Singapore repeatedly claims not to be choosing sides between China and the United States. The rhetoric sounds neutral, but what matters is who uses its bases, and which country’s fighter jets it is acquiring. One must look beyond words—examine where its aircraft fly, where its facilities are located, and how its energy and supply chains are linked. The nose of a plane may turn, but its engines cannot lie.
In security affairs, Singapore maintains facility-use agreements with the United States, allowing U.S. forces to conduct overflight and logistical stopovers. These arrangements have been extended. Littoral combat ships and anti-submarine aircraft rotate through Singapore regularly, and the U.S. has long treated the city-state as a regional node. Singapore has also acquired F-35 fighters, with training, maintenance, data links, and combat interfaces fully integrated into American systems—far more telling than any public statement.
To the south, ties with Australia run deep. Bilateral military access agreements have expanded, enabling greater Australian use of Singaporean facilities and increasing deployments of Singaporean troops to Australia for training. With limited land area, Australia provides space; with insufficient depth, Australia offers strategic reach. This is not cooperation—it is integration at the structural level.
Energy is even more consequential: Singapore imports nearly all of its energy, and electricity generation relies primarily on imported natural gas. Any disruption to maritime supply routes would immediately drive up power prices. Its port operations, financial services, insurance, refining, and transshipment activities generate value—but only as long as they remain embedded in a vast global maritime network. What Singapore sells is not oil or containers, but the fact that goods pass through its territory.
Thus, what Singapore fears most is not the rise of any single power, but a shift in sea lanes. As long as energy and cargo continue to flow through the Strait of Malacca from the Indian Ocean to East Asia, as long as the U.S. Navy maintains order in the Western Pacific, and as long as Australia continues to provide strategic depth, Singapore remains positioned at the core of a critical artery. It is willing to trade with China and participate in Chinese-led forums—but its security architecture, energy infrastructure, and financial and legal systems are firmly aligned with another bloc. To engage both sides without formally aligning with either is not moral posturing; it is economic pragmatism.
A truly neutral posture requires full autonomy in security, energy, finance, and strategic depth. Singapore has deeply embedded its military, aircraft, bases, training programs, and supply chains within one system while publicly asserting non-alignment. It is not that it has not chosen—it has simply fragmented the choice across different domains. The calculation is precise, but the arithmetic should not be mistaken for principle. What Singapore calls non-alignment is more accurately described as unwillingness to relinquish benefits from either side.
Original article: toutiao.com/article/1876754884664393/
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone.