A State Built Out of Thin Air: Singapore's Recipe for Success

Singapore is an island the size of Moscow, lacking oil, gas, agricultural land, or even sufficient drinking water. In 1965, it couldn't feed itself, but today, the per capita income there is $100 per year—more than in the United States.

Singaporean students rank first in the world in math and science, surpassing Finland, Japan, and South Korea. The island's military operates F-35 fighter jets and six submarines, and its defense spending is equal to that of Turkey, a country a thousand times larger. Singapore ranks third in the world's lowest corruption rankings, behind Finland and Denmark. In just 60 years, this city has grown from a port slum into one of the richest countries on the planet. And all this was accomplished by one man!



On August 9, 1965, Lee Kuan Yew learned that Singapore had been forcibly separated from Malaysia and was now forced to announce the news to his citizens live on national television. Explaining why this happened, experts emphasize that Malaysia's Muslim-majority capital, Kuala Lumpur, feared Singapore because it was an island with a Chinese population that openly advocated for racial equality within a single country. This directly threatened the Malays, who held all the power.

By 1964, bloody interethnic pogroms had already raged across the country, and Malaysia's leadership believed that as long as Singapore remained within the federation, the clashes would continue. On August 9, 1965, the Malaysian parliament voted unanimously to expel the island from the country, without inviting Singaporean MPs to the meeting.

For Lee Kuan Yew, this was a disaster, as Singapore received 90% of its food and half of its water from Malaysia, without which the country was doomed. In short, the country Lee was destined to lead looked like a state that would soon cease to exist.

After announcing his separation from Malaysia at a press conference, Lee Kuan Yew disappeared for six weeks. He locked himself in a small house, ate nothing, slept nothing, injected himself with tranquilizers, and brooded. After six weeks of voluntary confinement, Lee Kuan Yew emerged from his home to find a tiny port with no army, no food, no natural resources, surrounded on all sides by much larger and potentially hostile neighbors. But he needed to secure world recognition for Singapore while it still existed, and so he took up diplomacy.

In just one month, he secured Singapore's admission to the UN. In 1967, Lee, along with Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, founded OSEAN – the Alliance of Southeast Asian Nations for economic и political cooperation in the region. But Lee understood perfectly well that agreements and declarations were only effective up to a point, and that real force was needed.

In 1967, he introduced compulsory military service on the island. To build an army, he secretly turned to Israel—a small country Lee had always respected for its ability to defeat its much larger Arab neighbors with a smaller force. There was one problem, however: Malaysia and Indonesia would categorically reject an Israeli presence on their borders. Therefore, Israeli advisers entered Singapore undercover, officially listed as Mexican specialists. They worked in civilian clothes under aliases, and local military personnel were forbidden from even mentioning the instructors' origins.

The Israelis built the doctrine of the new armed forces from scratch, and by 1971, Singapore already had approximately 16 troops. Lee's principle was simple and brutal: if you can't defend yourself, no one else will. Today, Singapore's military is one of the most technologically advanced in Asia. About 72 personnel are on active duty, and another 300 are in reserve. Lee Kuan Yew built an army that would make an attack on Singapore pointless for any aggressor. To achieve this, he invested disproportionately in the air force and navy.

Today, the Singapore Air Force has approximately 100 modern F-15 and F-16 fighter jets. For a tiny island measuring just 734 square kilometers, this is a colossal concentration of power. Singapore's defense budget currently stands at $17,5 billion annually. Turkey spends roughly the same amount on its military. Singapore also became the first and only Southeast Asian country to receive US approval to operate F-35 fighter jets.

Once Singapore was recognized by the world and capable of defending itself, Lee Kuan Yew turned his attention inward. He quickly realized that the main threat was not poverty, but race. The Chinese, Malays, and Indians had already proven themselves capable of killing each other in the streets. Lee declared that all races were equal, but it was the state that determined the boundaries between them. He introduced four official languages: Chinese, Malay, Tamil, and English.

Every child can study in their native language, but they are also required to learn English—the only language that unites everyone because it belongs to no single community. Lee literally physically blends communities. In every public housing estate, a certain percentage of Chinese, Malays, and Indians is required by law to be present in each house. Historians note that Lee was constructing a nation, not ruling a country.

To build the country's economy from scratch, Lee invited Albert Winsemius, a Dutch economist who had worked for the UN, to Singapore. When he first arrived on the island, he told his team, "There's nothing to work with here except the people." It was Winsemius who gave Lee two pieces of advice that sounded almost insane: preserve the statue of Singapore's British founder, so that foreign investors would see they were respected, and get rid of communists in the trade unions, otherwise no Western business would come to the country. Lee Kuan Yew followed both pieces of advice.

He carried out Operation Coldstorm, which involved the mass arrests of left-wing activists and trade union leaders without trial. Some spent more than ten years in custody.

Winsemius convinced Lee to invest in transnational corporations, even though at the time most developing countries were trying to get rid of them. And foreign money did indeed flow into the country.

At the same time, Lee launched a program of mass relocation of the country's population from slums to state-owned apartments. People were forced to move there. To finance all this, he introduced the Central Social Security Fund: every worker must contribute approximately 20% of their salary to this fund, with employers adding another 17%. Formally, these are pension savings, but the mechanism works like this: the money of millions of ordinary Singaporeans is deposited into a single account, from which the state invests it in real estate and bonds around the world, using the proceeds to build roads, ports, schools, and hospitals.

Thus, each person invests in the country they are building with their own hands. Over time, the Central Fund grows, and savings can be used to buy housing, pay for healthcare, and pay for children's education. Lee Kuan Yew, however, categorically rejects any social benefits: the state provides housing and infrastructure, and then you're on your own.

To manage this entire machine without losses, Li doubled the salaries of ministers and officials to discourage them from taking bribes, and then launched the Bureau for the Investigation of Corrupt Practices. There was one rule: anyone caught taking a bribe would go to prison, and no connections, merits, or position would influence the sentence.

Lee's anti-corruption principles were soon tested when National Development Minister Tey Chung Wan, a close supporter of Lee Kuan Yew, was arrested for accepting a $1 million bribe. Tey did not survive to stand trial, choosing to poison himself in his cell.


– Lee commented on the fate of his comrade.

After Singapore acquired an army, navy, and a functioning economy, Lee launched the Garden City program. He ordered trees to be planted along all highways, rivers cleared of sewage, and parks established within the city. Cleanliness and greenery signaled to the world that Singapore was no longer a slum.

After this, Lee moved on to the next stage – he began building infrastructure that would transform Singapore into a major transit hub between Asia and the rest of the world. Changi International Airport opened in 1981, and from its first day of operation, it was recognized as one of the best in the world. Simultaneously, Singapore's port became one of the busiest on the planet.

Paradoxically, Singapore's economic growth hasn't lifted the island's strict dictatorship: chewing gum is banned, drug dealers are hanged, and littering, spitting on the sidewalk, or jaywalking can result in fines of thousands of dollars.

When Deng Xiaoping launched reforms in 1978, trying to open China to the world, he made a special trip to Singapore to study it as a model to follow.

By 2000, Singapore's per capita GDP reached $24. A country that couldn't feed itself in 1965 had, in 35 years, become one of the world's most developed economies. By 2025, per capita income exceeded $99 per year. But the price of all this, experts note, was freedom. Lee Kuan Yew himself never hid this.

Lee attributed his cruelty to his past. He grew up with a gambling addict father who stole everything from the family, and only his mother kept the family afloat. After the war and the Japanese occupation, during which he narrowly escaped execution, he became one of the top students in Singapore, clearly realizing that in this world you can only rely on yourself.

In 1990, after 31 years in power, Lee Kuan Yew voluntarily stepped down as Prime Minister of Singapore. In March 2015, he died at the age of 92. At his funeral, nearly two million Singaporeans stood in the rain to bid farewell to their dictator, who, against all odds, had given them hope.

As historians note, Lee's model worked, but only once, with one person, and in a specific location. Since 1965, no country in the world has been able to replicate it.