Book Review: Aristocracy of Armed Talent: The Military Elite in Singapore

By virtue of its rich interdisciplinary coverage and prodigious research, Samuel Chan’s book on the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), and its elites, is a seminal event. Scoring very high for its incredibly accurate snapshot of the Singapore Armed Forces, Chan’s manuscript is a labour of love and reverence for his subject. Written in the tone of a consummate insider, one expects this book to be featured prominently in SAF officers’ reading list (if such a list still exists). More importantly, future academics will mine both Chan’s book for its data, and Tim Huxley’s earlier tome, Defending the Lion City (2001), whenever they wish to discuss the SAF. As Chan has rightly pointed out, information on the SAF are hard to come by (p. 349). Hence, Chan’s contribution deserves great credit in keeping the cross hairs squarely on this pertinent subject matter.

There are nine chapters in total, but the three best chapters, which thoroughly piqued this author’s interest, are Chapter 5 “The Ascension Process,” Chapter 6 “The Ascension Structure,” and Chapter 7 “Scholars and Stars by Numbers and Cases.” Chan painstakingly lays out the promotion terrain for an officer. Displaying uncommon verve and an exceptional command of details, Chan discusses potential pitfalls and potential prize billets an ambitious officer could work towards. At times, Chan’s self-control softens a tad when he underscores truly meritorious commanders such as COL (RET) Nelson Yau Thian Hock (p. 300). Most noteworthy, Chan’s interviewees were no shrinking violets when it comes to certain duds who are SAF Overseas Scholarship (SAFOS) scholars:

Some scholars were pushed ahead of their time. The system pushed them because they were scholars. There were those who were good in theory but practically f*****. Some also got cocky. [Officer J] (a scholar) was playful, lazy, and not interested in the military but very smart. He spent half his life on phone watching the stock market. In one two-sided brigade exercise [officer K] (a non-graduate) won big time over [officer J]. I had to stop the exercise before it became a massacre. (p. 227)

Perhaps being a former grunt in the infantry, together with a requisite spell in the reserves, lends this author the licence to offer several diametrically different perspectives. Bereft of stars in one’s eyes, one finds Chan’s argument that Singapore is overall “predicated on temperate social militarization” (p. 15) unpersuasive. Chan’s stance is too sanguine a view on potential praetorianism in Singapore. Clearly, in this part of the world, current examples such as U Shwe Mann, a former member of Myanmar military junta, who changed his battle fatigues for the ballot box, are the rule rather than the exception. Interestingly, Chan cites an oral testimony whereby one Lee Onn Pong, director of employment in MINDEF (Minstry of Defence), who plainly stated to Goh Keng Swee that “eventually a logjam of scholar officers in the upper echelons of the SAF, which, if not managed well, could cause big problems, possibly even a coup! So after serving their bond in SAF some senior officers should be assigned to the Administrative service” (p. 90). In another instance, Chan even candidly quotes Lee Kuan Yew as speculating “once or twice, as Senior Minister, that an opposition victory at polls might require the army to step in” (p. 16).

Curiously, despite the voluminous data mined for this volume, Chan assiduously avoids reaching the kind of conclusions – the impact of military elitism – his data generated. One can fairly argue that Chan’s project did not set out to answer that per se. For example, Chan marches lockstep to the script of measuring SAF vis “Huntingtonian ideals,” and Moskosian “Institution/Occupation” thesis (pp. 21, 76, 361). If so, then such perspicacity can only be gleaned from another giant in the field, Teo You Yann’s This Is What Inequality Looks Like (2018). Whereas Chan’s fecundity in unearthing hitherto overlooked details about the SAF is undisputed (Chapter 7 is one prime example), and his book is also important for acknowledging the presence of one form of elitism in the city state, Teo You Yann’s eminently readable volume establishes directly the (perhaps unintended) impact of such a reality.

Part of the mental acrobatics one engages in while reading this book is measuring (by inches) just how far Chan can push a number of so-called sensitive topics. One of the issues is a meritocracy, which stands in significant propinquity to Chan’s discussion. “How can an individual be identified in their late teens,” queried Chan judiciously, “and groomed for a position they would hold only in their late 30s and early 40s?” (p. xxvii). Indeed, Chan’s book is a masterclass (with a twist) in lighting up the proverbial elephant in the room with guidance laser, without knocking the bottom out of his line of inquiry. Such dialogues are vitally important for Singapore’s national conversation; one intrepid Singapore politician memorably announced in 2002 that “There will be no sacred cows” in reviewing all government policies. Unfortunately, Chan’s volume errs on the side of caution, by sidestepping potentially controversial social implications. See, for example, his lukewarm discussion on the selective Wranglers’ scheme (p. 200), and the opaque “Godfather” phenomenon (p. 232). Perhaps most striking of all, his legalistic insistence (p. 228) that 40 per cent to 43.04 per cent of SAFOS within the military elite as a “minority” is coyly dissembling.

Finally, one area which Chan can consider exploring, conceivably as a sequel to the present volume, are the career trajectories of the “farmers”; the latter is a colloquial term used in the SAF which refers to soldiers who were not scholars (p. 3). Despite covering twenty eight generals, Chan is vague about the definitive number of Colonels, Lieutenant Colonels, and Majors also consulted for this book (p. 467). Many such officers held flag appointments but retired at the rank of full Colonel. In other words, these officers clearly fell short of SAF’s hallowed Current Estimated Potential system for their progression (p. 214). One conspicuous example is COL (RET) Oh Beng Chin, who was once the Provost Marshal of the SAF Military Police Command (1997–2000) and Commander of the Army Training Evaluation Centre. Another prominent instance will have to be COL (RET) Ng Kin Yi, previously Commandant, Goh Keng Swee Command and Staff College, who was also the former Chief Engineer Officer. The supreme irony that the SAF uses petrochemical giant Shell’s corporate HR model (p. 203) for assessing its officer ranks cannot be more glaring to any number of corporate statism critics.