Speech by Minister for Defence Dr Ng Eng Hen at the 13th Shangri-La Dialogue

First let me wish everyone here a welcome. On behalf of my cabinet colleagues here, Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean, Minister Chan Chun Sing, Minister of State Dr Maliki, we are delighted to be hosts together with my Permanent Secretary Mr Chan Yeng Kit and CDF General Ng Chee Meng. I want to thank you for your very positive comments over the meals that we've had. Many of you have come up, unsolicited, to that say that this year's Shangri-La Dialogue has been very successful. Here, John and board members of IISS are to be congratulated for your leadership and guidance.

Some of you have said that the lectures this year are particularly hard-hitting. I share with you this observation but better hard words than other things that would follow. And if there is a reflection in resolution, I think the Shangri-La Dialogue would have played a very positive role. I want to thank you for your presence here because that’s what makes Shangri-La Dialogue successful. The time that you have committed. I want to thank my fellow ministers and the heads of delegations. The rich exchanges that we have, it's because of your presence and I thank the participants. I do want to acknowledge with you the fine role that my officers have played from the Singapore Armed Forces, your many liaison officers that have helped you and as they say, military parlance it's the weekend burnt. Shepherding you and we want to thank them for the role they have played. Let me thank you for asking me to speak on agile conflict management.

Unpredictability of Security Challenges

Being agile presupposes that we can identify or have early warning of conflicts. But most of us must realise that predicting specific conflicts is risky business. Former US Secretary of State Robert Gates summed it well in a particular West Point speech in 2011, and let me quote him - "When it comes to predicting the nature and location of our next military engagements, since Vietnam, our record has been perfect. We have never once gotten it right, from the Mayaguez to Grenada, Panama, Somalia, the Balkans, Haiti, Kuwait, Iraq, and more - we had no idea a year before any of these missions that we would be so engaged."So to Ukraine which reaffirm our predictive prowess, or lack of. Indeed, a month before Crimea was annexed, I know that a few of us here were at the 50th anniversary of the Munich Security Conference. It was obviously a historic conference, but there was a particular panel discussion that stayed with me. And in this panel there was former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing. They were all together on one panel discussion, so you can envision it in your mind's eye. And in a reflective mood, Mr d'Estaing remarked that there had been no wars in Europe in the past half-century, because "what Europe did was to eliminate the concept of war". After recent events in Ukraine, Europe looks less stable. I suppose the rejoinder from optimists amongst us is that it is because we expend efforts at preventing conflicts in hot spots, that actual conflicts are the unknown unknowns, the unexpected. We certainly hope so.

While specific conflicts have been difficult to predict, their impacts are increasingly transnational given our inter-connected World. Again, with reference to Ukraine, growth in Europe could be impacted, particularly for countries that rely heavily on Russian oil and gas. And European countries will also have to decide if military spending needs to increase. Because currently, many European countries do not meet NATO's defence spending target of 2 percent. While Europe's GDP forecast is expected to grow between 1.7 to 2 percent in 2015, fiscal room to expand military expenditure is challenging.

Russia and China recently inked an energy deal. Does this signal increasing polarisation against those partnered and allied with the US? If it is, what would it be based on? Certainly not the competition between ideology, between Communism and Capitalism - Russia and China are wedded to and dependent on global markets as much as any other country. Indeed, China's deal with Russia is part of its strategic sourcing campaign for energy, mineral resources and commodities over the last two decades, whether with its close neighbours or far flung places in Australia or Africa. My view is that the polarisation would be less when compared to the Cold War - simply because the stakes for all countries are less binary, shades of grey and not black and white, and countries feel less compulsion to take sides but will instead weigh the calculus based on their own vested interests.

Looking at our region, and compared to the past SLDs, I think all of us here agree that the temperature has gone up. China's announcement of the Air Defence Identification Zone last November had elicited strong reactions. Last December, there was a near-collision of the USS Cowpens and a Chinese warship. Last month, Chinese and Vietnamese vessels clashed over an oil rig in the South China Sea; domestic unrest throughout Vietnam occurred, with substantial damage and civilian casualties. Added to this, North Korea remains a hot spot. All this is familiar to us here.

Challenges faced by Asia

But if you ask the question, "What are the risks of a conflagration in Asia?" It is a serious question worth pondering. And at this year's MSC, the eminent Mr Kissinger had observed that present-day Asia is "more in a position of the 19th-century Europe" and I think what he says is worth quoting - "I would say Europe is in a position of a post-modern period, reluctant to engage in military conflict. Asia is more in the position of 19th Century Europe. It is the state of Asia to not exclude military conflict" among each other. And there are conflicts between China and Japan, Vietnam and some of its neighbours. Plus the problem of an emergent Asia and its relationship with the developed world which is often summed up by an analogy of Britain and Germany in the 19th Century. It is the state of Asia not to exclude military conflict. A dim prognosis - is Mr Kissinger right?Defence spending in Asia has indeed gone up, against world trends. While global military expenditure fell for the second consecutive year, Asia's defence expenditure last year increased by 3.6 percent to now USD381 billion, with China estimated to have contributed to half the region's total defence spending. Increases in South Korea's defence spending now rank it the 10th biggest military spender in the world, following closely behind Japan and India. Militaries in ASEAN and Australia have also pledged to increase if not maintain their defence spending. This militarisation of many countries within Asia on this scale has no historical precedent.

What safeguards and structures exist to mitigate fall-outs in Asia? Certainly less than those that exist in Europe. Unresolved historical baggage, animosities exists between China, Japan and Korea and is viscerally felt within their populations and therefore fertile ground to be whipped up by nationalistic instincts. While the three countries, Japan, Korea and China, institutionalised an annual trilateral summit in 2008, they last met two years ago and frequent high level visits between them are a rarity.

ASEAN has made strides, as Mr Le Drian had mentioned, but certainly not in the breadth or depth when compared to the EU or NATO. The ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting (ADMM) is still a young forum established only in 2006, and the ADMM-Plus younger still, only inaugurated four years ago.

But beyond these reasons, there is another stark deficit that exists in Asia when it comes to avoidance of conflict. Asia does not have the equivalent of the "never again" resolve that bound all of Europe after two World Wars, and that translated into political will to create formal structures and alliances to avoid war, to "eliminate", as President d'Estaing said, the "concept of war" in Europe.

Instead, Asian countries only share a common struggle for Independence but disparately fought. On that score, Asian countries are still relatively young, beginning with Vietnam gaining independence in 1945, Singapore gained independence in 1965, and the last nation of ASEAN to gain independence was Brunei in 1984. The civil and social institutions are still evolving and inchoate. Some countries in Asia are not traditional democracies. Unlike Europe, there is no binding aversion to regional conflict. The restraining force hitherto has been economic development for each own's interest, first supported in large measure by the US as it provided the strategic security umbrella for the region, and subsequently fuelled by China’s economic development in the last two decades.

Converging economic interests of different Asian countries have indeed brought wealth and progress to this region. Asia was a star performer in this last decade even after the global financial crisis in 2008. Since their introduction to the global market, India's real GDP per capita has more than tripled while China's has increased twelve-fold. Within ASEAN, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines have, mostly, been growing steadily between five to seven percent since 2010, and by some reports, projected to be among the world's top 20 economies by 2050 in terms of GDP. This is a positive trajectory for Asia.

But what happens when competition for resources, or graver still, sovereignty disputes escalate? Or when fears of domination prevail over consensus and fair competition? Or when economic projections do not come true, and the engines of growth within Asia stall, even momentarily? Or when existing social and political structures are challenged due to a rising middle class?I have said that for Asia, a collective "never again" resolve does not exist. But it does for individual countries. For China, who will celebrate 100 years of the founding of the CCP in 2021, it never again wants a repeat of the "century of humiliation and unequal treaties" that China was subjected to in the 19th Century. In this narrative, a strong China would never have been forced to give up large swaths of land to encroaching and invading foreigners. Part of the Chinese Dream, articulated by President Xi, is thus to achieve the "great revival of the Chinese nation" through "uniting and leading the people", in order for China to "stand more firmly and powerfully among all nations. A strong China". Japan wants to move on from the baggage of World War II. We heard Prime Minister Abe in this conference - a new Japanese in the normal Japan. Never again does Japan want to see the horrific destruction from two atomic bombs. Japan wants to move forward and claim its rightful place in the global economy of the 21st Century as a "normal" country. ASEAN member states never again want to be colonised or exploited, or become a proxy playground for bigger powers. ASEAN member states want higher standards of living that other regions enjoy as independent and sovereign nations.

The political challenge before us is to ensure that these circles of aspirations and ambitions of individual countries intersect as widely as possible to protect the global commons of peace and stability. Recent incidents in the East and South China Seas do not give the reassurance that Asia's trajectory is on this virtuous path.

Asia must therefore build more resilient mechanisms to forge consensus and political will, and here I agree with my colleague Mr Le Drian, political will to prevent if not mitigate conflicts. Asia must not backslide into a fractious environment, riven by confrontational nationalism and lack of mutual trust.

Agile Conflict Management

Many have pointed out that strategic trust among Asian countries is lacking. We need to have open and frank dialogue on security challenges, like we are doing here, before they can be meaningfully addressed.

Asia must build on multilateral frameworks to achieve this trust, anchored on common principles and shared values that promote peace and stability. For regional security, the ADMM, as well as the ADMM-Plus framework, with its eight extra-regional partners, serves as platforms for open and inclusive dialogue to resolve differences peacefully.

We must also step up practical cooperation and interaction between militaries to forge understanding and trust. This was the aim in the joint ADMM-Plus Exercise held last year hosted by Brunei where eighteen countries with eighteen militaries conducted a large HADR and Military-Medicine exercise. The ADMM-Plus militaries will do more, including the next joint Counter Terrorism and Maritime Security exercise.

A key platform to achieve trust is concerted action to help one another in HADR. Recent natural disasters such as Typhoon Haiyan showed the need for a 24/7 crisis centre to coordinate military and civilian efforts in the most crucial first 24 to 48 hours of a disaster. This was the reason why Singapore put forward a proposal to host a Regional HADR Coordination Centre which would complement existing frameworks such as the ASEAN Humanitarian Assistance (AHA) Centre, and will add to and strengthen the existing regional crisis architecture.

Conclusion

Friends and distinguished guests, crises and conflicts are unpredictable. But we can reduce the uncertainty by proactively building among us strong relations and multilateral frameworks that build trust and confidence through cooperation and consensus. A stronger, more stable Asia will benefit all our citizens and the World.

Thank you very much for your attention.