NOV 25 — The Berlin Wall was built not to keep the West Germans out but to keep the East Germans in and to prevent them from escaping to a better world beyond. It symbolised a siege mentality. In a different era, the Great Wall of China was meant to keep nomadic barbarians out of China, but it too had an isolating influence.
Societies that welcome foreign ideas and influences, like Tang China and modern Singapore, were and are more dynamic, better able to adapt to change and progress faster. When countries isolate themselves, they decline or stagnate. One contemporary example is North Korea.
While walls are sometimes necessary for protection, it is better to build bridges. They can convert potential enemies into good friends and helpful neighbours.
How did the fall of the Berlin Wall affect Singapore?
• Singapore as a global trader: The end of the Cold War opened up economic spaces in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and Central Asia. These areas became more accessible to Singapore manufacturers and traders. The countries belonging to the former Soviet Union in particular had suffered more than 70 years of repressed demand for both producer and consumer goods and services, and so there was a rush from a number of countries to fulfil these demands.
• Singapore as part of globalisation: The entry of the former Warsaw Pact into the global market increased competition for investments, especially from Eastern Europe, which had a well-educated and talented workforce. Factories were uprooted as businesses shifted their manufacturing plants to China and other cheaper locations behind the now crumbled “Iron Curtain”.
But the addition of these new economies into the global market also increased the number of consumers. The rise of China and of India alone added more than 2.5 billion consumers — as well as competitors — to the global economy.
• Singapore as a small state: The fall of the wall liberated small states like those in the Baltics. This increased the number of like-minded countries with similar characteristics — such as a limited domestic market, security vulnerabilities and susceptibility to external political pressures from giant neighbours.
Being fully aware of these problems, Singapore is fully sympathetic to and supportive of small developing countries. A member of the Non-Aligned Movement, Singapore's resolute opposition to the Vietnamese invasion and occupation of Cambodia stemmed from its commitment to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of small states threatened by irredentist or otherwise hostile neighbours.
• Singapore's own walls: Every country has its own domestic walls. They exist in the minds of its people and are demonstrated in their behaviour.
Singaporeans have their walls of prejudice against foreign workers and walls of social separation. It will take time for us to become more self-aware and thus a better, more gracious and more understanding society, hence making it possible for these walls to come down.
• Singapore as a divided city removed from its hinterland: The economic success of Singapore since its independence in 1965 may have obscured, especially for the young, the circumstances in which it was ejected from its natural hinterland, Malaya.
In a sense, Singapore is similar to the former West Berlin, which was also physically separated from its hinterland, West Germany.
The Cold War afforded many small states like Singapore a certain amount of predictability, with the global political and security structures underpinned by two hegemonic superpowers. The succeeding era when there was only one superpower afforded small states less room for manoeuvre. A more anarchic system would be even worse, for it would not be pleasant for small states since they are liable to the predations of bullies. Kuwait was lucky that the world's policeman, the United States, did respond to its urgent calls for help; and it was lucky it had oil.
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the peaceful reunification of Germany offer hope for Asia, where there are still pending cases of divided territories: North and South Korea, and China and Taiwan.
The first lesson the German experience provides is that the process of reunification can occur peacefully, without conflict. Second, the process of integration can be smooth, though it might be expensive. And third, the newly united country can play a constructive role in the region, as Germany has done within the European Union.
The dismantling of walls, be they physical or metaphorical, and the liberating consequences they bring, can only be good news for Singapore. Its strategic and economic well-being depends so much on a stable and peaceful neighbourhood, regional openness, the free flow and exchange of ideas, the creative intermingling of cultural influences and the coexistence of different ethnic and religious communities. — The Straits Times
The writer is director of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. An earlier version of the above essay appeared in “Panorama”, a journal of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung.
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