Speech by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence of Singapore Mr Teo Chee Hean at the Manama Dialogue 2010

Strategic Reassurance and Deterrence in the RegionYour Royal Highness, Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon to all of you. I would like to thank Crown Prince Salman and Minister of Foreign Affairs Shaikh Khalid for the warm hospitality.

I am extremely pleased to be here on this panel with Secretary Fox and Minister Abdullah, and to see other friends and colleagues in the audience, many of whom have been to Singapore for Shangri-La Dialogue.

The issue of security in the Gulf, as well as the larger Middle East, is important not just for countries in this region, but also for the larger international community. Indeed, what has drawn all of us to this dialogue is the recognition that the complex security challenges we face today require multinational and cooperative responses that involve all the stakeholders

The question before us at this session is "Strategic Reassurance and Deterrence in the Region". How do we maintain peace and stability, and is it possible to build trust and cooperation out of differences and conflicts? Sheikh Khalid in his remarks this morning talked about connectivity in ASEAN and I will use that as a key to speak about this question. I will analyse the experience of Southeast Asia as it faced and overcame serious security challenges through the 1960s to the 1990s, and rely on your wisdom and knowledge to see if there are aspects of diplomacy and deterrence that might have been useful application in the context of this region.

Let me paint the backdrop. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN was established in 1967. At that time, the region and ASEAN's five founding members - Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand - faced numerous challenges. Apart from Thailand, the other four countries were new to statehood, having gained independence in the years following the Second World War. There were differences, territorial disputes and even conflicts, between several of the member countries.

The ASEAN five made up only half of the ten countries in Southeast Asia. Casting a shadow over the whole regionwas the Cold War. Through the late 1960s and early 1970s, the war in Vietnam was heating up. Southeast Asia was split right down the middle, along ideological lines. In 1975, the North Vietnamese Army captured Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and re-unified Vietnam.

But this did not bring peace and stability. In December 1978, Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia; and in February 1979, China attacked Vietnam along their border. The Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia raised the fear that other countries in the region would succumb and fall like dominoes.

At the UN Security Council, the permanent members were divided. China demanded the censure of Vietnam; the Soviet Union asked that China be condemned for aggression. The US called for the withdrawal of Chinese forces from Vietnam and of Vietnamese forces from Cambodia.

In the face of these challenges, the ASEAN countries had to put aside their differences and work together to prevent conflict from spreading. Militarily, the ASEAN countries were not strong enough to ensure stability in the region.

A combination of deterrence and diplomacy was therefore needed.

ASEAN countries helped bolster Thailand's military deterrence as it was the frontline ASEAN state neighbouring Cambodia. ASEAN supported the Cambodian resistance movement and its government in exile. At the same time, ASEAN sought to take the diplomatic initiative to shape the outcome and to galvanise the international community against the invasion, including through mobilising opinion at the UN. In November 1979, the UN General Assembly adopted an ASEAN-initiated resolution calling for immediate Vietnamese disengagement from Cambodia. The resolution also called on all states to refrain from acts of aggression against, and interference in the internal affairs of, states in Southeast Asia.

Through patient and arduous efforts over a decade starting from 1979, ASEAN's deterrence and principled diplomacy gained international support, and the conflict in Cambodia was contained. Essentially, principles outlined in the 1979 United Nations Security Council resolution were used to settle the dispute. Vietnam withdrew its forces in 1989, and in 1993, UN supervised elections led to the re-establishment of a representative and legitimate government in Cambodia. Of course, the larger environment, with the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, also helped bring an end to the ideological conflict that had so polarised Southeast Asia and indeed the world.

In the process of working together on this pressing common cause, the ASEAN member countries forged a spirit of mutual trust and accommodation. While there were still pending disagreements between members, these did not get in the way of the task at hand.

A strengthened ASEAN also provided the foundation for its member countries to forge ahead as one of the fastest growing economic regions in the world. The ASEAN countries (which became six when Brunei joined in 1984) grew at an average annual rate of 10.3% from 1975 to 1985, and 11.5% from 1985 to 1995.H

ence, apart from Deterrence and Diplomacy, the story of ASEAN would not be complete without a third "D". That "D" is Development. Spreading the benefits of development allowed the ASEAN countries to uplift the well-being of their people, overcome their own internal insurgent movements, and achieve internal stability.

The developmental success of the ASEAN countries based on market economics, and openness to trade and investment, provided an attractive alternative to the centrally planned model. The benefits of belonging to a successful regional association were compelling. Vietnam joined ASEAN in 1995, Laos and Myanmar in 1997, and Cambodia in 1999, bringing all ten Southeast Asian nations for the first time under one ASEAN roof. Where we once stood on different sides during the Cold War, divided by conflict and strife, the ten Southeast Asian countries now regularly meet around the same table to forge cooperation and connectivity. They signed the ASEAN Charter in 2007, establishing a legal and institutional framework for ASEAN, as well as new organs, boosting ASEAN's efforts to create an ASEAN Community by 2015 covering the Political-Security, Economic and Socio-Cultural dimensions.

Also actively involved in ASEAN's efforts to build a more robust regional community are the extra-regional players, those far outside the region, that have a stake in the region. Southeast Asia has always been of strategic importance to extra-regional powers, given its sea-lanes that connect the Indian and Pacific basins, its population of 590 million, and a wealth of natural resources. Today, Southeast Asia is of strategic relevance for another reason - the role that ASEAN plays as the fulcrum of the regional security architecture in the Asia-Pacific, in bringing together all the major players in the region around the same table to address regional challenges.

ASEAN is able to play this role as it has a number of strengths.

It is non-threatening (not usually seen as a strength but being non-threatening has its advantages), open to relations with all, and consultative; hence allowing it to facilitate dialogue, build trust and confidence and foster consensus. ASEAN subscribes to the principles of mutual respect, mutual benefits and non-interference in each country's international affairs. The ASEAN Regional Forum established in 1994 has since expanded to 27 members. This testifies to its utility as a foreign affairs led, consultative forum on political and security issues in the region. The East Asia Summit, established in 2005, now brings together at the leader’s level the ten ASEAN countries annually with eight key partner countries - Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Korea, Russia and the US. ASEAN also recently established the ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting-Plus, which brings together the defence ministers of these same 18 countries for open and constructive dialogue, and to forge concrete cooperation among the ASEAN and "Plus" countries on a range of transnational defence and security issues.

On this part, as a small country, Singapore contributes within our capabilities to international efforts to maintain peace and stability, including in this region. In 1991, we deployed for the first time a medical group to Saudi Arabia as part of the coalition forces countering the invasion of Kuwait. From 1991 to 2003, we deployed military observers to the UN Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission (UNIKOM). Our forces from 2003 to 2008 supported coalition forces and protected Iraqi oil export terminals in the Northern Arabian Gulf.

In addition, for the past 4 years, we have deployed medical and construction teams, a weapon locating radar, UAVs, and military institutional trainers as part of the multinational stabilisation and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. To counter piracy in the Gulf of Aden, over the past two years, we have contributed ships and commanded Combined Task Force 151.

In recognition of the third "D" - Development, we have also forged strong economic links with countries in this region. In 2008, Singapore and the Gulf Cooperation Council signed the GCC's first ever Free Trade Agreement. Besides the GCC, Singapore also has an FTA with Jordan, which was signed in 2004.

The security challenges in the Middle East are complex and multi-dimensional, perhaps more so than those that faced us in Southeast Asia in the decades of the 1960s through to the 1990s. In this interconnected world, we all have to work together as instability in one part of the world can impact on peace and security elsewhere.

I hope that there are some aspects of the South East Asian experience - of how steadfast deterrence, patient diplomacy coupled with compelling development, can produce positive results in the long term. I hope they find relevance and resonance here in this region.

Thank you.