Singapore and the Vietnam war.(Report)

Introduction

This paper attempts to fill two gaps in two sets of historiography, one pertaining to the history of Singapore post-independence, and the other, the Vietnam war or more accurately, the second Indochina war. The two are not unrelated. For a decade or more after Singapore became a sovereign state in 1965, little emphasis or attention was given to its history. This state of affairs remained until the 1980s when the political leadership began to be concerned that 'Singapore society was undergoing change far too rapidly' and 'that by "breaking loose from (their) historical moorings"', Singapore could evolve into a 'rootless and transient society ... anchoring (their) future on the unsettling foundation of rapid changes'. (1) The history of Singapore written since the 1980s was in the main social and cultural history or what has been described as history from below. The economic history of Singapore has also been fairly well documented. However, until today, there were comparatively few historical writings on the diplomatic (and military) history of Singapore, if any, apart from the subject of the Second World War and the Japanese Occupation of Singapore (2) while the post-war political history of Singapore principally dealt with the issues of merger and separation from Malaysia, and their immediate aftermath. (3) There are at least two main reasons for this: one, at the time when history and historical writing was given attention in Singapore, the Annales School of historical writing, and its various streams, was very popular, whereas diplomatic history, with its emphasis on politics, diplomacy and war, was considered old-fashioned. Two (and perhaps more importantly), the records/archives of the Singapore foreign and defence ministries, up till the present, remain tightly closed, which makes it difficult, if not impossible, for diplomatic historians to develop their craft. In response to a suggestion for Singapore to adopt a 30-year declassification rule, then deputy prime minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong, said, 'I think 30 years is not a long time. One hundred years maybe--our grandchildren can think about it.' (4)

Besides the lack of archival sources, there is also little public interest in foreign policy. S. Rajaratnam, the first foreign minister of Singapore, recalled that the average Singaporean's interest in foreign affairs is minimal. He noted that 'Singaporeans by and large are really parochial ... despite the fact that quite a lot of Singapore politics had a foreign policy dimension because the pro-CP (Communist Party) elements were trying to use Singapore and the political struggle in Singapore to advance the foreign policy interests of China.' The late minister revealed that as Singaporeans were on the whole indifferent, 'foreign policy was shaped more objectively by myself, the Prime Minister, and Dr Goh [Keng Swee] where there were economic implications. Foreign policy making has not been a public football.' (5)

Turning to the historiography of the Vietnam war, apart from a few isolated and some tangential studies (which touched on the Southeast Asian perspective(s)), (6) the Southeast Asian dimension of the conflict is noticeably lacking in the historiography of the conflict. There has not been a full and proper historical account of the Vietnam war from the Singapore angle, although the Singapore leadership, particularly the then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, had been one of, if not the most vocal and well-known, 'subscriber' of the domino theory and supporter of the American presence in Vietnam. This is ironic given the fact that the vision of falling dominoes in Southeast Asia goes back to as early as 1949 when the nationalists were forced to withdraw from mainland China. The 'domino theory' had been expressed in one form or another in the National Security Council (NSC) documents 48/1 (June 1949), 64 (February 1950) and 124/2 (June 1952), as well as President Dwight Eisenhower's press conference on 7 April 1954, which is perhaps the best known (and the first public) explanation of the domino theory with regard to Southeast Asia. The unavailability of primary sources is a major reason for this omission. Although the Cold War ended more than a decade ago, there is no indication that Southeast Asian governments are considering making documents of the Cold War years accessible to scholars soon. But as the late historian Gordon Alexander Craig pointed out in a slightly different context, even though most of the documents might not be available and the archives are likely to remain closed, it should not discourage historians from tackling such subjects, and there are accomplished examples of what could be achieved by the clever use of memoirs, official accounts and press coverage. (7)

An appropriate year to begin this account is 1965. Singapore became fully independent on 9 August 1965. Prior to this, foreign and defence policies came under the purview of London, and for about two years after 1963, Kuala Lumpur. The year 1965 is also often considered to be the year in which the military war between the US and the Vietnamese communists began. The Vietnam war continued until April 1975, which coincided with the first decade of Singapore's independence.

Background

It is, however, useful to first begin with some brief background of events related to Singapore and also in Vietnam prior to 1965. In a nutshell, Singapore's experience with communism prior to independence began with the formation of the Malayan Democratic Union (MDU) in December 1945. The MDU was apparently a front for the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM). (8) From 1948, the British and Malayan forces fought a communist insurgency in the Malay peninsula. (9) With the declaration of the Emergency in June 1948 (first in Malaya and soon after, in Singapore), the CPM was proscribed and the MDU subsequently dissolved. This, according to John Drysdale, marked 'the end of the first communist attempt in Singapore to carry out an urban revolution through a united front', and the entire communist movement went underground. (10)