Transcript of Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr Vivian Balakrishnan’s Interview with Reuters Global Managing Editor for World News Mark Bendeich, 23 March 2026

Mark Bendeich (Reuters): We are going to start off with, obviously, the Iran war. I wanted to ask you, for those investors and businesses who are deciding now to leave Dubai, what would you say to them about Singapore, at the moment, as a destination for investment and capital?

Transcript of Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr Vivian Balakrishnan’s Opening Remarks at Fireside Chat at the Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C. on 7 June 2025

Minister: I come from a tiny city state called Singapore in the heart of Southeast Asia, 700 square kilometers in size. We have no natural resources. We are wedged between the Straits of Malacca and the Sunda Strait. We are at the tip of the Malay Peninsula. Our survival has depended on an open and rules-based international order. So we have always believed that peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific has been the foundation of our prosperity and our security. And I think the region is at an inflection point, and it is not clear which way things will go.

The end of the liberal world order

Speech delivered in Parliament on 3 March 2025

This is the 10th time that I am addressing the Committee of Supply (COS) as the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and I have never seen the world more disrupted, more volatile, or more dangerous. So, this is a more sombre, careful and brutally frank message that I am delivering this year. The common thread in all the interventions so far has been this big question: Has the post-WWII liberal world order come to an end? This is a world order which has prevailed for 80 years. In 2025, Singapore celebrates our 60th anniversary. It is also the 80th anniversary of the end of WWII. In these six decades, successive generations of hardworking and disciplined Singaporeans have built up our tiny city state into an outstanding beacon of economic and social success. That we did so without any natural resources or past fiscal reserves is all the more remarkable.

Transcript of Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr Vivian Balakrishnan’s Remarks at the Singapore Institute of International Affairs Year Opener “Outlook 2025 – Singapore at 60 and The Road Ahead”, 24 January 2025

Associate Professor Simon Tay, Patricia Quek, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

1 It is a pleasure to be here. 2025 is a significant year. For Singapore, [it is] SG60. It is also 80 years since the end of the Second World War. So I think this is an opportune time for us to ask three sets of fundamental questions.

Interviewed on CNBC Squawk Box on the 11 March 2020. We were in the early stages of COVID-19 - a time of great uncertainty and fear.

Speech and Q&A at the Institute of Policy Studies Singapore Perspectives 2019 Conference

28 January 2019

Thank you, Janadas, for that slightly unconventional introduction. Let me first say that today you’ve had a history lesson from Professor Wang Gungwu, a politics lesson from George Yeo, another session on economics from Chng Kai Fong, and then a session from Marty Natalegawa and Bilahari Kausikan on regional diplomacy. I’m going to try – and I say try because you’re all very long-suffering and have been here for many hours – but I’m going to try to synthesise all these elements into a coherent concept.