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The Singaporean polity has created the ‘militarized civilian’. This policy phenomenon beckons the question: How is this cross-fertilization carried out in Singapore's civil–military relations? Militarization is in the first sense meant to inculcate a calibrated dual personality within the civilian whereby being an effective soldier requires indulging in simulated military suffering as a badge of pride; at the same time, the citizen soldier has to believe that military and civilian values are perfectly interchangeable and contribute equally to the maintenance of peace. In a second sense, militarization is equally about permanently ritualizing sacrifices for a communitarian defence. We argue that while mostly successful, militarization also produces the tension arising from the need to appear pugnaciously vigilant while avoiding the casualties that must logically arise from heightened simulated combat. This tension is explained through two dimensions of ongoing crises: the parameters of a politically dramatized National Service ritual; and the constant propaganda of geopolitical dangers threatening the Republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to engage in a preliminary twinned study of the foreign policy styles of Mahathir bin Mohamad and Lee Kuan Yew within the framework of ‘modernizing Southeast Asian foreign policies’. Modernization is a process of immense multidimensional displacement in economy, society, political system, attitudes towards politicians, identities, work, and consumption. As such the onus falls upon their leaders to either mitigate change or productively awaken their followers to embrace a new mode of thought. Both Lee and Mahathir have however chosen to engage in the foreign policy of intellectual iconoclasm featuring the narrative of ‘productive shock’, manufactured nationalist logics, elitist policy-making and elaborate self-propaganda. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]