What small states can learn from Singapore

Singapore’s story is often framed as a miracle of survival. Following its separation from Malaysia in 1965, the fledgling nation-state defied predictions of collapse. It transformed itself into an economically prosperous ‘global city’ – a concept articulated by its founding Foreign Minister, S. Rajaratnam. This vision was underpinned by the Old Guard’s deep engagement with historical precedents. While Rajaratnam provided the overarching narrative, Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and Dr Goh Keng Swee looked to the maritime city-states of Athens and Venice for guidance. They envisioned a polity that, despite possessing few natural resources, could outpace its larger neighbours through strategic trade.

A story of economic resilience, the so-called ‘Singapore Model’ has attracted growing attention in Europe. In the Netherlands, Singapore is referenced in the newly formed government’s coalition agreement as a benchmark in discussions on public sector salaries. In Belgium, Prime Minister Bart De Wever recently published a book detailing the four economic principles of Singapore’s founding Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, as a source of inspiration for its own fiscal crossroads. Facing a sluggish economy and a straining welfare state, De Wever’s message is clear: ‘If we do nothing, our welfare state risks collapsing. It is to mend or to end.’ Yet, even as European leaders look East for answers, Singapore itself often shies away from suggesting that its success offers a universal blueprint. Its leaders often stress that its policies were born of unique circumstances of survival, making them difficult to transpose onto established western states.

Although Belgium may be among the economically weaker links in Europe, no European small state, whether economically strong or weak, can evade the immense geopolitical challenges now confronting the continent. Europe’s military posture remains fragile, even as readiness levels vary across borders. Consequently, European states, both large and small, are increasingly entangled in difficult debates on security and defence, where questions of increased defence spending, the reform of conscription and new frameworks for security cooperation have moved front and centre.

These debates unfold in a Europe divided over matters of security and defence. Countries such as Hungary and Slovakia have, at times, acted as spoilers in support for Ukraine, while the transatlantic relationship is also strained. As a result, European states are reconsidering the very structure of their security architecture, including closer cooperation among like-minded groupings. This has birthed initiatives including the so-called ‘Coalition of the Willing’, which brings together states in support of Ukraine, and the Multilateral Defense Mechanism, initiated by Finland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, aimed at ‘increasing defence capabilities through joint procurement’.

The current context may well present a window of opportunity. As Singapore’s former Ambassador-at-Large Bilahari Kausikan observes: ‘Cooperation against something is always easier than cooperation for something.’ He characterises NATO’s post-Cold War era as a ‘near-death experience’ that concluded only when the invasion of Ukraine provided a sharp existential catalyst – or as Kausikan dryly notes: ‘Mr Putin did it a favour of invading Ukraine.’

Singapore’s significance extends beyond its economic achievements. In security and defence, it has projected a weight that belies its geographical size. At a time when the international security environment is increasingly volatile – strained by the ongoing war in Ukraine, tensions in the Middle East aggravated by recent developments involving Iran, and broader geopolitical uncertainties, including shifts in the US commitment to traditional alliance structures – the following questions arise: How has Singapore, as a small state in a difficult neighbourhood, organised its security and defence? And what might small states in Europe draw from its experience?

Small states in Europe likewise possess agency and can exert influence beyond their size. The support provided to Ukraine by countries such as Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands is a strong case in point. These states rank among the leading providers of military assistance to Ukraine and have played a significant role in sustaining Kyiv’s defence.

Small European states, which make up the majority of countries on the continent, can learn from Singapore’s experience. The contexts differ, and those differences matter. Singapore is a relatively heterogeneous society, with a multi-ethnic citizen core and a considerable non-resident population of around 30 per cent of its total population. Its regional security architecture operates within an intergovernmental ASEAN, rather than a supranational European Union or the NATO alliance, and thus within a regional strategic environment with its own distinctive political and security dynamics. A simple copy-paste of Singapore’s model would therefore be misguided. Yet its experience can be meaningfully contextualised, offering insights for small states in Europe today.

Emerging as a newly independent state in the 1960s, Singapore was defined by an existential threat perception, driven by acute resource scarcity, impending British withdrawal, and the dynamics of Konfrontasi simmering in its backyard. During this period, Indonesia carried out 42 bomb attacks, most notably the 1965 MacDonald House bombing. Conducted by Indonesian marines Usman and Harun, the bombing killed three civilians and led to the pair’s execution in 1968, a move that deeply strained bilateral ties. While Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew scattering flowers on their graves eventually helped to stabilise relations, the 2014 naming of an Indonesian warship after the duo reignited the controversy decades on. More than a historical episode, this has endured as a perennial security lesson, reinforcing the inherent vulnerabilities of a small state where constant vigilance is vital. Such historical flashpoints were foundational to Singapore’s post-independence identity.

When Singapore became independent, Foreign Minister S. Rajaratnam was asked to hold a press conference. Unsure of what to say, he turned to Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew for guidance. Lee’s reported reply was: ‘Never mind, Raja, just wear a tie and you’ll think of something.’ The anecdote captures something essential about Singapore’s early predicament. It was, in many respects, starting from scratch. From this formative ‘blank slate’ emerged a collective national consciousness, shaped by a shared understanding of what has happened in the past and an aspiration to pre-empt similar security crises. This ‘historical survivalism’ has since crystallised into a national psyche, most visible in Singapore’s consistently high defence budget and its ‘Total Defence’ framework.

Yet, this level of societal buy-in was not always a given. British attempts to introduce conscription in the 1950s were met with strong resistance, culminating in the 1954 National Service riots. While these events involved primarily Chinese-educated students, their motivations were underscored by an anti-colonial sentiment; there was little incentive for the local population to sign up to defend a government that did not represent them. It was only with the shock of independence, and more decisively the British withdrawal by 1971, that threat perceptions sharpened. This shift provided the catalyst for the 1967 National Service (Amendment) Act, as the mission moved from defending a colonial outpost to securing an independent sovereign state – a project in which the citizenry now held a tangible, personal stake. This mandate for self-reliance extended beyond the military. Singapore similarly pursued a diversified approach to resource security, most notably in its management of water, long a resource of tension with neighbouring Malaysia. While the modern relationship today has matured toward collaboration, legacy frictions over water prices and supply remain ‘hot button’ issues necessitating a balanced policy between good neighbourliness and strategic autonomy. A credible defence posture serves as the necessary insurance policy, ensuring that diplomacy over such vital interests is conducted from a position of strength.

This survivalist psyche is perhaps best captured by the evolving metaphors of Singaporean statecraft. As the Singaporean historian Kwa Chong Guan noted in 2002, these reflect a clear strategic progression: from the initial ‘poisonous shrimp’ – the deterrent logic of being too toxic to consume – to the ‘porcupine’, as its national defence capabilities matured. By the 1990s, this shifted toward the ‘smart dolphin’, an animal capable of navigating and swimming with figurative sharks through diplomatic agility and speed. Even the ‘little red dot’, a phrase first used dismissively by Indonesian President B.J. Habibie to underscore Singapore’s insignificance – was later reclaimed as a symbol of defiant relevance. Together, these analogies underscore a fundamental tenet: smallness is not weakness if a country is too costly to touch and too vital to ignore. Singapore’s survival, in other words, rests not only on national resilience, but on a form of diplomacy that expands its strategic headspace and creates international relevance.

Singapore’s approach rests on three strategic principles. First, it practices multi-alignment, adhering to a pragmatic ‘friend to all’ mantra. Yet, this is no policy of passive neutrality, nor does it mean Singapore serves as a regional mouthpiece for others. Instead, the city-state maintains a consistent, principles-based posture: its position is determined solely by what best advances Singapore’s own national interests. This reflects the kind of unsentimental pragmatism that dates back to its founding years; when tasked with formulating Singapore’s foreign policy, Rajaratnam took Lee Kuan Yew’s advice to ‘just wear a tie and you’ll think of something’ – reflecting the idea that for a new nation, diplomacy was less about dogma, but the existential necessity of ‘figuring out’ what was required to survive.

This resolve was demonstrated by the Terrex episode in 2016, where Singaporean infantry carrier vehicles were seized in Hong Kong, widely interpreted as a diplomatic signal from Beijing over Singapore’s military ties with Taiwan. The incident tested the city-state’s resolve to protect its sovereign assets and independent security partnerships under external pressure. Within this context, strategic hedging – balancing security ties with the United States against a primary economic relationship with China – serves to preserve autonomy and avoid the trap of binary, bloc-based choices.

Second, Singapore uses multilateralism to amplify its influence. Through its leadership in the Forum of Small States (FOSS), it champions a rules-based international order where sovereignty is assured through institutional norms rather than size. Yet, for small states, multilateralism is only as effective as the principles that underpin it. Singapore therefore treats international law as the linchpin of sovereign equality, and defends it with consistency. Its principled stance is consistent: from leading ASEAN’s 1979 United Nations resolution against Vietnam’s invasion of Kampuchea (modern Cambodia) to opposing Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine through its support of UNGA Resolution ES-11/1. Most recently, Singapore voiced concern over US actions in Venezuela and escalation following joint US-Israel strikes on Iran and subsequent retaliation. Even when international law is ignored by powerful countries, a small state must relentlessly call for its adherence because the alternative of a ‘might makes right’ world leaves no recourse for small states.

At the same time, Singapore leverages multilateral institutions not merely as normative frameworks, but as strategic instruments to manage regional asymmetries. ASEAN, founded in 1967, serves to embed larger member states within a consensus-based order, granting them leadership roles that favour stability over unilateral dominance, at no cost to state sovereignty. Within this setting, Singapore exerts influence without overt ownership. The creation of ASEAN Free Trade Area is a case in point. Conceptualised in Singapore and proposed in 1976 at the first ASEAN Summit, it initially met resistance from former Indonesian President Suharto. It was later advanced as a Thai proposal, securing broader regional buy-in. A reflection of Singaporean statecraft: for a small state, ideas travel further when carried by others.

Finally, Singapore positions itself as a broker and regional agenda-setter. The 2018 Trump-Kim Summit was the headline example, but the more consistent signal comes from the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue. By providing a neutral space for political and defence elites, combining public debate and closed-door exchanges, Singapore acts as a ‘pressure valve’ for global tensions – exemplified by its hosting of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2024. It presents a similar posture within ASEAN, shaping conversations in nascent sectors such as digital trade and smart city infrastructure. These are all ways in which Singapore entrenches itself as a regional and international node that others have reason to engage.

Singapore is not without its own set of problems. Its domestic resilience is being tested by demographic and socio-economic pressures, even as the global order grows more volatile. The erosion of respect for international law, the primary shield of small states, makes this environment more difficult. Yet, Singapore’s predicament is not an isolated one. The same anxieties are mirrored across Europe.

Longstanding certainties across the Atlantic are shifting, a trend that has unmistakably accelerated under the Trump administration. From questioning NATO commitments to floating the annexation of Greenland, and more recently pressuring allies to support US endeavours in the Strait of Hormuz under threat of a ‘very bad future’ for the alliance, the direction is clear. This moment is increasingly understood as a broader turning point in international politics – a ‘transition’ in the words of Finnish President Alexander Stubb, or a more profound ‘rupture’, as Canadian PM Mark Carney has put it. Even European adversaries have echoed the scale of the shift. Its implications are captured succinctly by Singapore’s former Foreign Minister George Yeo: ‘Even if there’s a negotiated outcome, European leaders know that, looking ahead, they have to stand on their own… and be more autonomous.’

Against this backdrop, European defence is undergoing a transformation. Until 2014, it was driven largely by internal considerations rather than external threats. Initiatives among Europe’s small states, such as the Nordic Defence Cooperation (NORDEFCO), formalised in 2009, were primarily about efficiency. While cooperation in training and exercises proved relatively successful, deeper integration – particularly in joint procurement of major systems – was constrained by diverging national defence-industrial interests. Only after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, and more decisively after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, did European defence become overtly threat-driven.

This shift is visible in spending. In the Netherlands, defence expenditure rose from 1.4 per cent of GDP in 2021 to 1.9 per cent in 2024; in Belgium, from 1.0 to 1.3 per cent. On Europe’s northeastern flank, this increase has been sharper: Finland raised defence spending from 1.4 per cent of GDP in 2021 to 2.3 per cent in 2024, while Sweden doubled its outlays from one to two per cent. The Baltic states have followed a similar trajectory – with Latvia, for example, moving from two to 3.3 per cent. While these figures suggest a pivot, the pattern is not uniform across the continent. Smaller states have been slower to adjust. Portugal, for instance, has maintained broadly stable defence spending, from 1.6 per cent of GDP in 2021 to 1.5 per cent in 2024.

In contrast, Singapore has maintained a consistent defence budget of three to four per cent of GDP, with the 2026 figure standing at three per cent. Its resources are increasingly directed toward building a ‘next-generation’ force, a transition informed in part by tactical lessons from the Ukraine conflict – particularly the integration of drones and unmanned systems in warfare. This long-term fiscal commitment has historically underpinned the ‘Total Defence’ concept that Singapore originally adapted from Swedish and Swiss models of comprehensive security. In a modern reversal, as Sweden rebuilds its own societal resilience, it finds itself drawing lessons from the Singaporean experience.

A second development is the return of national service. During the 1990s and 2000s, many European states phased out conscription, reflecting a more permissive era – an assumption that has since been overturned. Russia’s actions in 2014 and 2022 forced a rapid re-assessment of manpower requirements. Some states have already reversed course: Lithuania reintroduced conscription in 2015, followed by Latvia in 2024. Others have expanded existing systems, with Norway doing so in 2015. Meanwhile, countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands have opted for enhanced voluntary schemes to fortify their standing forces.

In this sense, European (small) states may be entering a phase that bears some resemblance to Singapore’s early years: a transition from a relatively permissive security environment to one shaped by sharper external pressures. The comparison should not be overstated. Europe does not face the same acute existential constraints that shaped Singapore’s formative years. Yet the present moment offers an opportunity. Heightened threat perceptions and strategic uncertainty can serve as a catalyst for policy recalibration; lowering political barriers to deeper defence cooperation and capability development. As Bilahari Kausikan observes, cooperation forged in response to a common challenge is often more durable than that built on abstract ambitions.

The resurgence of geopolitical uncertainty is a shared reality across Europe and Southeast Asia alike. For a small state like Singapore, economic and national resilience rest on a distinct form of historical survivalism, rooted in public memory and shaped by formative events. Unlike Belgium or the Netherlands, Singapore’s threat perception reflects a unique starting point: it emerged as a tabula rasa. The task of forging a cohesive national psyche from scratch is thus fundamentally different from Europe’s challenge of rebuilding or reshaping institutions and identities that were largely dismantled during the post-Cold War era.

To be sure, the historical parallels are far from exact. In the 1960s, Singapore was a nascent city-state without a hinterland, abruptly cut off from British protection. Europe today operates in a markedly different context. Most European small states are embedded in the European Union and NATO, and are navigating a more gradual, if uncertain, recalibration of their security relationship with the United States. While many European small states find themselves in a similar position, the spectrum of vulnerability remains wide. The predicament of Moldova, outside both EU and NATO, with limited economic capacity and a force of roughly 6,500 active personnel, is of a different order from that of the Nordic states.

European small states should not seek to replicate Singapore’s policies wholesale, because they are in Europe. Yet they may draw inspiration from its experience. Despite temporal and geographic differences, there is a resonance in strategic logic. Singapore was compelled to turn the withdrawal of an external security guarantor, alongside other existential pressures, into a catalyst for national resilience. Europe now faces a comparable imperative: to move from a legacy of dependency towards greater self-reliance. In both cases, the central challenge is the same: adapting to a world in which the burden of security must increasingly be borne within the region itself.

It is here that elements of Singapore’s approach become instructive. Foremost among these is the survivalist psyche that underpins its policy choices, shaping how threats are perceived and translated into action. This is operationalised through a set of concrete policy interventions, most notably an overarching ‘Total Defence’ framework that integrates military and civilian preparedness, national service which embeds societal responsibility, and long-term resource management to ensure resilience. These are complemented by a distinct diplomatic posture: multi-alignment to avoid over-dependence, active engagement in multilateral institutions to uphold rules and norms, and a deliberate effort to act as a broker and agenda-setter to increase its strategic utility and influence. This historical consciousness has, in turn, helped sustain a broad societal consensus in support of defence and security policy, including the political willingness to bear its costs.

‘The only true knowledge is historical,’ as Ambassador Kausikan has observed, a reminder that certainty about success or failure is only possible in hindsight, and even then, only partially. It follows then that while much of the criticism of Europe may be justified, excessive pessimism is not. Even amid the considerable challenges facing Europe today, small and middle powers retain agency. The choices they make now will shape the decades to come. As De Wever puts it, in more hopeful terms: ‘We will have to cycle steeply uphill for about a decade and persevere, but beyond the summit a green valley awaits.’