Singapore Unlikely Power Chapter 8 Part 1 - Water Wars and Brain Power

Chapter VIII is called “Coming to the Present,” and it marks a shift in Perry’s book. We’re past the colonial era, past independence, past Lee Kuan Yew’s early nation-building. Now we’re looking at modern Singapore figuring out how to survive when the old playbook isn’t enough anymore.

This first half covers environment, water, piracy, regional competition, the knowledge economy, and that very Singaporean obsession with engineering the perfect society. The throughline? Singapore never stops reinventing itself because it literally cannot afford to stop.

Asia Lite: Selling a City With No Scenery

Perry opens with a funny observation. Albert Winsemius, the Dutch economist who advised Singapore for decades, noted that the place has zero natural tourist appeal. No scenery, no ancient ruins, no historic sites. Wild animals exist only in the zoo. And yet Singapore somehow pulls in more tourist money per year than India. A country with the Taj Mahal and the Himalayas.

How? Food, for one. The cuisine is a mix of Malay, Chinese, Indian, and everything in between. Even the food vocabulary tells the story of a crossroads city: sarabat from Arabic, laksa from Persian, satay from Tamil.

And then there’s the manufactured appeal. Sentosa Island was originally called Pulau Blakang Mati, “Island Behind Death.” Oil companies wanted it for refineries. Winsemius said no, make it a tourist destination. They renamed it “Peace and Tranquility” and built hotels, beaches, and eventually casinos. Perry calls the whole tourist experience “Asia Lite.” Comfortable and safe with just a whiff of exoticism.

The Land That Keeps Growing

Here’s the thing about Singapore that most people don’t realize. The island is physically bigger than it was at independence. Since 1965, they’ve expanded their land area by 22 percent through reclamation. They use incinerated trash and industrial waste as landfill material, pushing the coastline outward. Venice built on wooden piles. Amsterdam pushed back the sea. Singapore drives steel posts into the seabed and keeps going.

But the neighbors noticed. Malaysia and Indonesia got annoyed enough to ban exports of stone, gravel, and sand to Singapore. They felt like Singapore was literally growing at their expense. So the Singaporeans had to find construction materials from further away and develop new ones.

The environmental cost has been real. Nearly all the original mangrove is gone. More than half the coral reefs have disappeared. For a long time, nobody in charge cared because Singapore doesn’t depend on living marine resources. The value of natural habitats as carbon sinks and water purifiers just wasn’t on the radar.

And then there’s the pollution Singapore can’t control. Sumatran forest fires periodically blanket the city in haze. Runoff from Malaysian tin mining and palm oil plantations contaminates shared waters. Singapore can clean its own river, but it can’t clean another country’s sky.

Drinking Your Own Sewage (And Liking It)

Water is Singapore’s biggest vulnerability after territory. The city has depended on Malaysia’s Johor state for water under a 1965 agreement the Malaysians consider unfairly cheap. As Johor’s own population and economy grow, that supply becomes less certain.

So here’s what happened. Singapore decided to drink its own sewage. Seriously. They built a system that filters, disinfects, and reverse-osmoses wastewater into drinking water cleaner than what comes out of most taps. They branded it “NEWater” and even give it away free in bottles. Most of it gets pumped straight back into the regular water supply. Perry notes that people seem more amused than disgusted by the concept.

Singaporeans now talk about their “four taps”: rainwater, Malaysian imports, desalination, and NEWater. The plan is to eventually get 50 percent from reclaimed water, 30 percent from desalination, and 20 percent from rainfall. The target for full water self-sufficiency is 2061.

But here’s the problem. Recycling and desalinating water takes a lot of energy. And Singapore imports all its energy. So water independence might just mean trading one dependency for another. Classic whack-a-mole for a small state.

The smart move is that Singapore turned this vulnerability into an export business. They now sell water technology to India, Thailand, Cambodia, and Mauritius. Perry calls it “niche diplomacy.” When you can’t project military power, you project technical expertise.

Pirates, Shipjackers, and the Kra Canal That Never Gets Built

Perry tells a wild story about the Petro Ranger, a Singapore-owned oil tanker hijacked in 1998. Twelve pirates with machetes and handguns climbed up the stern on a bamboo ladder, overwhelmed the crew, raised a Honduran flag, and sailed off with fake papers renaming the ship “Wilby.” A Chinese coast guard vessel eventually intercepted them during a random document check.

The piracy problem got bad enough that Lloyd’s of London classified the Melaka Straits as a “high risk war zone” in 2005. That could have been devastating for Singapore since it drives up insurance and pushes shipping elsewhere. The three littoral states finally established joint patrols. Lloyd’s removed the classification a year later.

Then there’s the Kra Canal. Thailand could theoretically dig a canal across its southern peninsula, bypassing the Melaka Straits entirely. One commentator compared it to Disney rereleasing Snow White every seven years for a new generation of kids. The Kra Canal is always a project, never a reality. But if China decides it needs an alternative route and is willing to pay, things could change. And then there are opening Arctic sea routes. Singapore’s position is never as secure as it looks.

Brain Services and the Growth Triangle

Singapore’s economic pivot from manufacturing to “brain services” is one of Perry’s most interesting threads. The idea: let the neighbors do the physical manufacturing while Singapore provides management, marketing, research, and logistics. Venice and Genoa updated for the modern era.

The “Growth Triangle” with Malaysia’s Johor and Indonesia’s Riau Islands was the first experiment. AT&T, Siemens, and Philips set up factories on Batam Island. Singapore kept the headquarters. It worked for a while, transforming Johor into Malaysia’s most dynamic state. But cooperation turned into competition. By 2002, Johor’s chief minister declared flatly: “We are no longer in a complementary role to Singapore. We are competing with it.”

Manufacturing a National Identity

The most fascinating section is about Singapore’s deliberate engineering of national identity. Here’s a country that had no independence struggle, no founding heroes, no stirring national narrative. Lee Kuan Yew could have been the national hero but chose not to play that role.

So the government invented the Merlion, a half-lion, half-fish creature symbolizing the union of land and sea. Perry is not impressed. Neither, apparently, are Singaporeans. It works as a tourist photo spot but not much more. Few would call it beautiful.

They also codified “national values” through Parliament. Family comes first. The individual bows to the community, the community to the nation. Hard work, frugality, discipline. Stay healthy, be punctual, don’t be late for weddings. The prescribed ethic reads like a company handbook for an entire country. Lee Kuan Yew wanted “some grace and poise” to polish the “ruggedness” of society. A culture that is modern yet Asian in essence.

And that’s why it matters. Singapore’s survival strategy has always been the same: identify a vulnerability, turn it into a strength, and if that doesn’t work, reinvent entirely. Water scarcity becomes a water technology export. No natural resources becomes a knowledge economy. No national identity becomes a deliberately engineered one. Whether that engineering produces a genuine culture or just an efficient one is a question Perry leaves open. Part 2 will dig into education, language politics, and the “Asian values” debate.

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