Keynote Address by Senior Minister of State for Defence Mr Chan Chun Sing, at the 15th Asia-Pacific Programme for Senior Military Officers (APPSMO)

Good morning Ambassador Barry Desker, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. For all our foreign guests, a very warm welcome to you for joining us on this week. This is a significant week for Singapore because it is also the week of our National Day. So for all first time visitors to Singapore, we hope that we will be able to give you the Singaporean hospitality to make you feel warm and at home during this week. For the people who have come back here for the second or third time, or many more times, welcome back again to join us because you are always amongst friends when you are here in Singapore.

As Ambassador Desker said, APPSMO has come a long way and this is the 15th in the series. Over the many years, beyond the academic discussions and the rich intellectual discourse, I think the most important thing for the participants of APPSMO has been the network that was built and continues to be built amongst officers from all the different countries, and one can never understate and underestimate how important this network is. At one level, this network helps to build trust and confidence with each other. At another level, it allows us to share with each other our innermost thoughts and how we see the world. All these are perhaps even more important than the academic subjects that are being discussed at each and every one of these sessions. So on this note, I would like to encourage all the participants in this APPSMO, just as the previous participants did, to fully make use of this opportunity to build the bonds and the relationship between and amongst all of you, and this valuable opportunity to sit down and discuss ideas about your own profession going forward.

Today, you have chosen a pretty difficult topic, "The Future of War", as Ambassador Barry Desker shared. Actually when I had first heard that you had chosen this topic, I was really puzzled as to why you chose such a difficult topic for yourself. Because actually, it is very difficult to predict the future. There is only one thing that I can predict with certainty for the future on this issue of war and warfare, and that is that there will not be the end of history, neither will there be the end of war. That is about the only thing that I can say with certainty. As to how war will evolve, what will be the factors that will influence the future of warfare, what are the causes of warfare, those are constantly evolving. But if we cast our eye to this region, then I can summarise and say that perhaps there are some things that may not change, even as we discuss the future of war. And that has to do with the nature and the source of conflicts. If I can summarise it, it revolves around the three 'R's - resources, race and religion, and rights. If we cast our eyes back to the type of conflicts that have beset this region for the past hundred years or so, I think inevitably it goes back to these three 'R's - the contest for resources, the conflict over race and religion, and the contest over rights. Let me elaborate.

The contest for resources has always been an evergreen challenge for societies across the entire span of history. The contest for resources will become even more acute when there is an imbalance between the areas that hold the resources and the areas that need the resources. One can argue that one of the contributing factors to the start of World War II was the fact that there was a contest of resources. And this is particularly challenging when countries are growing rapidly because the countries that are growing rapidly will need tremendous resources to sustain its growth trajectory and momentum. The security of its sources of resources will be of utmost importance. The Asia-Pacific region is a rapidly growing region in the entire world. The kind of resources that we need, the quantum of resources that we need, is tremendous. And there will inevitably be a mismatch between where those resources are and where those resources are needed. And hopefully for this generation, we would have learnt from the previous generation on how to manage the allocation of such resources in a rapidly changing and developing world. Because if we do not manage this well, then this can considerably become one of the reasons for wars to start.

The second set of issues that tends to beset this region because of its rich diversity and complex history has to do with race and religion. While we have progressed much economically, the issue of race and religion will always be in this region regardless of how far we go on the economic front. If we look at some of the more recent security challenges in our region, it was not too long ago where race and religion reared its ugly head in Indonesia after the fall of Suharto. It is something visceral, it is something that is difficult to explain away logically because for centuries and for centuries to come, many people will still identify themselves with their race and religion. And if we do not have a mechanism for people to discuss such issues amicably and resolve their differences constructively, then this can be the second 'R', the second source of reason, for potential conflicts to happen.

The third 'R' has to do with rights, and there are two types of rights - one has to do with sovereign rights to land and space in the three-dimensional space, and the other type of rights has to do with the rights to a particular system of governance in any particular country. And wars and conflicts have been fought over such issues. Will these continue to be with us for the coming decade? I think so. Because I am never confident that the newer generations will not be unlike the old generations, whereby if we fail to build up a mechanism to resolve some of these things peacefully, it may come to blow.

So on this note, while we talked about the future of war, I tend to look back at history and cast an eye and ask ourselves, "Have things really changed?" Some things have, perhaps some may not change as much as we think it has. And when it comes to the contest of resources, the contest of rights, the contentious issues of race and religion, I think this set of issues will continue to be with us for a very long time to come.

Having said that, the way in which wars and conflicts are fought may change and yet certain aspects may not change. For all the military professionals here, especially those educated in the Western school of thought, we have a definition called the conventional way of war, which many will come to associate with the use of organised military force - tanks, ships, fighters - the conventional way of fighting wars. But it is a rather unique term because in my limited experience talking to many other people from many other different cultures, there is no such definition as conventional or unconventional war. War is war. War is a contest of wills, a contest of power, and for many cultures it would require them to put all on the table and to risk all at stake. It is total war. And one of these things that I have learnt, the first thing is that increasingly, there is no such thing as a frontline in war. In the past, maybe during the Napoleon era, there is a distinct frontline. There is the good guys on one side, and the bad guys on the other side. Beyond the frontlines, the world lived happily ever after, away from the disruptions that wars bring about unless the frontline shifts towards where they are. But in today's context, I am not sure if we will still have something called a frontline, where there is a distinct geographical demarcation between what is called war and where the other places are called not in war. It is very difficult. That frontline has blurred, and for many societies, war is everything and everything about total war. It will involve every strata of society, from the highest to the lowest, involving people from all walks of life. And there is no distinction, perhaps even between combatants and non-combatants - everyone is involved in some way or another.

The second way that war may have changed or not changed, depending on how you were brought up, has to do with the non-tangible aspect of war. For some, it involves the psychological aspect of a contest of people's mind and allegiance. For others, the non-tangible aspect would include the contest of the information sphere, the cyber sphere, and so forth. While war, in this aspect - and this aspect is becoming increasingly prominent - has very little to do with what we call the conventional aspect of war, which has to do with the tanks, the planes and the ships. I am not saying that the tanks, the planes and the ships will no longer be important and will go away, but I think we are seeing a new balance between not just what we considered conventional war, but a new contest in a more amorphous sphere of the cyber sphere, the information sphere and the psychological sphere. For some of us who are educated in the non-traditional school of thought, this has always been the case and this will never change - that war is not just about the tangible aspects of the planes, the ships and the guns, but it is also about contest of these other spheres. And if we find a new balance - and this balance will continue to shift depending on the nature of the conflict, depending on the area of which the conflict breaks out and so forth - but there is no one answer that war will be such, or at least I do not think so.

The third characteristic, if I may share, is that in the past, in the very long past, war may be a sharp distinct phase or contest. Again you may bring this back to the Napoleon era or even the American civil war. War is about a battle fought somewhere for a distinct period of time. And then after that we have this reversion till now. But that may not be the correct characterisation even for the wars during the Napoleon era or the American civil war. War could be prolonged, be low-intensity and a continuous struggle between two sets of competing ideas, two sets of competing forces, fighting over resources or rights. And we can expect that war will cover this entire spectrum not just for what you call a high-intensity conflict, but also prolonged and sustained contest of wills between two different forms of society, two different forms of organisations.

Having said that, then the challenge for the military is how do we respond to these new forces and yet at the same time, be cognisant of these existing if not old forces that are evergreen and ever-present with us. Three things come to mind. The first, is that in order to overcome this, beyond the hardware of the tanks and the planes, it is the contest of our agility in mind and spirit, of how we train and not just what we train. How we train our people to adapt to the circumstances that will confront us in the next conflict. The conventional way of training soldiers to prepare for the last contest will never do justice for our preparations for the next contest. Because as we always say, to answer last year's exam questions is not the best way to prepare for the next year's exam. The question is: How can we train our people to be agile in mind and spirit, so that we can constantly adapt? The contest will be won not by who is best trained but perhaps who is best suited to adapt and to last the course of the contest - that is a different way of looking at war, as a contest of adaption.

And it is not just about adaptation at the military level, it is about organising society at the entire societal level to see how the society can adapt and last the course. So when we organise ourselves for a contest, it is not just about the military organising itself, but it is also about how we organise the entire society to bring to bear the entire resources of the society from that potentially prolonged contest of wills over issues of resources, rights and so forth. And this is where the concept of total defence comes in useful in the issue in response to the concept of total war. This is something that perhaps you can discuss in your subsequent seminars, on how we can organise ourselves for such potential conflicts that involve not just the military but the entire society.

Last but not least, I must say that there has been a lot of focus on the issue of technology and its impact on future wars. True, technology will play an increasingly important part in future wars. But let us also not forget the importance of the human spirit and the resilience of the human spirit in this contest. Technology complements and perhaps enables the human spirit, but at the root of the contest is still a contest of wills, a contest of the human spirit, and perhaps that will not change. So as I cast my eye back to this topic on the future of war, perhaps one of my conclusions is that some things will never change in this contest, but many things will. The channels may change, the mode may change, but some of the underlying factors may not change.

So on this note, may I wish you a most interesting discussion this week on what you see the future of warfare may be, what are those things that you think will change, and what are those things that will not change. My little sharing this morning is hopefully something to trigger your mind and tickle your mind as you go forth this week to share your experiences and your thoughts with your fellow participants, and we look forward to a rich and fruitful discussion amongst the participants here. If I may come back to where I have started my speech, that beyond all these discussions, we look forward to everyone here having the opportunity to build those bonds, to foster those relationships that will allow us to build up the sense of trust so that we can build up the structures necessary to resolve some of these evergreen challenges in our region and beyond. And I must say, that having grown up in the military, the military is a very unique organisation - perhaps the only organisation amongst many that allows our young officers to grow up together, understanding each other, sharing with each other our perspectives, building the trust with each other, so that when the time of action comes, they are people who know each other and can call upon that trust and bond to forge new solutions for a new era. And that is our challenge going forward. The last generation had in their own ways built the trust amongst themselves to solve the last generation's challenges. It is incumbent upon us, as the new generation, to similarly build upon the foundation that they have to continue to strengthen the trust and build new institutions to resolve the challenges that are facing us now and the challenges that will face us in the future. So on that note, I wish you every success and all the best in this coming conference and to stay in touch. Thank you very much.