FEATURE ANALYSIS
As former President Bill Clinton becomes the first ex-president compelled to testify before Congress in over four decades, Singapore watches a superpower ally turn its legislative machinery inward — with consequences that extend far beyond Chappaqua, New York.
CHAPPAQUA, New York — In a converted performing arts centre in a quiet New York suburb, a former President of the United States sat across from congressional investigators on Friday and answered questions under oath about his associations with a dead sex offender. The moment was historic in the literal sense: Bill Clinton became the first sitting or former president compelled to testify before members of Congress in more than forty years. But for observers from Singapore and across Southeast Asia watching from thousands of miles away, the significance ran far deeper than constitutional precedent.
It was, in many ways, a portrait of a superpower doing something unusual — holding its most powerful former leaders publicly accountable, however imperfectly, to a body of elected representatives. And that portrait, however messy and partisan its execution, carries layered consequences for a city-state whose economic model, strategic doctrine, and very survival have long been bound to the assumption of an effective, credible United States.
I. The Testimony: What Happened and Why It Matters
The depositions of Hillary and Bill Clinton before the Republican-led House Oversight Committee on 26 and 27 February 2026 represent the culmination of a seven-month legal confrontation. The committee, chaired by Representative James Comer of Kentucky, issued subpoenas to ten individuals in August 2025 — including the Clintons — as part of its investigation into the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, and into alleged mismanagement of federal investigations into their network.
Hillary Clinton testified for approximately six hours on Thursday, maintaining in her opening statement that she had “no idea about their criminal activities” and had never met Epstein, flown on his plane, or visited his properties. By the end of the session, committee Republicans were reportedly asking her about UFOs and the long-debunked “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory — a detail that exposed the hearing’s occasional drift into political theatre. Bill Clinton followed on Friday in what was expected to be an even longer deposition, having acknowledged in prior sworn declarations that Epstein had offered him the use of his private plane for Clinton Foundation philanthropic trips in 2002 and 2003. CNN’s review of flight logs showed he had travelled on that plane at least sixteen times.
Critically, committee chairman Comer repeated multiple times that “no one is accusing the Clintons of wrongdoing.” The investigation’s formal remit is to understand how Epstein operated, how the federal government failed his victims, and whether foreign intelligence connections exist. Democrats, for their part, spent much of both sessions demanding that the committee also subpoena President Donald Trump, whose own associations with Epstein in the 1990s and early 2000s are extensively documented in the Justice Department’s released files.
“President Clinton’s presence here today under oath highlights the Donald Trump-sized gaping hole in Chairman Comer’s investigation.” — Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Virginia)
The partisan contest in Chappaqua thus became, paradoxically, an argument not about Epstein’s victims but about which powerful man’s associations with him deserved more scrutiny. Both Clintons argued the exercise was politically motivated — designed to deflect attention from Trump. Democrats noted that others in the inquiry were permitted to submit written statements in lieu of personal testimony, a courtesy not extended to the former first couple. “Even though practice makes perfect, Jim Comer can’t even lie well,” one Clinton camp statement read.
The Clintons had initially resisted, missing multiple subpoena deadlines and citing legal challenges to the subpoena’s validity. It was only when the full House prepared to vote on a bipartisan contempt resolution — nine Democratic members joined Republicans in supporting it — that the Clintons relented. The bipartisan dimension was notable: it reflected a changed political climate in which Epstein’s victims’ demands for accountability cut across party lines.
II. Singapore and the Legibility of American Democracy
From Singapore’s vantage point, the Clinton-Epstein hearings arrive at an already fraught moment in the republic’s reading of American power. Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, speaking at Singapore’s 60th National Day celebrations last August, stated with unusual bluntness that it is now “every country for itself.” That declaration — from one of America’s most reliable and capable partners in Asia — encapsulated a hardening recognition that the postwar liberal international order, underwritten by American credibility, is under structural strain.
The Brand Finance Global Soft Power Index 2026, published in January of this year, found that the United States — despite retaining first place overall — recorded the steepest decline of any ranked nation brand, driven by sharp drops in reputation (-11 positions, to 26th) and key attributes including perceived friendliness, generosity, ease of doing business, support for climate action, and ethical standards. The report’s authors were direct: “Nations failing to uphold promises implicit in their brand are penalised by global audiences.”
Singapore held steady at 21st globally — above India, above most of Southeast Asia — and outperformed regional peers across governance, business and trade, and education and science metrics. The juxtaposition is instructive. As American institutional credibility contracts, Singapore’s remains stable, a dynamic that complicates the traditionally asymmetric nature of US-Singapore relations but also underscores the vulnerability of any small state that has premised its security architecture on a powerful patron’s predictability.
As American institutional credibility contracts, Singapore’s remains stable — a dynamic that complicates the traditionally asymmetric nature of US-Singapore relations.
The Epstein proceedings, viewed from Buona Vista or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Nassim Road, are not primarily about Jeffrey Epstein. They are a data point in a larger pattern: an American polity increasingly consumed by internal political warfare, deploying its legislative instruments as weapons of partisan advantage rather than as tools of genuine accountability. The distinction matters enormously to a city-state whose entire security and economic model depends on a United States that is coherent, rules-following, and strategically predictable.
III. The Strategic Context: Singapore Under Pressure from Both Directions
The Clinton-Epstein circus plays out against a backdrop of considerable geopolitical turbulence for Singapore. In February 2026, President Trump announced a 15 per cent tariff on Singaporean goods under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 — an increase from the earlier 10 per cent baseline — even though Singapore runs a trade deficit with the United States. The irony was not lost on Singaporean commentators: Washington was penalising one of its most reliable strategic partners in the Indo-Pacific.
Singapore’s entire economic model is premised on rules-based multilateral trade. Exports-to-GDP ratio exceeds 100 per cent. The country has concluded at least 19 bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements. When Trump’s State of the Union address in late February described tariffs as a permanent structural instrument of American economic policy — and even suggested they might one day replace income taxes — Singapore’s Singapore Economic Resilience Taskforce (SERT), established in response to the tariff shock, recognised the signal for what it was: not a negotiating tactic, but a doctrinal shift.
PM Wong’s parliamentary statement on the initial tariff announcement had described it as “a profound turning point” and “a new phase in global affairs — one that is more arbitrary, protectionist and dangerous.” Such language, from a head of government famous for studied moderation, was diplomatic code for deep alarm. The Lowy Institute observed that Singapore’s relationship with the United States was built on shared values of a stable rules-based global order. If Trump, as Singapore’s then-defence minister put it in April 2025, had shifted America from being “a system-manager to acting like a landlord seeking rent,” the foundations of that relationship required urgent re-examination.
At the same time, Singapore’s relationship with China remains complex and asymmetric in different ways. Three-quarters of the city-state’s population identify as ethnically Chinese. Beijing invests heavily in influence operations through business associations, kinship networks, and media. Yet surveys consistently show that the United States retains greater soft power in Singapore than China, and that Singaporean leaders have proven resistant to Beijing’s narrative architecture. The CSIS Southeast Asia Program has noted that Singapore “is distinguished by its masterful diplomacy, which means that it is unlikely to be taken in by any country.”
The Epstein affair, and the broader spectacle of American political dysfunction it represents, does not push Singapore toward China. But it does reinforce the logic, already dominant in Singapore’s strategic community, of genuine non-alignment — not the passive non-alignment of Cold War posturing, but the active, entrepreneurial diplomacy that Singapore has pursued since independence: building redundant relationships, championing multilateral institutions, and cultivating the credibility that comes from being demonstrably useful to multiple great powers simultaneously.
IV. What the Clinton Hearings Signal About American Governance
The constitutional dimensions of the Clinton depositions deserve attention on their own terms, because institutional legibility — the degree to which a state’s governance processes are transparent and consistent — is itself a form of soft power.
Bill Clinton is the first sitting or former president compelled to testify before a congressional panel in more than forty years, since Gerald Ford appeared voluntarily in 1983. The precedent the House Oversight Committee has now established — that former presidents can be subpoenaed to appear in person, under oath, before legislative investigators — cuts in multiple directions. Democrats, led by Representative Robert Garcia of California, were quick to argue that the precedent should now apply to Trump himself: “Republicans are now setting a new precedent, which is to bring in presidents and former presidents to testify. We are now asking and demanding that President Trump officially come in and testify.”
Chairman Comer demurred, arguing that Trump had “answered hundreds, if not thousands of questions” from the press. The asymmetry was visible to any observer: different procedural standards applied to a former Democratic president versus the incumbent Republican one. For Singapore and other rule-of-law states watching, the inconsistency is precisely what corrodes institutional credibility. The rule of law derives its legitimacy from universality; selective application is its antithesis.
The rule of law derives its legitimacy from universality. Selective application is its antithesis — and Singapore, whose entire brand rests on institutional reliability, watches the American variant of that proposition under stress.
That said, it is worth noting what the hearings also demonstrate about American democratic resilience. Nine Democratic members of the Oversight Committee voted with Republicans to hold their own party’s former president in contempt — prioritising, in their own words, the power of congressional subpoenas and consistency for Epstein’s victims over partisan solidarity. The committee’s bipartisan contempt vote was a genuine exercise of legislative independence. The Clintons ultimately appeared. The process, however imperfect, functioned.
Singapore’s own political philosophy, shaped by Lee Kuan Yew’s conviction that effective governance matters more than procedural democracy, has always maintained a degree of institutional scepticism toward the messier features of Westminster and American democratic practice. The Clinton hearings will do nothing to revise that scepticism. But they will also not fundamentally alter Singapore’s assessment that, for all its dysfunctions, the American constitutional order retains resilience that authoritarian alternatives lack.
V. Epstein’s Network and the Global Elite Accountability Gap
Epstein’s network was not merely American. It was global — encompassing financiers, royalty, politicians, academics, and technology executives from across the Atlantic world and beyond. The Justice Department’s document releases, running to millions of pages, contain names and associations that span multiple continents. The question of how a convicted sex offender maintained access to the highest levels of Western power for decades is not merely an American question; it is a question about the structural vulnerabilities of elite networks in liberal democracies.
For Singapore, which positions itself as a corruption-free financial hub and a model of clean governance, the Epstein saga offers a clarifying mirror. The city-state’s anti-corruption framework — built around the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB), stringent financial regulations, and a political culture that has historically enforced severe consequences for personal misconduct by public officials — represents a deliberate countermodel to the permissiveness that enabled Epstein’s network to function for so long. Singapore’s brand rests substantially on the credibility of that countermodel.
The contrast with Washington’s prolonged inability to hold Epstein’s associates accountable — Epstein himself died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial; his death was ruled a suicide — will not be lost on Singaporean observers. The current congressional proceedings, whatever their partisan motivations, represent a belated attempt at accountability. Whether they produce meaningful accountability, or simply more political ammunition, remains to be seen.
VI. Implications for Singapore’s Foreign Policy Calculus
Singapore’s Foreign Minister Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, speaking in Parliament on 27 February — the same day Bill Clinton was testifying in Chappaqua — emphasised that Singapore must retain the ability to say “no” even if it has to pay a price for its positions on issues. The statement was a reaffirmation of the city-state’s foundational foreign policy doctrine: that small states must maintain principled consistency, because credibility is their primary currency.
That doctrine has a direct bearing on how Singapore navigates the current American moment. Singapore cannot afford to be seen as simply accommodating Washington’s preferences, any more than it can afford to be seen as accommodating Beijing’s. Its value to both lies precisely in its independence. When the United States behaves in ways that erode its own credibility — through selective application of its legislative powers, through tariff policies that penalise allies, through a political culture increasingly dominated by partisan warfare rather than governance — Singapore’s calibrated distance from Washington becomes a strategic asset rather than a liability.
At the same time, Singapore’s security architecture remains deeply dependent on American power projection. US Navy littoral combat ships are rotationally deployed at Changi Naval Base. Singapore operates F-35 combat aircraft. The 1990 Memorandum of Understanding on military facilities, renewed in 2019, runs to 2035. The Trump administration’s Pax Silica initiative — aimed at securing semiconductor supply chains — named Singapore as a key partner alongside Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. These ties are not merely transactional; they reflect decades of trust-building and capability alignment.
The Clinton-Epstein hearings do not threaten those ties. But they are another data point in a growing body of evidence that American political culture is consuming itself in ways that will have long-term consequences for the country’s capacity to be the kind of stable, reliable partner that small states like Singapore require. The question Singapore’s strategic planners must answer — and are almost certainly already modelling — is how to maintain the benefits of American alignment while hedging against the risks of American unpredictability.
VII. Conclusion: Spectacle, Accountability, and the View from the Lion City
History will judge whether the Clinton-Epstein hearings were a genuine exercise in democratic accountability or a partisan performance that further hollowed out the institutions it purported to vindicate. The answer is probably both. American democracy has always been characterised by the productive tension between its highest ideals and its lowest political instincts, and the current moment is, in that sense, continuous with a long tradition.
For Singapore, the significance is neither alarm nor reassurance. It is, rather, confirmation of a worldview that has guided the city-state’s foreign policy since independence: that no external power can be fully trusted, that the rules-based international order is valuable but fragile, and that small states must be perpetually vigilant architects of their own security and prosperity.
In a world where the most powerful democracy is simultaneously setting a precedent for presidential accountability and demonstrating the limits of its willingness to apply that precedent consistently, Singapore’s response is likely to be what it always has been — quiet, methodical, and strategically agile. PM Wong’s observation that it is now “every country for itself” was not a lament. It was a statement of operational reality from a government that has always known, at some level, that this moment would come.
The question is not whether Singapore can survive American dysfunction. Singapore has survived worse. The question is what kind of international order emerges from it — and whether the institutions that enabled Singapore’s extraordinary rise can be sufficiently repaired, or replaced, before the next crisis demands that they hold.