The Southeast Asian dimension of Singapore's relations with China cannot be detached from the Republic's expectations of the U.S. role in East Asia as a whole. The evolution of the U.S.-Singapore relationship provides a context for the way in which Singapore sees its options in the age of Chinese ascendancy.

The Republic's view of the United States as a benign hegemon made it continue to support, after the American withdrawal from Vietnam, an American presence in the region to counter the potentially malign influence of other powers. But it was the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the dismantling of bipolarity in international affairs that saw one of the clearest reaffirmations of Singapore's balance of power outlook. On 4 August 1989, Brigadier-General George Yeo, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, told Parliament that Singapore was prepared to allow the United States to use some of its military facilities to make it easier for the Philippines to continue hosting the American bases at Clark airfield and Subic naval bay. Singapore's stance basically was that the Philippines government was coming under increasing domestic pressure on the American bases; and although all non-communist Southeast Asian countries enjoyed the protection of the U.S. cover, Manila was the only capital to have to bear the political burden of hosting them. Although the military facilities that Singapore was offering were negligible in physical terms — all of Singapore could fit into the Subic naval base — the move was a pointed gesture of support for the U.S. presence in Southeast Asia. Such gestures were seen as being necessary because the end of the Cold War was coinciding with a deepening of America's economic problems and a strengthening of U.S. domestic sentiments in favour of military disengagement abroad and the diversion of saved resources to the domestic economy. By making it easier for the United States to remain engaged abroad, beneficiaries of its presence would be furthering their own interests in an era when the domestic mood in the United States was in favour of isolationism. What would come to be called the'“places, not bases” strategy adjusted forward deployment to changing strategic and economic needs.