SINGAPORE (July 4): Two of Singapore’s heavyweight diplomats have clashed in a rare public disagreement over the city-state’s foreign policy.

This comes after Kishore Mahbubani in a commentary on Saturday suggested that the decision by Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to break off diplomatic relations with Qatar holds an important lesson for Singapore.

“Small states must always behave like small states,” says Kishore, Singapore’s former permanent representative to the United Nations. “Exercise discretion. We should be very restrained in commenting on matters involving great powers.”

“No small animal would stand in front of a charging elephant, no matter who has the right of way, so long as the elephant is not charging over the small animal’s home territory,” he adds.

Currently dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore (NUS), Kishore alluded to the Lion City’s decision to stand against China in the South China Sea dispute.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong last year voiced support for international arbitration as a way to deal with such territorial disputes after an international arbitral ruling on the dispute went against China.

Beijing fumed at Lee’s comments. Officials later described the ruling as “illegal and invalid”.

Just months later, in November last year, authorities at Hong Kong’s Kwai Chung Container Terminal detained nine Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) Terrex Infantry Carrier Vehicles (ICV) en route to Singapore from the southern Taiwan city of Kaohsiung.

The Terrex ICVs were being shipped from Taiwan back to Singapore after routine training exercises that the SAF conducts in Taiwan. The vehicles were held for about two months.

The incident was seen as China’s reprisal for Singapore’s comments, and a deterioration of Sino-Singapore relations.

“Consistency and principle are important, but cannot be the only traits that define our diplomacy,” says Kishore. “There is a season for everything. The best time to speak up for our principles is not necessarily in the heat of a row between bigger powers.”

The veteran diplomat’s views triggered a blustering response on Facebook from ambassador-at-large Bilahari Kausikan.

“Independent Singapore would not have survived and prospered if they always behaved like the leaders of a small state as Kishore advocates,” wrote Bilahari. “They did not earn the respect of the major powers and Singapore did not survive and prosper by being anybody’s tame poodle.”

“I am profoundly disappointed that Kishore should advocate subordination as a norm of Singapore foreign policy. It made me ashamed,” says Bilahari, who has served as permanent secretary of the foreign ministry and as Singapore’s envoys to Russia and the UN.

Bilahari notes that even Singapore’s late independence leader Lee Kuan Yew “stood up to China when he had to”.

“To my knowledge Mr Lee is the only non-communist leader ever to have gone into a Chinese Communist Party supported United Front and emerged victorious. The Chinese respected him and that is why he later had a good relationship with them,” Bilahari adds. “I don't think anyone respects a running dog.”

But that leads us back to a point Kishore alludes to: Lee Kuan Yew could “comment openly and liberally on great powers” only because he was recognised as a great leader.

“[Lee Kuan Yew] had earned the right to do so because the great powers treated him with great respect as a global statesman,” says Kishore.

Singapore’s other political leaders? Perhaps not so much.

“We are now in the post-Lee Kuan Yew era. Sadly, we will probably never again have another globally respected statesman like Mr Lee,” Kishore says. “As a result, we should change our behaviour significantly.”

Without the global respect accorded to Lee Kuan Yew, trying to walk in his gigantic footsteps might just backfire – as Qatar is learning the hard way.

Should Singapore still try to “punch above its weight” in this post-Lee Kuan Yew era? Or should we be the small state that hides when “elephants” fight?

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