Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia draw closer

Bilateral relations lie at the heart of international politics, and never more so than when they involve two neighbouring states. Friends (and enemies) come and go, but neighbours last. No country can choose its neighbours any more than they can choose it. This is why Singapore's improving relations with Malaysia and Indonesia at the same time are a source of hope, not only for the three countries but for Asean as a whole and its relations with the United States and China.

Malaysia first. At the end of November last year, Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob visited Singapore and suggested reviving discussions on the terminated Kuala Lumpur-Singapore High-Speed Rail (HSR) project. Singapore and Malaysia had reached an agreement on the termination, and the issue had been amicably settled and closed, but Singapore said in November that it is open to fresh proposals fromMalaysia.

There is no need to revisit the winding HSR saga here to believe that the overture from Malaysia could restore some of the bilateral trust that its abrogation of the project had undermined earlier. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's conciliatory response to his Malaysian counterpart's efforts to renew bilateral ties with an eye to mutual benefit underscored Singapore's consistent position that the two countries enjoy a long-standing, broad and multifaceted relationship.

Nothing is a zero-sum game in their relations. Indeed, those ties have been reaffirmed by the way that they have worked together during the coronavirus pandemic.

The ties would be strengthened by the Johor Bahru-Singapore Rapid Transit System Link that is expected to start passenger services by the end of 2026. It is inconceivable that the two nations, merely a Causeway apart, should not provide their citizens with a mode of transport commensurate with their closeness. Causeway jams should not feature at all in the geography of bilateral relations.

Now for Indonesia. Prime Minister Lee's meeting with Indonesian President Joko Widodo in Bintan last month produced a balanced set of agreements that address long-standing bilateral issues of the Flight Information Region (FIR), defence cooperation and extradition of fugitives. In Singapore's view, the agreements reflect both parties' interests, represent a good balance of benefits, and are designed to last for at least a generation.

The FIR in particular had become entangled with a misdirected nationalist impulse in Indonesian politics because of misplaced concerns that the alignment between the Jakarta FIR and the Singapore FIR somehow infringed on Indonesian sovereignty. That misconception has been taken care of, thereby providing for constructive engagement on other issues, including defence cooperation. Like Singaporeans, Indonesians realise that close defence ties benefit both sides.

Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore lie at the core of maritime Southeast Asia. They have many differences, but those differences are subsumed by the higher reality of regional identity. Indonesia and Singapore are republics; Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy. Islam is the predominant religion of Indonesians and Malaysians; Taoists and Buddhists together constitute the religious majority in Singapore.

Indonesia and Singapore are secular states, whereas Islam is the official religion of Malaysia. Singapore is the only Chinese-majority state in the world outside China, but its Chinese do not belong to the People's Republic of China or Taiwan or Hong Kong or Macau: Their destinies have been decided in Singapore, within the possibilities of a tiny island city-state whose closest relations are with its immediate neighbours. For them to drawcloser is for Southeast Asia to become a more coherent region whose very diversity demands a higher unity.

The wider world

Bilateral friendships are coming to the fore in a global context where rivalry between America and China threatens to split regions down the middle.

Southeast Asia lies to China's immediate south, manifestly within its desired sphere of exclusive influence. The region lies also at the heart of America's maritime reach in the Indo-Pacific, whose name suggests the strategic integrity of the Indian and Pacific oceans. Asean straddles the two contending worlds of a rising China and a countervailing America.

Now, what is Asean? It is, of course, a regional organisation, one of the most successful organisations in the world indeed. The fact that it began as a Cold War organisation but has outlived that war and prospered attests to the reality of Southeast Asia as a region. However, regionalism cannot survive in the long run if it is not upheld by bilateralism, crucially good relations among neighbours. That is why it is important for bilateral relations to flourish so that regionalism coheres. If that regionalism frays, the individual countries of Asean would splinter along the axis of the Sino-American divide. Or else Asean as a whole would be absorbed into the orbit of one power, thus attracting the focused strategic hostility of the other. (That is a grave danger because both America and China outweigh Asean's strategic heft, to say the least.) It is only by remaining united that Asean could avoid fragmenting or being taken hostage in the great interplay of global relations that is just beginning.

Already, it is apparent that at least two countries in Asean are leaning heavily in one geopolitical direction -- northwards. The other eight lie on a spectrum that reflects the need to come to terms both with China's rise and America's refusal to be shunted out of Asia. Those eight countries are responding to the exigencies of the Sino-American conflict as best as their national interests permit them. But Aseanstill coheres because eight is greater than two.

With an eye to this coherence, Malaysia's and Indonesia's renewed closeness with Singapore's suggests that other Asean countries, too, cement their cross-border ties so that Asean's land and maritime borders with China and the United States reflect the integrity of Southeast Asia as a single, independent region.

The writer is founder and CEO of Pereira International, a Singapore-based political consultancy.