Two years after a failed union with its larger neighbour Malaysia, Singapore was cast adrift under its first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew. In the years immediately following its independence, Singapore was faced with the daunting task of navigating a complex geopolitical environment set against the backdrop of the Cold War. Singapore had to contend with the intricacies of containment, communism, and anti-colonialist sentiments on the ground. My dissertation takes a closer look at how these competing priorities were affected by the Vietnam War, and how in turn that affected the Singapore-US relationship.
Singapore’s independence in 1965 coincided with one of the biggest developments in modern Southeast Asian history: the introduction of US ground forces in the Vietnam War, representing an unprecedented escalation of American involvement in the region. With the introduction of US troops, Vietnam – and Southeast Asia – became a major battleground of the Cold War. That said, the vast majority of previous historiography in the field contends only with US involvement in the war and has paid little attention to the impact the Vietnam War has had on third countries that were not directly involved in the conflict. In particular, there is little literature on the connections between Singapore and the war besides a short piece by historian Ang Cheng Guan.
This dissertation lies at the intersection of two bodies of scholarly literature: the history of the Vietnam War, and that of Singapore-US relations. In the first category, the overwhelming majority of work is naturally focused on the parties to the conflict. There is little literature tying Singapore to the Vietnam War, which is no surprise given that Singapore was not a party to the conflict. Ang Cheng Guan, a Singaporean historian, attempts to draw some links and fill in the gap by suggesting that “the two are not unrelated”[1]. His work focuses, however, on Singapore’s attitudes towards the war, primarily, US involvement in it, and not the Singapore-US relationship. While in other works he alludes to some background context on the state of affairs between Singapore and the US, in particular Lee’s anti-Americanism in the early years, it is not the focus of his piece.
In the second category, Daniel Chua is much more ambitious with his book which surveys the state of Singapore-US relations across a ten-year period from 1965 to 1975[2]. He charts the evolution of the relationship from Lee’s initial anti-Americanism to the eventual partnership and even embrace of the US by the time of the Nixon administration. He lays out the major factors at play, but even then, his work has only minor consideration of the Vietnam War as an aspect of the relationship. In the initial period of Singapore-US relations, Daniel Chua argues, three factors were at play – Lee’s desire to gain recognition from the Afro-Asian countries by appearing non-aligned, the possibility of British withdrawal from Singapore, and Lee’s perception that the US was unfairly close to the Malaysians. A similar opinion has been voiced in Chan Heng Chee’s writing regarding Lee’s desire to “assert strongly his country’s genuine non-alignment”[3]. Some of these explanations are revisited in the final substantive chapter of the dissertation, which considers other factors unrelated to the Vietnam War that impacted the Singapore-US relationship.
The other significant book-length work on Singapore-US relations is by Joey Long but focuses on the historical background of the relationship in the 1950s[4]. His work provides a crucial backdrop for the dissertation by underlining the significance of Singapore’s strategic geographical location to the Americans even before 1965. He further argues that the Eisenhower administration succeeded in leaving a favourable impression of the US among Singaporeans. There are similar works in the literature, but all focus on a different time periods or provide little consideration of the Vietnam War’s impact. Wen-Qing Ngoei, another Singaporean academic, briefly considers the role of America in the region in the context of the Cold War, which naturally includes the Vietnam War as one of its conflicts.[5] However, he only provides a small piece of the much larger puzzle.
Given American involvement in such a significant regional conflict, understanding the impact the Vietnam War had on the Singapore-US relationship is an important angle. My work is an attempt to build on the existing literature and contribute to the discussion by looking at the finer points of the relationship in the shadow of the Vietnam War and Singapore’s independence, and from there construct a theory of how and why Singapore-US relations evolved during the period from 1965-1968. Crucially, the dissertation considers if the Vietnam War in the years 1965-68 had any impact on the Singapore-US relationship, and if so, in which dimensions and to what extent.
By looking at documents from the National Archives at College Park (NACP), Maryland[6] as well as newspapers from Singapore’s Lee Kong Chian (LKC) Reference Library’s[7] collection, my work charts the path of Singapore-US Relations across the four years. Broadly speaking, Singapore’s relationship with the US across 1965 to 1968 can be described as evolving from animosity to pragmatic partnership. These four years saw a general positive turn in the relationship and were punctuated by a few key events.
Notably, almost immediately upon Singapore’s independence from Malaysia in August 1965, its attitude towards the United States was one of animosity, with the government described in a US Department of State Intelligence Note as “somewhat contemptuous of Americans.” As the dissertation argues, this avowed stance was mostly showmanship, used to portray a certain image of Singapore as non-aligned and neutral, both to domestic and international audiences. Despite this, the relationship between Singapore and the US did not get off on the best foot.
In a televised interview in August 1965, one of Lee’s first since Singapore’s separation from Malaysia, Lee put on full display his strain of anti-Americanism, most prominently citing an attempt by the CIA to penetrate the Singapore Police and an incident relating to his wife’s illness and the unsuccessful attempt to bring an American doctor to Singapore for treatment, among others. This outburst, described by some as surprising or “seemingly senseless,” hinted at what was to come for the Singapore-US relationship. In addition, it also provided an avenue to understanding the reasons behind Lee’s dislike of the Americans, which my dissertation examines in greater detail.
One of Lee’s accusations was that the CIA attempted to penetrate the Singapore Police in 1960, and when that failed, offered a bribe of US$3 million. According to this narrative, the CIA agent tried to buy over a Singaporean police officer in exchange for continuous intelligence being channelled to the CIA. When the police officer in question refused the bribe and turned the matter over to his superiors, Lee was offered a larger bribe by the CIA agent, which arguably provoked Lee’s anger. In his mind, the entire affair demonstrated the Americans’ lack of regard for the Singapore government, seeing it as “an insult.” The incident also cemented in Lee the belief that the US lacked “finesse” in its dealings with foreign governments, something he saw in the British, by comparison. The evidence suggests that Lee from the very beginning harboured a strong dislike of the Americans, even as he was aware that they would be vital for Singapore’s growth and survival. This sets the backdrop of the initial state of Singapore-US relations.
Eventually, my dissertation argues that Singapore-US relations were indeed affected by the Vietnam War and American involvement in it, but only to a marginal extent. This happened largely as Lee Kuan Yew and Singapore were keen to create an image of being non-aligned in the early days of Singapore’s independence, attempting to distance themselves from the Americans who were heavily involved in Vietnam and tainted by that involvement. As explored throughout, my dissertation finds that Lee Kuan Yew attempted to pander to certain international and domestic audiences, which affected Singapore’s US foreign policy as well as its foreign policy at large. However, even this factor was only marginal. Eventually, the relationship has to be understood in the light of larger forces at play: the British withdrawal from East of Suez, America’s broader interests in Singapore and the region, as well as Singapore’s own core interests outside of the Vietnam War. These arguments are explored in greater detail and are supported by primary sources in my dissertation. My dissertation thus offers an in-depth exploration of the socio-political and economic impacts of the Vietnam War on the Singapore-US relationship, and how these competing priorities played out. The American and British angles on the issue are also considered.
Overall, my dissertation has contributed to the literature in two ways.
First, it established a framework for thinking about how the Vietnam War
impacted third countries that were not party to the war, Singapore in this
case. It further considered how this impact extended to Singapore’s
relationship with the United States. Second, it contributed to the broader
historiography of the Vietnam War and Cold War-era international relations by
highlighting how smaller states like Singapore navigated the turbulent geopolitical
landscape of the period. In particular, there is agreement here with historians
like Ang Cheng Guanthat there is indeed some relation between
Singapore and the Vietnam War worthy of consideration. However, in the context
of Singapore-US relations, this appears not to be anything substantial.
Furthermore, despite his minor consideration of the Vietnam War, Daniel Chua
asserts the “complicity of…Singapore…in prolonging the Vietnam War” by encouraging
the US to stay on. This paper concludes by refuting this assertion, because it
has found that the Vietnam War was only a minor factor in Singapore-US
relations, and so the idea that Singapore could have compelled US policy on this
front can reasonably be considered to be implausible.
[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/27751567
[2] https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1xxzsn
[3] https://www.nlb.gov.sg/main/book-detail?cmsuuid=2e3095fd-2a0d-4147-a0eb-2353db92cadd
[4] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09592296.2012.706547
[5] https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501716416/arc-of-containment/
[6] https://www.archives.gov/college-park
[7] https://www.nlb.gov.sg/main/visit-us/our-libraries-and-locations/libraries/national-library-singapore/lee-kong-chian-reference-library
*About the research: This blog is based on the Author’s dissertation for his LSE-PKU Double Masters in International Affairs, for which the Author was awarded SEAC’s Dissertation Fieldwork Grant.
*Research conducted at the National Archives in Maryland was supported by the Richard Strauss travel bursary provided by the International History Department at the LSE.
*The views expressed in the blog are those of the authors alone. They do not reflect the position of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, nor that of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Cover photo by the Author
