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The war Russia waged on Ukraine has negatively impacted the Asia Pacific area at many levels, PM Lee Hsien Loong said at a dialogue with the Council on Foreign Relations on Wednesday, Mar. 30.

War in Ukraine stokes insecurity

Besides damaging the international framework for law and order, and peace between countries, the war violates the United Nations (UN) Charter, and "endangers the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, especially small ones", PM Lee said.

He further added that if "crazy decisions and historical errors" can be used to justify invading somebody else, then "many of us are going to be feeling very insecure in the Asia Pacific, but also in the rest of the world".

PM Lee, who's on a working visit to the U.S. from Mar. 26 to Apr. 2, was explaining the specifics of a line in the joint statement he and U.S. President Joe Biden released on Mar. 29, which said "the war in Ukraine has a negative impact on the Indo-Pacific region".

International framework for cooperation affected

PM Lee elaborated that the war has affected "the global system of multilateral working together -- whether on trade, climate change, pandemic preparedness, nuclear non-proliferation".

There is no longer a framework in which rivals and competitors can work together, maybe disagree with one another, and do "win-win cooperation", he said.

"Now it is win-lose, you want the other guy to be down, fix him, crash his economy," he said. "So how then do most of the countries, if possible, hang together and cooperate with one another and not fall into disorder, autarky or anarchy?"

And this worries Singapore as the city-state depends on globalisation for a living, he added.

U.S.-China relations impacted

PM Lee further said the war is certain to strain U.S.-China relations, and that it already had.

He also expressed the uncertainty regarding the possibility of bilateral ties between the two major powers becoming even worse than they already are. If that happens, it will hold implications for the whole of Asia Pacific and the world, he said.

Furthermore, countries will have considerations of their own when they look at what's happening in Ukraine. For instance, they might ask who they can trust to come to their help when they need it for their defence.

Countries' strategic calibrations impacted

He then raised the example of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe suggesting that the country should host U.S. nuclear weapons. While the Japanese government had rejected the idea, the thought has been planted and will not go away because "the implication from Ukraine is that nuclear deterrence is something which can be very valuable".

He also brought in the example of South Korea, where majority of its population believe the country should develop its own nuclear capability beyond just hosting American weapons. Should this happens, South Korea, along with North Korea, Japan and China, will also become a nuclear power. An optimist will then say there can be "a stable equilibrium", he said.

However, should more countries, such as Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries, do the same too, the world will be "heading into very dangerous directions", he opined.

PM Lee also mentioned the impact of the war in Ukraine on Taiwan, saying that as 40 per cent of the Taiwanese public now believes that the Japanese will come to their help in the event of a Chinese attack. However, a lower percentage (30 per cent) think that the Americans will come to their aid, which was almost half of the number who said in a poll last year that the Americans would help.

While these calculations will not change the scene overnight, they are significant strategic recalibrations, he added.

Need for institutions in Asia to engage countries

He also said there is a need for institutions in Asia for countries, such as the U.S. and China, to engage with one another in order to avoid conflict and "head off such a failure of deterrence" as what occurred in Europe.

Asia does not have Nato, an organisation that has sparked debate about whether Russia had real security concerns due to its expansion -- the military alliance will not engage in warfare unless a member country is attacked.

But Asia has "hotspots" and "issues which are difficult to resolve", he said, which calls for the necessity of such institutions to promote greater interconnectedness among countries and to deter conflict.

Such institutions should accommodate China as well, which is going to become "more developed, larger, more advanced in the technology, and yet not become overbearing on the rest of the world and acceptable to the U.S., which currently, is the dominant military power worldwide", he explained.

"I think you need to have given thought to this and steer things in a direction which does not lead you to a hot conflict," he said, referring to the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework that the U.S. has mooted as a way to engage the region.

You can watch the entire dialogue here:

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Top image via Council of Foreign Relations