A Study Of The Choice Of Singapore’s Security Strategies From The Perspective Of "Small Stateg’Security"

All these days have witnessed the neglect against small states for their negligible status and less say in the international systems, while the great powers have constantly dominated the international power politics from time to time. However, they succeed in standing still among the nations of the world with its unique politics, economics and cultures, which cannot be studied clearly only by the theory of studying great powers. Its uniqueness deserves a study and will offer some new perspectives to research international relations. For that reason, it carries critical significance to study small states and their behaviors for the theoretical development of international relations.As a matter of fact, the academic circle gets different views of what kind of states can be categorized as a small state. Some identify them on the basis of its populations, territory scales and other measurable statistics while others may classify them under its military and economic powers. After analyzing all these kinds of views, this thesis will take "The Theory of Three Dimensions" of Hans Geser as the theoretical basis to study the Small State Security Strategy of Singapore. Hans Geser defines the standards of small states under three aspects:"substantial smallness","relative small scales" and "subjective smallness". Substantially, Singapore has small population and territory scale; as for relative scales, it’s a "red pot" in Southeast Asia; subjectively, its crisis awareness also demonstrates its smallness. As small powers, they have to live with their low capacity owing to small scales and strong dependence of international relations. So they have to choose the pattern of "permanent neutrality","alliance" or "great power balance" to safeguard themselves. These patterns are double-edged swords and play influence of different levels in securing small states. As for Singapore, shortcomings in scale and squishing from international powers have continue to challenge its security, which brings different issues in different stages in Singapore, especially the "subsistence-maintaining issues" at the time when it struggled for its independence,"sovereignty-safeguarding issues" during the Cold War and "development-promoting issues" after the Cold War. All of these issues also kept threaten Singapore’s national security. While international situation keeps changing and different problems keeps emerging at home and abroad from time to time, Singapore constantly adapts itself to the situation and adjusts its foreign policy. Progressively, it forms its unique security strategies which take the "great power balance" strategy as the main support, supplemented by "double loop balance" strategy from deepening collaborations among ASEAN, to promote its strong economic development and stabilize its efficient power operations. That not only solves the problems which threats surviving and development, but also greatly improves Singapore’s international status. For now, Singapore plays more roles in the world compared with its scale. However, we should also analyze its shortness while applauding for its greatness. All above shows that small states may be born with sense of insecurity, but a good security strategy definitely can minimize the weakness of small states.