Few countries are better equipped to interpret the U.S.-China relationship than Singapore. The small but wealthy city-state has extensive contacts with Washington and Beijing and understands both sides. It knows what’s at stake. And it’s invested in trying to bring the two together and avoid conflict in the Indo-Pacific. Singapore hosts the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, attended by defense ministers from around the world. Last month, that summit was the site of a high-level meeting between the U.S. and Chinese defense chiefs.
So, how does Singapore see the world? I spoke with the country’s defense minister, Ng Eng Hen, on a range of issues, from U.S. soft power to Chinese assertiveness, on the opening night of the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. What follows is a transcript, lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Ravi Agrawal: Minister Ng, there’s little question now that over the last decade or so, China has just become a lot more belligerent. As you understand them, why do you think the Chinese have shifted in the last decade or so to become more assertive and belligerent?
Ng Eng Hen: I don’t pretend to understand China or to be an apologist for China. So let me frame our perspective. We have two theaters of conflict, right? One in Ukraine. And you have one which started after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. The retaliation and the retribution by the IDF is painful for all of us. But the greater problem there is that it can expand beyond Gaza and Israel.
We can ill afford a third theater of conflict in Asia. First, I don’t think the system can take it. But I think more importantly, I think the reasons for casus belli are simply not there, or at least not yet.
RA: Well, sure. But you’re an astute observer of China. From speaking to your interlocutors, can you try and explain how are they seeing the world and why they’re acting as they are?
NEH: Well, if you situate yourself in China, a lot of things that they’re doing make sense to them. I’m not saying they didn’t make any mistakes. But to build, for example, features within the South China Sea to move their forward defense line a couple of hundred kilometers makes perfect military strategic sense. The island chain concept was an American concept, and it was meant to contain China. And, from that point of view, if they could do it, they would. So they did.
The assertiveness you were describing in the South China Sea was probably a bad foreign policy. If you speak to them quietly and candidly, they say that they don’t claim every inch of water. They’ve said so publicly, but in private, they say they don’t. How to roll it back is something that they need to deal with.
RA: So let me flip that question. America’s approach toward China has also changed dramatically in the last seven or eight years. Does that worry you?
NEH: It does.
But let me try to reframe it. The China of today is a wonderful testament to great American foreign policy from the 1960s to the 2000s. In fact, the whole of Asia is. Across administrations, starting from President Kennedy [who said] “one form of colonial control [shall] not … be replaced by an iron tyranny” in 1961 when America spearheaded the fight against communism. You talk about President Clinton, sponsoring China’s ascension into the WTO. The reason he gave to convince both sides of the aisle was that it was important for the security of Asia. Now, from that perspective, American foreign policy from the 1960s to somewhere in 2010 has been consistent in building a global system that benefited small and large countries. And the results have been spectacular. Economically, China is now 17% of world trade, with an economy of $17 trillion. [The U.S. still leads at $28 trillion.] But 800 million people were lifted out of poverty. No way, historically, has any country ever done that. In the 1960s, if you take all of Asia, it accounted for 4 percent of global trade. It’s now 30 percent. All these have been American successes.
RA: I noted you stopped at 2010 there. What about 2010 to 2024?
NEH: The moving spirit did a volte-face and decided that the institutions created for globalization didn’t work for this process. The bill didn’t pass, but America tried to get out of the WTO. The Paris Agreement. Pulling out of the TPP. So America was the moving spirit for the globalized world, for trade, for finance that would benefit small and large countries. It’s now changed. We don’t know where it will go. And I don’t think China is the only reason. And we have to ask ourselves, where will the U.S. be and where will China be?
Because the reality now for China is that from the Asian perspective, China is the largest trading partner for almost all countries in Asia. Now, Joseph Nye talks about soft power. Kissinger talks about legitimacy. But here’s a question for you. Can the U.S. sustain its global presence and its military presence in Asia solely predicated on military power?
RA: I’m guessing the answer is no. I mean, that was a rhetorical question.
NEH: In case you haven’t noticed, Americans weren’t always popular in Asia. In the 1960s, there was a real anti-American backlash. Now in 1990, America became more popular because basically the foreign policy worked. “A rising tide lifts all boats,” and the Asian economies grew. But, when American forces had to pull out of Clark and Subic [military bases], we offered Singapore. Today, American ships and planes are the largest user of Changi Naval Base.
So from Singapore’s perspective, we’ve held that the U.S. presence in Asia is a force for stability. We’ve said it’s indispensable. But that was of a U.S. that was leading the global charge. And [then-Singaporean Prime Minister] Lee Kuan Yew, when he addressed the U.S. Congress in 1985, said America, as a superpower, will have to decide on the rules and enforce it, which America did marvelously, I would say, for 20 years hence. Today, I would argue that it’s a different America, and one that has to be careful to maintain its moral legitimacy, even in Asia.
RA: Are you saying America has lost its moral legitimacy in Asia?
NEH: Has to maintain its moral legitimacy.
The Chinese say to us, “You ASEAN countries or Asian countries, you’re very difficult. You choose China when it comes to trade, and you choose America when it comes to military power.” So we look at them and say, “Why not?”
RA: Fair.
We’re here at Aspen Security Forum, but you host the Shangri-La Dialogue, where you host defense ministers from all around the world. Just last month, your counterparts from America and China were there. If there were to be a skirmish in the Indo-Pacific, what would that look like?
NEH: That would be cataclysmic. Whatever the outcome. It would test Pax Americana. And discovery, I think, is what we want to avoid.
In the third Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1995 and 1996, President Clinton mobilized two aircraft carriers. The Chinese had missiles pointing toward Taiwan. And thankfully, both stood down, or at least both claimed that they stopped their exercises. If you had another situation today, I’m not sure what the outcome would be. And I’m not sure that we want to discover it because it wouldn’t be a simple or short outcome.
I’ve said that Taiwan is not Ukraine, and China is not Russia. Taiwan is an island. To resupply Taiwan, you would need Japan and Korea and you would draw them in. And China is not Russia. China has got military capabilities and 70 percent of trade. The effect on us would be devastating. So this is a very complex situation.
From a security perspective, I think all of us should be very, very careful to avoid any physical conflict for at least this decade, if not for longer, because discovery will be very painful and will probably be life-changing. If America is able to maintain its military supremacy in Asia, that won’t stop China. China will hunker down. Global trade will end with China. China will spend more on military spending. And the contest will go on for another couple of decades. Maybe even more than one generation. If America can’t maintain its military supremacy, I think that’s the beginning of the end of Pax Americana.
RA: One question about Donald Trump. Hypothetically, we’ve heard various possibilities of what a Trump 2.0 China policy could look like, ranging from dismissing so-called “managed competition” in favor of “winning,” to enhanced trade tariffs. A lot of that would rock the boat significantly.
NEH: Well, it is what it is. But I would remind you, we’ve worked with the Trump administration before. And he was very happy with Singapore because we have a trade surplus with you. And, security-wise, in 2015, my Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, renewed the military MoU to continue allowing American ships and planes to go through Singapore. So we’ve worked with the Trump administration. I’m not so much concerned.
But on trade, I think it’s possible to have “small yard, high fences.” The fundamental aspect I think is, it’s not quite trade, it’s information. And if you say, I am trying to protect information, and then it becomes a security risk, the yard gets bigger. If you talk about security, food security, the yard gets bigger. If you talk about capital, which is the most fungible of all, and invest in a Chinese company that has a holding with security aspects, and therefore you cannot do business with American companies? That becomes very difficult. I think it’s not undoable, but I would humbly submit that we are not sure. It’s very hard to decipher what the real outcome of this new industrial policy is.
RA: I want to ask about the war in Gaza. In Southeast Asia, a lot of countries have significant Muslim populations: Indonesia, Malaysia, your own country as well. What is the mood like? And how are you gauging the West’s role in the Middle East?
NEH: Oh, anger.
Singapore has a Muslim population of 15 percent. And, we had just announced two people that were picked up because they were radicalized. This was a 14-year-old boy who pledged that he would commit jihad. So obviously there are effects. It’s been difficult, whether countries have Muslim populations or not. The problem is that you’ve radicalized another generation of would-be terrorists, in Gaza and elsewhere.
So, we hope that the violence in Gaza ends soon, and all we have done is to try to help them and give humanitarian aid. We gave airdrops to Gaza by way of Jordan. But this is a longer tale, and it’s unfortunate that it happened.
The larger problem, of course, is Iran. The Israelis know it and the progressive Arab states know it. I think this has upended the Abraham Accord. Some of the states want to resume relations with Israel, but domestically, their politics have made it very, very difficult for them to sell their message.
RA: The first word you said there was “anger.” Is America losing soft power?
NEH: Not so much soft power, but I think across many countries, we’ve lost the young on this. The young, even in Singapore, are particularly incensed about the violence and the fact that nothing is done to stop it. So you would lose political support, not so much in soft power.
There are other issues that I talked about: what America wants to do about trade. What Asian people, I suppose, can’t wrap their minds around is, how can the U.S. say that the trade practices are unfair when, to them, it’s the richest country in the world. Where America has a $28 trillion economy, a high per capita GDP. There may be inequality in America, but when they see America, they see a rich country. So when the U.S. talks about unfair trade practices, they find that difficult to understand.
RA: Your country has been investing a lot more in defense itself. In the last four years, the percentage increase has ranged between 5 percent and 12 percent, year on year. That is quite a lot. Talk to us about how you think about regional defense. Is this coming from a place of fear about potential adversaries?
NEH: Well, it comes from paranoia. If you know our history, we separated from Malaysia, and it was a difficult time for Southeast Asia. There was a threat of communism.
Actually, our defense spending has come down. We used to spend as much as 5 percent of our GDP on defense, and now we are spending about 3, 3.1, 3.2 percent. But you’re right in nominal terms. We believe that defense is the best deterrence. We have no plans or no capability of projecting ourselves, and we don’t want to anyway. But, Mr. Lee had this term, “poison shrimp,” for our defense forces. We’re bigger than a shrimp now, but we’re still poison, so we’ll keep it as that. We project a good image of deterrence, and the government continues to fund it.
RA: I want to talk about your country’s fairly studied neutrality in world events. That’s of immense value to big powers, clearly. But I’m curious how you think about neutrality in a world that is in flux; in a world that is at war?
NEH: All of us are quite taken with the Melian Dialogue: “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” That’s our ethos. And if you’re weak, then what do you do?
Well, we believe not so much in neutrality, but in information, in observing, in trying to be ultimate realists and seeing what works, what doesn’t. And we don’t believe that we can balance superpowers, but we speak to them and we try to find some space where all sides need us. Whether we can succeed, history will tell. But I think the U.S.-China conundrum will decide the fate of all our nations for this decade and the next. I understand all the policies of “small yard, high fences,” and security alliances, but ultimately, America has to decide its foreign policy toward China. I am not sure that I have a clear idea. Is China an enemy? Is China an enemy for how long? Or can China be a friend, and how would you go about it? Those are difficult questions.
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