Back
About RSIS
Introduction
Building the Foundations
Welcome Message
Board of Governors
Staff Profiles
Executive Deputy Chairman’s Office
Dean’s Office
Management
Distinguished Fellows
Faculty and Research
Associate Research Fellows, Senior Analysts and Research Analysts
Visiting Fellows
Adjunct Fellows
Administrative Staff
Honours and Awards for RSIS Staff and Students
RSIS Endowment Fund
Endowed Professorships
Career Opportunities
Getting to RSIS
Research
Research Centres
Centre for Multilateralism Studies (CMS)
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS Centre)
Centre of Excellence for National Security
Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS)
International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR)
Research Programmes
National Security Studies Programme (NSSP)
Social Cohesion Research Programme (SCRP)
Studies in Inter-Religious Relations in Plural Societies (SRP) Programme
Other Research
Future Issues and Technology Cluster
Research@RSIS
Science and Technology Studies Programme (STSP) (2017-2020)
Graduate Education
Graduate Programmes Office
Exchange Partners and Programmes
How to Apply
Financial Assistance
Meet the Admissions Team: Information Sessions and other events
RSIS Alumni
Outreach
Global Networks
About Global Networks
RSIS Alumni
Executive Education
About Executive Education
SRP Executive Programme
Terrorism Analyst Training Course (TATC)
International Programmes
About International Programmes
Asia-Pacific Programme for Senior Military Officers (APPSMO)
Asia-Pacific Programme for Senior National Security Officers (APPSNO)
International Conference on Cohesive Societies (ICCS)
International Strategy Forum-Asia (ISF-Asia)
Publications
RSIS Publications
Annual Reviews
Books
Bulletins and Newsletters
RSIS Commentary Series
Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses
Commemorative / Event Reports
Future Issues
IDSS Papers
Interreligious Relations
Monographs
NTS Insight
Policy Reports
Working Papers
External Publications
Authored Books
Journal Articles
Edited Books
Chapters in Edited Books
Policy Reports
Working Papers
Op-Eds
Glossary of Abbreviations
Policy-relevant Articles Given RSIS Award
RSIS Publications for the Year
External Publications for the Year
Media
Cohesive Societies
Sustainable Security
Other Resource Pages
News Releases
Speeches
Video/Audio Channel
External Podcasts
Events
Contact Us
S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies Think Tank and Graduate School Ponder The Improbable Since 1966
Nanyang Technological University Nanyang Technological University
  • About RSIS
      IntroductionBuilding the FoundationsWelcome MessageBoard of GovernorsHonours and Awards for RSIS Staff and StudentsRSIS Endowment FundEndowed ProfessorshipsCareer OpportunitiesGetting to RSIS
      Staff ProfilesExecutive Deputy Chairman’s OfficeDean’s OfficeManagementDistinguished FellowsFaculty and ResearchAssociate Research Fellows, Senior Analysts and Research AnalystsVisiting FellowsAdjunct FellowsAdministrative Staff
  • Research
      Research CentresCentre for Multilateralism Studies (CMS)Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS Centre)Centre of Excellence for National SecurityInstitute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS)International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR)
      Research ProgrammesNational Security Studies Programme (NSSP)Social Cohesion Research Programme (SCRP)Studies in Inter-Religious Relations in Plural Societies (SRP) Programme
      Other ResearchFuture Issues and Technology ClusterResearch@RSISScience and Technology Studies Programme (STSP) (2017-2020)
  • Graduate Education
      Graduate Programmes OfficeExchange Partners and ProgrammesHow to ApplyFinancial AssistanceMeet the Admissions Team: Information Sessions and other eventsRSIS Alumni
  • Outreach
      Global NetworksAbout Global NetworksRSIS Alumni
      Executive EducationAbout Executive EducationSRP Executive ProgrammeTerrorism Analyst Training Course (TATC)
      International ProgrammesAbout International ProgrammesAsia-Pacific Programme for Senior Military Officers (APPSMO)Asia-Pacific Programme for Senior National Security Officers (APPSNO)International Conference on Cohesive Societies (ICCS)International Strategy Forum-Asia (ISF-Asia)
  • Publications
      RSIS PublicationsAnnual ReviewsBooksBulletins and NewslettersRSIS Commentary SeriesCounter Terrorist Trends and AnalysesCommemorative / Event ReportsFuture IssuesIDSS PapersInterreligious RelationsMonographsNTS InsightPolicy ReportsWorking Papers
      External PublicationsAuthored BooksJournal ArticlesEdited BooksChapters in Edited BooksPolicy ReportsWorking PapersOp-Eds
      Glossary of AbbreviationsPolicy-relevant Articles Given RSIS AwardRSIS Publications for the YearExternal Publications for the Year
  • Media
      Cohesive SocietiesSustainable SecurityOther Resource PagesNews ReleasesSpeechesVideo/Audio ChannelExternal Podcasts
  • Events
  • Contact Us
    • Connect with Us

      rsis.ntu
      rsis_ntu
      rsisntu
      rsisvideocast
      school/rsis-ntu
      rsis.sg
      rsissg
      RSIS
      RSS
      Subscribe to RSIS Publications
      Subscribe to RSIS Events

      Getting to RSIS

      Nanyang Technological University
      Block S4, Level B3,
      50 Nanyang Avenue,
      Singapore 639798

      Click here for direction to RSIS

      Get in Touch

    Connect
    Search
    • RSIS
    • Publication
    • RSIS Publications
    • CO15065 | Lee Kuan Yew: The ‘Engine’ That Was ‘Too Big for the Boat’
    • Annual Reviews
    • Books
    • Bulletins and Newsletters
    • RSIS Commentary Series
    • Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses
    • Commemorative / Event Reports
    • Future Issues
    • IDSS Papers
    • Interreligious Relations
    • Monographs
    • NTS Insight
    • Policy Reports
    • Working Papers

    CO15065 | Lee Kuan Yew: The ‘Engine’ That Was ‘Too Big for the Boat’
    Kumar Ramakrishna

    25 March 2015

    download pdf

    Synopsis

    Former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s renowned intellectual, moral and political strengths played a major role in Singapore’s rise from Third World to First in one generation. Fair-minded Singaporeans are unlikely to forget his achievements.

    Commentary

    NOT LONG after the fall of Soviet Communism more than two decades ago now, the American Soviet specialist Jerry Hough created a stir when he declared that “Singapore had actually won the Cold War”. In a sense Hough was paying a compliment to the vision of Mr Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first Prime Minister.

    The emerging orthodoxy by the early 1990s was that the US-led Western bloc, organised according to the principles of liberal democracy and market capitalism, had trumped Soviet-style centralised political and economic planning. This was what had won the Cold War, as popularised by Francis Fukuyama’s famous “End of History” thesis. Hough’s claim about Singapore was thus startling because while Singapore had adopted market principles in economic organisation, its political system was not liberal democratic in a textbook sense, but rather a hybrid one. Then and now Singapore’s system of governance prioritised order as the basis for the rule of law. Hough was thus implying that there was also a Singapore model of governance that deserved wide appreciation.

    Lee’s view of order and rule of law

    Over the years Lee had had many detractors who chided his failure to adopt textbook liberal democratic methods in governing Singapore. They suggested that by so doing he was undermining the rule of law in Singapore. The critics totally misunderstood Lee’s perspective however. Lee saw the rule of law as utterly integral to the successful political and economic development of Singapore. However Lee’s view of the rule of law was one that was subordinate to Singapore’s needs and not vice versa. He rejected an un-contextualized, abstract conception of the law. In particular, the experiences of fighting the Communists in the 1950s and 1960s engendered in Lee the conviction that order must always precede and establish the basis for legal frameworks.

    In a speech to the University of Singapore Law Society on 18 January 1962, Lee argued that while in “a settled and established society, law appears to be a precursor of order” in emerging ones wracked by violence and subversion the reverse was often the case: “without order, the operation of law is impossible’’. At the time of this speech the Cold War was at its height and Singapore and Malaya were very much a frontline in the ideological and geopolitical conflict between the Eastern and Western blocs.

    It was with this wider backdrop in mind that Lee added that the “realities of the sociological and political milieu in Malaya and of the world of 1962 are that if you allow these shibboleths of ‘law and order’ to be uttered out of context” and without reference to “the actual social and political conditions we are in”, disaster may strike, simply because in “the last analysis if the state disintegrates then the rules of all laws must vanish”.

    Lee’s life mission: Fighting society’s entropy

    Years later, an insightful journalist suggested that to understand Lee Kuan Yew’s approach to governance, one must first appreciate how he had devoted his entire political career to fighting the “entropy” – the decay – of a society and its politics. This was something he had had first-hand experience with during his twilight struggles with the powerful, often violent Communist United Front in the Singapore of the 1950s and early 1960s.

    For Lee, the lesson from that struggle – quite clearly the defining experience that shaped his entire outlook on politics and governance – was clear: Singapore needed order as the wellspring of everything else – including especially the economic security that a polyglot, immigrant, multiracial society needed as an initial basis for glueing its disparate elements together.

    Lee’s ability to instinctively grasp – through the “fog” of both the internal political upheaval of the struggle with the Communists as well as the external instability of Konfrontasi of the 1960s – that political order and economic growth were the sine qua non of Singapore’s survival, was important. It was arguably one aspect of what the renowned 19th century Prussian military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz called coup d’oeil – “the rapid discovery of a truth which to the ordinary mind is either not visible at all or only becomes so after long examination and reflection”. Lee’s uncanny ability to dissect a complex situation under stress and chart a path forward was a measure of his coup d’oeil.

    But there is another aspect to coup d’oeil that is equally important and which Lee possessed in abundance: the “resolution” to overcome “the torments of doubt” and follow through despite the uncertainties expressed by all and sundry. In this respect, many commentators have noted Lee’s forcefulness in pursuing courses of action that were often seen as controversial and unpopular. Clear examples are the restrictions on foreign newspapers deemed to have interfered in Singapore’s domestic politics; unfettered religious proselytisation; family planning policies that some deemed promoted elitism; and of course defamation suits against those opponents whom Lee felt had impugned the political credibility he needed to govern optimally.

    Singapore’s political viability paramount

    What arguably tied all these various elements together, regardless of one’s sentiments about them, was one overriding consideration: Singapore’s continued political viability and prosperity. Lee consistently counseled resolute, eternal vigilance. This was the only stance he believed made sense in light of how the globalised nature of Singapore’s economy and polity rendered the country inescapably exposed to global and regional perturbations.

    A third element of the coup d’oeil that Lee appeared to possess was “presence of mind” – or the innate capacity to surmount the “unexpected” and pursue one’s aim to a successful conclusion. Make no mistake: Lee could certainly be pretty Machiavellian in his machinations with his political opponents in pursuit of his agendas. In July 1965, a mere month before Separation from Malaysia, Life magazine – quoting an unnamed “British high official in Singapore” – somewhat inelegantly described Lee as “the most brilliant man around, albeit just a bit of a thug”.

    But one must keep things in perspective: in an era when global Communism was elsewhere on the march, the Communists in Singapore – no strangers to cheerfully employing ruses and stratagems themselves to get their way – complained that they had found Lee’s PAP a match in “methods of political chicanery”. Lee Kuan Yew was no saint and never pretended to be one – but he possessed the “presence of mind” to defeat the Communists and set Singapore on a different trajectory.

    As it was said of Abraham Lincoln the day he passed away, Lee Kuan Yew himself now “belongs to the ages”. In the 1970s, a leading American politician once declared of Lee and Singapore: “The engine is too big for the boat”. Perhaps that may have been the case, but the gratitude of fair-minded Singaporeans is not likely to ever abate.

    About the Author

    Kumar Ramakrishna is Associate Professor and Head, Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS) at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. From 1 April 2015, he will assume the new appointment of Head of Policy Studies in the Office of the Executive Deputy Chairman, RSIS. This is the second in the series on the Legacy of Lee Kuan Yew.

    Categories: RSIS Commentary Series / International Politics and Security / Singapore and Homeland Security / Country and Region Studies / Southeast Asia and ASEAN

    Synopsis

    Former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s renowned intellectual, moral and political strengths played a major role in Singapore’s rise from Third World to First in one generation. Fair-minded Singaporeans are unlikely to forget his achievements.

    Commentary

    NOT LONG after the fall of Soviet Communism more than two decades ago now, the American Soviet specialist Jerry Hough created a stir when he declared that “Singapore had actually won the Cold War”. In a sense Hough was paying a compliment to the vision of Mr Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first Prime Minister.

    The emerging orthodoxy by the early 1990s was that the US-led Western bloc, organised according to the principles of liberal democracy and market capitalism, had trumped Soviet-style centralised political and economic planning. This was what had won the Cold War, as popularised by Francis Fukuyama’s famous “End of History” thesis. Hough’s claim about Singapore was thus startling because while Singapore had adopted market principles in economic organisation, its political system was not liberal democratic in a textbook sense, but rather a hybrid one. Then and now Singapore’s system of governance prioritised order as the basis for the rule of law. Hough was thus implying that there was also a Singapore model of governance that deserved wide appreciation.

    Lee’s view of order and rule of law

    Over the years Lee had had many detractors who chided his failure to adopt textbook liberal democratic methods in governing Singapore. They suggested that by so doing he was undermining the rule of law in Singapore. The critics totally misunderstood Lee’s perspective however. Lee saw the rule of law as utterly integral to the successful political and economic development of Singapore. However Lee’s view of the rule of law was one that was subordinate to Singapore’s needs and not vice versa. He rejected an un-contextualized, abstract conception of the law. In particular, the experiences of fighting the Communists in the 1950s and 1960s engendered in Lee the conviction that order must always precede and establish the basis for legal frameworks.

    In a speech to the University of Singapore Law Society on 18 January 1962, Lee argued that while in “a settled and established society, law appears to be a precursor of order” in emerging ones wracked by violence and subversion the reverse was often the case: “without order, the operation of law is impossible’’. At the time of this speech the Cold War was at its height and Singapore and Malaya were very much a frontline in the ideological and geopolitical conflict between the Eastern and Western blocs.

    It was with this wider backdrop in mind that Lee added that the “realities of the sociological and political milieu in Malaya and of the world of 1962 are that if you allow these shibboleths of ‘law and order’ to be uttered out of context” and without reference to “the actual social and political conditions we are in”, disaster may strike, simply because in “the last analysis if the state disintegrates then the rules of all laws must vanish”.

    Lee’s life mission: Fighting society’s entropy

    Years later, an insightful journalist suggested that to understand Lee Kuan Yew’s approach to governance, one must first appreciate how he had devoted his entire political career to fighting the “entropy” – the decay – of a society and its politics. This was something he had had first-hand experience with during his twilight struggles with the powerful, often violent Communist United Front in the Singapore of the 1950s and early 1960s.

    For Lee, the lesson from that struggle – quite clearly the defining experience that shaped his entire outlook on politics and governance – was clear: Singapore needed order as the wellspring of everything else – including especially the economic security that a polyglot, immigrant, multiracial society needed as an initial basis for glueing its disparate elements together.

    Lee’s ability to instinctively grasp – through the “fog” of both the internal political upheaval of the struggle with the Communists as well as the external instability of Konfrontasi of the 1960s – that political order and economic growth were the sine qua non of Singapore’s survival, was important. It was arguably one aspect of what the renowned 19th century Prussian military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz called coup d’oeil – “the rapid discovery of a truth which to the ordinary mind is either not visible at all or only becomes so after long examination and reflection”. Lee’s uncanny ability to dissect a complex situation under stress and chart a path forward was a measure of his coup d’oeil.

    But there is another aspect to coup d’oeil that is equally important and which Lee possessed in abundance: the “resolution” to overcome “the torments of doubt” and follow through despite the uncertainties expressed by all and sundry. In this respect, many commentators have noted Lee’s forcefulness in pursuing courses of action that were often seen as controversial and unpopular. Clear examples are the restrictions on foreign newspapers deemed to have interfered in Singapore’s domestic politics; unfettered religious proselytisation; family planning policies that some deemed promoted elitism; and of course defamation suits against those opponents whom Lee felt had impugned the political credibility he needed to govern optimally.

    Singapore’s political viability paramount

    What arguably tied all these various elements together, regardless of one’s sentiments about them, was one overriding consideration: Singapore’s continued political viability and prosperity. Lee consistently counseled resolute, eternal vigilance. This was the only stance he believed made sense in light of how the globalised nature of Singapore’s economy and polity rendered the country inescapably exposed to global and regional perturbations.

    A third element of the coup d’oeil that Lee appeared to possess was “presence of mind” – or the innate capacity to surmount the “unexpected” and pursue one’s aim to a successful conclusion. Make no mistake: Lee could certainly be pretty Machiavellian in his machinations with his political opponents in pursuit of his agendas. In July 1965, a mere month before Separation from Malaysia, Life magazine – quoting an unnamed “British high official in Singapore” – somewhat inelegantly described Lee as “the most brilliant man around, albeit just a bit of a thug”.

    But one must keep things in perspective: in an era when global Communism was elsewhere on the march, the Communists in Singapore – no strangers to cheerfully employing ruses and stratagems themselves to get their way – complained that they had found Lee’s PAP a match in “methods of political chicanery”. Lee Kuan Yew was no saint and never pretended to be one – but he possessed the “presence of mind” to defeat the Communists and set Singapore on a different trajectory.

    As it was said of Abraham Lincoln the day he passed away, Lee Kuan Yew himself now “belongs to the ages”. In the 1970s, a leading American politician once declared of Lee and Singapore: “The engine is too big for the boat”. Perhaps that may have been the case, but the gratitude of fair-minded Singaporeans is not likely to ever abate.

    About the Author

    Kumar Ramakrishna is Associate Professor and Head, Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS) at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. From 1 April 2015, he will assume the new appointment of Head of Policy Studies in the Office of the Executive Deputy Chairman, RSIS. This is the second in the series on the Legacy of Lee Kuan Yew.

    Categories: RSIS Commentary Series / International Politics and Security / Singapore and Homeland Security / Country and Region Studies

    Popular Links

    About RSISResearch ProgrammesGraduate EducationPublicationsEventsAdmissionsCareersVideo/Audio ChannelRSIS Intranet

    Connect with Us

    rsis.ntu
    rsis_ntu
    rsisntu
    rsisvideocast
    school/rsis-ntu
    rsis.sg
    rsissg
    RSIS
    RSS
    Subscribe to RSIS Publications
    Subscribe to RSIS Events

    Getting to RSIS

    Nanyang Technological University
    Block S4, Level B3,
    50 Nanyang Avenue,
    Singapore 639798

    Click here for direction to RSIS

    Get in Touch

      Copyright © S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. All rights reserved.
      Privacy Statement / Terms of Use
      Help us improve

        Rate your experience with this website
        123456
        Not satisfiedVery satisfied
        What did you like?
        0/255 characters
        What can be improved?
        0/255 characters
        Your email
        Please enter a valid email.
        Thank you for your feedback.
        This site uses cookies to offer you a better browsing experience. By continuing, you are agreeing to the use of cookies on your device as described in our privacy policy. Learn more
        OK
        Latest Book
        more info