With friends like that, who needs enemies?

The Prime Minister announced his Cabinet today.

I got my prediction about Dr Ng Eng Hen right -- he is now the Defence Minister. But Mr Teo Chee Hean is not the Foreign Minister, something which I had predicted. Apart from being still the Deputy PM and relinquishing Defence, Mr Teo takes on Home Affairs and is also the new Coordinating Minister for National Security.

Mr K Shanmugam is the new Foreign Minister, while relinguishing Home Affairs and retaining Law. (There is a precedent in this twinning of two key portfolios: Prof S. Jayakumar was both FM and Law Minister from 1994 to 2004.) What threw me off were two things: Mr Shanmugam is still relatively unknown regionally, and I had thought -- post 9/11 -- that twinning Law and Home Affairs was still the way to go.

Still, given that Mr Teo is the Coordinating Minister for National Security, another way of looking at these key changes is a focus on the further integration of traditional and non-traditional security templates, as well as a tighter link between homeland security and external security. It looks doable.

------------------------------------------------------------------

My other musing today is the notion of "friendship" among states. Lord Palmerston (1784-1865) famously said, "Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests." Further back in time, Thucydides (c460-c400 BC) said, "Large states do as they will, small states do as they must".

Yet nations will grandstand and unabashedly proclaim true friendship with each other. Pakistan, recently made to look foolish by one big power ally, the United States, in the wake of the US assassination of Osama bin Laden on Pakistani territory, turned to big power ally China for a shoulder to cry on.

I thought this news report ("China our 'best friend': Pakistan PM", ST, 18 May, page A13) depicted the farce among nations pretty nicely:

"In an apparent dig at the United States, Pakistan's prime minister [Yousuf Raza Gilani] declared China as his country's best friend as he began an official visit to China [17 May].

'We appreciate that in all difficult circumstances, China stood with Pakistan. Therefore we call China a true friend and a time-tested and all-weather friend,' Mr Gilani told Xinhua news agency.

'We are proud to have China as our best and most trusted friend, and China will always find Pakistan standing beside it at all times.' "

Wow. I bet the Chinese leaders will give him a big panda bear hug when they meet him.

Oh, there's one more "friend" saying to round this off: "With friends like that, who needs enemies?" It's apparently an old English proverb.