NextFin News - Seventeen nations have formally entered a pact to defend critical undersea infrastructure, marking a significant shift in how middle powers address the vulnerability of the global digital economy. At the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Saturday, defense ministers launched the Guiding Principles for Underwater Infrastructure Defence Exchanges (Guide), a voluntary framework designed to coordinate responses to threats against the subsea cables that carry 99% of intercontinental data traffic.
The coalition includes a diverse geographic spread, ranging from Southeast Asian nations like Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines to European powers including the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands. Notably, the world’s two largest economies—the United States and China—are absent from the agreement. Singapore’s Defence Minister Chan Chun Sing emphasized that while many more nations expressed interest, the immediate priority was establishing international norms for maintaining and protecting infrastructure that provides the "connectivity for energy and telecommunications" essential to modern trade.
Barbora Valockova, a research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy’s Centre on Asia and Globalisation, noted that the participating countries share a high degree of digitalization and trade dependency. Valockova, who has long focused on the intersection of technology and regional security, argues that for these nations, even brief disruptions to data flows carry outsized economic and political costs. Her perspective suggests that the pact is less about military posturing and more about economic survival in an era where the seabed has become what Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles described as a "battlefield."
The urgency of the pact is underscored by a series of recent incidents that have exposed the fragility of subsea networks. Marles cited the severing of a fiber-optic line between Helsinki and Estonia late last year, alongside Taiwan’s report of five separate cases of cable damage in 2025. While these incidents are often officially categorized as accidents, the frequency and scale are historically unprecedented. The new Guide aims to address these vulnerabilities through inter-regional information sharing and enhanced crisis response, though it remains non-binding and adheres to existing international laws like the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
However, the absence of the U.S. and China presents a significant hurdle for the coalition’s operational effectiveness. Collin Koh, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, characterized the Guide as a "noteworthy first step" but cautioned that without superpower involvement, the group lacks access to the most advanced surveillance and repair technologies. Koh’s analysis reflects a cautious realism; while he sees the pact as a way to gauge the appetite for security cooperation, he acknowledges that the major powers hold the "heft in capacity and influence" necessary for comprehensive global protection.
A contrasting view is offered by Elina Noor of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who suggested that the exclusion of major powers might actually make the cooperation more manageable. Noor posits that the agreement serves as a strategic hedge, signaling that middle powers cannot always rely on superpowers during times of crisis. By operating independently, these 17 nations may be attempting to secure a degree of strategic autonomy, avoiding the "spheres of control" that often define U.S.-China competition.
The ultimate success of the initiative will likely depend on its ability to bridge the gap between government policy and private sector operations. Since the vast majority of subsea cables are privately owned and operated, defense ministries must align their security goals with the commercial interests of cable owners, insurers, and regulators. Without this public-private alignment, the Guide may remain a potent political signal but a limited operational tool in a domain where attributing damage to specific actors remains notoriously difficult.
Explore more exclusive insights at nextfin.ai.
