Bilahari Kausikan: On international law and foreign policy

You asked me to consider whether the ongoing global conflicts erode the role of international law in inter-state relations. The answer is not as straightforward as many Singaporeans may believe. 

In recent years, I have grown concerned about what might be termed the foreign policy illiteracy of Singaporeans — increasing interest among the general public in foreign policy has not been accompanied by any commensurate understanding of foreign policy, including among some public servants. Many discussions on foreign policy issues are simplistic in their underlying assumptions. 

In any democratic society, foreign policy must rest on a sound domestic foundation. The foreign policy illiteracy of our public makes us vulnerable to foreign and domestic hucksters peddling snake oil and can conscribe the government’s ability to manoeuvre in an increasingly volatile and uncertain international environment. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify what I think are some of the commonest misconceptions.

Let me begin by recalling what our first — and in my opinion our greatest — foreign minister, Mr S. Rajaratnam, had to say about our foreign policy. Almost everything anyone has subsequently said about our foreign policy is only a gloss or commentary on his insights. 

‘Practical diplomacy’ the currency of survival

Only a month after independence, Mr Rajaratnam pointed out that every country has and needs two foreign policies: a foreign policy of words which he later called a foreign policy of theology, in which we and all countries always stand for the highest of principles and the noblest of ideals, and a foreign policy of deeds — practical diplomacy — which is what we and all countries have to do to survive in what Mr Rajaratnam called “a jungle world”. In the foreign policy of deeds, principles and ideals oftentimes must bow to the contingencies of circumstances. Mr Rajaratnam stressed that although we and every country needed both types of foreign policy, to confuse them was suicidal. 

International relations are defined by relationships between sovereign states, which remain the ultimate authority in international relations. Whether we recognise it or not, this has therefore always been essentially a jungle world and will remain essentially a jungle world as long as states are the primary actors of international relations. This hard fact arises from the nature of sovereignty, from the dynamics of inter-action between sovereignties, and, ultimately, from the darkest recesses of human nature. 

Abiding by international law is a choice

International relations is nevertheless not entirely a Hobbesian state of nature in which the life of a state is nasty, brutish and short. Most states, most of the time, choose — exercise their sovereign agency — to abide by most of international law. But the “rule of law” means something fundamentally different when used in an international rather than a domestic context. I have emphasised the choice in the decision of states to abide by international law. Compliance with law is not a matter of choice domestically.

States choose to comply with international law because it is in their interest to do so. Interest, not law, is the core organising concept of international relations. Interests change according to circumstances. For this reason, it is only a recklessly sanguine state that would commit itself to comply with all international laws, all the time, under all circumstances.

International law sits uneasily in between theology and practical diplomacy. Neither is its location static; it is continually shifting. This elusiveness makes the role of international law in foreign policy the greatest single source of public confusion between theology and practical diplomacy. 

Compliance with international law is always contingent on its utility in a particular set of circumstances. This is because competition between states, and thus at least the possibility of conflict, are inherent characteristics of the jungle world of international relations. Even in the ostensibly tamest of regions, the jungle is never very far away, as Europe has found to its cost in Ukraine. 

In 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea, then Secretary of State John Kerry famously called this 19th-century behaviour in the 21st century. There are many excellent reasons to criticise Russian actions against Ukraine, but Mr Kerry’s statement was absurd. It was absurd because it assumed that your adversary should share your values or your idea of international order. But if your adversary shared your ideas and values, it would not be your adversary in the first place. 

Systems of values built on a base of stability

Mr Kerry’s mistake was to reify his ideas and values and invest them with an illusionary objective reality that he thought all should recognise regardless of the contingencies of interests and circumstances. These delusions were not confined to Mr Kerry but were widespread throughout the West and played no small role in the ineffectual Western response to the annexation of Crimea and the Donbas. This emboldened Russia and led to Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine eight years later in 2022.

Similar confusion was on display in Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech in Davos in January 2026. Mr Carney called on middle powers who shared similar values to work together to uphold an international order that he claimed had “ruptured” because the US under Mr Donald Trump was no longer willing to uphold it. Mr Carney’s speech was widely acclaimed, but in fact his argument contained a fundamental internal contradiction.

Of course, all powers — regardless of size — that share values ought to work more together. But any system of values — including the value of international relations conducted in accordance with law — needs a foundation of stability to operate effectively. Stability depends on deterrence and a balance of power. There is no possible combination of middle powers that can by themselves either deter Russia or balance China, the two powers that challenge international order as Mr Carney envisaged it. Having reified his ideas of international order and succumbed to the temptation of letting his distaste for Mr Trump colour his view of the world, he missed the obvious. A week after Mr Carney’s speech, the secretary-general of NATO, Mark Rutte, a Dutchman, told the European Parliament to “keep on dreaming” if Europe thought it could defend itself without the US. 

International law is not an autonomous reality. International order is not the order of the universe which is subject to the immutable laws of physics. International law is only one tool in the tool kit of statecraft that, among other things, includes force and the threat of force and unilateral action as well as negotiations and multilateralism. Not every tool is fit for all purposes under all circumstances. 

States choose to comply with law or choose not to comply with law according to how they assess the law’s utility with regard to their interests in any particular set of circumstances. States may legitimately conclude that force is the more appropriate instrument. Of course, there are laws and rules governing the recourse to force. But regardless of what those laws may prescribe, it is ultimately the sovereign state that decides whether and how to apply those laws and interprets them accordingly. 

Trump’s morality and American interests

In an interview with the New York Times on 7 January 2026, Mr Trump said that his exercise of power would only be restrained by his own morality and that his compliance with international law would be based on his own judgement of whether it was in accordance with American interests. That is as good a definition of sovereignty as anything written by Thomas Hobbes, Carl Schmitt, Jean Bodin, or any political theorist anywhere who has reflected on the nature of sovereignty. 

The relatively generous and open American policies — the generous and broad definition of American sovereignty — that we had become accustomed to were in fact artefacts of the existential Cold War struggle between the US and the Soviet Union. They were not adopted out of altruism but to bind allies and partners to the American side. 

Reinhold Niebuhr, the American theologian and political philosopher, once wrote that Americans being generally uncomfortable with the idea of power, have usually found it necessary to wrap up their use of power in ideas of universal moral significance. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was time to “Put America First”. Every country puts itself first, so why not America? The only thing really unique about Mr Trump is that he is not uncomfortable with power and thus does not bother with the wrapping.

A different president may again wrap up American interests in language that is more pleasing to our ears. But since the narrower and more transactional definition of American interests is the consequence of a structural change in international relations — the end of the Cold War — I doubt its substance will be very different. 

International law is often only the vocabulary in which states justify actions they have decided to take on other grounds. They resort to the terminology of international law in order to try to seize the moral high ground and put their opponents on the backfoot. This is a theological use of international law; a genuflection of power to principle even if the principle is ignored in practice. We should not mistake such tributes to virtue as investing international law with autonomous reality.

One crucial factor influencing a state’s decision on what tool to use in any set of circumstances — whether to reach for the rule book or the gun — is its capabilities. A state’s judgement about the effectiveness of its capabilities to protect its interests in any particular set of circumstances largely determines its adherence to international law — not entirely, but very largely. That is why poor and weak states are usually quickest to appeal to international law. You can’t reach for the gun if you only have a pea-shooter.

The Singapore government is fond of saying — perhaps too often — that a world governed by international law and organisation is best for small states. This is obviously true but trite; as trite as saying water is wet. But the more salient issue is whether this is really such a world? The honest answer is that it has never been such a world, or only occasionally and partially such a world under certain historical circumstances. 

Water is not always wet. Under certain circumstances, water becomes a solid or vaporises. That is why Singapore has invested heavily in a strong and technologically advanced military to ensure that water does not boil over and avoid getting scalded if it does. This does not mean what we say about international law and organisation is hypocritical. It is an acknowledgement of the fact that any system of laws cannot operate effectively without a foundation of stability, and we must have the option to maintain stability with or without recourse to law. 

As previously noted, in the jungle world of sovereign states, stability ultimately rests on deterrence and a balance of power. Of course, law itself contributes to stability. But this leads to a fundamental paradox. If the requirements of law conflict with the requirements of stability, it is usually — almost always — the latter that prevails. 

We see the operation of this paradox in the veto granted to the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), an institution based on the idea of law. The veto is a clear derogation of the principle of sovereign equality, which is one of the foundational principles of the UN Charter. The veto means that the UN cannot act when action is most needed. But the veto has also ensured the survival of the UN whereas its predecessor, the League of Nations, is now just a footnote in the history of international organisation. 

The UN General Assembly (UNGA) is largely a political theatre whose function is to give the majority of states the sensation of participating in the great affairs of the world. Speeches in the UNGA are primarily performative, at best statements of aspirations. The UNGA was never intended to have any real role as far as the maintenance of international peace and stability is concerned. The UN’s dysfunctionalities are the price we pay for having any sort of universal international organisation at all. But it is better to have an imperfect UN than no UN, at least I think so.

More than most other countries, the Singapore government tries to speak frankly to our people about the world. But it is in the nature of things that public statements by political leaders tend towards the theological and elide over the more unpleasant aspects of international relationships. The nuances of what political leaders and diplomats say about international order — the unspoken but crucial qualifications to international law and organisation that most practitioners take for granted and thus are usually not articulated — are lost on the public, giving them misleading ideas about international relations. 

Singapore and its national interest

Despite our habitual rhetoric about the importance of international law, Singapore is no more and no less virtuous than any other state. In 1984, the newly retired head of the Malaysian Armed Forces, General Freddie Hashim, said in an interview published in Malaysian Business that Lee Kuan Yew had told him that if PAS (Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party) took over and tried to interfere with water supply from Johor, Singapore would not wait for the UNSC to solve the problem but move the Singapore Armed Forces in. 

In case some of you think that Singapore using force unilaterally is out of the question, consider that in 2016, an Islamic State-inspired terrorist group was caught plotting to shoot rockets at Marina Bay Sands from Batam. In that case, we were lucky that the Indonesian authorities acted quickly to stop them before any harm was done. But suppose that sometime in the future, the situation in Batam or Johor deteriorates to the extent that the authorities are unable or unwilling to act to stop terrorists shooting missiles at the Central Business District or at aircraft using Changi Airport. What should we do? 

Throw ourselves at the mercy of Putrajaya or Jakarta? Appeal to the UN to intervene? Even if the UN or the Indonesian or Malaysian authorities agreed to act, how long would it take? Should we give the lives of Singaporeans hostage to foreign decision-making processes which operate according to their own tempo and considerations? Does the government just wait, comforted by consciousness of its own virtue, while Singaporeans die? My point is that decisions to use force are seldom as straightforward as the law may prescribe and they are never based only on the law. 

We are also fond of talking — again perhaps too often — about the consistency of our foreign policy based on adherence to principles. We may well be more consistent than most states, but that is setting the bar rather low. No state can pursue a perfectly consistent foreign policy based on principles unless it does nothing. The world is complex, principles are legion and not all principles are commensurable. Whenever you hear the term “rules-based order” or its equivalent being used, it would be prudent to ask yourself whose selection of rules, which interpretation of those rules, and for what purpose?

A consistency of interests, not principles

Singapore took a strong stand against the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. But we contributed military assets to the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Our public statements on Ukraine conveniently omitted mention of our position on Iraq and only mentioned our criticism of the 1983 US invasion of Grenada, which was a legitimate diplomatic tactic — good diplomats should not tell outright lies but are not obliged to tell the whole truth — but nonetheless disingenuous. What was the difference between the invasion of Iraq and the invasion of Ukraine? The honest answer is that not much as far as the principles involved were concerned, but quite a lot in terms of our interests. It was in our interest to support one and in our interest to oppose the other. 

Our foreign policy has indeed been consistent. But it has been primarily a consistency of interests not principles. I understand theological reasons for claiming a consistency of principles, but doing so only accentuates the foreign policy illiteracy of the general public by giving a simplistic impression of how the world really works. We should talk more about interests instead. 

We should, however, never fall into the trap — in which Mr Kerry and Mr Carney ensnared themselves — of convincing ourselves that our interests or values — including our commitment to international law — should command consensus simply because they are our interests. It is a matter of historical fact that whatever “order” exists internationally has more often than not been defined not by consensus but by competition and conflict, and efforts to make competition and conflict less dangerous in which the law is only one aspect and a dependent rather than independent variable. 

This was certainly the case in the more than a century since 1914, when the 19th century Concert of Europe collapsed, resulting in the First World War, down through the Second World War, the numerous proxy conflicts of the US-Soviet Cold War (which was far from “cold” in much of the world where it became entangled with decolonisation), to the present day. “Order” has never meant “peace”. The idea of a “peace dividend” has always been a myth propagated by the simple-minded or overly sanguine. 

It was only a very short, exceptional period of world history lasting about 20 years from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to circa 2008 when the global financial crisis broke out, when this harsh reality was masked because only the US seemed to matter. That period is over and it will not return. And even during that exceptional period, vicious genocidal war broke out in the Balkans, the US invaded Iraq, and conflict was and remains endemic in much of Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. 

The conflicts we are now experiencing in Ukraine and the Middle East are not unusual. They represent a reversion to the historical norm of international relations after that short exceptional period. That period was extremely beneficial to Singapore and many other countries. But that it was beneficial to us does not make it any less exceptional. Confusing the exceptional for the norm is one of the more common and dangerous manifestations of mistaking theology for practical diplomacy. The sine qua non of dealing with volatility and uncertainty is a clinical — indeed cold-blooded — mind.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have probably talked for too long. Thank you for listening patiently. I have chosen to make my points in very broad brush-strokes leaving the particulars of specific conflicts to question time. I have done so in order to give you the sense of perspective that I find missing in most discussions of contemporary events, not just in Singapore but everywhere. 

One of the reasons for the lack of perspective is that most individuals in positions of authority in both the public and private sectors around the world came to their intellectual and career maturity during the short, exceptional period of world history I mentioned. They thus are generally still struggling to accept that what they are currently experiencing is really the norm. But all our countries, certainly Singapore, have gone through far worse with far less capabilities. Yet here we still are.

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