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Article Excerpt
The Singapore-Indonesia relationship is commonly described as being subject to sharp fluctuations, shifting between periods of tension and relatively close cooperation. A conventional schema would commence with the period of hostility during Indonesia's Confrontation of Malaysia from 1963 to 1966, which also targeted Singapore by virtue of its temporary inclusion in Malaysia from 1963 until 1965. (2) Diplomatic relations improved with the change of regime in Indonesia, when President Sukarno was ousted by Soeharto's "New Order" government in 1966, deteriorated sharply when Singapore executed two Indonesian marines in 1968, and returned to an increasingly close and cooperative footing from 1973 until the end of the New Order in 1998. Under four successive Indonesian presidents since 1998, relations have been subject to a number of acerbic exchanges and occasionally obstructive policies, interspersed with declarations of cooperative intent and ongoing close relations in many functional areas.
The current state of bilateral relations appears to be somewhat prone to tension, beneath a veneer of official protestations to the contrary. As detailed below, a number of contentious issues remain outstanding, and progress towards resolving them has stalled since 2007. In the Indonesian press and parliament, disputes with Singapore over seemingly mundane issues have frequently been magnified, and senior Indonesian politicians have accused Singapore of insincerity in its dealings with Indonesia. Singapore, for its part, has remained officially open to cooperation, but has taken a relatively inflexible line on several contentious issues. As noted with regard to Singapore's relations with its neighbours, bilateral issues "are often kept on hold merely to avoid open conflict". (3)
This article examines patterns of cooperation and conflict between Indonesia and Singapore with a view to understanding why the relationship appears prone to recurrent uneasiness and, during certain periods, difficulty in resolving matters of mutual interest. A number of different potential explanatory factors are examined. The first section asks whether Singapore is in a fundamentally vulnerable position with regard to Indonesia due to structural, historical or demographic factors, and whether this might explain the apparent sensitivities surrounding the bilateral relationship. The second section looks at the role domestic political factors may play in driving the relationship, examining in particular the idea that the vagaries of Indonesia's domestic politics create tensions in the bilateral relationship during periods of political contestation or instability in Indonesia. The third section examines the structure of interests which link Indonesia and Singapore, asking whether irritants in the relationship are in fact out of line with the mix of complementary and competing interests that characterize the interlinked political economies of the two countries.
The principal arguments of this article can be briefly summarized. First, bilateral tensions are often magnified out of proportion, both by policy-makers and by scholarly accounts that view irritants in isolation from the large areas of complementarity and cooperation that exist. Second, the bilateral relationship is not inherently prone to exceptionally high levels of tension and instability. Most of the structural and historical factors commonly assumed to influence the relationship are not, in fact, determinative. Certain structural tensions in the relationship do exist, but they have operated over a longer time period than the post-1965 era, and are not fundamentally rooted in culture or demographics. Third, the pattern of cooperation and contestation is driven as much by Singaporean strategies, aspirations and politics as by Indonesian political shifts and leadership characteristics. Politicians on both sides have at times adopted a selective interpretation of the relationship, presenting it as more sensitive than it is, but the same fault need not be repeated in scholarly analyses.
It should be noted at the outset that an emphasis on the irritants in the relationship betrays a Singapore-centric orientation. The siege mentality which many accounts have attributed to Singaporean policymakers may capture the flavour of Singaporean self-representations with regard to its nearest neighbours, but the view of the bilateral relationship as seen from Indonesia is noticeably different. With a few exceptions, while Indonesia is depicted as presenting at least a latent threat for Singapore in work on Singapore's foreign relations, which tend to dwell on the irritants in the relationship, Indonesian accounts pay much less attention to the irritants and treat them as having much less significance. To take just one example, the pronouncement by Indonesian President B.J. Habibie that Singapore was a "little red dot" has been repeated ad infinitum in accounts of Singapore's foreign relations, and taken as an indicator of underlying ethnically-based hostility. Official Singaporean actors seem to have seized on the epithet with enthusiasm, using it as the title of a volume of quasi-official memoirs by Singaporean diplomats, and in speeches. (4) In contrast, the bilateral relationship with Singapore gets relatively little attention in accounts of Indonesian foreign policy, although it is certainly possible to find material aimed at a more popular Indonesian audience that focuses on Singapore. (5) Most accounts of Indonesian foreign policy covering the post-Soeharto presidencies, whether by Indonesians or others, barely mention Singapore at all, and not in terms that suggest hostility. (6)
The Limits of Asymmetric Vulnerability
In most accounts of the bilateral relationship, the baseline around which relations have fluctuated is presented as fundamentally precarious, or inherently subject to tension, due to both historical and structural factors. (7) These inherent tensions are then seen as either skillfully contained or exploited, depending on domestic political shifts and leadership personality. But to what extent does the bilateral relationship between Singapore and Indonesia rest on structural characteristics that create a background of suspicion and potential instability? In the view of one of the most well-known scholars of Southeast Asian regional relations, the "inherent vulnerability" of Singapore is repeatedly emphasized as the essential driver of Singapore's foreign policy, a vulnerability that is presented as both objectively real--based on concrete asymmetries in territory, population and resources--and psychologically embedded in the minds of Singapore's leaders. (8) In contrast, another major study of Singapore's foreign relations argues that "Singapore has outlived its archrealist outlook in foreign policy. Whereas the country remains small both in terms of land area and population size, there is a very real sense in which such smallness is compensated by its international linkages and presence." (9)
This section argues that Singapore is not exceptionally bound by imperatives for a defensive self-help posture, for reasons that include, but go beyond, being able to "compensate" for its geographic smallness. One reason is that asymmetries between the two countries are not as significant as they might appear at first glance. Of course, Indonesia is vastly bigger in terms of territory, natural resources and population, and this makes possible (or, on some issues, requires) more inward-looking economic and security policies. However, other than the different degrees to which each country is impelled to look outwards, there are few necessary implications that follow from these structural asymmetries.
In terms of military power, the asymmetry is arguably not that great under most realistic scenarios. Singapore's military is vastly more modern, better equipped for conventional and high-technology warfare and absorbs a much higher proportion of the national budget than Indonesia's. (10) The extremely small territorial size of the country, which means the lack of any option of strategic retreat when faced with an all-out attack aimed at territorial conquest, is undeniable. But the relevance of this vulnerability has to be assessed against the conceivable interest of either of Singapore's near neighbours in launching a military bid for Singapore's territory. War is far from being obsolete in the modern world, but conditions which arguably make it unlikely--including an absence of natural resources, a knowledge and services-based economy and shared fundamental interests in integration in a liberal international economy--apply in the case of Singapore and its neighbours. (11)
For other marked asymmetries between the two countries--in population and in economic wealth per capita--it is not clear why they should have a determinative influence on bilateral relations. Indeed, when other bilateral relationships involving close neighbours of very different size and wealth are considered, such asymmetries do not seem to be associated with particular tendencies towards instability or latent insecurity. Based simply on structural endowments, Brunei, rather than Singapore, should be the Southeast Asian country with most reason to worry about its neighbours' intentions--and while Brunei did initially view Indonesia with a great deal of suspicion (Bruneian passports were not valid for travel...
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