Speech by Coordinating Minister for Public Services and Minister for Defence Chan Chun Sing at the RSIS 30th Anniversary Distinguished Lecture on 22 September 2026

Distinguished guests, faculty, students, and alumni of RSIS, ladies and gentlemen, a very good morning to all of you.

30 years ago, I had the privilege of working with the late Mr S. R. Nathan to build the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS) from the ground up. When we first started, we had 3.5 staff. Staff number one was Mr Nathan. Staff number two was Daisy, his personal assistant (PA). Staff number three was Maniam, his driver. Staff number 0.5 was me, because I was seconded to Nanyang Technological University (NTU) IDSS as a part-time staff when I was then the Head of Joint Operations Development in the Ministry of Defence (MINDEF).

We started in a spare room that NTU kindly afforded us. We had no signboard and no premises, and we were told to go out and recruit staff from anywhere. Mr Nathan told me that his job was to go and recruit a few promising young people – perhaps just finishing their PhDs or doing their postdocs – from all around the world. In the meantime, he gave me the task of designing the IDSS building. This building is where the current S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) still is.

The Vision Behind IDSS

Mr Nathan was a man of extraordinary instinct. He understood, before many others did, that a small state like Singapore could not afford to be surprised. This was also the reason why Dr Tony Tan, when he was then Defence Minister, started this initiative. We needed our own eyes, our own analysis, and most importantly, our own voice. This was the spirit behind IDSS, and it is the same spirit that must continue to emanate from RSIS today – more urgently than ever.

I always remember how Mr Nathan carefully chose the first tagline for IDSS. I do not know whether you still use it or still remember it. It was just three words: ponder the improbable. In short, make sure that we are not surprised. Make sure we stay ahead of the game. Think of not just trying to understand what is happening; but trying to think two or three steps ahead, and to forewarn Singapore before what people thought would never happen actually does.

30 Years of Strategic Change

30 years is not just a milestone; it is an entire strategic era. When IDSS was founded in 1996, Indonesia and Malaysia were undergoing significant political transitions – particularly Indonesia. The Cold War had just ended. The first Gulf War had also just ended, and America stood unchallenged. China was just emerging from its difficulties in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and was beginning its journey to integrate into the global trading system. At that point in time, it almost felt like a unipolar moment, where globalisation felt like an unstoppable tide.

30 years later, the world has changed – and as they say, all of that has become history. US primacy has given way to sustained great power competition. The US-China rivalry now cuts across trade, technology, supply chains, and ideology. Cyberspace has erased the protection of physical distance. Economic interdependence, once seen as a source of shared prosperity, has become a tool of leverage and even coercion. And closer to home, our relationships with Malaysia and Indonesia – always consequential – are being reshaped by forces that are shifting fast within their respective societies.

In Singapore, we can never wish away our geography, nor can we opt out of geopolitics. However, what we can do, and what we must do, is to understand the world more deeply than others would expect a small state to – and more importantly, to use that understanding to stay relevant, to stay connected, and to stay ahead.

RSIS’s Mission: Never Done

This is what I want to say to RSIS plainly on your 30th anniversary: our task is never done, and that is the job of RSIS. We cannot just do more of the same. We have to constantly reinvent ourselves ahead of the times to stay relevant. We must always strive to stay one step ahead of all the changes. To interpret ongoing change must be a 101 competency for all of us that is necessary, but not sufficient. We must go beyond interpreting current events to ask ourselves, just as Mr Nathan reminded us, how to ponder the improbable.

RSIS’s mission is to help Singapore stay one step ahead, because you have assiduously built up deep connections and understanding of the personalities, institutions, and deep forces shaping the world. You can help us interpret and project the implications for Singapore ahead of time. I always come back to these three words that RSIS will always have in its DNA: to help us understand the personalities, the institutions, and the deep forces driving the changes around the world.

Understanding Personalities, Institutions, and Deep Forces

Let me explain and elaborate on what I mean. The shifts we are going through are not just structural; they are also personal. The decisions that will shape our region are being made by specific leaders with specific worldviews, specific insecurities, and specific ambitions.

Understanding geopolitics today means understanding the Chinese conception of national rejuvenation, and what that means for how China exercises power in the region and beyond. It also means understanding the personalities, institutional pressures, and domestic politics that shape American foreign and domestic policy – not just under this particular administration, but across different administrations. It also means understanding what Indonesia is becoming, and what that means for ASEAN and for all of us. The Indonesia of the 1990s is a very different Indonesia from that of the 2020s. Over the last 30 years, Indonesia has changed far more than it did in the previous 30 years, by any measure. Likewise, the domestic dynamics in Malaysia are also shifting fast. If we look at the last 30 years – from 1996 to 2026 – and compare that to the previous 30 years, from 1966 to 1996, you would see what I mean: the forces shaping and reshaping the societies around us and around the world have changed much more, much faster, and in far more unpredictable ways.

This is the kind of deep, granular human understanding that cannot be assembled overnight when a crisis hits. It requires persistent research, language skills, long-cultivated relationships, and genuine intellectual immersion in other societies. In my view, RSIS must always aspire to be the institution that builds and sustains this capability for Singapore. This is the reason – and will continue to be the reason – why we will support RSIS’s growth and development.

Singapore’s Relevance to the Great Powers

On the US-China front specifically, Singapore’s ability to remain relevant to both is never guaranteed. It has to be earned continuously. The RSIS Trilateral Exchange is a good example of how we have created trusted spaces where American and Chinese academics and Track 1.5 participants can speak candidly, and where Singapore can play a constructive role – not just by providing the table and chairs, but also by offering our perspective as a third party that is seen as honest, trusted, and serious.

When I spoke to participants at the seventh edition last month, both sides were frank about their differences, but conscious of the need to avoid deliberate provocation. Both sides gave us a glimpse of their inner thinking, which was valuable to our work on how to position Singapore in this turbulent world. Singapore’s value in the room depended entirely on the quality of our understanding and the credibility of our analysis. RSIS, just as Singapore, must keep earning that credibility. As the perspectives and needs of the US and China shift, we must constantly challenge ourselves to come up with new propositions that can continue to entrench our relevance. We cannot be the proverbial one-trick pony.

Our Closest Neighbours

Beyond the great powers, we must also not take our relationships with our closest neighbours, Malaysia and Indonesia, for granted. These are not relationships that we can manage on autopilot. They require the same depth of understanding of history, political culture, and the deep forces shaping their societies from within – from their economic structures to their demographics, to the relationships between their different states and institutions within their own polities. RSIS should be the place where Singapore develops and sustains such understanding, so that our policymakers are never caught flat-footed.

This is why I share Mr Nathan’s vision that RSIS – formerly IDSS – should be the go-to place for everyone from the region and beyond who wants to understand the deep dynamics of the Southeast Asian region, especially Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. This is never easy. It requires a lot of hard work – not just to think and reflect on what we see, but also to constantly reach out to stakeholders beyond Singapore, so that we can build up a network of personalities and institutions that will see RSIS as a trusted focal point: a place to share, to sense-make, and to generate value propositions. That has been the tall order we set for ourselves since 1996.

Technology, AI, and the Changing Character of Conflict

Alongside these geopolitical shifts, technology is also redrawing the boundaries of what is possible in security and warfare. Artificial Intelligence (AI), autonomous systems, and drones are changing how conflicts are fought and how power is projected. Commercial technologies have given smaller states and non-state actors capabilities that once required enormous resources. Conflicts today do not begin only when shots are fired; they begin long before – in cyberspace, in the information environment, in the grey zones below the threshold of traditional war. This is why we say that today we are never living in peace nor war in the conventional sense, but always somewhere in between, always in a grey zone where we must conduct operations every day to protect ourselves from conflict, even as contestation continues.

RSIS must help Singapore think through both the opportunities and the risks as a small state – not just what new technologies can do, but what they mean for how we organise, operate, and make decisions. Not just how to harness AI, but how to ensure that human judgement remains at the centre of consequential choices. And where technologies cross borders, RSIS can help develop the common ground and shared expectations of responsible behaviour that reduce the risk of miscalculation.

Judgement, Signal, and Strategic Patience

Because in the end, this is what it is all about: sound judgement about the capabilities and intentions of others. Capabilities are easier to see and assess based on what we can gather from various sources, but intentions are hard – and this is where RSIS earns its keep.

A useful analogy is the chessboard. Chess is a game of perfect information, because you can see all the pieces on both sides. There is no doubt as to where the pieces are. But who wins at chess is not determined merely by looking at the pieces on the board. It is ultimately the intentions and imagination behind the moves – how we use the pieces, even as everyone can see them – that define success or failure, victory or defeat. It is not the information itself, but what we do with it.

It is also this ability to distinguish signal from noise, and the wisdom to know when to act and when to hold back. This goes beyond the chessboard, because in chess everybody makes one move at a time, but on the geopolitical stage, moves need not be sequential or one after the other. The harder questions are: when do we need to make the move, and when can we afford to hold back? Both require strategic patience and strategic understanding. To not act in haste requires confidence in one’s own capabilities – more so, even, than to act at a moment’s notice. Poor understanding of the other side, and poor understanding of ourselves, increases the risk of miscalculation. And any miscalculation in this part of the world would have consequences that none of us want to contemplate.

Conclusion

RSIS was created because Singapore needed to understand a changed world more deeply. That imperative has not diminished; it has intensified over the last 30 years.

As we mark this 30th anniversary, we must challenge ourselves to ask honestly the tough questions. Can we do things better with the resources we have? Can we do better things? Do we understand the personalities, institutions, and deep forces driving the shifts from Washington to Beijing, from Jakarta to Kuala Lumpur, and beyond? Are we finding new ways to keep Singapore relevant to the powers that matter to us? Are we giving our policymakers and military leaders the kind of deep, candid, forward-looking analysis that helps them make better decisions before choices are forced upon us?

Mr Nathan built IDSS because he believed Singapore deserves its own strategic voice. 30 years on, that belief is more important than ever. The world will keep evolving. Our task is to see it clearly, understand it deeply, and help Singapore navigate it wisely – ahead of time.

Congratulations to RSIS on your 30th anniversary. Thank you to the generations of alumni who have contributed so much to this mission to keep Singapore safe and ahead of the curve. It is now our turn – this generation’s turn – to rise to the occasion and to continue to ponder the improbable ahead of time.

Thank you very much.