Limits of the Heavy Hand?

 There’s a joke in Singapore, which has become something of a bade of National Pride. We call ourselves as “Fine City,” because you can get finned for a host of infringements. As well as fines, we famously hang drug traffickers and we cane vandals. Lee Kuan Yew, the first Prime Minister of Independent Singapore took great pride in having strict rules. As far as he was concerned, he needed to be harsh because it made Singapore the clean, green and rich place that the world admires.

Being harsh is a great political cover too. What better way to show the people that our government is not a Western stooge than caning a Western kid for vandalism or hanging one or two for drug trafficking? The respective Western government will make some noises about being concerned about their citizens, our government will then make even more noise about our Asian Values prioritizing social order and stability over the rights of a few hooligans and our ambassador in the country in question will be busy selling the Singapore side of things so as to ensure the Western leaders understand that a portion of their voters’ clap for us. I’m old enough to remember Americans supporting the canning of Michael Faye for vandalism.

As a people, we’ve grown used to the heavy hand of the state and it’s almost as if most of us agree with the official position that the heavy hand of the state is necessary for Singapore to be the “celestial kingdom” that it has sold itself to be.

However, is that really the case? Is the heavy hand of the state necessary in ensuring prosperity and a decent living environment? I got to admit, I do like the fact that we’re a litter-free place and my estate gets cleaned.

Well, to an extent, harsh penalties work up to a certain level.  You don’t litter because, well, it’s simply not worth the fine. No high from any drug is worth the prospect of the gallows. However, is it really necessary to have a heavy hand?

I noticed our great comfort with the “heavy hand” back in 2006 and 2008. In 2006, the Gaza had one of its exploding moments, particularly as Hamas won the Palestinian elections. In 2008 there was the Beijing Olympics, which was marred in the “democratic” countries where Tibetan protestors made noises as the Olympic Torch was making its way to Beijing. A few friends actually commented to me that they could not understand why the Palestinians and Tibetans were doing what they did because it was pretty obvious, they were not going to win against an opponent who was that much stronger.  People were even critical of the Dalai Lama for “Trying to make China look bad.”

These moments have remained with me because it gets me questioning whether we’ve become so used to the heavy hand that we’re totally unable to sympathise with people who have been on the wrong end of the heavy stick.

I will admit that the comparison is in some ways a hard one to make in as much as they heavy hand they’re under is a “foreign power” displacing them from their home land. However, the examples do make the point that there are limits to the “heavy hand.”

Take the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an example. A “militant” group like Hamas will fire a few rockets at Israel, who will in turn use advanced weaponry on the Gaza strip. Israeli civilians will be scared. A few may die. On the other side thousands will die and the infrastructure of the Gaza strip be set back a few decades. The Western press will trumpet the line that Israel has the right to defend itself. The “liberal” press will talk about the Palestinians being oppressed.

I’ll leave the broader discussion to more informed people to continue. However, I will ask the simple question of whether the “heavy hand” of the Israeli military has worked? Hamas was elected in 2006. There have been clashes between the two in 2008, 2010, 2011. 2014, 2018, 2019 and 2021. You would have imagined that after the first few beatings, the Palestinians would have gotten the message that they were not going to win and turned-on Hamas. That clearly hasn’t happened. Israel has a lot of firepower and the residents of the Gaza strip are well aware of that. Yet, they have not become more sympathetic or fearful of Israel or at least fearful enough to get the “militants” to stop provoking Israel. 

If anything, the only real beneficiary of the bombardment of Palestinian areas are Israeli politicians needing an election boost and the recruitment arm of Hamas and other militant groups as stated in paragraph 75 of the May 2007 end of mission report of Alvaro De Soto, former United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process. A copy of the De Soto report can be found at:

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2007/06/12/DeSotoReport.pdf

 

The Most Effective Way to Recruit Terrorist – Copyright South China Morning Post

Let’s make take another military example close to home. The Vietnam War of the 1970s. The Americans dropped more bombs on Vietnam than they did World War II. Yet, the only thing that the world remembers about the Vietnam War is the American’s running away from the top of their embassy. How did this situation happen? The Americans were clearly the superior force (even if the “other side” was aided by North Vietnam, China and Russia – in the same way that militant groups in the Middle East are always aided by Iran) and should solved the problem in a matter of months. Well, you could argue that they got a little over reliant on the single word that General Westmoreland used to sum up his strategy – Firepower (in fairness to the US, there were a few attempts to have “hearts and minds” campaigns but that inevitably played second fiddle to the shock and awe).

These military examples have shown that overwhelming force isn’t as effective as effective as we’d might imagine, especially if you’re talking about a side that believes it has nothing to lose by going up against you.

The heavy hand only works if it’s combined with something else – namely the buy in from people. There’s the example of the Malayan Conflict of the 1960s. The British did use some harsh techniques. However, they didn’t approach it as a conventional conflict from the beginning and implemented effective intelligence strategies and waged an effective “hearts and minds” campaign.

 

This wins wars as much as heavy firepower -copyright weaponsandwarefare.com

I don’t disagree with the heavy hand of the state. Sometimes the situation warrants it. In the current pandemic for example, you do need rules enforced and rule breakers shouldn’t get let off because the rules are there to protect us.

However, the harsh heavy hand of the state isn’t going to be enough to make a society safe, clean, green or even viable. Yes, harsh penalties against littering make Singapore clean but they don’t necessarily make Singapore a clean people (back in the day, all you needed to do was to visit Johor where you’d find Singaporeans littering with glee in a place where slipping 50RM – or 15 bucks to the cops fixed things). In the military context, our harsh penalties against littering are like heavy fire power.

For better results, we should look at the Bhutanese, who pick up their own litter because they’ve been taught to appreciate their environment. The Bhutanese government works on a “hearts and minds” campaign to get its objectives. Takes longer but in the end its probably more sustainable.

The heavy hand of the sate may have uses. However, you cannot rely on that alone to ensure that society functions.