For many years under the administration of former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia had appeared to be an uncompromisingly nationalistic, independent and neutralist country. Sometimes, the image also bordered on being dangerously 'anti-Western' and 'anti-American'.

However, a more rational or dispassionate look at the reality in Malaysia suggests that its defence has always been closely tied to the Anglo-American West: from 1957 to 1971, Malaya/Malaysia maintained its defence relations with Britain, Australia and New Zealand through the Anglo-Malayan/Malaysian Defence Agreement (AMDA) which was invoked in 1963-1965 to defend the then newly formed Malaysia against the Indonesian Confrontation, especially in Sarawak.

After AMDA lapsed in 1971, a Five-Power Defence Arrangements (FPDA) was instituted to preserve the traditional and close defence relations between Malaysia, Singapore, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. FPDA is still valid and operative.

Besides, since 1984, Malaysia is also said to have entered into "a strategic deal" with the United States to cement defence and military-to-military ties.

What accounts for the discrepancy between the appearance and reality in Malaysia's foreign and defence policies under the Mahathir administration that spanned for more than two decades?

In an attempt to explore and understand this, malaysiakini interviewed long-standing observer and researcher Dr Chandran Jeshurun via e-mail.

Chandran was educated at the University of Malaya and the London School of Economics and Political Science. He taught at University of Malaya and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia when it was first founded. After being the foundation Professor of Asian History at the University of Malaya for 13 years he moved on to other regional research positions.

He joined the Malaysian Territorial Army in 1969 (before May 13) and served in it as a commissioned officer with the rank of Captain until 1984. He has contributed to a few modest publications in the field of Malaysian defence policies but his interests are in heritage conservation at the moment.

In the interview which is serialised in two parts, Chandran and this writer also explore other critical issues relating to Malaysian defence policies from a historical perspective, including the modernisation process of the Malaysian Armed Forces (MAF), the ethnic imbalance in the nation's armed services, challenges of articulating a truly national strategic culture as well as threat perceptions, national service as well as arms procurement policy or its implementation.

Mahahir's paradoxes

Reproduced below is the complete question and answer session with Chandran:

Malaysiakini: In your recently published essay, 'Malaysian Defence Policy under Mahathir: What Has Changed?' (Bridget Welsh., ed. Reflections - The Mahathir Years, Washington DC, SAIS; pp. 333-342), you observe that the former premier was once intellectually enthusiastic about military and strategic affairs. But he could also simultaneously be a committed anti-militarist or even pacifist and after he assumed power in 1981, he also took up the defence portfolio. He was active in building and modernising the MAF but was later distracted by other concerns. How do you explain these seeming paradoxes, flip-flops and inconsistencies? Can you elaborate?

Chandran: I have no doubt that his long-standing interest in defence and military matters dating back to 1957 were the main reason for his taking on the defence portfolio when he became prime minister in 1981. However, the consistency with which he conceived Malaysia's defence policy was probably compromised once he turned the primary focus of his interest to international affairs from about the mid-1980s. Although he probably continued to keep a close watch on the development of the MAF, it can be argued that the MAF and its projected role increasingly became an instrument of his foreign policy. One the one hand, it provided him with a convenient mean of engaging developed nations that possessed cutting-edge defence technology with dual-use potential in order to achieve his goals of rapid industrialisation and the transfer of technological know-how to this country.

At the same time, it gave him the unique opportunity of pushing for another of his foreign policy agendas, namely, to actively and materially support the concept of UN peacekeeping forces. This latter role of the MAF inevitably meant that rapid force modernisation was indispensable to enable selected sectors of the military to participate meaningfully in such tasks. As for the question of "flip-flops", I would tend to believe that his defence thinking was a constantly evolving one and even somewhat opportunistic insofar as the regional and international strategic scenario was itself undergoing systemic change within the post-Cold War context.

Strategic deal

In the 1960s, Mahathir was well-known for his passionate opposition to the 1957 Anglo-Malayan Defence Agreement (AMDA) and active support for Afro-African "neutralism" which, in the context of the Cold War, was perceived or felt by the United States to be effectively pro-Soviet. However, you also recorded in your essay that, in 1984 when Mahathir was prime minister as well as defence minister, "Malaysia entered into a strategic deal with the USA" and also, Malaysia entered into "a major procurement arrangement with the UK" in 1988 (ibid: p.336). How do you explain the seeming about-turn by Mahathir? Did he change or was he forced by circumstances to change?

No, there is no evidence that he had "changed" his stance as his earlier pro-neutralist preferences were conditioned by the politics of the Cold War. In the 1980s, however, he clearly saw a strategic advantage in being linked with the American military-industrial complex and US forward deployment policy in the Asia-Pacific region. The deal that was done with the (Margaret) Thatcher government, on the other hand, is much more difficult to fathom as it involved other non-military matters such as the Pergau Dam project and the apparently attractive offer of a broad range of military assets by the UK. There was also a fair amount of speculation in the media at the time that certain influential agents and middlemen on both sides were motivated by rather pecuniary interests in promoting that particular Anglo-Malaysian deal. Again, Mahathir merely remained true to his political style, particularly at the international level, which was never to miss an opportunity to, so to speak, steal a march on others in a region like ours.

Besides Mahathir himself, who else and what other political groups opposed AMDA in the late 1950s and the 1960s? How effective was the opposition to AMDA? Did it succeed in any way? If not, what were the reasons?

Some of the most virulent attacks on AMDA came from people like Burhanuddin Helmi of PAS, Tan Chee Khoon of the Labour Party/Socialist Front and a number of Malay nationalists from Umno itself, mainly from Kedah. Mahathir was one of the vocal backbenchers in the latter group. I don't think that they were in any way "successful" in their anti-AMDA campaign but it certainly helped in strengthening the Alliance government's hands in negotiations with the British. Both the Tunku (Abdul Rahman) and Tun (Abdul) Razak were quite dismissive of these attacks arguing that it was a responsible government's duty to ensure that its external defences were adequately provided for. In any case, Razak always stressed that such military pacts were essentially "temporary" in nature as the expansion of the MAF progressed in stages according to the successive Malaysia Plans.

Another former premier Razak also served as a defence minister under the Tunku's premiership. How do you assess Razak as defence minister? What are the continuities and changes in the defence policies of Malaya/Malaysia since Razak's time?

Razak's role as defence minister has not been adequately studied by scholars. I must confess that my own work on this period is at best only rather cursory. However, it can be said that for the entire pre-1975 period the primary focus in defence policy was the Counter-Insurgency Warfare (CIW) mode of the MAF and an embryonic beginning in force re-structuring concentrating on naval and air capabilities that had been provoked by the experience of Confrontation. Razak's personal priorities, as far as one can perceive them in hindsight, were to retain the highly-regarded British military traditions of the largely Sandhurst-trained (and later the Royal Military College or RMC) officer corps of the army and the preservation of the multi-ethnic character of its high command, albeit still heavily weighted in favour of the Malays. Both these elements of the MAF were to undergo dramatic changes during the post-1981 period for reasons that are still not entirely discernible.

Another interesting feature of the political leadership at Mindef (Ministry of Defence) was that even after Razak gave up the defence portfolio, his successors were invariably drawn from trusted Umno lieutenants such as his own brother-in-law, Hamzah Abu Samah. This factor has remained more or less constant in the post-1981 period as well with the defence portfolio only going to people within the inner circle of Umno with the exception of Abdul Taib Mahmud of Sarawak.

No choice

Why is it that Mahathir opposed to AMDA (1957-1971) so strongly but he had not been seen to be objecting very much to the subsequent Five Power Defence Arrangements (FPDA) which replaced AMDA in 1971 and is still valid and operational today?

We have to understand that after the nasty experience of Confrontation and the British Labour government's East of Suez policy in 1967, Malaysia had practically no choice but to settle for an alternative such as FPDA, and even that after much appeals and negotiations with the UK. The original opponents of AMDA would have been on very shaky ground if they had also opposed the FPDA given the deteriorating regional security situation as the Vietnam War worsened. There is also more than an ounce of truth in the suggestion that FPDA was also required to avoid any unforeseen eventualities in the post-Singapore expulsion period. As to its relevance at the present moment, the jury is still out as to who is or are the chief beneficiary/beneficiaries from this somewhat anachronistic military pact particularly in the context of Asean and regional military cooperation.

Despite the Malayan/Malaysian membership in FPDA since 1971, the 1984 "strategic deal with the USA" and 1988 "major procurement arrangement with the UK" which Mahathir himself must have been aware of or even the initiator, Mahathir still postured himself as a champion of the Third and Islamic world by being consistently and publicly critical of the West, especially the United States, UK, Australia and Singapore. Why? What were the reasons for him to do so?

This is not so much a question of defence policy as it is a remarkable insight into the workings of the Mahathir mind in his appreciation of foreign policy and international diplomacy. Most observers of his pro-active role in the world have invariably noticed the obvious contrast between his public rhetoric, which the international media used to simply lap up, and his private low-key arrangements that were entirely designed to serve Malaysia's larger national interests. One has to understand his consummate, almost instinctive, talent in playing to the gallery in world affairs while quietly and privately maintaining the most proper relations with the powers that mattered. The West in general was quite used to this favourite stratagem of small nations and had no problem with in dealing with Mahathir outside the public domain.

(Part 2 to follow)

JAMES WONG WING ON is chief analyst of Strategic Analysis Malaysia. He is a former DAP member of Parliament for Kampar (1990-1995) and a former columnist for the Sin Chew Jit Poh Chinese daily (now Sin Chew Daily). He read political science and economics at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.