Small state, big agenda: Singapore prepares to steer Asean through crisis

Every bloc needs a chair capable of getting things done – and Southeast Asia watchers say that description fits no country better than Singapore. The city state will get the chance to prove it in the bloc’s 60th anniversary year, after it takes the Asean helm from the Philippines on January 1. Speaking at Singapore’s National Day Rally on August 22, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said the world was becoming more fractured and dangerous – one that the city state would have to “endure and survive for many years to come”. “Our response cannot be to retreat and turn inward,” Wong said, calling for the 11-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations to deepen integration “to create a more effective single market”. A litany of headaches stand in the way of that ambition, from Myanmar’s civil war to an unresolved Thailand-Cambodia border row, simmering South China Sea tensions and keeping a distracted United States engaged with the region. But if any country can rise to the challenge, it is Singapore, according to Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a professor of political science and international relations at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. There was a joke among regional observers, he said, that Singapore should chair Asean every year, because “it is the most equipped despite its small size”. Technocratic leadership Singapore last chaired Asean in 2018, launching a smart cities network, spearheading efforts against transnational cybercrime and terrorism, and helping negotiators agree on a single, shared draft for a South China Sea code of conduct. Analysts expect a similar chairmanship style this time around: efficient, unglamorous and results-driven. “Compared with the Philippines, whose position as a South China Sea claimant gives it greater urgency on maritime security, Singapore is more likely to act as an honest broker and focus on institutional follow-through and economic integration,” said Joanne Lin, senior fellow and Asean Studies Centre coordinator at Singapore’s ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. I would expect Singapore’s chairmanship to be more technocratic and implementation-oriented Syaza Shukri, political scientist A similar contrast can be drawn with Malaysia’s recent stewardship, according to Syaza Shukri, an associate professor of political science at the International Islamic University Malaysia. “I would expect Singapore’s chairmanship to be more technocratic and implementation-oriented than some previous chairmanships, such as Malaysia’s, focusing more on normative and diplomatic agenda,” she said. Singapore tended to emphasise deliverables, Syaza said, though its effectiveness would still depend on its ability to build consensus among member states. Its greatest impact, in her view, will come in economic integration, trade resilience, energy and connectivity. An economically fragmented bloc was more vulnerable to pressure from major powers, she said. “In that sense, Singapore’s economic agenda and its geopolitical agenda are really two sides of the same coin.” ‘Tangible effects’ Sharon Seah, principal fellow at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, points to a scheme launched under Indonesia’s 2023 chairmanship as a concrete integration success: an interoperable QR code payment system linking the bloc’s national banks that is now working with WeChat, the Chinese super-app used by over a billion people for messaging, social media and mobile payments. “Singapore can try to take this idea further with key Asean trading partners and promote a systems interoperability that can help millions of Asean small and medium-sized enterprises,” she said. “This will be a very tangible effect of Asean payment systems integration.” Lin sees another opening on trade: Singapore could push for a less fragmented regional response to US tariff pressures by cutting non-tariff barriers, simplifying customs and rules of origin procedures, and coordinating responses to trade diversion and transshipment concerns. “I don’t think Singapore can solve Asean’s major crises, but it can try to sustain momentum, preserve common principles and leave Asean better coordinated and more resilient,” she said. Underpinning this is decades of institutional muscle memory. As a founding member, Singapore has the bureaucratic capacity and personnel to manage the bloc’s machinery, not just chair its meetings. “There is no doubt among the community of Asean observers that Singapore possesses strong agenda-setting powers and has able personalities who can steer the organisation at the various levels,” Seah said – borne out in this year’s State of Southeast Asia Survey, in which 31.3 per cent of respondents named Singapore the strongest leader on the bloc’s key challenges. Conflicts of interest For all the promise of economic statecraft, Singapore’s chairmanship will also be judged on harsher metrics – and few loom larger than Myanmar. For Thitinan, success hinges on how the city state handles Myanmar’s civil war and what he calls its “civilian-disguised government after a bogus poll”. Elections held between December and January were widely criticised as a junta-engineered sham to legitimise coup leader turned president, Min Aung Hlaing. “If Min Aung Hlaing is readmitted after gaining recognition from Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia … then leaders of major dialogue partners might not join Asean-related summits next year,” Thitinan said, adding: “Min Aung Hlaing is Singapore’s chief challenge.” Asean barred Myanmar’s generals from high-level meetings after the 2021 coup, but has since signalled willingness to welcome them back into the fold. Singapore’s chairmanship would also be measured against the ongoing Thailand-Cambodia border row and South China Sea tensions, Thitinan said – as well as its ability to draw “the US back into the Asean fray in order to balance out China”. On the South China Sea, Syaza said Singapore’s status as a non-claimant state cut both ways: no territorial stake made it a plausible broker of dialogue, but that same distance limited how far it could speak for claimant states like the Philippines and Vietnam. Should the long-stalled Asean-China code of conduct for the disputed waterway remain unresolved by the end of the Philippines’ term, “Singapore could inherit the task”, she said. No less consequential will be energy security. Asean’s heavy reliance on Middle Eastern oil and gas was laid bare this year by the fallout from the US-Israel war on Iran, spotlighting the need to move away from fossil fuels. “Asean needs to fast track the green energy transition,” said Pou Sothirak, a former Cambodian ambassador and now a senior adviser at the Cambodian Centre for Regional Studies, calling for the “practical adoption of renewable energy, including stronger and smarter grid interconnectivity”. Like every Asean chair before it, Singapore will ultimately need to build consensus among member states with divergent interests to achieve its ambitions. “Singapore’s unique convening powers will be tested in the year ahead,” Seah said.

Small state, big agenda: Singapore prepares to steer Asean through crisis

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The city state takes the helm on Asean’s 60th anniversary amid civil war, tariff threats and rising global tensions

The city state takes the helm on Asean’s 60th anniversary amid civil war, tariff threats and rising global tensions