Singapore and the US: Security Partners, Not Allies
27 Aug 2013
As US Vice President Joe Biden told journalists when he visited Singapore in late July, his country and the city-state not only enjoy mutually beneficial economic ties, but also important, wide-ranging defence and security cooperation. Indeed, over the last 18 months it has become clear that this bilateral relationship is a lynchpin of the US ‘rebalance’ to the Asia-Pacific. Encouraging a strong US regional security role has been central to Singapore’s foreign and defence policies for more than 40 years, and it recently agreed to provide what is, in all but name, a base for US Navy Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), the first of which (USS Freedom) arrived in April. However, while the depth of their defence links may give the impression that Singapore is a US ally, the city-state has pointedly eschewed this, preferring the strategic autonomy deriving from a less formal – if still close – connection.
The two countries’ security links date back to the late 1960s, when Singapore supported Washington’s war effort in Vietnam by providing maintenance and resupply for US Navy (USN) operations and allowing ‘rest and recreation’ visits by US troops. During the 1970s, the US became the main equipment supplier for the growing Singapore Armed Forces (SAF). Small bilateral naval exercises began in 1975. In 1978, it was disclosed that the USN was using Singapore’s Tengah Air Base for long-range patrol flights over the Indian Ocean. In 1981, Exercise Tiger Balm, an annual joint brigade-level command-post exercise, was inaugurated. The United States Air Force (USAF) was also allowed to maintain a facility at Paya Lebar Air Base to support transiting aircraft.
Singapore is a small island state sandwiched between much larger neighbours. Originally led, after it achieved independence from Malaysia in 1965, by Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, Foreign Minister S. Rajaratnam and Defence Minister Goh Keng Swee, Singaporean politicians have understood it is best to prevent the regional dominance of any power that might threaten their country’s independence. As Lee Kuan Yew said in 1966, it was vital for Singapore to have ‘overwhelming power on its side’. Singapore has built up its armed forces primarily to offset Indonesian and Malaysian power in its immediate locale. However, its small size and relatively limited diplomatic influence and military capacity have forced it to base its balance-of-power strategy at the regional level on borrowing political and military strength from powers outside the region, particularly the US.
Since the late 1960s, Singapore’s leaders have repeatedly expressed anxiety that the declining military presence and involvement of Western powers (principally the US) in East Asia endangers the regional balance. They have worried that this provides opportunities for other large powers – particularly China and, before 1991, the Soviet Union – to assert themselves more freely in the region and potentially threaten Singapore’s freedom. Britain’s almost complete military withdrawal from East of Suez by the early 1970s, the communist victories in Indochina in 1975 and Vietnam’s subjugation of Cambodia in 1978 all accentuated Singapore’s view of the US as a vital external influence on Southeast Asian security. Singapore sought to expand its military cooperation with Washington to delay the attenuation of America’s regional security role. Despite frictions over trade relations, human rights and the supply of military equipment, in the 1980s the foundations were established for increasingly close bilateral security relations.
Even before the last American base in the Philippines closed in 1992 following the Philippine Senate’s decision to reject a new bases treaty, Singapore had stepped in to offer expanded access for American ships and aircraft, to ensure a continuing US presence in the region. Under a 15-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in 1990, Singapore agreed to allow wider use of its facilities for USN repairs and USAF training. In 1991, Singapore agreed to allow the US to transfer its COMLOG WESTPAC (Commander, Logistics Group, Western Pacific) headquarters to Singapore, to support the US Seventh Fleet and coordinate bilateral naval exercises throughout Southeast Asia.
This greater access soon proved invaluable to the US: Singapore was an important transit point for American ships and aircraft during the1990–91 Gulf War. In 1998, Singapore agreed an addendum to the 1990 MoU to allow USN ships including aircraft carriers and submarines access to the new Changi Naval Base following its completion in 2000. And, in March 2000, Singapore’s defence ministry and the US Department of Defense signed an Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement providing for reciprocal logistic support.
By the late 1990s, this increasingly close defence relationship saw more than 100 USN vessels visiting Singapore annually, together with an average of six one-month deployments by USAF fighter units. It also allowed SAF involvement in increasingly complex bilateral and sometimes multilateral exercise series. These include Commando Sling which involved air-combat training with the USAF and, from 1998, the Royal Australian Air Force. In 2000, the SAF joined the large, joint-service Cobra Gold exercise, formerly a bilateral US–Thai affair. From 1995, Singapore acted as the hub for bilateral exercises between the USN’s Seventh Fleet and Southeast Asian partners known as the CARAT (Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training) series, planned and coordinated by COMLOG WESTPAC.
In addition, the extensive range of long-term training opportunities provided in the US for the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) has been crucial in developing Singapore’s air power. The first such programme commenced in 1988, when the RSAF’s initial F-16 fighter unit was based at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, where it could take advantage of the local air-combat manoeuvring range, extensive air-to-ground ranges and the vast airspace available for training. In the early 1990s, Singapore secured US agreement to host F-16 training units over the long-term. Subsequently, there have been additional agreements covering training in the US for the RSAF’s CH-47D Chinook, AH-64D Apache, and S-70B Seahawk helicopters, KC-135R refuelling aircraft, and F-15SG combat aircraft.
While Singapore’s defence relations with the US have grown ever closer, there are nevertheless constraints on the relationship from Singapore’s perspective. Crucially, Singapore’s positive view of America’s regional role and the benefits of close bilateral defence relations do not imply that it wishes to be part of any US-led effort to contain China. Clear-cut alignment with the US could not only imperil Singapore’s important and still-expanding links – especially in the economic sphere – with China, but also place Singapore in a difficult and potentially dangerous predicament in the event of serious tensions or conflict between China and the US. It is also important for Singapore to display a degree of sensitivity towards its immediate neighbours, where Islamism, suspicion of US intent, and strongly-held notions of national and regional self-reliance in security are important elements of political discourse.
Presumably mainly for these reasons, in 2003 Singapore reportedly turned down a US offer of Major Non-NATO Ally status. (This was an offer that was accepted by the Philippines and Thailand, which were already formally allied to the US through earlier agreements.) However, in October 2003 Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and US President George W. Bush announced they would conclude a bilateral Strategic Framework Agreement for a Closer Cooperation Partnership in Defence and Security (SFA). The fact that the SFA was not signed until July 2005 suggests that negotiations may have been complex. Although the agreement’s details remain secret, it is on record that it includes two elements:
• A Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA) that subsumed all existing bilateral defence cooperation and provided for new areas of collaboration including ‘developing military expertise and defence capabilities to deal with the wider range of non-conventional threats’. The DCA reaffirms the importance of defence–technological collaboration and sharing between Singapore and the US. Under its auspices, the two sides set up an annual Strategic Policy Dialogue to bring together senior officials to exchange views on security, defence and bilateral cooperation.
• A Protocol of Amendment to the 1990 Memorandum of Understanding (AMOU) extending the earlier agreement covering access for US ships and aircraft to facilities in Singapore.
Over the eight years since the SFA was signed, bilateral defence collaboration has further intensified.
The recent agreement on deploying LCS to Singapore is clearly an example of this. The USS Freedom arrived at Changi Naval Base in April, and there are plans for four such ships to be forward-deployed in Singapore by 2017. In addition, between May 2007 and June this year, Singapore deployed forces including artillery location, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), and medical units to Afghanistan to help ‘stabilisation and reconstruction’ as part of the US-led coalition there. It has also, in close coordination with the US, sent naval vessels to the Gulf of Aden on counter-piracy duties as part of CTF-151, for which Singapore’s navy has twice provided commanders since 2010. Many observers saw Singapore’s decision in December 2005 to buy the F-15SG as its new combat aircraft as an element of the overall package of defence connections with the US. It is widely expected that, having been a Security Cooperation Partner in the US Joint Strike Fighter programme since 2003, before long Singapore will place an order for an initial batch of these aircraft.
As the LCS deployments clearly illustrate, in substantive terms Singapore undoubtedly supports the current US rebalance to the Asia-Pacific. When Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong spoke in Washington in early April, he remarked that ‘US forces are the most frequent foreign visitors to our military facilities, and we look forward to welcoming your first Littoral Combat Ship shortly.’ In early June, after Lee and Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen each met US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel on the sidelines of the most recent IISS Shangri-La Dialogue, a news release from the Pentagon said Lee and Ng ‘welcomed the US rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region and noted the importance of robust US engagement in the region. They also reaffirmed the importance of the United States of the United States deploying on a rotational basis its first Littoral Combat Ships to Singapore.’
But Singapore itself was less than willing to shout from the rooftops that it supports the rebalance: the corresponding press release from Singapore’s defence ministry on its minister’s meeting with Hagel said merely that they ‘reaffirmed the excellent and longstanding defence relationship between Singapore and the US, and their commitment to further strengthen bilateral defence cooperation’. They also discussed ‘a wide range of regional security and defence issues’: there was no mention of either the rebalance or the LCS deployment. Similarly, in his plenary address at the Shangri-La Dialogue Hagel took the opportunity to elaborate on the substance and significance of the rebalance, whereas in his own plenary speech on ‘Advancing defence cooperation in the Asia-Pacific’ Ng spoke in some detail about the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting Plus, but did not mention the rebalance and Singapore’s ever-closer defence cooperation with the US. In his remarks to the press when Vice President Biden visited Singapore in July, Lee stressed that ‘Singapore is friends with America, also with India, Japan and China and the other major powers. And we would like to maintain our good relations with all of them.’
There are reasons for thinking that these rhetorical nuances are not simply presentational variations, but rather reflect something more profound. Like most other Southeast Asian states seeing China rise, the US rebalance and the role of other major powers remain uncertain, Singapore is unwilling to wholeheartedly align itself with the US and needs to keep its strategic options open. Notwithstanding Singapore’s long-term efforts to encourage continued American engagement in Southeast Asia and the Asia-Pacific, the formal status of relations between Singapore and the US accurately represents the reality: they are security partners, not allies.
For additional reading on this topic please see:
Singapore: Background and US Relations
The Emerging Asia Power Web
Okinawa – Look to Singapore!