There is not much information on Lee Kuan Yew’s views on international politics and foreign affairs before August 1965 as compared to the period after. However, it is still possible to get some insight into his strategic thought in the earlier period. He was a law undergraduate in Cambridge between 1946 and 1950. Returning to Singapore in August 1950, Lee got involved in local politics and formed the People’s Action Party (PAP) in 1954. 3 Singapore achieved internal self-government in 1959 but foreign policy and defence remained under the purview of Whitehall until 1963 when Singapore merged with the Federation of Malaya to form Malaysia. From 1963 until Singapore’s independence in August 1965, foreign policy and defence were controlled by Kuala Lumpur, and not by Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, although Lee did have some leeway in expressing his views and establishing personal ties with foreign leaders which more often than not contributed to tensions between him and the federal government. 4

Two events in 1956 shed some light on Lee’s thinking on international relations – the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt (also known as the Suez Crisis) and the Soviet invasion of Hungary. With regards to the former, Lee approved of the American response to the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt which had “shocked and angered the whole non-European world” and was “a reminder of the perfi dy and ruthlessness of the gun-boat policy of the imperialist powers of a bygone age”. According to Lee, “fortunately, for the peace of the world, the Americans refused to support Britain and France, but instead joined the rest of

of the Canal symbolized the end of the gunboat age for Britain and France”. As for the invasion of Hungary which he described as a “bloody and brutal armed suppression of Hungarian patriots”, Lee noted that “history may well mark this event as the turning point of Soviet Communism in the West and perhaps in the whole world. Never before has any single event in the Communist world split the Communist parties of Europe as Russia’s cruel action in Hungary has done…” 5 .