Former Straits Times editor-in-chief Warren Fernandez writes with characteristic elegance in his latest RSIS piece, “With or Without You: The U2 Doctrine Comes to Shangri-La”, carried in The Straits Times on June 3, 2026.
The piece gives cause for three reflections from this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue: whether middle power coalitions can substitute for hard power; whether the SLD can be both a pro-American forum and a genuine platform for US-China ministerial dialogue; and whether deterrence and diplomacy are coequal in one’s foreign policy toolkit.
Let’s take them in reverse, because deterrence is the precondition for everything else.
Diplomacy comes after deterrence
Deterrence works by changing an adversary’s cost-benefit calculation before a decision to act is made. Diplomacy has room to operate only when the costs of aggression exceed the benefits. Without a coercive backstop, the stronger party has little reason to concede anything.
Fernandez cited Sun Tzu’s “supreme art” of prevailing without battle. But that only works when the adversary calculates that battle is irrational – and that calculation is produced by deterrence.
What happens when we invert this sequence? Europe spent three decades deepening economic interdependence with Russia while hollowing out its deterrence posture, betting commercial ties would socialize Moscow into the rules-based order. Then, Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, undercutting Europe’s peace via economics premise.
In the South China Sea, ASEAN has pursued dialogue, while China has built at least seven artificial islands in the Spratly Islands, equipped with anti-ship missile batteries and operational runways, and has outright rejected the 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling. An ASEAN-China Code of Conduct may eventually be concluded, but it’s unlikely to change the territorial facts on the ground.
Questions of neutrality
For the second consecutive year, China’s defense minister skipped the SLD. Beijing’s explanation for his absence as “a completely normal work arrangement” was neither credible nor to the point, which is that China views the SLD as dominated by the US and the West.
Singapore’s former Ministry of Foreign Affairs permanent secretary, Bilahari Kausikan, affirmed as much on the sidelines of this year’s SLD : “The Shangri-La Dialogue was always primarily about anchoring the US in Southeast Asia.” IISS should own this assessment, rather than equivocate when critics call it out.
China’s Xiangshan Forum, which draws ASEAN and Global South defense ministers each September, is a rational response. So was Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s choice to attend the Munich Security Conference in February 2026 rather than Singapore in May.
He went where he could contest the normative order at its weakest, not where Chinese hard power is already the operating assumption among Indo-Pacific neighbors.
I make these points because the SLD should not simultaneously try to be both an American-anchored forum and a neutral platform for US-China ministerial dialogue to remain relevant and purposeful. Given today’s state of regional geopolitical contest, those are structurally incompatible functions.
If SLD exists to anchor US commitment to the Indo-Pacific, then Japan, Australia, the Philippines, and other American-aligned states are not merely attending a dialogue but are also using SLD as a stage to reaffirm Washington’s regional role.
China has no rational or strategic interest in legitimizing a forum that is structured around that purpose. Expecting Beijing to do so is asking a competitor to dignify its opponent’s press conference.
And because Singapore is hosting the conference, its local defense community should stop expressing “disappointment” at China’s absence. Lamenting it signals confusion about what SLD is for.
Worse still, mistaking SLD for a neutral convening platform – and then acting surprised when China declines – is self-deception. Singapore hosts SLD as an institutional choice and its internal clarity about the forum’s structural meaning must follow.
Don’t mistake activity for capability
This confusion about the SLD reflects a broader problem: mistaking the momentum of multilateral activity for the substance of deterrence.
Fernandez references the Guiding Principles for Underwater Infrastructure Defense Exchanges framework (GUIDE), Japan-Australia agreements, and middle-power Plan B architectures in his essay. He said that middle powers are “seeking agency – not just to adapt to a changing world, but to shape it.”
But shaping a security order (even a regional one) requires the ability to impose costs on a major power that is seeking to contest it.
Threat perception can be defined as intent multiplied by capability. In deterrence, intent matters little if a power lacks the capability to act on it, or if its capability is inferior to that of its competitor.
As US War Secretary Pete Hegseth said at the SLD, a favorable balance of power requires “capable allies with genuine military strength, industrial capacity and political resolve.” On this point, Hegseth is right.
For any smaller state, autonomy exists in the space that competing great powers leave open as they constrain one another.
In Singapore’s case, its ability to speak sincerely to both Washington and Beijing, to host the SLD and send ministers to Xiangshan, and to maintain the Agreement on Defense Exchanges and Security Cooperation with China while deepening US access arrangements, depends entirely on that balance of power remaining credible.
It’s worth noting that Singapore established an MOU granting US forces access to Sembawang and Changi in 1990, anchoring America’s forward presence before Singapore formalized defense ties with Beijing in 2008, from a position of strength. As Singapore enhanced the ADESC in October 2019, it also renewed the MOU with the US on base access through 2035.
In short, Singapore was able to deepen ties with both major powers because the balance was assured.
Friends with everyone
Keeping that balance on an even keel enables Singapore to stay friends with all. To illustrate this point, I’ll reference two of my earlier essays.
The first concerns Singapore’s September 2025 decision to acquire four Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft. The US$2.3 billion platform is US-built, US-interoperable and optimized for anti-submarine warfare in precisely the waters whose stability is undergirded by a US-led architecture.
Second, I reflected last month on the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor, with Singapore embedded as an indispensable logistics node in Beijing’s western maritime supply line, as a sustainable way of deepening economic ties and other strategic interests with China.
Warren’s counsel to “shape ties with a capricious America” treats US commitment as one variable among many. But Singapore’s experience suggests that without America’s commitment here, there is simply no balance to be had; without balance, there is no autonomy; and without autonomy, Singapore’s diplomacy – with Washington, Beijing, or anyone else – has little ground to stand on.
Singapore’s Defense Minister Chan Chun Sing recalled Emeritus Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong’s counsel at this year’s SLD, saying, “We cannot control the sea, but we can certainly keep our boat seaworthy.”
That is precisely why we should go beyond debating whether China should have attended the SLD or whether the US is coercing partners to burden-share. The SLD serves a purpose, but it is only one side of the ledger. Indeed, a seaworthy boat is necessary, but it still needs sea lanes that no single power can toll.
Marcus Loh is the chairman of the Public Affairs Group at the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) Asia Pacific and a director at Temus, a Singapore AI and digital services firm. Formerly the president of the Institute of Public Relations of Singapore, he helped strengthen the role of strategic communication and public affairs amid shifting policy, technological and geoeconomic landscapes. He is currently an MA candidate at the War Studies Department of King’s College London.
