Ambassador Bilahari Kausikan (pictured above left) is Policy Advisor with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and former Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Affairs Ministry This is an excerpt of a speech given at the launch of the S Rajaratnam Endowment held on 21 October. 

When I joined MFA as a very junior officer more years ago than I care to remember and admit, Mr Rajaratnam was our Foreign Minister and MFA was located at City Hall across the Padang. That building is soon to be our new art museum, a use that Mr Rajaratnam would have approved of as he also served as our Culture Minister.

As a new officer I was told a story by my seniors. When Singapore became unexpectedly independent, Mr Rajatnam was appointed our first Foreign Minister and shortly afterwards was asked to give a press conference to a group of foreign journalists. We were totally unprepared for independence and had never anticipated having to have a foreign policy.

"What", the story goes, "shall I tell them?" Mr Rajaratnam asked our then Prime Minister Mr Lee Kuan Yew.

Back came the answer, "Never mind Raja, just wear a tie and you’ll think of something."

The story may well be apocryphal, but the moral of the story is nevertheless relevant. Mr Rajaratnam, together with Mr Lee Kuan Yew, Dr Goh Keng Swee and other first generation leaders, established the fundamentals of our foreign policy on a blank slate, improvising amidst the tumultuous events of those times. It is testimony to their foresight that those fundamentals still serve us well today.

Operationally, the story was an example to all Singapore Foreign Service officers of the importance of quick thinking and nimbleness. Small countries have few options in international affairs and no small country can survive without cultivating such attributes.

Fundamentals of Singapore's foreign policy

What are those fundamentals? Mr Rajaratnam laid them out on 21st September 1965 in the very first speech he gave to the United Nations General Assembly. The speech was only three typewritten pages long, a model of clear and succinct writing. But its importance bears no relation to its length. I do not propose to repeat all he said. The speech is a public document and what he said has been elaborated many times, including by former President Nathan, former PM Lee Kuan Yew, by former Foreign Ministers, Professor Jayakumar and Mr Wong Kan Seng, and just a few days ago by ESM Goh Chok Tong, in the public lecture series that bears Mr Rajaratnam’s name. But let me summarize and focus on two of what I consider the most important themes of the maiden speech in the UN.

An independent country in peace with all and in accordance to UN charter principles

First, we wish to live as an independent country in peace with all countries, in particular our neighbours, in accordance with the principles of the United Nations Charter. And we do this not out of what Mr Rajaratnam called “vague idealism” but out of “practical self-interest”; and while we pursue a policy of non-alignment vis-à-vis the great powers, we would not be non-aligned with regard to these principles. But Mr Rajaratnam also stressed in that speech that Southeast Asia was a traditional battleground for the great powers, as indeed it still is today. Situated as we are in such a region, we cannot behave as Mr Rajaratnam famously said in a different speech on another occasion, like a nun that had wandered by accident into a red-light district. Principle must be tempered by a clinical realism.

A multiracial society

Secondly, we are a multiracial society, and, I quote Mr Rajaratnam: “no one people or culture has a monopoly of wisdom”. Mr Rajaratnam was of course also the author of our National Pledge which embodies the commitment to multiracialism. In foreign policy terms I interpret the commitment to multiracialism as a commitment to the national interest rather than the interests of any particular community. From time-to-time international issues arise than have a particular resonance for one group or another of Singaporeans. But we cannot and should not privilege the interests of any one segment of our society over another. The importance of the national interest is the thread that runs through the entire UN speech; it is the foundation of the realism that shapes and gives specific form to abstract principle, and is the abiding guide of our foreign policy.

The national interest is a particularly vital concept today when the world is rent by sectarianisms of various kinds from which we cannot insulate ourselves; when consequently the "culture wars" are upon us in various ways, not necessarily only in foreign policy issues, although in an interdependent world – and this is a concept that Mr Rajaratnam stressed in his speech well before it became fashionable – no domestic issue is without its international dimension, and when increasingly I see some quarters succumbing to the temptation to use foreign policy for partisan political advantage. Domestic politics ought to stop at water’s edge. This is a precept that all countries ignore only at their own peril. But the risks are greatest for small countries with little room for manoeuvre because partisanship in foreign policy erodes the nimbleness that is so vital to small countries.

Related article:

5 examples of how S Rajaratnam’s spirit is alive in every S’porean

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