S. Rajaratnam Lecture 2025

In April 2025, I was nominated to attend the S. Rajaratnam Lecture at the MFA Diplomatic Academy, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong's inaugural foreign-policy address, titled 'A Safe Harbour in a Turbulent World', delivered on 16 April 2025.

PM Wong opened by reflecting on what 60 years of independence had made possible for Singapore and on the global order that helped bring it about. Then came the harder part: the rules-based international order, which made that possible, is fraying, and Singapore cannot simply wait for it to be restored. He outlined three responses: stewardship of the global commons, deeper regional cohesion, and a stronger network of bilateral partnerships, but what I kept thinking about was the framing underneath them. A small state navigating a more multipolar world cannot rely on rules it cannot enforce. It has to build relationships, contribute to shared institutions, and remain valuable enough to others for its interests to be worth considering.

The Q&A that followed opened the floor to a room of over 900 guests, ranging from diplomats and government officials to students. The questions pushed further into the lecture's harder edges: how Singapore navigates the US-China rivalry, what meaningful multilateralism looks like when the major powers disagree, and whether ASEAN integration can hold under that kind of pressure. Listening to those exchanges in that room made the argument feel less like analysis and more like reality.

Those exchanges pointed back to the same underlying question. How much of Singapore's resilience depends not on formal mechanisms but on making clear what it stands for and why that should matter to others? That is a soft-power argument, and sitting in that room, I kept thinking it was not so different from what any person trying to be heard has to figure out. You cannot force your way into a conversation. You have to give people a reason to listen.