As Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong visits Canberra this week for the annual Australia–Singapore leaders’ dialogue and meets Anthony Albanese for the first time since the Labor leader became prime minister, the focus should be on whether the bilateral relationship will continue along a meandering path of comfort or set itself to address the challenges of our time.

It is often said that while Indonesia is the most important Southeast Asian country to Australia, Singapore is its most enduring partner, owing to a longstanding convergence of strategic interests.

In 2015, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said that Australia and Singapore are ‘natural partners’ whose interests ‘could hardly be more complementary’. That view is shared in Singapore. When Foreign Minister Penny Wong visited in July this year, Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan opened their press briefing by referring to the two countries as ‘longstanding natural partners’ with a ‘huge reservoir of strategic trust’.

This ‘natural partnership’ is based on a history of converging security interests. Australia was the first country to establish diplomatic relations with Singapore following its independence in 1965. During the Cold War, common threat perceptions about the spread of communism and a potentially expansionist Indonesia, as well as fears about reduced US engagement in Asia in the lead-up to its withdrawal from Vietnam, prompted the two to establish the Five Power Defence Arrangements in 1971 with Malaysia, New Zealand and the UK.

In the post–Cold War era, Australia–Singapore cooperation continued to deepen over terrorism and maritime security issues. Singapore is one of the few countries that not only regularly trains its forces on Australian soil but also holds exchanges of military and civilian defence officials. The two countries also continue to hold a shared belief in the need for a sustained US presence in the Indo-Pacific and agree that the US ultimately plays a crucial stabilising role by deterring states (including, but not limited to, China) from using military force.

Complementing the common security concerns is convergence in diplomatic and strategic preferences. The two countries signed a comprehensive strategic partnership in 2015 and are leading members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, understanding that it’s far more than a trade agreement.

Like anything ‘natural’, however, there are imperfections.

The level of shared interests across defence, foreign affairs, trade and security issues allows for greater rhetoric than action and there’s a real risk of the partnership being one of perception over substance.

Despite their common interests, the two countries have different strategic outlooks. While Australia sees itself as a regional power with global interests, Singapore views itself as a small state focused on survival. The ‘shared interests, different strategies’ approach is best illustrated in how the two countries are trying to manage the current era of strategic competition. Australia and Singapore share common concerns about China’s maritime adventurism and sabre-rattling over Taiwan, and the long-term strategic implications of Beijing’s growing power. It was to former Singaporean foreign minister George Yeo that China’s foreign policy czar Yang Jiechi once infamously quipped: ‘China is a big country and you are small countries, and that is a fact.’

Yang knew his target—Singapore’s foreign-policy approach has long been informed by the deeply realist world view of its political class, shaped by a sense of insecurity that is rooted in its small size, status as an ethnic-Chinese-majority country surrounded by Indonesia and Malaysia, and geographic location along two of the world’s most important sea lanes of communication (the Malacca Strait and the South China Sea). Lessons of history have taught Singaporeans the importance of pragmatism as a condition of survival. As a trade-dependent economy, Singapore is also innately vulnerable to geopolitical, economic and diplomatic shocks.

A strategic environment mired by intense great-power competition risks destabilising Singapore’s own domestic politics, a ruling People’s Action Party has long depended on economic performance as a source of regime legitimacy. At a time when the Lee dynasty—the political family that has ruled Singapore for nearly 50 (of 63) years—is coming to an end with Lee’s imminent stepping down a prime minister, the political elite is very keen to ensure that the international system remains stable enough not to create shocks that could undermine a smooth transition of power and the continued dominance of the People’s Action Party.

In this context, Singapore has occasionally been wary of actions that risk intensifying great-power competition. Arguably Southeast Asia’s most vocal leader on international affairs, Lee has spoken many times of the need for China and the US (and Australia) to find common ground. It has, to some extent, enabled a moral-equivalency narrative to form about the two major powers that belies the reality of Beijing’s aggression.

And, to some extent, Beijing gets what it wants from Singapore—a policy of non-alignment that, even in the face of China’s maritime adventurism and persistent influence operations and disinformation campaigns in Southeast Asia, sees Singapore being cautious about openly criticising China.

However, there’s more to Singapore’s strategy than simply an ignorance-is-bliss approach. Its actions behind the scenes are often a powerful signal of its potential regional influence and importance to Australia. For example, Singapore privately advocated for Australia (and not China) to become ASEAN’s first ‘comprehensive strategic partner’ in 2021 to reward Canberra’s longstanding commitment to diplomatic engagement with the region while also dispelling the impression that China is ASEAN’s most important partner. When the AUKUS pact was announced in September last year, unlike the concerns expressed by leaders in Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur, Lee expressed his hope that AUKUS would ‘contribute constructively to the peace and stability of the region and complement the regional architecture’.

Albanese’s meeting with Lee is therefore an opportunity for Australia to recognise Singapore’s strategic view of the world, as well as to help Singapore increase its trust in the power of the collective and reduce its focus on individual survival. That will require a level of openness with Lee—that no level of neutrality and non-alignment is going to help reduce US–China tensions. They will continue to get worse before they improve and the Indo-Pacific will be a core playing field for the competition that in time damages those who stay still.

Alternatively, Australian and Singaporean officials must simply be realistic about the strategic limitations of their relationship and recognise how terms like ‘natural partnership’ could conjure up false hopes.

This doesn’t mean that there’s no room for cooperation. Much can be done to enhance practical collaboration on areas of common interests. Even though Australia and Singapore don’t share identical threat perceptions, they do share common security, economic and diplomatic concerns. As two prosperous states with extensive regional influence, Australia and Singapore have the potential to lead diplomatic efforts to address issues that undermine the resilience of countries in Southeast Asia, from supply-chain disruptions and cyberattacks to climate change.

Wong’s tour of Southeast Asia early in her term as foreign minister was widely touted across the region as a success. By de-emphasising great-power competition and focusing on responding to the region’s needs, she spoke and acted in a manner that demonstrated strong empathy for regional wants and aspirations.

But the bad news is that competition between the US and China shows no sign of waning. And it seems increasingly possible that diverging threat perceptions of China between Australia and Singapore will continue to impose constraints on cooperation.

It will take leadership and political will on both sides to ensure that, when tested by intensifying strategic competition in the coming decade, this natural partnership proves to be as hard, though imperfect, as a diamond.

It’s been 40 years since a UK defence review meant much to Australia and the Asia–Pacific, but the National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015, released last month, signals a sea change. In it, the UK not only commits to increasing its contribution to the apparently ageless Five Power Defence Arrangements (FPDA), but makes an explicit promise to include its new aircraft carriers in future FPDA exercises.

Why does this matter? Because, for the first time since 1979, the UK is about to acquire a viable, independent, strike-carrier capability; which the government says will be second only to the United States Navy. When operational, this carrier force will constitute a new fact in the global distribution of naval power. And for FPDA members—long used to token UK interest—the ships herald a changed equation.

As the review states: ‘We will increase our contribution (to the FPDA), in particular through exercises, including with our new aircraft carriers, and joint training.’ So for countries such as Australia and Singapore that invest heavily in amphibious capabilities, the promise of organic air power brings dramatically expanded scope to the exercises FPDA can conduct, and consequently the potential for FPDA as a vehicle for regional security.

The carriers in question, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, are gigantic compared with the Invincible-class ships they replace. At 70,600 tonnes, they are also 50% bigger than the Royal Navy’s previous biggest warship, the old HMS Ark Royal — whose 1979 demise signalled the effective end of independent Royal Navy operations East of Suez. When the ships commission, in 2018 and 2020 respectively, only the USN will possesses larger aircraft carriers.

What makes the 2015 strategic defence review relevant is the decision to give both ships teeth. Before the 2014 NATO summit in Cardiff, it looked doubtful if Prince of Wales would even see a commission. The Queen Elizabeth, meanwhile, sharing the fiscal attrition of all F-35 partners (including the US), prepared to welcome just 12 of the jump-jet F-35s into her capacious hanger.

Now, the UK has decisively bitten the F-35 bullet. It has committed to a full 138-aircraft purchase, and doubled its pre-2023 carrier-specific procurement. The result: the Royal Navy will get a fully-equipped, two-ship carrier force, with each ship eventually able to operate up to 36 fifth-generation jets.

Outside the NATO area, the carriers will constitute a dominating force, in almost all conceivable maritime and littoral environments. And, critically, the UK has the Sampson-equipped destroyers and high-endurance attack submarines to protect them.

This decision deserves attention in Asia–Pacific because it expresses a shift in UK security priorities. The UK’s designated expeditionary force is to be doubled to 50,000 personnel; special forces’ budgeting will also be doubled; and two new rapid-strike brigades formed. The Review creates the force structure behind the ambition for ‘… global reach and influence’. The inherent corollary: European security has finally ceased to dominate UK defence spending.

This shouldn’t shock a realist-minded analyst. The UK’s interests are shifting. The share of UK trade for which the EU accounts has fallen consistently since 1999, and is now less than 50 percent. Between 1999 and 2013, exports to non-EU countries grew at almost twice the pace of exports to EU, and whereas overall trade with EU suffers from chronic, deteriorating deficits, non-EU trade is healthily in surplus. Commercial imperatives underlie Mr. Cameron’s’ quest to build a trading future ‘in the Far East.’

Similarly the City of London is more global than at any time since the Sterling Area era. As its financial and professional services jostle New York for global pre-eminence, the ‘Asian Century’ has come to matter in Westminster. London’s enthusiasm for the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (heedless of Washington’s concerns) and the offshore renminbi trade are meaningful watersheds. The UK has a vital and growing interest in the stability and security of the Asia–Pacific region.

Hence, the startlingly global outlook of the security review, which includes setting up new defence staffs in Asia–Pacific. The UK is ‘…strengthening considerably our defence, political and diplomatic cooperation with Japan, our closest security partner in Asia’. This involves building on joint counter-piracy operations with Japan, and collaborating on joint deployments — regionally and worldwide. And to make clear the UK’s trade-centric view of security, the desire to deepen defence engagement is twinned with an endorsement of opportunities for expanding UK–Japan trade and investment.

Besides Japan, Australia and New Zealand are singled out as countries with which the UK will ‘seek to strengthen co-operation on settling international and regional disputes. The commitment to ‘developing new capabilities’ with Australia could just be a tilt at the RAN’s ANZAC replacements, given growing confidence in the Type 26’s Artisan–Sea Ceptor combination But the desire to deepen security engagement with the region is a recurring theme, which new capabilities make relevant.

In practical terms, this means that when the Royal Navy sails east, FPDA members will play with multiple squadrons of sea-based strike-fighters, instead of the 8-10 Sea Harriers that maxed-out the old carriers’ decks. Australia’s two new Canberra-class amphibious ships will exercise against more aggressively-framed scenarios, and more importantly, so will the Hobart class air-warfare destroyers. And since the giant ships will carry a large, mixed bag of anti-submarine, attack, early warning and transport helicopters, the range of operations will expand too.

There are geo-strategic caveats, of course. Putin’s dreams could drag the UK back to old familiar postures. ISIL loomed large in the Review’s media spin—though terrorists are more afraid of ridicule than retaliation, a lesson the UK learned in Ireland. And the F-3B itself has much to prove—though its target-finding finesse plus other vehicles’ missiles looks a formidable combination.

For Australia, the re-emergence of expeditionary UK doctrines—backed by interest, not sentiment—should provoke some forward-thinking. Relationships in Southeast Asia are changing. The assumptions that underpin the China Rising narrative may or may not survive that country’s epic macro-financial tangles. But the UK’s naval build up, at the front end of its own economic cycle, offer opportunities for Australia. And new facts to play with.