\n<\/p>\n
Asked what the evolving Middle East situation meant for Singapore, whether the United States remained a reliable security partner and how China might respond, Mr Chan cautioned against jumping to “certain short-term” conclusions.<\/p>\n
He said it was for historians to decide whether the US had lost credibility through recent events.<\/p>\n
Mr Chan reiterated that Singapore has always believed in taking responsibility for its own defence rather than assuming others would come to its aid.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Singapore, we never make the assumption that somebody will come and save our skin if anything goes wrong,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe that if we want to be the masters of our destiny, we have to take responsibility for it, and that’s why we consistently invest in our defence, and will continue to do so \u2013 not just in terms of budget, but in terms of the allocation of manpower, talent, and time from our entire population.”<\/p>\n
More broadly, however, he said the greatest danger in international security is not simply a question of military might.<\/p>\n
“The biggest danger in the world of security is not just about capabilities. It’s about intentions, and whether people read the intentions correctly,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Sometimes nothing might have changed, but because perception has changed, and people think that A or B has become less effective, then people change their calculations, and that becomes dangerous.”<\/p>\n
He added: “When the world is in flux and people are not clear about each other’s intention, it is a dangerous world, or people miscalculate each other’s intention and\/or capabilities, it is a dangerous world.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
DANGERS OF MISREADING INTENTIONS\u00a0 Asked what the evolving Middle East situation meant for Singapore, whether the United States remained a reliable security partner and how…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":63095,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dam.mediacorp.sg\/image\/upload\/s--LbvUkCqL--\/c_fill,g_auto,h_676,w_1200\/f_auto,q_auto\/v1\/mediacorp\/cna\/image\/2026\/06\/23\/chan_chun_sing.png?itok=YzLv9xYK","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[25281,7860,15895,4120,25280,9851,25279,153,18969,526],"class_list":["post-63094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-news-sg-global","tag-adventurism","tag-chan","tag-chun","tag-dangerous","tag-deterrence","tag-erosion","tag-majorpower","tag-sing","tag-spur","tag-world","wpcat-2-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/63095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}