Singapore, US and the global order

Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Lawrence Wong’s

10-day visit to the United States

has given his hosts an opportunity to understand views on America held by Singapore’s fourth-generation political leadership, which Mr Wong leads. Slated to be Singapore’s next prime minister, Mr Wong held substantive meetings with US Cabinet secretaries and senior members of the Biden administration that covered a wide range of

issues from national security to economics and finance.

The upshot from those meetings is that, convinced that the US will continue to play a dominant role in the world in the foreseeable future, Singapore will expand bilateral ties into new areas such as emerging technologies, outer space exploration, and green energy.

This development is a strong statement of the sense of purpose that drives bilateral cooperation. The basis of cooperation is multifaceted. On the economic front, not only is the US the largest foreign direct investor in Singapore, its investment is larger than American investment in China, Japan and South Korea combined. Tiny Singapore, on its part, is the third-largest Asian investor in the US, after Japan and South Korea. On the strategic front, Singapore’s status as a Major Security Cooperation Partner of the US underlines its importance to the superpower although the city-state is not an ally.