Two centuries after the landing that resulted in the founding of modern Singapore, the island is one of the few colonial port cities to have withstood the test of time. But as tensions between the US and China threaten to upend global trade flows, heightened pressure from the two superpowers towards smaller nations has tested Singapore’s resolve to remain unaligned. “We are seeing a reduction of strategic autonomous space for Singapore policymakers to make our own independent decisions on certain important issues,” says Ong Keng Yong, a Singaporean ambassador-at-large and executive deputy chairman of RSIS.