EDITORIAL: A new partnership with Singapore

OPINION:

The Obama government will sign a new military cooperation agreement this week with Singapore, and that’s important for several good reasons. It’s an upgrading of one of the most important American logistics and surveillance operations. Singapore is essential to the U.S. Navy’s forward positions in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean.

The new agreement permits American surveillance aircraft to operate from a base at the heart of Southeast Asia’s transportation and communications systems, which are increasingly threatened by China.

Singapore’s strategic importance has always been an unparalleled center of efficiency, transport and communications, first under the British and then under the Singapore Chinese. Coupled with its location at a chokepoint on one of the world’s most important economic arteries, Singapore takes on an importance far beyond its size. Even in the worst of times, despite a population of fewer than six million residents, it has been an island of stability in a sea of faltering former colonies attempting to become independent states.

The new agreement continues a bold Singapore foreign policy, a tacit military alliance with the United States in the face of growing Chinese strength and adventurism in the South China Sea. That’s despite the overwhelming Chinese ethnic composition of its people. Singapore has pushed the Obama administration to protect the principle of freedom of navigation in the face of China’s building naval and air bases on islands built on coral reefs a thousand miles south of the China Mainland, established across a naval artery carrying a third of the world’s cargo. The challenge, like all challenges posed by President Obama, has been hesitant, fearful and long in coming.

Freedom of the seas and free navigation through the Malacca Straits is the essence of Singapore’s existence. The Singaporeans see the Obama administration as less forceful than everybody hoped for, though Washington recently sent warships and aircraft into the waters bordering the new China island bases.

Singapore has a huge and growing $100-billion trading relationship with China. Sheltering under the American defense umbrella while at the same time doing a thriving business with China is not new. During the Vietnam War, Singapore maintained a highly profitable non-lethal trade route through Cambodia to North Vietnam. American troops regularly took rest-and-recuperation leave in Singapore. Lee Kuan Yew, the forceful longtime leader of Singapore, argued that the American war in Vietnam, even though it did not succeed as planned, gave the free Southeast Asian nations, including Singapore, a needed shield for their early development.

Now a diminishing number of American naval ships will find it hard going to maintain the American commitments, including those in both the East China and the South China Seas. Hillary Clinton’s famous “pivot to Asia” has not impressed anyone. In fact, even in the midst of President Obama’s tepid bombing campaign against the Islamic State, or ISIS, there’s no American aircraft carrier in the area. The nations of Southeast Asia have taken note.

China continues to expand its barrier reefs across the South China Sea and the crucial commercial sea artery. President Obama will have to match his rhetoric with action if his commitments to Singapore and Southeast Asia mean what he says they mean. The new assurance to Singapore is a start.