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153 Shooting Rapids in a Canoe: Singapore and Great Powers1 KUIK CHENG-CHWEE Running the United States is like being in command of an aircraft carrier. You will not capsize. Steering a small and young country is more like shooting rapids in a canoe [emphasis added]. We are at the mercy of the external elements—the velocity of world trade expansion, the economic rocks, and the international political turns and twists. We need the best skills to survive the rapids.2 — Goh Chok Tong, 1985 Singapore’s strategy toward the great powers is the story of how a vulnerable Lilliputian state has endeavoured to combine the use of astute stratagem and skilful diplomacy to manage its asymmetric relations with the big powers. By borrowing the strength of the political heavyweights to manoeuvre through the swift currents, the city-state reduces the risk of capsizing in the rough sea of international relations. This essay adopts a risk-based analysis to explore the change and continuity in Singapore’s great power strategy during the Goh Chok Tong years. One notable change in Singapore’s foreign policy under Goh was the island state’s multilateralist drive beyond the ambit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as a means to promote Singapore’s interests at both regional and global levels. This change has brought new elements to Singapore’s big power strategy. The expanding multilateral diplomatic and economic linkages have not only enabled Singapore to punch above its weight in international affairs, but also provided it with an additional channel, along with the traditional bilateral approach,for engaging the United States and China.These multilateral platforms are extremely valuable for a small state like Singapore because they allow the city-state to ameliorate the power asymmetry problem by giving it a voice equal to that of other much larger countries at diplomatic forums. More importantly, the evolving multilateral institutions have given Singapore precious opportunities to actively shape its relations with the big powers in the uncertain post-Cold War world. Singapore has seized these opportunities, as evidenced by (1) its central role 14 154 KUIK CHENG-CHWEE in retaining the American presence in the region not only through its bilateral efforts, but through multilateral processes such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF); and (2) acting together with its ASEAN partners to engage and integrate China into the ASEAN-led multilateral processes. In retrospect, these two endeavours have brought about far-reaching implications not only for Singapore ’s interests, but also the Asian-Pacific regional architecture in the immediate post-Cold War era. This essay argues that while the push to multilateralism was one distinguishing feature of Goh’s approach, it served to reinforce rather than depart from Singapore’s long held foreign policy goal of mitigating the city-state’s external risk. Singapore’s approach in engaging the big powers may have taken a different form during the Goh years, but its fundamental foreign policy goals have remained largely unchanged since independence in 1965. Mitigating the Risks:What Risks? As a tiny city-state with limited resources and an intricate geopolitical environment, Singapore’s foreign policy has always been driven by the need to cope with its innate vulnerability .3 In order to ensure the political future of Singapore as a sovereign entity and the political relevance of the ruling elites, an enduring theme in Singapore’s foreign policy is the creation of favourable external conditions that could mitigate all real and perceived risks. This theme is particularly reflected in Singapore’s policy toward the big powers, given the latter’s considerable ability to serve or harm the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) elite’s efforts to offset the risks. The bottom line of Singapore’s strategy is to cultivate and capitalise on its multifaceted relations with the major powers in order to hedge against all forms of external challenges. When a particular big power is perceived as a possible source of, rather than a solution to, the external risks, Singapore tends to meticulously leverage on the strength of its relations with other powers to cope with the challenges that it is incapable of addressing alone. Nevertheless, if such external leverage is unavailable or unsuitable for use, the Singapore government typically makes practical concessions while attempting to uphold its sacrosanct sovereignty. Singapore faces a broad spectrum of actual and perceived risks.4 Each risk originates from external...

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