The geopolitical predicament the Gulf states find themselves in makes you wonder about the relative stability to our east and how its readings of past history reinforce that stability.
Living in Singapore, I found the discourse of it being a ‘Global City’ predictably ubiquitous but persuasive. Resource deficient, tiny, ethnically vulnerable in that it is a Chinese-majority city-state in a Malay universe, it nevertheless transitioned from the third to the first world in the space of a single generation. This fairy tale-like transformation was accomplished by internally structuring its society and managing its external environment to achieve maximum economic growth. Its investment in a plural society, notwithstanding the estimated 80% ethnic Chinese majority, is genuinely impressive. To achieve this, its government went into an extraordinary amount of detailed and very precise social engineering. The balance of the population is roughly equally split between ethnic Indians and Malay. To ensure that no ethnic or religious ghettos remained, the government would deliberately mix the three ethnicities — "races" to use Singapore officialese — together in government-provided public housing. Racial divisions inevitably have reduced.
What struck me in particular was how often a non-Asian template was invoked — that of medieval Venice — to exemplify the Singapore story. Why Venice in particular? The similarities range from the superficial — modern Singapore and medieval Venice both used a lion as a national symbol — to the more complex: Venice was invoked because it too was small in size and population, punching far above its weight, and leaving an impact that survived its decline. Think, for instance, of the great world traveller, Marco Polo, the composer, Antonio Vivaldi or of the romantic womaniser, Giacomo Casanova. Shakespeare’s Othello and The Merchant of Venice both project the city-state in terms that we could today call a medieval superpower.
From the 10th to the 15th century, Venice’s strength and influence derived not from absolute power but from a skilled leveraging of its maritime location and some very sensible diplomacy. Its ports and shipbuilding capacity lay at the core of its strength; its trade linkages, knowledge of global markets and its stature as a financial hub gave it additional heft. Finally, it had the wisdom to stay out of prolonged neighbourhood and regional conflicts. Its days of glory ended only with the rise to dominance of the Ottomans from the 16th century onwards.
I recall that the most convincing articulation of Venice as a model for Singapore came from George Yeo, its brilliant foreign minister from 2004 to 2011. He saw Singapore’s core strength being derived from its openness to global talent and capital. Certainly, these attributes were very evident. Singapore soaked in financial, intellectual and scientific talent. As an Indian diplomat, an observation I frequently encountered was that Singapore had more IIT and IIM graduates than any city outside India — whether this was good or bad for India is still unclear to me. Singapore’s liberal tax regimes, a strict observance of the rule of law, and an extraordinarily liberal climate in terms of ease of doing business also drew companies and capital from across the world and, of course, from India. Again, opinions vary on whether and how much this was Indian business globalising or, simply, capital flight to greener pastures.
To many, Singapore appeared to resemble a business centre rather than a country. There is an apocryphal story of an irritated Indira Gandhi’s biting response to Lee Kuan Yew’s suggestions on how to manage India’s economy better: “Prime Minister, please don’t advise me. I run a country; you run a super market.” But in time, the analogy of Singapore being a gleaming and antiseptic business centre became somewhat limited; it was a country with all the problems of managing equity alongside growth and change.
Thus, Singapore’s successes bred their own pushbacks. The most prominent of these came from nativist sentiments from within. Many Singaporeans resented the liberal inflow of rich and talented foreigners, the rising cost of living, and that national narratives of being a global and open city superseded their own pressing local issues. The ruling People’s Action Party lost a few seats in the general election in 2011. While it may not have made any real dent on its majority, it was seen as a definitive and huge setback. Most of all, George Yeo lost his parliamentary seat in the Al-Junaid constituency. To the Singaporean mindset, for a sitting minister to lose in an election was unprecedented, almost calamitous. Amongst diplomats living there, this was termed, only half in jest, as the ‘Al-Junaid phenomenon’ — a sign that the country would now have to change. To me, the ‘Al-Junaid factor’ was proof that beneath the clockwork-like efficiency and gleaming malls was the pulse of a real country with its own set of problems and legacies.
The narrative of Venice as a template and Singapore being a global and open city quietly retreated thereafter. Singapore citizenship was less freely distributed to rich or talented foreigners. The reality of nativist pressures was more openly acknowledged, anticipating in many ways what was to happen in Europe and North America in the years to come.
Singapore’s strengths are, however, many. Most of all, it has been a beneficiary of, and has itself invested deeply and wisely in, regional cooperation and stability. Southeast Asia is today a dense web of inter-governmental cooperation notwithstanding many internal geopolitical fault lines and external challenges, such as Chinese assertive behaviour in the South China Sea. Today’s Southeast Asia makes it easy to forget just how conflict-prone the region was even half a century ago. In the 1960s, one scholar had quite accurately termed Southeast Asia as the “Balkans of the Orient” — invoking the analogy of the outbreak of World War I given the fault lines that had intersected in that part of Europe. How investment in the spirit of ASEAN changed all this is the enduring lesson that can be extracted from that history. Singapore played a role in this process and also reaped the benefits of the ensuing peace. There is a lesson embedded here, and not just for the Gulf states.
T.C.A. Raghavan is a former High Commissioner to Singapore and Pakistan