew its forces in 1989 and, in 1993, UN-supervised elections led to the re‑establishment of a representative and legitimate government in Cambodia. Of course the larger environment, with the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, also helped, by bringing an end to the ideological conflict that had so polarised Southeast Asia and, indeed, the world.
In the process of working together on this pressing common cause, the ASEAN member countries forged a spirit of mutual trust and accommodation. While there were still pending disagreements between members, these did not get away from the task at hand. A strengthened ASEAN also provided the foundation for its member countries to forge ahead [as] one of the fastest‑growing economic regions in the world. The ASEAN countries, which became six when Brunei joined in 1984, grew at an average annual rate of 10.3% from 1975 to 1985, and 11.5% from 1985 to 1995. Hence, apart from deterrence and diplomacy, the story of ASEAN would not be complete without a third ‘D’, and that ‘D’ is development.
Spreading the benefits of development allowed the ASEAN countries to uplift the wellbeing of their people, overcome their own internal insurgent movements and achieve internal stability. The developmental success of the ASEAN countries, based on market economics and openness to trade and investment, provided an attractive alternative to the centrally planned model. The benefits of belonging to a successful regional association were compelling. Vietnam joined ASEAN in 1995; Laos and Myanmar, in 1997; and Cambodia, in 1999, bringing all 10 Southeast Asian countries for the first time under one ASEAN roof. Where we once stood on different sides during the Cold War, divided by conflict and strife, the 10 Southeast Asian countries now regularly meet around the same table to forge cooperation and connectivity. They signed the ASEAN Charter in 2007, establishing a legal and institutional framework for ASEAN, as well as new organs boosting ASEAN’s efforts to create an ASEAN community by 2015, covering the political‑security, economic and socio‑cultural dimensions.
Also actively involved in ASEAN’s efforts to build a more robust regional community are the extra‑regional players, those from outside the region that have a stake in the region. Southeast Asia has always been of strategic importance to extra‑regional powers, given its sea lanes that connect the Indian and Pacific basins, its population of 590 million and a wealth of natural resources.
Today, Southeast Asia is of strategic relevance for another region: the role that ASEAN plays as the fulcrum of the regional security architecture in the Asia‑Pacific, in bringing together all the major players in the region around the same table to address regional challenges.
ASEAN is able to play this role as it has a number of strengths. It is non‑threatening, which is not usually seen as a strength, but it has its advantages. It is non‑threatening, open to relations with all and consultative, hence allowing it to facilitate dialogue, build trust and confidence, and foster consensus. ASEAN subscribes to the principles of mutual respect and benefit, and non‑interference in each others’ internal affairs. The ASEAN Regional Forum, established in 1994, has since expanded to 27 members, with ASEAN at the core. This testifies to its utility as a foreign‑affairs‑led consultative forum on political and security issues in the region. The East Asia Summit, established in 2005, now brings together at the leaders’ level the 10 ASEAN countries annually, with eight key partner countries from outside the Southeast Asian region – Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Korea, Russia and the US.
ASEAN also recently established the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus, which brings together the defence ministers of these same 18 countries for open and constructive dialogue and to forge concrete cooperation among the ASEAN and ‘Plus’ countries on a range of transnational defence and security issues.
On its part as a small country, Singapore contributes within our capabilities to international efforts to maintain peace and stability, including in this region. In 1991, we deployed for the first time a medical group to Saudi Arabia, as part of the coalition forces countering the invasion of Kuwait. From 1991 to 2003, we deployed military observers to UNIKOM, the UN Iraq‑Kuwait Observation Mission. Our forces from 2003 to 2008 supported coalition forces and protected Iraqi oil export terminals in the northern Arabian Gulf. For the past four years, we have deployed medical and construction teams, a weapon‑locating radar, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and military institutional trainers, as part of the multinational stabilisation and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. To counter piracy in the Gulf of Aden, over the past two years we have contributed ships and commanded the Combined Task Force 151.
In recognition of the third ‘D’, development, we have also forged strong economic links with the countries in this region. In 2008, Singapore and the Gulf Cooperation Council signed the GCC’s first ever free trade agreement. Besides the GCC, Singapore also has at FTA with Jordan, which was signed in 2004.
The security challenges in the Middle East are complex and multi‑dimensional, perhaps more so than those that faced us in Southeast Asia in the decades of the 1960s through to the 1990s. In this interconnected world, we all have to work together, as instability in one part of the world can impact on peace and security elsewhere. I hope that there are some aspects of the Southeast Asian experience, of how steadfast deterrence and patient diplomacy, coupled with a compelling development model, can produce positive results in the long term. I hope that these find some relevance and resonance here in this region. Thank you.
