Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s New Year message underlines the need for Singaporeans to recognise that a clear national path does exist although the future may be uncertain. That the future is uncertain is borne out by the international situation. Even as the outcome of the Ukraine war remains inconclusive, Hamas’ savage attack on Israel, which drew a swift and ferocious military response in Gaza, has brought war on civilians, whose suffering has sparked revulsion and anger around the world. The legacy of war threatens to spill over from 2023 to 2024 closer to home, where the entire Indo-Pacific is exposed to tensions and risks caused by rival claims in the South China Sea and by the cross-strait situation between China and Taiwan. On the non-traditional security front, climate change poses a risk to all countries that is ultimately no less serious than the traditional security nightmare of armies crossing national borders uninvited.

What are Singaporeans to do in these circumstances that are not of their creation? It is a truism that even an ordered world does not owe a tiny island city-state a living, so what more an uncertain world? However, this fact of life has been factored into the genes of Singapore’s survival and success strategy since independence. The world was not a nice place in the Cold War 1960s when Singapore was ejected into independence. Yet, this country made it through those hostile times by, first, believing that small states could navigate their way through tensions created by the great powers and, second, by nurturing a core of political and bureaucratic leaders who could devise and implement survivalist policies that paved the way to success. Those strategies remain constant today.