http://www.theglobalist.com/
The article by George Yeo (ST Review, 9 May, page A27) is intriguingly titled "Venice and Singapore: A study in parallels". It is a must-read for both locals and others who wonder why Singapore's leaders seem to be overly obsessed with the tiny country's long-term survival. Here's the Globalist's link:
http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=9609
I'll extract the first few paragraphs to whet up your appetite:
Singapore is geographically very small. The Swiss think they are small, but those who come to Singapore realize how big Switzerland really is by comparison. We have very little land, we don't have much air space, and even the seas are claimed by others. We are forced to plan and organize very carefully.
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| Venice built up her defenses, her economy and her institutions. The similarities to Singapore are remarkable — and we do well to draw lessons from her experience. |
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Life in Singapore is not easy. The truth is we have to work much harder than others to survive. But will hardship make us or break us? Are we strengthened or weakened in the process? Arnold J. Toynbee, in his massive Study of History, tells us that civilization is conceived not in ease, but in hardship. The greater the stimulus, the greater is the response.
Will we continue to succeed? We will fail if we are a house divided, if our leadership is weak, if we do not have a clear sense of what our essential interests are, and if we do not have the resolve to be the master of our own destiny?
Is there any example in history, then, of a small nation-state surviving any reasonable length of time? An example for us to take comfort in? A model to follow? There is such an example — and a brilliant one. It, too, had the lion as a symbol, the winged lion of the evangelist St. Mark. Venice — or the Most Serene Republic, as she called herself — lasted over a thousand years.
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Mr Yeo makes compelling arguments in his piece. But, like a master chef, he left out some key ingredients. For instance, he did not attempt to suggest why Venice became eventually merely just a component of modern Italy, and why it seemed to have yielded its dynamic status to Rome.
True, if independent Singapore can survive 1,000 years, that would be an amazing political feat, but what are the possible external or internal dangers that might reduce it to end up as a future tourist spot, like the Venice of today?
Interesting, Mr Yeo's views were first made in 1988, as gleaned from the Globalist's introduction to his piece (and which was not in ST's version):
George Yeo, until recently Singapore's foreign minister, is a man given to thinking in profound historic terms. In a recent conversation, we asked him about the relevance of Venice's maritime republic to today's Singapore. To our surprise, he pulled out a speech from 1988, when he was Director of Joint Planning and Operation for the Singapore Armed Forces, in which he addressed that very topic. What follows is a condensed version of that speech.
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The other must-read article from the Globalist is its own commentary, titled "Is the United States an Accidental Empire?". Here's the link:
http://www.theglobalist.com/storyid.aspx?StoryId=9613
Again, here are extracts:
Our present predicament didn't happen overnight. It was a long time in the making. Along the way, America changed. We forsook our birthright, we deceived ourselves and, ever so slowly, our loadstar changed from liberty to force. When it was all over, we woke up and had an empire...
These three wars of choice [the Mexican-American war of 1848; the Spanish-American war of 1898; and America entering World War I in 1917] redefined American exceptionalism into something very different from what the Founders intended. We were no longer exceptional because of our unique form of government. The federal government no longer existed to protect the sovereignty of the individual.
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The government now existed to promote democracy abroad. Never mind that the American republic was never a democracy. (The Constitution established a republic. The Founders rejected democracy because it didn't protect the individual from the tyranny of the majority.)
Each war of choice made the next one easier. President Polk's decision to take the country to war against Mexico made President McKinley's decision to go to war against Spain seem less unreasonable. It is hard to imagine President Wilson taking the country to war against Germany if Polk and McKinley hadn't gotten their wars.
Now the Constitution was turned upside down. We were set on a trajectory that turned the government against citizens. Wilson tolerated no war dissent and severely limited civil liberties.
We could have turned back to the foreign policy of the Founders. Mexico was no existential threat to the United States. But the war was popular and Polk gave the people what they wanted and made the country richer. We could have stopped there.
The little war with Spain was avoidable, too. But that war was also popular, cost-free and journalism became an accomplice in war. We could have stopped there. But wars of choice had become a habit for ambitious Presidents — and Wilson was ambitious.
Wilson's decision to take the country to war against Germany was far-reaching. The rapid rise of Germany was a reality that the major powers in Europe had to recognize. The Germans built an economy greater in size than the combined economies of France, England and Russia. Rather than let the Europeans find their own solution, Wilson decided to enter into an "entangling alliance" against Germany.
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The article is provocative, and it makes us ponder.
I guess another way to explain those US actions described is to adopt the Political Realists' amoral argument that "great powers do as they will; small powers do as they must". Which brings me back to Singapore. We do as we must, and it's still no guarantee of our long-term survival.
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