Singapore foreign minister: Differing US-China views on Ukraine war threaten already fraught superpower ties

Vivian Balakrishnan said Covid-19 and Russia’s invasion marked the end of a ‘post-World War II golden era’ and the world was on the verge of a dangerous moment

Beijing is committed to boosting ties with the region and ensuring peace, its envoy to Asean Deng Xijun told SCMP’s China Conference: Southeast Asia

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Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan speaks during a signing ceremony with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in front of the news media at the State Department in Washington, DC in September 2021. Photo: Pool/AFP

Published: 9:22am, 23 Mar 2022Updated: 10:55am, 23 Mar 2022

Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan on Wednesday said contrasting views between China and the United States on Russia’s Ukraine war was threatening to “inadvertently complicate” already fraught ties between the superpowers.

“Their different approach to the war in Ukraine is the latest complication,” Vivian said in a keynote address at the South China Morning Post’s China Conference: Southeast Asia, adding it would be “disastrous for both powers to focus on extreme competition or even confrontation” and that “the old Cold War strategy of containment will not be viable in this emerging multipolar world”.

A deterioration in ties between the countries would only serve to harm global efforts to deal with long term problems like climate change, he said.

Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan addresses the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly at the UN Headquarters in New York in September 2021. Photo: Pool via Reuters

In the 15-minute speech, he said the world was on the verge of a dangerous moment in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine, and urged governments to double down on efforts to hold together the international rules-based order.

He also reiterated the city state’s frequently-emphasised position that geopolitical shifts shaping an emergent “multipolar order” required the US, China and all other powers to abide by a new modus vivendi, or way to get along.

The escalating US-China superpower rivalry and rising anxieties about social mobility and inequality were prime drivers of the shift, he said.

But “it’s really the two more recent events, Covid-19 and especially the war in Ukraine that have truly marked the end of this post-World War II golden era,” Singapore’s top diplomat said in the recorded speech for the conference.

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