Contemporary Southeast Asia Vol. 45, No. 2 (2023), pp. 324–26 DOI: 10.
1355/cs45-2j
© 2023 ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute ISSN 0129-797X print / ISSN 1793-284X electronic
Pukul Habis: Total Wipeout: A Story of War in Malaysia and
Singapore. By David Boey. Singapore: David Boey Creatives, 2022.
Softcover: 400pp.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and concerns over a potential
Chinese attack on Taiwan have brought the conduct as well as
the deterrence of interstate war to the foreground of contemporary
discussions about international security. But, despite the prominence
of concerns over terrorism, internal security, piracy and other
relatively low-intensity challenges over the last two decades, potential
conflict between states never went away as a focus for those who
think about defence and security in Southeast Asia. This has been
particularly so in Singapore. The structure, equipment and training
of the city-state’s armed forces provide many clues to their intended
operational roles, which are evidently concerned primarily with
deterrence and (if necessary) defence against conventional military
threats. However, to a greater or lesser extent, the orders of battle,
procurement patterns and military exercises of some other Southeast
Asian states, including Malaysia, reveal that their political leaders
and defence establishments also have possible conflict with other
regional states on their minds.
For several decades, David Boey—a Singaporean who was at
one point a correspondent for Jane’s Defence Weekly and later
Defence Correspondent for The Straits Times—has thought long
and hard about his country’s defence preparations. In a country
where almost every locally raised male has some military expertise
due to Singapore’s National Service system, Boey is probably the
most knowledgeable person, outside government, on the Singapore
Armed Forces (SAF). It should be no surprise that Pukul Habis,
his fictional account of a war between Singapore and its neighbour
Malaysia, reflects his near-encyclopaedic knowledge of the SAF
and is replete with military detail. But Boey’s transition from his
previous journalistic writing to the very different medium of fiction
is also impressive.
Following in the footsteps of previous authors of speculative
war fiction—including novels as diverse as Hector Bywater’s The
Great Pacific War (1925), General Sir John Hackett’s The Third
World War (1978) and Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October
(1984), not to mention earlier books by Singaporean authors such
as Douglas Chua’s Crisis in the Straits: Malaysia invades Singapore
(2001) and Wee Ee Hon’s Ko Island: What if NS Men had to fight?
324
02j BookReview_2P_31July23.indd 324 29/7/23 4:28 PM
Book Reviews 325
(2004)—Boey’s book describes how bilateral tensions between
Malaysia and Singapore could escalate to full-scale warfare. This
involves, among other things, an SAF advance into the Malaysian
state of Johor, Malaysia’s use of air power and multiple-launch rocket
systems to attack Singapore, naval clashes in the Singapore Strait
and submarine warfare against Singapore’s amphibious warfare ships
as they head for Malaysian shores. Written in large part, though not
exclusively, from the perspective of the Malaysian Armed Forces,
the story adds a strong human dimension to its imaginary war by
focusing on the thoughts and feelings of service personnel ranging
from ordinary soldiers to senior officers. In an apparent effort to
redress the gender-bias often inherent in books about warfare, Boey
emphasizes the roles of female personnel and decision-makers.
The author is at his best when writing in detail about the
operational and tactical dimensions of this fictional war. Boey
displays not only his expert knowledge but also his empathy for
service personnel to good effect in his descriptions of night-fighting
in an oil palm plantation between a Malaysian territorial army
anti-tank unit and SAF armoured infantry, clashes between the two
countries’ fixed maritime installations, a beach assault by Singapore
forces and armoured warfare in the “Pineapple Sea”. These sections
are all classics of the genre.
An interesting and important feature of the book is the author’s
emphasis on the techniques of deception employed by Malaysia,
on paper the militarily weaker of the two sides. It secretly brings
retired MiG-29 fighters back into service, clandestinely purchases a
squadron’s worth of light helicopters for use in an attack role, sets
up a decoy regiment using imitation rocket launchers and acquires
artillery-launched Electronic Warfare devices. As the story unfolds,
these clever measures help blunt the notional advantages of the
numerically and technologically superior SAF. However, sometimes
it seems that Boey is forcing Singapore to fight with one hand tied
behind its back. One might ask why, in the story, does the SAF not
use its offensive assets more effectively? Why is there no attempt
at strategic pre-emption, exploiting Singapore’s superiority in air
power and C5ISR (Command, Control, Computers, Communications,
Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance), particularly
in terms of an Offensive Counter Air campaign that one might
expect to see against Malaysia’s own air force at the start of such
a conflict? And what about the cyber dimension, which hardly
figures in the book?
Another slightly puzzling feature is the relative lack of attention
02j BookReview_2P_31July23.indd 325 29/7/23 4:28 PM
326 Book Reviews
paid to the political dimension of this hypothetical war. The
explanation of why these two closely inter-dependent states go to
war in the first place does not seem fully convincing. In reality, the
obstacles to war breaking out would be formidable, ranging from
the personal contacts between the two sides’ political leaders to the
probable damping effect that the region’s major powers (particularly
the United States) could be expected to exert as tensions rose. Boey
recognizes the potential significance of the role of the United States
but uses the deus ex machina of a volcanic eruption to neutralize
the impact of a US Navy carrier battle group’s presence close to
Singapore. Similarly, an unprecedentedly violent tropical storm
intervenes at the end of the book to enforce a pause in the SAF’s
advance into Johor—almost a literal case of “rain stopped play”. The
mechanics of ending such a war would be particularly interesting to
explore but Boey deals with these rather summarily through (spoiler
alert) a truce negotiated by the two sides’ military commanders and
the arrival of a Japanese task force in a peacekeeping role.
A larger matter is whether, since the 1997–98 Asian Financial
Crisis that severely undermined Malaysia’s defence spending and,
eventually, its military capabilities, open conflict with Malaysia
remains such a serious concern for Singapore as it once was. But
it is important to remember that Pukul Habis is intended as a
work of fiction. Boey has produced a well-written, highly readable
and attractively designed novel that brings home how costly and
harrowing a subregional interstate conflict in Southeast Asia would
be for all concerned.
Tim Huxley was Executive Director of the International Institute for
Strategic Studies-Asia in Singapore from 2007 to 2021 and is the
author of Defending the Lion City: The Armed Forces of Singapore.
02j BookReview_2P_31July23.indd 326 29/7/23 4:28 PM
