Commentary: In a changing geopolitical landscape, where does Singapore stand in 2024 and beyond?

As we step into 2024 under the shadows of a protracted war in Ukraine and Gaza, it is an opportune time for Singaporeans to reflect how the geopolitical landscape may affect our social fabric. 

We need to be cognisant of the geographic limitations we face as a global city-state, and how the evolving forces among our major trading partners will shape their engagement with us. 

Small states like Singapore are inherently vulnerable as our existential conditions are influenced by larger countries. Yet global economic competitive rankings feature a disproportionate number of small economies such as Singapore, Switzerland, and New Zealand. 

This irony is not uncanny as this group has little room for governance errors. They are economically more agile, and its people tend to establish close, tight-knit ties with one another as they share a similar culture, identity, and destiny as a collective.

While the neoliberal economic policies in post-World War II years have enabled many small states to flourish, the protectionist barriers, geopolitical rivalry, and the looming impact from climate change today have pitted countries to compete against one another in a zero-sum contest. 

This challenge is compounded by what Michael Spence, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, called the “supply-side constrained global economy”, where there is a finite limit to growth potential due to resource disruptions among major economies.

Taking an overarching perspective, Singapore faces three major headwinds in the coming year. 

SINGAPORE THROUGH A GLOBAL LENS

Beyond the shores of the city-state, Singapore is sometimes viewed as an enigma, an outlier that does not conform to the typology of the states.  

There are stories aplenty of how foreign powers perceive the country as a part of the greater China, and in some cases, regard the little red dot as a vassal state that promulgates Chinese political ideologies. 

This misconception is ostensibly a result of our shared cultural heritage as a majority Chinese society. To understand the extent of this ignorance, look no further than the mainstream media reports from abroad.

In an online commentary published in Think China in January last year, former editor of Chinese-language daily Lianhe Zaobao Lim Jim Koon lamented how the Japanese had classified the broadsheet as a pro-China news network.  

Six months later, The Washington Post — one of the most influential and widely circulated newspapers in the United States — posited the same accusation, citing Zaobao’s coverage of US-China affairs seemed to be in favour of the latter. Zaobao refuted this and said that the American newspaper had selectively left out some facts to paint a negative image of Zaobao.

In a flat and interconnected cyberworld, perceptions do matter. Singapore needs to be seen as a sovereign entity that puts its own interest at the forefront, not those of the superpowers’.

THE WORLD THROUGH THE SINGAPOREAN LENS

There is little doubt that Singaporeans understand our own multicultural fabric, and that our fate as a global city state is interwoven to the fortunes of the region and beyond. 

In a straw poll of 763 Singaporeans by global policy advisory firm Verian (formerly Kantar Public) in the third quarter of 2023, three in four respondents agreed that respect for multi-racialism and multi-religious practices is an important attribute of the Singaporean identity. 

More than four in five respondents believe that social and political unrest in our neighbouring countries will impact Singapore; and half of the sample think that the international community will come to our aid if Singapore is attacked. 

Notwithstanding this healthy dose of geopolitical realism, Singaporeans need to remember that our domestic social fabric and that of the global security ecosystem are fluid and volatile. 

In the immediate months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, international aid in the forms of weapons and humanitarian relief flooded into Kyiv. Towards the end of 2023, though, donor fatigue has set in. Western allies now question if they have the capacity to sustain their generosity. 

More recently, the terrorist assault on Israel by the Hamas group triggered an initiative wave of sympathy to the former and a stern condemnation to the latter even among politically apathetic Singaporeans. 

However, long before the year ended, anecdotes show that many others, especially within the Muslim community, are perturbed by the humanitarian disaster in Gaza created by Israel’s military retaliation. 

Singapore has thrived because we have stable institutions, a strong cohesive society, and our trading partners are successful, benefitting the city-state as rising tides lifted all boats. 

But there is no assurance that this is an infinite status quo, be that the support from our global partners, or the sentiments of diverse communities. 

‘BEGGAR THY NEIGHBOUR’

The principle of relativism is well-established in the study of intergroup identity and nationalism. 

In a nutshell, it is not what you have that matters but it is how you’re compared to others that does.

To defeat your opponent, it is sometimes necessary to give up what you cherish.

To illustrate what this means, consider the story of Vladimir’s choice, a well-known Eastern European mythology described by the late professor of psychology Jim Sidanius:

“Vladimir was a dreadfully impoverished peasant. One day, God came to Vladimir and said: “Vladimir, I will grant you one wish; anything you wish shall be yours!” Naturally, Vladimir was very pleased at hearing this news. However, God added one caveat: “Vladimir, anything I grant you will be given to your neighbour twice over.” After hearing this, Vladimir stood in silence for a long time, and then said, ‘Okay, God, take out one of my eyes’.”

Indeed, as Ismail Haniyeh, the former leader of Hamas, once purportedly said: “We love death like our enemies (Israel) love life!”    

The US and China have locked horns over a plethora of issues, ranging from naval prowess in the South China sea, to computer chips, artificial intelligence, and regional political influence.  

Singapore, as a majority Chinese society with a strong emphasis on the rule of law, is a natural battleground for the two giants, where each side aims to convince Singaporeans to support its agenda. 

Their protracted rivalry and animosity in 2023 and the quagmire in the Middle East may invariably have repercussions to the racial and religious harmony in Singapore.  

We need to ensure that corrosive racial and religious discourse does not permeate our systems.

Importantly, a small state is not destined to flounder. But to survive in the new nebulous, polarised world, we need to understand our ubiquitous constraints as a little red dot, and to amplify our impartial but distinct Singaporean view even as trouble rages on in other parts of the world. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Dr Leong Chan-Hoong is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University.