little ball bearing

Singapore Angle has a really interesting piece on Patricia Herbold, nominated as the next Ambassador to Singapore. Here are a few of the more interesting things that jumped out at me:

Frank Lavin, the current ambassador, has over twenty years of experience with Asia issues, a Lt Commander in the U.S. Naval Reserves, and not to mention a B.Sc.F.S. from SFS at GU, an M.Sc. in Chinese Language and History from GU, an M.A. in International Relations and International Economics from SAIS at JHU and an M.B.A. in Finance from Wharton. [all schools truncated from the original for your guessing pleasure]

I am astounded. His educational qualifications read like the who's who of top institutions. And I don't mean top institutions in the generic sense - this guy studies at the top institution for each field. I don't know how he managed to accumulate such a wealth of academics but ... I also want!

There always has been a small collection of "plum" ambassadorships that U.S. presidents of both parties save for their closest friends and reliable contributors: Paris, London, Tokyo, Buenos Aires and Singapore.

Why is Singapore considered a plum ambassadorship? I wonder what it takes to qualify to be a plum.

And this bit is from Ms Herbold's testimony, which also contains a very concise summary of Singapore-U.S. relations for anyone who is interested.

Singapore is a strong supporter of a U.S. military presence in the region. It is a critical logistics hub for U.S. forces transiting between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Singapore boasts the only pier outside a U.S. base at which a U.S. aircraft carrier can dock, for example. Singapore is also an important partner in promoting maritime security in the Strait of Malacca, through which one-third of the world's trade and one-half of the world's oil transits.

It brings to mind two fond memories. The first was when a bunch of friends were discussing regional militaries and someone joked that Thailand has an aircraft carrier and not enough aircraft. The comeback was: we have an aircraft carrier dock and no aircraft carrier. I didn't realise we were the only one in the world, though.

The second point is the now oft-quoted statistic about the Straits of Malacca. Soon after 9/11, I was engaged in a study of Terrorist Threats to Singapore under one of the foremost terrorism experts in the U.S. This was one of our core findings, and to this day I still wonder if the media spotlight a year or two later had anything to do with our little school project. My professor was, after all, a CIA consultant and who knows whatever other government links he had. But so what if half the world's oil flows through our Straits? Let me try to elucidate its significance to Singapore and the world, with excerpts from our research.

August 17, 1943. Bombers from the Eighth Air Force attacked ball bearing plants at Schweinfurt in a massive daylight raid. The allies had identified anti-friction bearings as a critical component of the German war machine and attempted to snap this weak link. Here is one example of input-output analysis [now more popularly know as Effects Based Operations], and how the destruction of something seemingly insignificant could have disproportionately large repercussions.

I was offended when my professor approached the problem by asking, "How could Al Qaeda attack America through Singapore?" Ethnocentric b***** I thought - but no, he actually had a very good point because the ISD had already proven it could deal with JI - and the only thing that would entice the intervention of Al Qaeda in our lion city was the prospect of dealing larger damage to the U.S. We used input-output analysis to figure if any of the weak links might reside on our soil.

The Straits of Malacca is one of the busiest and most crucial shipping lane in the world. Every year, more than US$1 trillion worth of goods are transported through the straits and the volume of shipping traffic through the straits in 2000 amounted to 49,062 vessels. The use of the Straits saves the Japanese petroleum industry about $400m a year just on transportation cost savings. Much of the trade that takes place in the world relies heavily on the Straits of Malacca, a narrow 1.5 mile stretch between Singapore and Indonesia, and it is estimated that half the world’s shipping passes through this point. It is easy to envision the world economy being severely crippled if use of the straits is made impossible, even if for just a few months. Industries, being heavily dependent on oil, will come to a standstill, especially in the poorer countries in East Asia, leading to the lack of components critical in driving world economic production.

There was little doubt in our minds of the magnitude of the problem should the Straits be blocked - we then spent a considerable effort researching dirty bombs, mines and RPGs on fast craft to determine how it might be done. Personally, I am very glad our respective governments have taken strict measures to control this threat even before any incident occurred.

And so that explains the significance of the Straits of Malacca. We also found some other less sexy and still unpublicised stuff, so I guess I will keep that to myself for now.