“Protecting the Singaporean Way of Life” is the objective of Total Defence, a day that was commemorated last Sunday. Implicit is the understanding that total defence or national security is about protecting national sovereignty.

But can it be assumed that this is what all Singaporeans invariably understand national security to be about? Could it also depend on what security might mean to the individual at a given point in time?

A concern often voiced is whether younger Singaporeans, who did not live through political turbulence in the nation’s early years, would continue to believe the “vulnerability” narrative — that there are intractable security concerns endemic to Singapore’s small size and the geopolitics of the region, which require a long-term commitment to a strong defence.

…Ho Shu Huang is a PhD candidate with the Department of War Studies, King’s College London and an Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University.