Singapore’s founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew described his country’s strategic situation as that of a small nation living in a dangerous neighborhood, whose survival depends on making itself indispensable to every major power simultaneously. His successors have maintained this framework with considerable sophistication. In the context of the Taiwan Strait, it produces a position that is carefully calibrated to avoid giving either Washington or Beijing grounds to treat Singapore as aligned with the other: Singapore maintains deep security cooperation with the United States, hosts American naval vessels at Changi Naval Base, allows American surveillance aircraft to operate from Paya Lebar Air Base, and simultaneously maintains an economic and diplomatic relationship with China that it regards as equally essential to its prosperity and security.