Singapore is an “exceptional state” because its vulnerability — stemming from its miniscule size, its predominantly ethnic-Chinese population which traditionally has engaged in the economic activities of an entrepôt, and a geography that wedges it between two larger neighbours — nevertheless is paired with an astounding degree of economic success. It perhaps is this exceptional combination of vulnerability and excellence that also has made Singapore “the classic anticipatory state”, the energies of whose leaders are aimed at “positioning Singapore to enable it to take advantage of future developments while avoiding dangerous currents”. Against the backdrop of a maritime history within which Raffles had created the essential economic features of contemporary Singapore, it reappeared as a trading state after World War II by drawing on the opportunities opened up by the San Francisco System that ensured the security of non-communist Pacific Asian states through economic growth. Singapore went on to engage India and China in the context of a Cold War in which its early closeness to India was replaced by a movement towards China that reflected the effect of the Vietnamese invasion and occupation of Cambodia on Singapore's security perceptions. After the end of the Cold War, Singapore engaged both Asian powers through a series of economic and political means, both bilateral and multilateral. As America's Long War on Terror begins, the least that can be said is that Singapore is entrenching its relations with India within a larger framework being established by the United States, but without giving up on its engagement of China, whose containment it remains opposed to.

Singapore's engagement of China reflects Randall L. Schweller's description of the term to mean the use of non-coercive means to blunt the non-status quo aspects of a rising power's behaviour so that it employs its growing power in ways that are consistent with peaceful change. To that end, soft-authoritarian Singapore has played an important interlocutory role for China in its relations with the West over crucial issues such as the Tiananmen Square killings and Hong Kong's return to the Chinese mainland. The Asian Values debate demonstrated the degree of congruence between the ideological outlook of Singapore and that of Beijing. Singapore's measured closeness to China has been apparent, too, in ASEAN, an essential platform for China's relations with Southeast Asia.