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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Singapore
Index
Until Singapore's separation from Malaysia in August
1965,
responsibility for national security matters had always
resided
either in London or Kuala Lumpur. In the two decades
following the
end of World War II (1939-45), Britain spent billions of
dollars to
rebuild its military bases in Singapore in order to honor
its
defense commitments to Malaysia and Singapore. Between
1963 and
1966, several thousand British troops were deployed to
protect the
two countries during the Indonesian Confrontation
(
Konfrontasi--see Glossary).
By 1967 the British Labour and Conservative
parties had
reached a consensus that Britain could no longer afford to
pay the
cost of maintaining a military presence in Southeast Asia.
In
January 1968, London informed the Singapore government
that all
British forces would be withdrawn by 1971, ending 152
years of
responsibility for the defense of Singapore.
After the 1963 merger of Malaya, Singapore, Sabah and
Sarawak
to form the Federation of Malaysia, Singapore ceded
control over
its armed forces to the federal government in Kuala
Lumpur. For a
time, Malaysian army and air force units were stationed in
Singapore, and Lee Kuan Yew's refusal to allow Malaysia to
retain
control over Singapore's military establishment after
separation
was one reason political relations between the two nations
remained
strained well into the 1970s.
Data as of December 1989
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