#snfo

The story out there is that we become soldiers because the British ditched us in 1941. Singapore- a colony, reliant on the mighty English. Yet it was our grandmothers who were raped when the Japanese came to invade. So when our teenaged boys bear arms today, it is with salient awareness that we do so because we want Singapore to be free (to be free, ya). 

Yet reality could not be more divergent. World War II was the war between the exclusive nation state. Aryan supremacists, Japanese militarism, fascist Italy, Thaification.  It was a quest for empire to benefit the people of the nation. Hitler fought for Anchluss and Lebensraum. The Co-Prosperity Sphere was a big farce. Southeast Asian resources were all diverted back to Japan to support the war effort. It was Darwinism in international politics, fought based on the notion of the nation state. 

Today, nationalism in Europe is a dirty word. Germany is on the ascent again, booming in the European Union, yet it does not sing über alles in der welt. This notion permeates the German psyche, influencing actual policy. Despite clearly being a member of the Western alliance, Germany abstained from the vote to establish no-fly zones in Libya because it was shunning its militarist, nationalist past. It leads awkwardly in the EU today, because of WWII legacies. European politics today is still shrouded in a cloud of political correctness. 

The atmosphere in Asia today could not be more different. Pakistan and India, China and Japan, China and Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia, Malaysia and Singapore. The lines on the map are drawn in permanent marker, the Asian Schengen highly unrealistic. Yet despite this heightened state of nationalist sentiment (not unlike Europe of the 1930s), war has been largely replaced by diplomacy. An alphabet soup of regional summits, groupings and treaties have showed an Asian commitment to peace despite the deep divisions between each country. 

It is thus in this context that Singapore conducts its foreign policy. Asia has as much historical baggage as Europe, ties still as sensitive. Yasukuni visits still trigger massive demonstrations in front of Japanese embassies. Border skirmishes in the past decade are aplenty. In the 21st Century though, the prospect of all-out war is frankly, unpalatable. The Middle East is hardly a model for the Asian renaissance. GDP growth figures remain paramount amongst Asian politicians and war would mess all that up. No, Asian politicians will replace war with diplomacy and live peacefully and (more importantly) wealthily. 

Yet diplomacy functioning atop a region rive with historical baggage is difficult. Instead of a convergence in national interests that produced the European Union, ASEAN instead adopts the ASEAN Way, a philosophy that emphasizes similarities and sweeps differences under the carpet. Raison d'etat is distinct from regional integration. Yet these vastly different forces are moving at the same speed. The result is finely-tuned foreign policy and calibrated diplomacy to avoid a massive collision. 

This is where our army comes in. Soldiers today don't take up arms to fight the boogeyman. There is no boogeyman, the Japanese in 1941 no longer exists. Instead what we face is a chessboard with more than a dozen players, none of them trying to capture Kings, but none of them willing to let their bishops go either. Asian diplomacy is a delicate dance. 

And without our army, we have no insurance against a chess player who miscalculates. Without our army, we wouldn't have that many chess pieces in this overcrowded chess board. An effective deterrence allows a wider range of options for effective foreign policy. National service is about securing the concepts of "independence" and "freedom" but it is also more than that. It is about realpolitik, enabling Singapore to navigate the treacherous geopolitical landscape with deeper resolve. 

National service is a big part of my life, maybe because it actually is my life. Being a full-time national serviceman, I am fulfilling the legal requirements of my citizenship to this legal sovereign entity that is Singapore. Since it is a legal requirement, it is not optional; it is compulsory, mandatory. And for exactly one year and ten months, I am beholden to the Singapore Armed Forces and will carry out whatever orders they dictate as a demonstration of my patriotism. 

It is under these circumstances that I seek to chronicle this life. Because I know that my life from a few months ago to 4 March 2013 (the day my requirements to the nation has been fulfilled) will be radically different from any other way of living I will have (or had). In the military, the free-spirit is constrained, circumscribed, confined (pun). And for most of my life, I mostly had the ability to do whatever I wanted whenever I felt like it. Not so much now.

But it has been almost half a year. And I have kind of gotten used to this sort of lifestyle. I came in abhorrent. Now it has calmed into some sort of quasi-fatalism. One of my biggest observations through this experience has been the existence of transience in time. And I know for a fact that unless I die, there will be a day when I wake up and it is miraculously the 4th of March 2013 and I am free to do other things. 

It is not a good idea to start a chronicle just wildly anticipating the end. But that is unavoidable. Every Singaporean son must serve his term until he is done, and until he is done he is just looking forward to when he is done. Hard truths. 

The reasons for such a chronicle are many. Given my observation of transience, chronicling enables a pathetic attempt at grasping the sweaty singlet of Usain Bolt. You can't stop the runner for an autograph, but you can have his sweat on your palms. And with that sweat you can remember that you once stood next to a legendary sprinter even if it was for only a really short time. A little reminder that it actually happened, even though its over. Reality becomes history which clouds and slowly dissolves into the atmosphere. 

The chronicle also allows for reflection, and self improvement, and therapy. I shall not elaborate. These are self-explanatory.

I view these two years in the Singapore Armed Forces as some kind of warped preparation for Law School. As much as the grass-is-greener rule holds, I am have this (despite attempts to conceal) intrinsic fear of going to university. There are several reasons for this- the implications of adulthood, responsibility, independence. But also the intellectual challenges and obstacles that I will eventually face, and the fear that I will not be able to overcome them, and flail. Which is why I think two additional years will allow greater intellectual preparation; and with the perceived toughness of military life, an excuse to escape the impending chains of adulthood. 21 still seems far away. I'm only 19.