National Service in Sweden

One of the first things I asked about when I got to know a few Swedish friends was whether they have National Service here like Singapore does it. As it turns out, Sweden still practices the "militaristic independence" I've read about. However, it appears that the people volunteering for military service far outnumbers the slots available within the military.

This could mean 2 things:

1) Swedes are a lot more patriotic than I'd imagine them to be, willingly putting themselves through NS.

2) There aren't a lot of slots for NS enlistees.

It appears that it was a case of the latter. The Swedes I talked to say that the military gets a smaller percentage of the budget each year, so they can't afford to spend so much on conscription.

That's great now, isn't it? As your economics lessons will tell you, government spending is made up of either spending on bread or guns. The less you spend on guns, the more you can spend on neccessities and economic development. What money Sweden saves on guns goes to further the country's already impressive economy and infrastructure. (Have I told you that students here enjoy free university education? Yeap, the perks from having a 25% GST.)

But wait, you ask. If they spend less on their military, aren't they afraid of being attacked? Good question, because that's the next question I asked these friends. Their reply was a very nonchalent one: "Who will attack us? We're (Sweden and her neighbours) are all members of the EU. And even if some other country attacks us, they face the military might of the entire EU."

As another Singaporean pointed out, "Why would a non-EU country want to attack Sweden? There are so many resource-rich countries to attack within the EU."

All these sounds too good to be true for me. Here we have a whole region that is steeped in age-old conflicts like the Anglo-French wars (thus making it home to many impressive castles), but now they're cooperating to bring the entire region to greater heights. Just some of the examples of the close cooperation amongst the countries is the embracing of a single currency and the passport-less travelling between countries covered in the Schengen Agreement.

So why isn't Singapore in the same boat? Why is national service still crucial for our military defence? Why the continuous drilling in Total Defence? Why did we practice our fire movement drills in rubber and oil palm plantations when we know Singapore doesn't have such plantations? While Sweden trusts its neighbours in the EU, Singapore thinks its most probable attackers are its ASEAN neighbours. While Sweden has taken out immigration requirements for neighbouring countries like Denmark, Singaporeans only recently stopped filling out "white cards" for the Malaysian Immigration Department.

What is needed to transform an ASEAN into an EU? For critics who think that ASEAN shouldn't become like the EU, allow me to ask you this: What's so bad about a shared feeling of trust, co-operative growth and region-wide economic growth? I asked an Italian how the EU came about. As suspected, it started with the 2 big countries in continental Europe, France and Germany, joining hands after the end of World War 2.

Both countries were strong economically, have large populations and are basically formidable countries on their own. But placed together, they're a dominant power in Europe. With such strong countries as part of the EU founding members, other countries joined the bandwagon. The smaller countries saw benefits in having a united front with allies like France and Germany. Even the stronger economies knew co-operation with their neighbours was the way to compete against the economic powerhouse of United States of America.

What about ASEAN? The strong countries in terms of economy (GDP per capita) are Singapore and Brunei. Incidentally, they're also amongst the smallest members in terms of land area and population. That makes them pretty weak militarily and do not impose a strong "powerbase" like France and Germany. The biggest members are the Phillipines, Thailand and Indonesia, but they aren't strong economically and still suffer a host of problems in areas like corruption and political dissent. We won't see a banding together of big, strong countries in ASEAN like France and Germany for the EU.

There's also the issue of trust. Theoretically, an economically strong country can band with a populous country to impose a strong "powerbase". But can you imagine Singapore banding with Indonesia, or Brunei with Philippines? There are simply many other socio-political-cultural undertones that prevent such close co-operation on multiple fronts. I'm not being particularly particular here, but heck, Singaporean politicians sometimes make fun of our developing neighbours.

Perhaps there's hope. The Italian girl pointed to a bunch of us within the conversation circle. "You're a Malaysian. You're a Singaporean. You guys represent the future of the region. Make something happen." Indeed, this exchange has shown me how interacting with students from other countries can open us to new perspectives that we couldn't have grasped simply by reading Wikipedia or listening in class. And indeed, we represent the future. If we, as students, started holding hands, perhaps our countries might do the same a few years down the road. -Jimmy