january / f e b r u a r y 2 oo7

The United States, Iraq,

and the War on Terror
A Singaporean Perspective

Lee Kuan Yew

Volume 86 • Number 1

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 The United States, Iraq,
and the War on Terror
A Singaporean Perspective

Lee Kuan Yew

The basic feature of U.S. foreign policy
during the Cold War was inclusiveness—
a willingness to embrace any country that
opposed communism, whatever its type of
government. The United States contested
the Soviet system and held the line militar-
ily, and its consistent and comprehensive
approach eventually led to the Soviet
Union’s implosion.
After the Cold War came the “war on
terror.” Islamist terrorists tried to bring
down the World Trade Center in 1993 and
bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania in 1998. Then came the attacks of
September 11, 2001. In response, the United
States attacked Afghanistan and routed the
Taliban. Then, in 2003, the United States
invaded Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein
and establish democracy there.
During the war on terror, however, the
United States has not been as inclusive as
it was in its war against communism. Aside
from those in the “coalition of the willing,”
even most European countries have dis-
tanced themselves from Washington.
The United States did not realize,
moreover, the depth of the fault lines in
Iraqi society—between Kurds and Arabs,
Sunnis and Shiites, and the members of
diªerent tribes and local religious groups.
These tensions were contained during
four centuries of Ottoman rule, and the
British, who took over from the Ottomans
in 1920, put Iraq under strong Sunni con-
trol, centered on Baghdad. Now, because
of the destruction of the old Iraqi society,
for the first time in centuries, power is in
the hands of the Iraqi Shiites.
With Sunni control of Iraq removed,
Shiite Iran is no longer checked from
extending its influence westward. And by
allowing the emergence of the first Shiite-
dominated Arab state, the United States
has stirred the political aspirations of the
150 million or so Shiites living in Sunni
countries elsewhere in the region.

Lee Kuan Yew is Minister Mentor of Singapore. He was Prime Minister of

Singapore from 1959 to 1990. This piece was adapted from a speech he deliv-
ered when accepting the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service in Octo-
ber 2006.

[2]
 The United States, Iraq, and the War on Terror
The United States has long relied on its
traditional Sunni Arab allies, such as
Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, to keep
the Arab-Israeli conflict in check. Now the
power of the Sunni bloc may no longer
be able to counter an Iran that supports
militias such as Hezbollah and Hamas
against Israel. The new Iraqi prime min-
ister, Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, found it
necessary to publicly support the Shiite
Hezbollah in Lebanon during the fighting
this past summer.
I am not among those who say that
it was wrong to have gone into Iraq to
remove Saddam and who now advocate
that the United States cut its losses and pull
out. This will not solve the problem. If
the United States leaves Iraq prematurely,
jihadists everywhere will be emboldened
to take the battle to Washington and its
friends and allies. Having defeated the
Russians in Afghanistan and the United
States in Iraq, they will believe that they
can change the world. Even worse, if civil
war breaks out in Iraq, the conflict will
destabilize the whole Middle East, as it
will draw in Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon,
Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey.
On Iraq, the Singaporean government
has been and is in firm support of President
George W. Bush and his team. We have
helped to train Iraqi police and have thrice
deployed a tank landing ship to the Gulf,
each time with about 170 personnel, a
c-130 detachment, and three separate
kc-135 detachments for air-to-air refueling
missions. President Bush was right to
invade Iraq to depose Saddam and try
to remove the weapons of mass destruction
that intelligence agencies in Europe and
the United States assessed Iraq to have had.
But I became nervous when the
United States disbanded the Iraqi army
fore ign affairs . January / February 2007
and police and dismissed all Baathists from
the Iraqi government. I feared this would
create a vacuum.
I recalled how when the Japanese
captured Singapore in February 1942
and took 90,000 British, Indian, and
Australian troops prisoner, they left the
police and the civil administration intact
and functioning—under the control of
Japanese military o⁄cers but with British
personnel still in charge of the essential
services, such as gas and electricity.
Except for a small garrison, most of the
30,000 Japanese invasion forces had left
Singapore and headed to Java within a
fortnight. Had the Japanese disbanded
the police and the civil administration
when they interned the British forces,
there would have been chaos.
Perceptions of U.S. unilateralism have
triggered an informal countercoalition of
necessity among those countries that oppose
the coalition of the willing. Many in this
countercoalition are not on the side of the
jihadists. Russia and China, along with
some European countries, have come
together simply to protect their interests
against what they perceive as U.S.
encroachment on their respective domains.
They have no fundamental conflict of
interest with the United States.
To isolate the jihadist groups, there-
fore, the United States must be more
multilateral in its approach and rally Eu-
rope, Russia, China, India, and all non-
Muslim governments to its cause, along
with many moderate Muslims. A world-
wide coalition is necessary to fight the
fires of hatred that the Islamist fanatics
are fanning. When moderate Muslim
governments, such as those in Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Persian Gulf states, Egypt,
and Jordan, feel comfortable associating
[3]
 corbis

Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore

themselves openly with a multilateral preparations, elections simply allow people

coalition against Islamist terrorism, the tide to vent their frustrations against the cor-
of battle will turn against the extremists. ruption and inadequacies of the incumbents
and vote in the opposition, regardless of its
REMAKING THE MIDDLE EAST characteristics. This is what led to Hamas’
The Bush administration has set out to gaining power in the Palestinian territories.
spread democracy in Iraq and the Middle A better start would be to concen-
East more generally. In the long run, trate on education, the emancipation
democracy can prevail, but the process of women, and the creation of economic
will not be easy. opportunity. Next should come a focus
A free and fair election, moreover, is on implementing the rule of law, strength-
not the best first step toward democracy in ening the independence of the courts,
a country that has no history or tradition and building up the civil-society insti-
of self-government. Without adequate tutions necessary for democracy. Only

[4] fore ign affairs . Volume 86 No. 1

then will free elections lead to a more
democratic order.
To think that Iraq can go from dictator-
ship to democracy via two elections in
three years is to expect too much. Such
a transformation is an eªort for the long
haul, well beyond the two- and four-year
U.S. electoral cycles.
In its struggles today, the United States
should remember the principles and policies
that guided its responses to Cold War
threats and accept that no single power,
religion, or ideology can conquer the world
or remake it in its own image. The world is
too diverse. Diªerent races, cultures,
religions, languages, and histories require
diªerent paths to democracy and the free
market. Societies in a globalized world
will influence and aªect one another. And
what social system best meets the needs
of a people at a particular stage in their
development will be settled internally.
Regarding the rest of the Middle East,
Singapore is much indebted to Israel.
When we became independent in 1965,
Israel was the only country that helped us
build a citizen army. The Israeli colonel
who led a team of ten o⁄cers from 1966
to 1968 revisited Singapore as a brigadier
general a decade later and was surprised
at our economic progress. He lamented
the slower economic progress in Israel.
I told him we had been at peace with our
neighbors and that Singapore’s armed
forces were a deterrent, a weapon of last
resort against adventurism by any country.
Israel, on the other hand, had been engaged
in successive wars.
To solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
there must be two states, one for Israel
and another for the Palestinians. But the
latter must be viable, one for which peace
is worth making. The United States should

[5]

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[6]
urge Israel to encourage such a Palestinian
state to emerge and help it prosper—for
the Palestinians will have reason to avoid
war if war will destroy the future they are
building for themselves.
Progress on the Israeli-Palestinian issue
would not just be beneficial in its own
right but would also relieve Sunni Arab
discontent that arises from the perception
that their countries acquiesce in U.S. sup-
port for Israel against Palestinian interests.
If the United States were seen to actively
support the peace process with the goal
of a two-state solution, Sunni governments
would be more likely to openly support
U.S. policies for peace in the greater
Middle East.
As for Iran, it is publicly committed to
the destruction of Israel and will try to
sabotage any peace settlement, because the
continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict is necessary for its fight against
the Sunni Arab states for leadership of the
Muslim world. Encouraged by North
Korea’s recent nuclear test, Iran will press
ahead with its own nuclear program. If
and when Tehran gets su⁄cient fissile
material, the balance of power in the Gulf
will be fundamentally changed. The Iranian
problem will eclipse the Iraqi problem and
be at the top of the international agenda.
And if Iran’s theocracy succeeds, it, not
democracy, will be seen as the way of the
future for many in Muslim countries.
COLLATERAL BENEFITS
The reason I am so focused on the Middle
East is that my first close interaction with
the United States grew out of the country’s
involvement in a previous painful struggle,
that in Vietnam. Between 1966 and 1971,
American leaders used to stop by Singapore
after visiting South Vietnam to discuss
 The United States, Iraq, and the War on Terror
the regional situation with me. Washington includes Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkmen,
had sent in some 500,000 troops without and others; and is not manipulated by
su⁄cient knowledge of the history of the any of its neighbors represents an outcome
Vietnamese people and paid a huge price that would accord with the interests of
in blood, treasure, prestige, and confidence the United States, Iraq’s neighbors, and the
as a result. wider world. Washington should there-
Conventional wisdom in the 1970s saw fore bring all of Iraq’s neighbors into the
the war in Vietnam as an unmitigated process of achieving this objective.
disaster. But that has been proved wrong. The next president will face a new world.
The war had collateral benefits, buying the There will be not just Iraq but also Iran
time and creating the conditions that to contend with, and the long-term fight
enabled noncommunist East Asia to follow against Islamist militants will still only
Japan’s path and develop into the four be in its early rounds. But the United
dragons (Hong Kong, Singapore, South States overcame the setbacks of the war
Korea, and Taiwan) and, later, the four in Vietnam, checkmated Soviet expansion,
tigers (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and became the indispensable superpower.
and Thailand). Time brought about the With a wide coalition and a proper attitude,
split between Moscow and Beijing and the United States can prevail now as well.∂
then a split between Beijing and Hanoi.
The influence of the four dragons and the
four tigers, in turn, changed both com-
munist China and communist Vietnam
into open, free-market economies and made
their societies freer.
The conventional wisdom now is that
the war in Iraq is also an unmitigated
disaster. But if the troubles in Iraq are
addressed in a resolute, rather than a
defeatist, manner, today’s conventional
wisdom can be proved wrong as well. A
stabilized, less repressive Iraq, with its
diªerent ethnic and religious communities
accepting one another in some devolved
framework, can be a liberating influence
in the Middle East.
The challenge now, as in the 1970s, is
for the United States to find an honorable
exit from a conflict that developed in an
unexpected way. Once begun, however,
the problem has to be seen through to the
finish so that irreparable damage is not
done to the United States and the world at
large. An Iraq that coheres as one state;

fore ign affairs . January / February 2007 [7]