provides the critical standardized metric for employers—all of whom know what it means to be an officer or to have served in an elite unit.
CHAPTER 5
Where Order Meets Chaos
—AMOS OZ
ABOUT THIRTY NATIONS have compulsory military service that lasts longer than eighteen months. Most of these countries are developing or nondemocratic or both. But among first-world countries, only three require such a lengthy period of military service: Israel, South Korea, and Singapore. Not surprisingly, all three face long-standing existential threats or have fought wars for survival in recent memory.1
For Israel, the threat to its existence began before it had become a sovereign nation. Beginning in the 1920s, the Arab world resisted the establishment of a national Jewish state in Palestine, then sought to defeat or weaken Israel in numerous wars. South Korea has lived under a constant threat from North Korea, which has a large standing army poised just a few miles from Seoul, South Korea’s capital. And Singapore lives with memories of the occupation by Japan during World War II, its recent struggle for independence, which culminated in 1965, and the volatile period that followed.
Singaporean National Service was introduced in 1967. “We had to defend ourselves. It was a matter of survival. As a small country with a small population, the only way we could build a force of sufficient size . . . was through conscription,” explained Defense Minister Teo Chee Hean. “It was a decision not taken lightly given the significant impact that conscription would have on every Singaporean. But there was no alternative.”2
At independence, Singapore had only two infantry regiments, and they had been created and were commanded by the British. Two-thirds of the soldiers were not even residents of Singapore. Looking for ideas, the city-state’s first defense minister, Goh Keng Swee, called Mordechai Kidron, the former Israeli ambassador to Thailand, whom he had gotten to know while the two men were working in Asia. “Goh told us that they thought that only Israel, a small country surrounded by Muslim countries, . . . could help them build a small, dynamic army,” Kidron has said.3
Singapore gained independence twice over the course of just two years. The first was independence from the British in 1963, as part of Malaysia. The second was independence from Malaysia, in 1965, to stave off civil war. Singapore’s current prime minister, Goh Chok Tong, described his country’s relations with Malaysia as having remained tense after an “unhappy marriage and acrimonious divorce.” Singaporeans also feared threats from Indonesia, all while an armed Communist insurgency was looming just to Singapore’s north, in Indochina.
In response to Goh’s pleas for help, the IDF tasked Lieutenant Colonel Yehuda Golan with writing two manuals for the nascent Singaporean army: one on combat doctrine and the structure of a defense ministry and another on intelligence institutions. Later, six IDF officers and their families moved to Singapore to train soldiers and create a conscription-based army.
Along with compulsory service and a career army, Singapore also adopted elements of the IDF’s model of reserve service. Every soldier who completes his regular service is obligated to serve for short stints every year, until the age of thirty-three.
For Singapore’s founding generation, national service was about more than just defense. “Singaporeans of all strata of society would train shoulder to shoulder in the rain and hot sun, run up hills together, and learn to fight as a team in jungles and built-up areas. Their common experience in National Service would bond them, and shape the Singapore identity and character,” Prime Minister Goh said on the Singaporean military’s thirty-fifth anniversary.
“We are still evolving as a nation,” Goh continued. “Our forefathers were immigrants. . . . They say that in National Service, everyone—whether Chinese, Malay, Indian, or Eurasian—is of the same color: a deep, sunburnt brown! When they learn to fight as one unit, they begin to trust, respect, and believe in one another. Should we ever have to go to war to defend Singapore, they will fight for their buddies in their platoon as much as for the country.”4
Substitute “Israel” for “Singapore,” and this speech could have been delivered by David Ben-Gurion.
Although Singapore’s military is modeled after the IDF—the testing ground for many of Israel’s entrepreneurs —the “Asian Tiger” has failed to incubate start-ups. Why?
It’s not that Singapore’s growth hasn’t been impressive. Real per capita GDP, at over U.S. $35,000, is one of the highest in the world, and real GDP growth has averaged 8 percent annually since the nation’s founding. But its growth story notwithstanding, Singapore’s leaders have failed to keep up in a world that puts a high premium on a trio of attributes historically alien to Singapore’s culture: initiative, risk-taking, and agility.
A growing awareness of the risk-taking gap prompted Singapore’s finance minister, Tharman Shanmugaratnam,
