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SINGAPORE: Complacency could dull Singapore’s ability to respond to emerging threats, Defence Minister Chan Chun Sing warned on Monday (Aug 3), cautioning that Singaporeans should not take the country’s security and success for granted.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Speaking at a dialogue organised by the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, Mr Chan said complacency worried him most, warning it could undermine Singapore’s ability to navigate an increasingly uncertain geopolitical landscape.<\/p>\n
“With every year of success, both on the security front, on the economic front, we might just be tempted \u2013 as Singaporeans \u2013 to think that \u2026 we will always have our rightful place in the sun, come what may,” he said.<\/p>\n
Instead, Singapore has to continue earning its place in the world, he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Chan described Singapore’s 61 years of independence as “an aberration” in Southeast Asian history, noting that small city-states have historically struggled to remain independent without a hinterland.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Singapore has overcome its geographical constraints by staying connected to the world, making connectivity existential rather than optional, he said.<\/p>\n
Drawing lessons from the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas conflict, Mr Chan said warning signs had existed before fighting broke out, but many people failed to act on them.<\/p>\n
“In a lot of these issues, it is complacency that dulls our senses to respond,” he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the economic front, all the challenges that we see, whether is it the weaponisation of geography, the weaponisation of supply chains, the weaponisation of leverage, all those things we can see coming for quite some time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe question is whether we take it seriously and ask ourselves if such things happen to us, what can we do and what should we do in anticipation so that we do not be caught in that situation?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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SINGAPORE: Complacency could dull Singapore’s ability to respond to emerging threats, Defence Minister Chan Chun Sing warned on Monday (Aug 3), cautioning that Singaporeans should…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":73913,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dam.mediacorp.sg\/image\/upload\/s--ss-6DiQ---\/c_fill,g_auto,h_676,w_1200\/fl_relative,g_south_east,l_mediacorp:cna:watermark:2021-08:cna,w_0.1\/f_auto,q_auto\/v1\/mediacorp\/cna\/image\/2026\/08\/03\/ayt_0130.jpg?itok=F4DTReYt","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[11123,7860,15895,27622,27623,67,153,209,4757],"class_list":["post-73912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-news-sg-global","tag-ability","tag-chan","tag-chun","tag-complacency","tag-dull","tag-respond","tag-sing","tag-singapores","tag-threats","wpcat-2-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73912","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=73912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/73913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}