In this article, you will:
- Understand why the “rules-based order” is failing.
- Learn why traditional maps of diplomacy no longer work.
- Discover Singapore’s proactive “under-the-radar” strategy to survive in a complex world of flux.
January came and went the way it always does. The calendar turned. People made plans. Container ships moved through the Strait of Malacca, as they have every day for decades, wars, and rumours of wars. (You know, the usual stuff.)
But underneath that surface of normalcy, something structural is shifting. There is a lot of hand-wringing in the West, and even Singapore’s leaders walk around with more furrows in their brows than usual.
The watcher feels the undertow.
The situational diagnosis seems to be converging around the idea that the rules that have governed how states behave since 1945, the ones that kept small countries like Singapore from being swallowed whole by their larger neighbors, are no longer enforced the way they once were.
The scary part for Singapore is that the shift is “gradual, then sudden.” The rules-based order thins out over time, long before the visible collapse. For a small state, that is the most dangerous sequence: by the time the failure occurs, the protection is already long gone.
The Hypocrisy of the Old System
Since 1945, the rules-based international order has functioned as an operating system for global commerce and diplomacy. It constrained what powerful states could do to weaker ones. It was imperfect and often ignored, but at least it set a general standard.
Yet, it is crucial to admit an uncomfortable truth about this system: it was always highly asymmetrical.
When mid-tier or regional powers stepped out of line, the rules were strictly and successfully enforced. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, or when Sukarno’s Indonesia launched Konfrontasi to crush its neighbours in the 1960s, the international system worked exactly as designed.
But the system possessed a fatal structural flaw: it granted impunity to its architects. Global hegemons frequently violated the very international laws they purported to uphold; from the US ignoring the International Court of Justice over Nicaragua in the 1980s and invading Iraq in 2003, to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and subsequent invasion of Ukraine.
What we are witnessing today is the breaking point of that arrangement. Emerging powers and the Global South are no longer willing to underwrite a two-tiered system of justice where the rule-makers are the most brazen rule-breakers. They are effectively calling the bluff on a structural hypocrisy that has lasted for decades.
Former Foreign Minister George Yeo has observed that fiat currency is essentially a contractual obligation backed by the latent threat of force.
The rules-based order was much the same; it functioned exactly like a casino chip. For decades, international law held immense value because everyone trusted the “house”—the economic and military dominance of the United States.
When the house continuously exempts itself from its own rules, the players eventually stop valuing the chips. They revert to being just pieces of plastic.
Welcome to Chaos
For Singapore, this rules-based system was the foundation of the national project. Prime Minister Lawrence Wong has been direct about the weakening of these rules.
“It will simply mean we are moving more towards a world where countries will be more inclined to use force to get what they want.”
We are moving from the predictable physics of a unipolar world to a geopolitical “Three-Body Problem.” In physics, a unipolar system is stable and a bipolar system is manageable, but when three or more massive objects exert gravity on one another, the resulting orbits become mathematically chaotic.
As President Tharman just noted in Davos, we should be wary of the term “multipolarity,” which suggests a balance that does not exist.
Is is probably more accurate to say that we are in a state of radical uncertainty. When rules weaken, power does not disappear; it reverts to its rawest form, concentrating in the hands of the few apex predators who possess the military and economic might to enforce their will unchecked.
Where the Breakdown Is Visible
The fragmentation is already underway across four domains:
1. War: Conflict is no longer a solution of last resort. Global dominance is no longer a stable given to be defended, but a contested prize that must be fought for
2. Energy: Infrastructure—pipelines, refineries, shipping lanes—has become a target rather than a protected neutral. The Strait of Malacca sits at the edge of this new reality, transforming from a transit corridor into a strategic pressure point.
3. The Fractured Internet: Data flows and semiconductor supply chains are now instruments of state power. We are seeing the rise of parallel digital ecosystems, particularly as the US and China race to build divergent, incompatible AI models. Singapore’s position as a data center hub depends on being trusted by both sides, a position that grows harder to maintain as the technological “Iron Curtain” descends.
4. Supply Chains: The logic of comparative advantage has given way to “friend-shoring.” Trade flows are being rerouted based on political allegiance, and the costs fall disproportionately on trade-dependent economies like ours.
Civilizational Reset vs. Civilizational Erasure
To understand the psychology of this shift, we must look through a civilizational lens. Ho Kwon Ping perfectly diagnoses the current friction:
When Western policymakers look at the fracturing of the order, they view it through the lens of fear, calling it “civilizational erasure.” They see an existential threat to a system where Western democratic liberalism is the sole reference point for progress.
Yet, when Asian historians look at the same phenomenon, they see a “civilizational reset.” It is a return to the historical norm—a world where multiple civilizations (Islamic, Chinese, Indian, Western) coexist without one being the absolute benchmark.
Actors like China or Iran do not respond to the same short-term incentives as Western democracies; they carry memory, grievance, and pride across centuries. They operate on longer time horizons and with entirely different definitions of acceptable cost.
Singapore’s Answer?
Write the Rules Before Others Lock Them.
Large powers shape the system; small states live within it. When the system degrades, our task is to keep as many doors open as possible while the world reconstitutes.
Singapore is currently attempting to build “new floors to stand on” because the global ceiling has collapsed. In the 1970s and 80s, we did this with UNCLOS to secure the seas.
Today, we are executing the same strategy for the digital realm. The Digital Economy Agreements (DEAs) are attempts to build domain-specific rules before the great powers lock them down in incompatible directions.
Strategically, a web of overlapping commitments—like the CPTPP and RCEP—creates partial enforceability where universal enforcement has failed. We are buying resilience, remaining useful, and therefore protected, in a utilitarian world.
Living at the Hinge
History has hinges.
These are moments when the old order loses coherence but the new one has not yet taken shape. The key risk for Singapore is believing that we are merely a geopolitical trading post that survives simply by buying cheap and selling dear.
We are not.
In a world tearing itself apart along civilizational lines, Singapore’s true arbitrage is its civilizational empathy. By managing profound diversity internally, and by holding distinct cultures and worldviews in the same shared space, Singapore embodies the software required to navigate a multipolar reality.
The pioneers who built this nation understood that stability is a dynamic achievement. Our survival depends on our ability to remain a non-anxious presence, ensuring that even as the world order resets, the Singapore way does not.
Why is any of this important at all?
We navigate the global storm so that the lived reality of our people can remain peaceful and joyful. The whole enterprise is centered on the simple ability to sit down at a kopitiam and have kaya toast with friends, and to be able to return home to one’s loved ones, to love and be loved.
And so, let us remember that if we are divided within, we cannot be effective without. Our internal cohesion is not just a strategic defense against the chaos of our times; it is the very reason we bother to defend the nation at all.
