The Reality of Threat to Singapore

Introduction

The SAF's primary mission has always been to defend Singapore through deterrence and diplomacy, and achieve a swift and decisive victory against any armed aggressor in times of conventional war. However, in this post-9/11 era, the SAF inevitably faces a wider spectrum of threats throughout the peace to war continuum, and can no longer just set its sights on achieving war-time success. The global and evolving threats of terrorism is clearly upon Singapore and it demands the same, if not more emphasis from the SAF to be involved peacetime counter-terror operations. Intuitively, in a resource-scare environment, the SAF would be in a dilemma, torn between maintaining its war-time capabilities and investing precious assets in peacetime counter-terror operations. However, this need not be a win or lose situation. With creativity and optimisation, the SAF can still wield this seemingly double-edged sword to its advantage.

This paper shall examine the reality of terrorist threats in Singapore and the necessity for the SAF to take on counter-terror roles. It shall also propose how the SAF can overcome the implications when assuming these additional tasks and turn it to its favour, without losing sight of its primary mission of defending Singapore against conventional military threats.

The Reality of Threat to Singapore

The events of 9/11 shocked the entire world and changed the security landscape permanently. Terrorists have proven that even the United States, a military powerhouse, can be infiltrated. The attacks of 9/11 eventually brought South-east Asia, especially the states comprising the Malay archipelago (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines) into the spotlight (Andrew Tan, 2002, p. 4). Although Singapore has enjoyed relative peace and not suffered from any terrorist attacks thus far, it would be naïve to believe that Singapore is not threatened by global terrorism. There were many instances where Singapore was able to neutralise the threats before they could create any major and lasting impact.

Thirty one members of the terrorist group, Jemaah Islamiah (JI), were arrested in January 2002 just as they were planning to launch an attack in Singapore. Some of the international targets include American military personnel at a MRT station and a pub, US naval vessels at the Changi Naval Base, US commercial interests and Western and Israeli embassies. Local targets include water pipelines at the Causeway, Jurong Island and the Ministry of Defence (Ministry of Home Affairs, 2002). It is thus apparent that Singapore is a also prime target for regional terrorist groups and had they succeed, Singapore would have suffered a heavy blow. There would be much local and foreign casualties, and investors' confidence in Singapore would be severely affected. Other than the regional threats from Jemaah Islamiah, Singapore is also targeted by international terrorist groups. It was uncovered that Hezbollah, a Shi'a Muslim militant group and political party based in Lebanon, were recruiting Singaporeans to conduct surveillance and eventually launch attacks on US and Israeli vessels in Singapore (Agence France Presse, 2002).

The above examples clearly illustrates that the threats of terrorism truly exists in Singapore. As a small nation state with an open economy, Singapore is even more susceptible to the occurrences in the world. With our economy heavily reliant on foreign investments and having strong affiliations with foreign allied forces, our state of security fluctuates with that of the international community and can sometimes change suddenly (Ministry of Defence, 2000, p. 5). Regionally, terrorists attacks in Thailand, Mumbai, Indonesia have also shown that each country's military forces had failed first in prevention and then in achieving decisive victory over the responsible party (Ong Y Z (2009), p. 25). It is thus crucial for the SAF to adopt a robust preventive stance against terrorism and invest itself in counter-terror operations without undermining its primary mission. In order to present the SAF itself as a credible defence force, it must hence be equipped with the knowledge and expertises to prevent and deal with any impending terrorist threats.

An Evolving Mission

As terrorism transcends national boundaries and even morality, it has become the tier-one national security threat in most countries (Rohan Gunaratna, 2006, p. 1). Taking reference from our region, even before the occurrence of 9/11, Malaysian Defence Minister Tun Najib had already necessitate that the Malaysian Armed Forces be ready to meet a full spectrum of threats, ranging from conventional warfare to low-intensity conflict and urban warfare (Mohamad Najib Abdul Razak, 2001, p. 83). As such, in order to similarly handle the impending threats from terrorism, the SAF have to consider broadening its spectrum of operations. At the same time, although the likelihood for Singapore to be engaged in a force-on-force conventional war is low, the possibility of it happening is certainly far from over. Thus, when the threat of transnational terrorism is added to the list, the SAF finds itself having to simultaneously tackle threats spanning the entire peace-war-postwar continuum (Alan Goh, 2010, p. 15).

The SAF, like most military forces, are traditionally structured, configured and trained to fight other armies with similar characteristics. The problem with counter-terror operations is that although there exist an armed enemy, the defeat of these terrorists on the battlefield is not the main objective of the war effort (Colin S. Cray, 2007, p. 46). Counter-terror operations relies heavily on intelligence collection and sending a strong message of deterrence is key to fighting terrorism. These evolving demands of counter-terror operations would certainly put a strain on the SAF's resources and require it to maintain clarity over its priorities. Hence, the SAF must creatively reinvent itself and put in place assets to adopt this defensive posture, without losing its primary focus.

Overcoming the Implications

While the SAF is well-equipped in weaponry and technologically advanced, it does not have a sizeable regular corps and relies heavily on the conscript army. As such, in order to extend its responsibilities to include counter-terror operations and send a strong deterrence message, it needs to reap synergies within itself structurally and doctrinally. With new counter-terrorism tactics, orthodox doctrine-driven structures meant for conventional wars must be reviewed to make way for smaller task forces to conduct counter-terror operations more efficiently. At the same time,