Blue Moon
Joshua Parapuram
Silverfish Books 2004; RM30


The years of indoctrination about some sort of higher meritocracy in everything south of the Causeway as compared to things on 'the other side' had created in the young National Servicemen a false confidence that bled to death in the mud and the blast craters.

The back cover of this book optimistically sets the stage for this book: "In his 'cautionary tale', Joshua Parapuram dares to think the unthinkable and teases us with his wicked sense of humour. This is a serious story but one can't help but notice Parapuram's tongue firmly planted in his cheek throughout."

This is a story set in the very near future describing what happens when the relationship between Malaysia and Singapore deteriorates. Singapore's new visionary leadership gets somewhat uppity over threats from Putrajaya to turn the tap off.

What ensues is a calculated combat operation that starts out as friendly as the Canadian civil war but ends up escalating into a full-out, full-on war. This book attempts to merge fiction with current events ala Tom Clancy Jr. You'll need a lengthy suspension of disbelief to get through this one, but it's an interesting novel nonetheless.

Cuts to the bone

The writing is no-nonsense and punchy, cynically coloured by Parapuram's years as a journalist. Not particularly sophisticated, but the reader gets the point. An example:

The shifting, self-serving positions that accompany linguistic gymnastics at the United Nations are always a sight to behold, except that the world has no time for speeches and all news is down to a few seconds of sound bites, accompanied by pictures if one is lucky enough.

In a world overflowing with action footage, a UN speaker stands no chance of being heard in the world at large, except as part of some other story in a news magazine. Singapore needed its message to be carried through to the decision-makers of the world.

To that extent, Singapore had chosen a list of emotive words and imagery, like ethnic cleansing, religious extremists, terrorist car bombs, the right to its water supply (likened to the right to breathe the air), and ceasefire and peace talks. It all sounded so reasonable. Malaysia, on the other hand, pushed the idea that naked aggression should never be rewarded, that Singapore had no pre-ordained right to Malaysia's water, the invaders must immediately pull back to their side of the Causeway.

The major problem with this book is that none of the characters are particularly likeable. All the people depicted are either stupid, full of hubris, or superfluous. There are hapless foreigners, unscrupulous arms dealers, and even a Dr. Strangelove-type. In addition, some of the content is forced and contrived and seems incongruous, such as the "theme song" for the war floated by the Singaporean authorities.

But again, the book is (hopefully) not meant to be taken as a realistic prediction of the future; it's merely a satirical look at the state of affairs between the two countries. It's a quick and interesting read, if not particularly illuminating; it has a lot of action. Yet the book seems to be more oriented towards local readership.

Another weakness is that the author seems to have an axe to grind; it seems like his fictional war is a direct result of the new precedent of pre-emption established with the US invasion of Iraq. This invasion gave the opportunistic Singaporeans just the excuse they needed to blitzkrieg Johor. Even given the aforementioned suspension of disbelief, the reasoning seems a bit unsophisticated.

An example: "Tuan Perdana Mentri, you are forgetting Iraq. There is aggression and there is aggression. Self-interest is the thing. The Americans will abandon us the moment they see some advantage on the other side. They are not to be trusted." The Americans are depicted as detached, waiting to see who comes out on top. To believe that the Yanks would just sit by and let two of their largest trading partners (and destinations for foreign direct investment) duke it out is a bit too much to imagine.

Hydropolitics

As unrealistic as the characters portrayed in the book seem, the conflict is very real. Most people are familiar with the history of petty acrimony between the two states over water. While a war between Singapore and Malaysia will never happen, many analysts assert that the next major conflagration in the world will be over water.

In fact, the study of hydropolitics is a new and developing field that studies conflict and cooperation among nations over shared water resources. The region that comes quickly to mind is the Middle East and North Africa, but water politics are a very contentious issue in Asia as well. Globally, some 40 percent of the world's population live in international river basins.

More than a billion people currently do not have a regular supply of clean drinking water, and two billion people lack access to sanitation facilities. Nearly 80% of all diseases and 30% of unnatural deaths in developing countries are in part due to water-borne diseases and pollution.

Furthermore, when a developing world with an unquenchable thirst is combined with global environmental change, catastrophe is in the offing. Rising sea levels, if only a few feet, would ruin the groundwater supplies of Bangladesh and Egypt. The Ganges, Nile, Jordan, and Congo rivers are all the subjects of bitter and long-running international disputes. None of these river basin systems has formal and enforced management agreements, which contributes to the conflict.

For example, all of the countries and territories around the Jordan are fully utilising or exceeding their domestic supply of freshwater. Some nations are depleting groundwater held in fragile aquifers, water that is not renewable. Sandra Postel and Aaron Wolf wrote in an article for Foreign Policy magazine that "water disputes between countries, though typically not leading to war directly, have fueled increase of regional tensions, thwarted economic development, and risked provoking larger conflicts before eventually giving way to cooperation."

In Asia analysts say that between 50 and 60 basins are currently or potentially the source of international tension and conflict. The Indian subcontinent has been the sight of various international and domestic disputes. Pakistan's Punjab state is blamed by the smaller states of Sindh and Blochistan for hogging the water. For a nation like Pakistan, where agriculture makes up around 25% of GDP, water is serious business, and a security concern.

Watery imbalance

Postel and Wolf assert that "the largest and most combustible imbalance between population and available water supplies will be in Asia[which] has roughly 60 percent of the world's people but only 36 percent of the world's renewable fresh water." Water tables are falling rapidly in North China, the bread basket of that country. Production is down in a number of countries, and more and more national governments are being forced to import food to make up for shortfalls.

In the future, water will be a focus of conflict and diplomacy. Hopefully more the latter than the former. Former United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said in 1985 that "the next war in the Middle East will be fought over water, not politics."

The world Water Development Report published in 2003 asserted that over the next twenty years the global water supply will drop by an average of 33%. Fresh water, unlike oil and many other resources, has no substitute. It is required not only for sustenance, but for all forms of economic activity, from agriculture to advanced manufacturing.

In the future scarce water will cause national governments to create water plans, and many may decide to channel water away from agriculture into industry. Currently agriculture accounts for about two thirds of water consumption in the world, but that figure is as high as 90% in some nations. Agriculture demands more water than industry, and so the return for water-poor nations is greater in the secondary and tertiary sectors.

Barbarians

As Postel and Wolf write, "history supports the hopeful notion that fresh water may foster cooperation more often than conflict in the years ahead. Water sharing has regularly brought even hostile neighboring states together. But the unprecedented degree of current water stress is creating more zero-sum situationsin which one party's gain is perceived as another's lossboth within and between countries."

The water issue has been used through the years more as a political scapegoat, and hence there is a feeling in Blue Moon that the author has grown tired of political posturing. It is suggested that the image of Singapore portrayed in the book is representative of a wider conflict between Singapore and Malaysia, that it depicts the "barbarians at the gate mentality".

Parapuram's book is not as good as it could be, but it's still not bad. It's a political thriller for Southeast Asia, and its treatment of local issues gives it an appeal that more than makes up for any shortcomings.