Despite an association with claims of Asian exceptionalism, the discipline of International Relations (IR) in Singapore tends to reflect approaches common to mainstream Anglophone, North American and, to a lesser extent, British perspectives on the discipline. Intellectual paradigms such as realism and constructivism seem to have a particularly enduring hold on teaching, research and knowledge production, even though the awareness of Global IR and alternative viewpoints is relatively widespread. The reasons for this divergence between statements about a focus on Asia and adherence to more conventional disciplinary norms are varied. The internationalization of Singapore academia, which incentivizes publication in highly-ranked international journals and university presses dominated by Anglophone academia, seems to be a key reason. Other explanations include a need to conform to the preferences of state funders who tend to view the world in policy rather than conceptual terms, and the fact that IR scholars in Singapore predominantly receive their training from parts of the Anglophone world. Limitations on being able to study Singapore in-depth also mean that Singapore-based scholars tend to engage intellectually with work that examines disparate locations outside of the country—even if they are in Asia—rather than systematically consider Singapore’s position in the world. © 2022 ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.

The mainstream literature on weak status quo states’ diplomacy tends to identify their regional security roles in terms of dealing with non-traditional security issues. This article argues that such a limited approach is not sufficient to explain the current security dynamics in the Asia-Pacific. This article reviews the literature on weak status quo states’ influence on regional order. It then identifies a security environment in which they are more likely to exert some impact on maintaining and building a regional order. After contextualising these discussions in the Asia-Pacific setting, the article examines the experience of South Korea and Singapore as secondary powers in the East Asian region. Although both countries enjoy high levels of security cooperation with the US, both have also been able to exercise a certain amount of influence in advancing their own geostrategic interests amidst the growing Sino-US geostrategic competition. Yet their exploitation of Sino-US geostrategic competition is neither a simple balancing strategy against China nor a simple bandwagoning with the US, since both South Korea and Singapore have been increasing bilateral and multilateral security cooperation with China.