Remarks by Minister for Defence, Mr Chan Chun Sing, at the Munich Security Conference 2026 Maritime Security Spotlight on 13 Feb 2026

Q1: How do you see the greatest threat to maritime security today, in your respective regions, and from your vantage points? Mr Chan, as Minister of Defence in Singapore, you must be assessing these threats quite a bit. How do you see the greatest threat today to maritime security for Singapore?                           

I will be very happy if I can tell you that there is only one thing I am concerned with, but unfortunately the world is not as simple as we wish it to be. You are right. From Singapore’s perspective, we look at this issue very closely because maritime trade is existential for us. Trade is three times our GDP, but we are concerned not just with what is happening around Southeast Asia. Our perspective is that whatever happens in any part of the world has an impact on Southeast Asia because it establishes the type of norms or the rules that the world will come to accept. So, if I may, I will divide it into three clusters of challenges, and we can discuss which one we think is the most challenging, depending on time and depending on which region of the world we are in.

The first is what I call “enduring challenges”. The enduring challenge for us is: how do we have a set of international norms based on UNCLOS? Now I accept that not everything in UNCLOS is perfect, and I accept that not everyone has accepted UNCLOS. But the more people accept such norms, the greater our chance of success. Instead of the trajectory of moving towards more people accepting such norms, I think what we are seeing is the reverse. This thing can unravel quite quickly, and once it is unraveled, the more one seeks to enhance our own security, we might paradoxically be increasing the insecurity of others; then we set off a vicious loop, a negative loop. So, I would say that that is the enduring challenge: how do we uphold a set of international norms, even though it is imperfect and not accepted by all?  

I think there is also an “emerging set of challenges”, and that is notwithstanding all the disputes by the major powers. There are many issues that we need to handle now, but there are also emerging issues that we need to focus on. What I am afraid of is that, because of the tyranny of the urgent and the tyranny of the here and now, we are forgetting - or not paying as much attention to - the emerging challenges; and if we do not do that well, we will have more fires to fight in the future. It is like how, if you do not do fire prevention, you end up fighting more fires. What are some of these emerging challenges? For example, you mentioned the protection of critical underwater infrastructure.  An attack on one part of the infrastructure is an attack on the entire system. It is in our shared interest to work together to counter such actions. But today, we have a lacuna, we have a gap. We do not have the international norms on how to respond to such an incident as it happens. This is just one example of what I call the emerging challenges – that while we address the enduring challenge, we must not forget the emerging challenge.

The third will be what we call the “evolving challenges”, and this has very much to do with technology – the use of unmanned systems to present both challenges and opportunities. In recent conflicts, we have seen the use of unmanned systems complementing manned systems to shut down ports, to shut down critical lines of communication that affect everyone in the world. Whatever happened in Ukraine, in the Baltic states, affects the Indo-Pacific as well. But there are also opportunities in this area, where we can use some of these systems to complement our security. For example, in the Singapore Straits - which 40% of the world trade goes through - is not only patrolled by our Police Coast Guard and our Navy, but also complemented by a suite of sensors – from static sensors to unmanned systems that can improve our ability to detect and deter any threats.

So I will say that there is: (i) the enduring challenge of making sure that more people come to abide by international norms; (ii) the emerging challenges of the new threats that we have to face – and we should not forget that, even while we try to resolve the first one, (iii) we must also look at the challenges and opportunities of those evolving challenges. I think, depending on which country you are from and which part of the world, I think you will have different priorities in how you see these three challenges.

Q2: The points raised about finding a multi-pronged approach to this complex problem, as you said, cannot focus on one thing. It ultimately does require multilateral and multinational cooperation. The time when we are seeing a lot of that cooperation fraying, is a time when we reference the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), but at the same time, the UN is in a weaker position than we have seen in some decades. How do we bridge that gap?

I will start off with this comment that I learned when I was young: all these problems in the sea do not start in the sea; all these problems start on land. We need to understand what the source of the problem is. Otherwise, we will not be able to use the correct tools. There are a few possible sources of problems that cause all these disruptions.

One is basic economic failure – when people cannot find and make a living on land, they try to rob; they try to use piracy to secure their means. The second is what I call a law-and-order failure. This usually comes when there are failed states – where the state is not functioning, it cannot control the malicious, and the people running around. The third - and it is quite different - is what I call a political failure, where states that are not successful become pawns, or elements within those states become pawns in other people's larger geopolitical games. They are just but proxies. What are the ways that we can tackle this plethora of issues? It depends on which of the problems, and very often all three come together. When something fails, all comes together, and then the problems get conflated. So, I think we need to take a multi-pronged approach.

On one end of the scale, we need to find ways to make sure that these problems on land – be it economic livelihood or law-and-order – are addressed. This requires capacity-building to help those countries, if they are still functioning states, to make sure that there is less reason for such things to threaten maritime security – it could be in piracy or elsewhere. Now, that is perhaps the easier, more straightforward part. If it is an economic or law-and-order issue, it is about bringing in state capacity.

The second thing that I think everyone needs to do is to build their own capability. All the littoral states within every region – from the Red Sea to Yemen, from Southeast Asia to the Baltic states – every one of us has to pull our own weight. It is important for the littoral states to build real capabilities so that we can work with other people to form combined task forces, and everyone has a shared interest to make sure that the situation remains under control. We have many examples of such task forces working in the past. For example, Combined Task Force 151 (CTF 151) – that was not just about the US or the Europeans chipping in resources; it is also about the littoral states putting in their resources and effort. One of the most dangerous things is that if countries in the respective regions do not have real capabilities, it is as we say, “nature abhors the vacuum”, and then you will invite other interested parties to come in and interfere. To deter this at the systemic level, that is where the multilateral collaboration comes in – whether is it in the Baltic states, the Scandinavian countries, Southeast Asia, or even the Middle East.

I do not think any one country will be able to solve this alone, but we do have mechanisms to allow countries to come together and work together. Now, I can understand that there are big quarrels in the world among the major powers, but there is nothing stopping littoral states in the region from coming together, working together on a solution, to at least mitigate either the problems on land or at sea. The real thing is that we need to invest and build real capabilities, both on land and at sea.

Finally, I will make a pitch to say that today it is very easy for us to get wrapped up in a geographical problem, and to say, “This problem belongs to this region.” What we need to understand is that maritime security affects the whole world because all of us are so interconnected. All our supply chains are so interconnected across the entire world that an attack on one part of the system is an attack on all of us. It behoves us to work together to try to counter such threats as a group rather than as individuals. Hopefully, the sum of the parts is more than the individual, and that is what I think we are already aspiring toward.

Q3: In the age of US-China – a second Cold War, maybe we can call it – both superpowers are sending more and more Navy ships to the waters of Southeast Asia. Do you think the navies of two big powers, two superpowers, make the waters in Southeast Asia safer or more dangerous?

First, from Singapore's perspective, we do not see it as a zero-sum game, and I think it is not in our interest to see this as a zero-sum game. If we think about it logically, the interests of both China and US converge in Southeast Asia. Both countries have a shared interest to make sure that the safety and security of the ships going through this part of the region is well taken care of. From our perspective, we think US, China and other stakeholders that use the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea have a shared interest to contribute, and they can contribute positively, provided we have a shared understanding of the framework. This is where the countries in the region – in ASEAN, in Southeast Asia – must take the lead to establish the framework to welcome partnerships with countries like China, US, and the European countries. That is my first point: I think we should not look at it as a zero-sum game. I think they have shared interests to ensure that the maritime security in this part of the world is well taken care of; if there are incidents, that they are well managed.

Second, I think today we need to change the conception of maritime security being a geographically bound concept. In the past, when we looked at security, we tended to look at the near geography. But today, we share many similar challenges across traditional boundaries. At the last Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, we saw the highest participation of European countries, the Baltic states and the Scandinavian countries. Why are they so interested in partnership with Southeast Asian countries like Singapore? Because many of the  challenges we face transcend boundaries. For example, we have an Information Fusion Center in Singapore that is open to all countries – US, China and Europe. This is a model that we are prepared to share and have other people in different parts of the region form this network.  The critical underwater infrastructure that you mentioned, those are common challenges. I think there are opportunities for us to work beyond the conventional definitions of a geographically-bounded mindset of how we see security.

More Resources

Chan Chun Sing: Collective Response Key to Countering Emerging Threats