SPEECH BY MRRAJARATHAN,
S
MINISTER FOR FOREIGNAFFAIRS
REPUBLIC OF SINGAPORE, AT A LUNCHEONHOSTEDBY THE FOREIGN
CORRESPONDENTS
CLUB IN TOKYOON WEDNESDAY,16 APRIL 1980.
First of all let me say how pleased I am to have been
invited
to address so august a body as the Foreign Correspondents
Club. However it is my hope that at the end of my discourse you
will have no reason to regret your hospitality.
This is because
the topic I have chosen is decidedly unpleasant end possibly
dangerous for a Foreign Minister to discuss publicly.
I have
nevertheless
decided to take the risk because I think the
question is one which will most certainly
decide the shape and
character
of the world of the 21st century
And the question
is this:
Will
- only 20 years
the 21st century
away.
see
the end of the non-Communist, largely capitalist,
world order
and its supersession by a new Communist World Order.
In the non-Communist world a question
such es this
has
for long been considered both unfashionable
end reactionary.
It is the language of antiquated Cold War mischief makers.
The
progressive
view, authored largely by the Soviets, was implicit
faith in detente and peaceful cc-existence
between different
social systems on the basis of mutual respect and non-terference
in one another's
internal
affairs.
catechism right - more or less.
I believe
I have got the
This is the catechism but the reality
is something else
Let us consider what detente and peaceful coaltogether.
existence has achieved for the Conmmunist world under Soviet
leadership
and for the non-Communist world under the leadership
of nobody in particular.
2
First,
the Soviet
balance
sheet.
was only one, somewhat precarious,
Before World War II,
Communist state
there
in the world - the
That
Soviet Union.
It was not even a power, lot alone a super-power.
of
was the time when Russian plumbing and the chronic inability
Communist nujiks to establish
any kind of report
with even the simplest
of machines were occasions for complacent hilarity among
capitalist.
powers than lording it over vast empires.
Socialism in one country,
as Stalin said it
would be,lulled
the Western world into complacency.
The Western world predicted that Socialism in one country would sooner
or later collapse and Russia would return to the capitalist
fold.
The post-war boon reinforced
the belief that capitalism
was indestructible.
Today, some 60 years later,
capacity to establish
machineryespecially
MO laugh loss about Russian
a working
relationship
with complex and intricate
the machinery of war. Maybe their plumbing
is still
not up to scratch old and
their watches are like
clocks compared to the sleek smooth products of the capitalist
It
is possible
that
the Soviets
have lost
grandfather
world.
out on plumbing
and watches but they have been steadily
winning a more important war
Please go
through skilful
use of detente and peaceful-coexistence.
back to your atlas and contemplate it.
Here it is the Russians who
have every reason for hilarity.
It more than compensates for having
lost, out on plumbing and watches.
As they gaze at the atlas
they know that the Soviet
century
is taking shape beautifully
and what is even more encouraging, largely
unnoticed by the non-Communist,world,
Today the Communist world
stretches
from the Berlin Wall, across Soviet Asia, down East Asia and
South East to terminate,
for the time being, along Thailand's
borders.
Except for China. and North Korea all the other states acknowledge the
undisputed and indisputable
leadership
of the expanding Communist world
the Soviet Union is creating over our heads,
Add to this massive Communist Euro-Asian bloo Soviet outposts
in Nicaragua, Cuba, Angela, Mozambique, Cranada, Ethiopia,
South
Yemen and even a few islands
north
of Japan.
3
And how has the non-Communist world fared under detente
and peaceful co-existence.
As the Soviet power end influence
has grown so has that of the non-Communist powers ceaselessly
Not only have the vast Western Empires disappeared but
shrunk.
a number of their former dependencies have entered
seriously
considering
entering the emerging Soviet
or are
world order.
Under the euphoria of detente end peaceful co-existence
non-Communist powers have of their own volition
clipped
their molars to convince
claws and extracted
Soviets that they are peace-loving
lions.
the
their
the appreciative
The consequence is that the military
end strategic
superiority
that the non-Communist powers had even as late
1965 has now been largely lost to the Soviets.
Today the
Soviets have established
conventional. military
superiority
Europe and global strategic
parity with the United States.
fact
Soviet
comparison
the Soviet
ally,forging
militarisation.
The
becomes a
a country
wars so much so that
may one day have to be manufactured
after
moment
of ploughshares into a words is the major
Loyal Cuba exports soldiers
to Africa and else-
preoccupation.
where to spread revolutionary
years
in
In
military
capacity is somewhat greater than the above
Most of the 21 countries currently
within
suggests.
orbit are not areas of peaceful socialist
construction
but of intensive
Soviet
as
the end of three
in Japan.
Cuban cigars
Less than three
decades of anti-imperialist
wars,
the peoples of Vietnam arc once again waging war against a
former comrade in arms. It is estimated that there are nearly
a million
Vietnamese under arms today - more then when the
Vietnamese were fighting
the Americans.
Everyone
knows
that
it
is Soviet rather then Vietnamese economy which is fuelling
Vietnamese fighting
spirit , Were the Soviets to turn off aid
for a week the Vietnamese military
machine will come to a
grinding
halt.
Nevertheless
world is
moves in
majority
vention
the Soviets
their
the fact
remains that the
non-Communist
unable to make any credible response to Soviet military
True the overwhelming
either Kampuchea or Afghanistan.
of U.N. members have censured Communist armed interin Kampuchea and Afghanistan.
But this has not deterred
and their
friends
from persisting
in end intensifying
armed intervention.
. . . ../4.
*
4
over,
is it
So the question the non-Communists should seriously
ponder
in the light of the balance-sheet
I have made, is this:
How
it that detente and peaceful co-existence
have resulted in the
Soviet world growing bigger and stronger while the non-Communist world
has by that much grown smaller and weaker? Unless we take a second
look at detente
doubt that
and peaceful
those admirable
co-existence,
concepts will
I have not the slightest
continua
advantage of the Soviet Union and if it persists
than the 21st century must be a Soviet century.
l
Look at the atlas again and you will
War alarmism.
As of today industrial
geopelitically
no more than an appendage of
the other end is industrial
Japan - also an
next decade or so West,South and South-East
Cold
within
the Soviet
Orbit,
African
and
realise
that
this
is no
Western Europe is
a Soviet Euro-Asia.
At
appendage. If over the
Asia could be brought
as they well might be, then the Soviets
no Serious problem getting
wag the right way.
have
Then
to work to the
over the eighties
the
two
the two tails
Americas,
of Soviet
deprived
Euro-Asia
will
to
Of the industrial
powerhouses of Western Europe and Japan, would have no choice but to
adjust to the reality
of a Soviet century.
authority
Am I indulging in political
melodrama in saying this?
What
have I for saying that Soviet ambition is the establishment
of a Communist World Order under their
leadership?
I have as my authority
the real experts On Soviet policy - the
men who shape and implement Soviet policy.
These are the Soviet leaders
themselves and their ideologies.
Read the recent - and not so recent This year Pravda, New Times, Isvestia
speeches Of Soviet leaders.
,
and other Community journals have openly declared that world capitalism,
as Marx predicted,
has reached its final stages of decline and that
now is the time to launch the prophesied world socialist
revolution
I documented these and other statements
headed by the Soviet Union.
by world Communist leaders in speeches I made recently.
For example
an article
in the New Times of January this year expanded Mr Brezhnev's
doctrine asserting that it was the "international
duty" of all Communists
5
to provide moral,
political
and military
assistance
not only to
threatened members of the Scviet socialist
bloc, which was the
original
Brezhnev doctrine,
but now also to revolutionary
regimes
everywhere.
Towards this
have invited
all
Paris next week.
of
Communist parties
fraternal
dissolution
in 1958.
fraternal
end the French and Polish
Communist parties
European Communist parties to attend a meeting in
Its purpose is to rivive the disciplined
direction
lost
as a result
of the tactical
of the Comintern in 1943 and its successor the Cominform
Every time the Soviets are on the political
offensive
Communist parties
are brought under strictor
Kremlin
discipline.
Therefore
possible
the question
for the Soviet Union
we should ask ourselves
on the basic
of detente
in: How was it
and peaceful co-
existance to
tip the balance of power in its favour in loss than 15
years? If Soviet power continues to grow at this rate there is no
doubt who will emerge No. 1 within the next 20 years.
It cannot be
the economic attractions of
the Soviet
After over 60 years of socialism the vast and potentially
empire has to supplement its food needs with capitalist
system.
rich Soviet
fodder.
For
a superpower the Soviet share of world trade
does not approach even
Where the Soviet economic system has
that of the Asean countries.
been transplanted
in developing countries it has been disastrous.
Three years after
winning independence, socialist
Vietnam has abandoned
Even more tolling is
the
reconstruction
in favour of world revolution.
case of Cuba which has been experimenting with Marxist economy
for
When thousands of Cubans demand emigration to a poor
some 20 years.
country like PEru, it requires indemitable
faith to believe in the
superiority
of the Soviet economic system.
l
6
Nor can,it be the political attraction
of the Soviet system.
The Berlin Wall, it is no secret, was designed not to keep the class
enemy out but to keep citizens
in.
Were the leaders of the Soviet
bloc countries to emulate President Castro's example we would have
one of the greatest
statistics
migrations of
published
last
recent
times.
According
to U.N.
year it had some 12,400,OOO people registered
as refugees in that year.
It does not take into account emigration,
legal and illegal
or those who perished in the attempt to become
Of this roughly 12.5 million only 446,000 claimed to be
refugees.
refugees from capitalist
oppression.
As against this same nine to
ten million had fled from states which had gone Marxist.
Nor can it be said that the majority
of the world's nations
approve of Soviet foreign policy.
The Soviets may be on the side of
these countries which for one reason or another adopt policies
hostile
to capitalist
powers but that does not mean these countries
are proThe recent voting on the questions of Kampuchea and Afghanistan
Soviet.
clearly
Soviet
demonstrated that the overwhelming majority
are dead against
expansionist
policies.
In fact only 20 or 80 of the 160 members
in the U.M. are c&idly
with Soviet
policy.
How then are we to explain the apparently
dominant position
of the Soviets in world politics
- its treatment as a power to be
respected, even feared and not to be trifled
with.
power-
Contact this with treatment accorded to the only other supercapitalist America
In terms of real strength the United
States and its allies
are far superior to what the Soviet Union can
The economic and political
attractions
of the non-Communist
mobilise.
powers can never be matched by the Soviet Union and its allies.
The
overwhelming
this
of the world's nations are non-Communist and to
in frustrating
a world Communist order.
a common interest
majority
extent has
Yet an anti-Communist
about humiliating
Iron has not the slightest compunction
America by taking
its
diplomats
as hostage.
. ../7.
As against this consider what happened when Iranians,
angered by the Russian invasion of Afghanistan,
marched to the
immediately sent troops to
Soviet embassy. The authorities
guard Soviet diplomatic personnel
You do not muck about with
the Soviets.
I mention this
merely to underline
my point that
even
those of us who may have deep distrust
of Soviet policies
are
constrained
to treat Soviet power with great circumspection
and
The Soviets can project
respect.
than what they actually possess.
an image of power greater
There is no mystery about how they do this.
Even if
they are relatively
weaker, we know that the Soviets will not
hesitate
to use their power where their vital
interests
and
prestige
are involved.
I attribute
Soviet
success to one and one thing
only -
a superb foreign policy.
It has style and class and if the noncommunist powers have anything to learn this is one area where
It is the foreign policy of a nation
the Soviets excel,
dotermined to be No. 1.
It has to do both the quality
formulates
and implements foreign
of the leadership
policy.
which
It has to do with
building
up a great and coherent vision of what it is that a
great power wants to achieve and how to achieve it.
It means
total
dedication
by the leaders
to this
great
cause to which
they subordinate
their personal interests
and their little
vanities
and for the achievement of which they mobilise their
people to make temporary sacrifices
and endure hardship.
The Soviet leadership knows that world leadership
cannot
the Soviet
be bought on the cheap. The game of power politics,
leadera are aware, cannot be played using the abacus and the
Book of Saints as the sole guides.
If you want to be the
play
the power game according
No.1
to its
great
rules.
power
then you must
8
And the Soviets,
have played
according
it
must be said to their
credit
and honour,
to the rules.
It is now being alleged that
Mr Brezhnev has been deceitful
and dishonourable
about detente and
He has been no more so than his adversarios.
peaceful co-existence.
On the evidence he has been less so than his adversaries.
Lot me quote from a public
statement
made by Mr Brezhnev
(and
reiterated by
his supporters since than) in June 1972 when the
principles
of detente Were endorsed by all concerned.
This is what
he said:
peaceful
reiterated
Where is the deception?
He states quite categorionlly
that
co-existence does not mean the abandonment of the publicly
historic
mission of the Soviet Union to bury capitalism.
To give substance to his interpretation
soon after
signing
of
the principles
of detente
of detente
Mr Brezhnev
and co-existence,
launched largely
through proxise a succession of revolutionary
wars
the yem kipper war, the
air-lifting
of Cuban troops'to
light up
the war in Ethiopia,
the overthrow of
revolutionary
wars in Africa,
the non-Communist Government of President Daud in Afghanistan,
,
the invasion of kampuchea
revolutions
in Nicaragua,Angela,
Mozambique
and the invasion
of North Yemen culminating
in direct
intervention
in Afghanistan.
Despite these clear evidence
of what the Soviets meant by
the non-communist world asserted that the
peaceful co-existence
Mr Brozbnev
spirit
of detente was growing from strenth
to strength.
assumed that
his interpretation
of detente
was not being contested.
If
the foreign
policy
of the non-Communist powers can
match
that of the Soviet Union in class, style and coherence then even
Mr Brezhnev would have peace of mind. There is no more dangerous
adversary
without
in this
nuclear
regard to its
inadvertently
rules
age than one who plays the power game
such an adversary could
and etiquette.
press the wrong button.
----m-