Last week, in an address, Singapore’s former Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong stated: “We do not take politics beyond the shore,” a statement that embodies the key to Singapore’s remarkable success – its rejection of the island mentality.
While nations often struggle with inward-looking, self-sufficient ideologies, Singapore emerged as a world-class hub precisely because it chose to move beyond the narrow, insular thinking that traps so many other countries. It was forged in the crucible of its bitter divorce from Malaysia, a painful event that nearly crushed the island nation’s future. Yet, Singapore not only survived but thrived.
Former Prime Minister of Malaysia Mahathir Mohamad, during an interview with me, bluntly remarked that many in Malaysia believed that Lee Kuan Yew would fail disastrously. But against the odds, Singapore dismantled its own island mentality, proving that nations which abandon isolationist instincts are the ones most likely to flourish.
The conversation about island mentality resurfaced just two days ago during a meeting I had with former President Ranil Wickremesinghe. I asked him to elaborate on the term and his response was both incisive and telling: “Sri Lanka has long suffered from an island mentality. How has this warped our politics, economy, and foreign policy? We have failed to leverage our geographical advantage.
“Our mentality has been inward-looking, protectionist, paranoid – an affliction set in motion by policies initiated in 1956. Only under J.R. Jayewardene did we begin to open up, but even now, we remain prisoners of our own limited worldview.
“Britain, though an island, does not suffer from this disease. So what exactly is island mentality? It’s an obsessive inward gaze, a chronic fear of external engagement. And what is the cure? We must break free of this psychological prison before it consumes us.”
His words were not just insightful; they were a scathing critique of how countries can suffocate under the weight of their own fears and misconceptions. How many nations, once powerful, have been rendered irrelevant because they remained prisoners of their own insular thinking?
Historical antecedents
History provides a brutal lesson about the dangers of isolationism. The myth of self-sufficiency, one that believes a nation can thrive entirely within its own borders, is a poison that paralyses countries.
Chanakya, the ancient Indian political strategist, understood this well. In his ‘Arthashastra,’ he warned: “A ruler who isolates himself is an elephant drowning in a swamp; he will perish without aid.”
The idea that a nation can thrive without interacting with the outside world is not just naïve; it is fatal. The world does not tolerate hermits – it devours them. Those who retreat into isolation are quickly forgotten, irrelevant in the larger geopolitical game.
The Chinese, too, have experienced the consequences of isolation. In the 15th century, the Ming Dynasty embarked on ambitious naval expeditions under the leadership of Zheng He, a naval admiral akin to Sri Lanka’s governance during the Kotte Kingdom, reaching as far as Africa.
However, the dynasty soon retreated into itself, dismantling its own naval fleet and sealing its doors to the world. Bureaucrats, gripped by fears of foreign contamination, curtailed trade and innovation. The consequences were disastrous.
The Qing Dynasty’s similar retreat into isolation during the 18th and 19th centuries ultimately led to its humiliation in the Opium Wars. The defeat fractured the Chinese psyche, a national trauma that reverberated for generations.
Years later, Deng Xiaoping overhauled the old odds, which had begun to dismantle with Henry Kissinger’s secret visit to Mao Zedong’s China, and re-engineered China’s psyche. Today, China is reaping the rewards.
Likewise, the tragedy of island mentality is exemplified in Japan by the Sakoku period (1635-1853), when Japan isolated itself to preserve its purity. The Tokugawa shogunate’s strict isolation stifled innovation for over two centuries.
When Commodore Matthew Perry’s fleet arrived in 1853, Japan faced the harsh truth that isolation had left it vulnerable. The Meiji Restoration was driven not by enlightenment but by desperation. As the Tokugawa edicts warned: “To open the gate is to invite disorder; to shut the gate is to invite death.” Japan was forced to modernise rapidly or risk collapse.
Psychological implications
The psychological implications of isolationism are equally troubling. Sigmund Freud, in ‘Civilisation and Its Discontents,’ argued that the individual’s autonomy and sense of self are shaped by the social structures around them.
“The liberty of the individual was greatest before there was any civilisation,” Freud observed, but this liberty is an illusion. In the absence of civilisation, individuals descend into savagery.
The same can be said for nations: those that withdraw into themselves, severing ties with the outside world, risk descending into a kind of national savagery. Thanatos, the death drive, thrives in isolation. A nation or people that disconnects from the world around them will inevitably disintegrate into paranoia, fear, and decay.
Carl Jung, who later became Freud’s rival, explored further the psychology of isolation in ‘The Undiscovered Self.’ He argued that societies that build walls around themselves – whether literal or metaphorical – will eventually turn inward and face their own suppressed issues.
This illustrates the true peril of an insular mentality: it is not just about rejecting the outside world, it is about rejecting oneself. The more a society isolates itself, the more it suppresses its own complexities and contradictions. Ultimately, these internal conflicts will erupt, as the festering wounds of isolation corrode the very foundation of the nation’s identity, leaving it fractured and vulnerable.
Erich Fromm, in ‘Escape from Freedom,’ addressed the seductive appeal of withdrawal. He recognised that nations retreating into isolation are not doing so from strength, but from fear. The isolationist impulse often masquerades as strength, yet it is rooted in a deep fear of the unknown.
Fromm argued: “A nation that isolates itself does so not from strength, but from cowardice. And cowardice, unchecked, breeds only tyranny.”
Vulnerable to repression
When nations withdraw into themselves, they become easy prey for authoritarian figures who promise safety from the perceived dangers of the outside world. Hannah Arendt, in ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism,’ pointed out the inherent danger of isolation, warning that it “eliminates the space for truth and dissent”.
In isolated societies, there is no room for critique, for dissent, for engagement with the other. This paves the way for totalitarianism; when a society has cut itself off from the world, it becomes vulnerable to the forces of repression that can flourish in the absence of open dialogue.
This mentality persists in contemporary politics, from rising nationalism to reactionary ideologies. Much like individuals, nations cannot exist in isolation. Those that attempt to sever their ties with the global community do not bolster their sovereignty – they erode it. The world is no longer a patchwork of isolated nations, each living in self-congratulatory pride of its own history. Rather, it is a tangled network of interdependence.
The most dangerous aspect of island mentality is that it is not only a political or economic issue – it is psychological. The individual who isolates themselves from others, who refuses to engage with differing viewpoints, who builds ideological barriers to protect their fragile ego, is no different from a nation retreating into isolation. Such individuals, much like nations, risk decaying in their own self-made prisons.
Existence is engagement. To live, to grow, to evolve, both as a person and as a nation, is to interact with the world. To shut oneself off, to retreat into a fortress of one’s own making, is not an act of self-preservation. It is an act of self-destruction.
(The writer is a Senior Manager at the Sri Lanka Ports Authority [SLPA]. The views expressed are personal)