There are no perfect solutions to international problems, and sometimes there are no solutions. So please don't waste your time and mine by looking for perfect solutions because there are none. And if you think that you have found a perfect solution, you are probably wrong.

There are some problems that can only be managed. They cannot be solved. And sometimes the process of managing a problem creates a different set of problems, which in turn have to be managed.

[Foreign policy] is not a movie. There are no good guys and there are no bad guys. There are seldom very satisfying resolutions of problems and certainly, even more seldom, morally satisfying resolutions of problems.

This is not a sporting event where there must be a winner or loser or draw. Sometimes the outcome is indeterminate, and sometimes an indeterminate outcome is much better, more desirable than any clear cut resolution, because a clear cut resolution most certainly will cause another set of problems. And sometimes all you can do is to fudge over things and wait, because time solves a lot of things.

And that's a characteristic of diplomacy. You have to make decisions with imperfect information with information that is certainly incomplete, sometimes deceptive. But the imperative of doing something is always there. You can't wait until you have perfect information about everything before you take some action.

And even not taking action has to be an action. In other words, you decide to do nothing. You don't do nothing because you are paralyzed by complexity or paralyzed by lack of information.

We had gone through a very short and historically unusual period after the immediate end of the Cold War from around 1989, when the Berlin Wall first came down to about 2008 when the global financial crisis broke out. There seemed to be no great power competition because of the overwhelming dominance of the United States.

The overwhelming dominance of the US masks a fundamental reality about international relations, and that fundamental reality is that competition between sovereign states is inherent in the nature of international relations.

[US-China relations are] a new structural reality of international relations which is going to be with us for the foreseeable future. And for the foreseeable future I don't mean one year or two years, I mean a decade or more. When I say it's a structural feature I mean it's one of the defining features of contemporary international relations which we better learn to live with. There will be periods of high intensity conflict, there'll be a competition and low intensity competition, but there will always be competition of a sort.

The competition between US and the Soviet Union was fundamentally different. The US and the Soviet Union each led two separate systems that were connected only tangentially. And the Soviet Union was never a very important economic actor except sporadically on the energy market. So the competition was between systems to see which would displaced the other.

But the US and China are both vital, irreplaceable components of one single system and they are connected to each other and to the rest of us by … supply chains of a complexity of a density and of a scope never before seen in world history.

Competition within a system is fundamentally different from competition between systems.

For a start, it's unlikely to end in any clear cut outcome as the US-Soviet competition, and that took 40 years or more because it's not about completely displacing one or the other of the principles. Both the US and China may wish to dominate the single system of which they own parts, but it's not in their interest to destroy that system or to replace it with something else because they all lose.

Secondly, it is not a binary competition. It is a much more complex form of competition. Although the binary frame of mind still lingers on. It's a very powerful frame of mind because it's simple.

As a small country you are irrelevant. So your strategic imperative is every day you must wake up and think of how do I make myself relevant. And that is a never ending process because what makes you relevant, vis a vis the Country A today may be irrelevant to Country B today, but also irrelevant to Country A in a week or month or year. It’s a constant process. It's a marathon with no end. So there is no magic formula in relevance. It's a a long distance marathon, not one in which there is a definite end to the race. It’s a marathon with no end. But that is the existential condition of a small country.

The other factor we should also tell them is that no matter how small you are, no matter how dire the circumstances you may be in seem to be, you always have agency. The more complex the situation, the greater the opportunity at least to exercise agency because in complexity there is maneuver space.

Because Singapore should not exist. Singapore exists because the circumstances we found ourselves on the 10th of August 1965, the day after we had independence thrust upon us were far more dire than those that we are in now and we had far less resources at our disposal. I do not mean only monetary resources. I mean military resources. I mean intellectual resources. I mean bureaucratic resources. Singapore is a very different place here then. But here we are. So there is always agency.

So it is already a multipolar world. And that's good news for countries like Singapore because in multipolarity there is maneuver space. Now imagine this only one pole, then you have no you have no agency, you have no room to maneuver. You just do as you're told. If there are two poles you have slightly more room. But if you have many poles in principle you have a lot of room to maneuver.

Now, whether you have the wit to recognize the opportunity and the ability, the courage, and it takes some courage sometimes, and agility to take advantage is a different matter. But in principle multipolarity is good.

This is already a multipolar world. The unipolar moment was very short, it was just the 20-odd years between 89 and 2008 thereabouts.

Our neighbors impress upon most Singaporeans the need to fight.

In 1991 our neighbors, both Malaysia and Indonesia, thought it was a jolly good idea to hold a joint military exercise. A parachute drop. It wasn’t very large scale, but it was in Kota Tinggi which is quite close to Singapore. Of course it’s [Malaysia’s] territory, they can do what they want. But it's an unspoken understanding that they don't do military maneuvers too close because it just gets us nervous. And when we are nervous, we are not very pleasant people.

This happened in 1991 and the date is significant because that was just one year after Goh Chok Tong took over Lee Kuan Yew. Nobody doubted Lee Kuan Yew’s resolve to defend Singapore. But they were testing Goh Chok Tong.

What did we do? We mobilize our entire armed forces including me. We issued live ammunition, new weapons to our tanks armor our soldiers. We moved all our armor and artillery and the bridging equipment to the jumping off points, the assembly areas to invade Malaysia if they try anything funny. And this exercise was held on the 8th of August, the eve of our National Day. And just in case we didn't get the message, we are too obtuse to get the message, the code name of the exercise which they publicized was called Pukul Habis, which means “finish them off” colloquially translated.

So we mobilized our entire armed forces. We issued new weapons we issued live ammunition to not just the soldiers but to the armor, the artillery and we moved them all to the assembly areas, the jumping off points. And we mobilized our Air Force, combat air patrols were flying all over the place. We also surrounded the Malaysia High Commission with troops and the railway station, which was still Malaysian territory, with troops and they have never done it again.

The very fundamental purpose of ASEAN is to manage relations between its members. We are not a happy band of brothers singing in perfect harmony because we were a happy band of brothers we will have no need for ASEAN. It is precisely because the most difficult bilateral relationship in Southeast Asia are among ASEAN members. You need some mechanism to ensure at least a modicum of civility and stability in that relationship. Everything else we do is a bonus. But this is the fundamental purpose. That fundamental purpose we do quite well.

Other things we don't do too well. And I don't think we are going to do very well for the next few years. And the reason is simple. ASEAN is an inter-state organization and we can do no more than what its member states permit it to do. It is not a supranational organization. It's a fact that the domestic politics of key ASEAN countries is rather, to put it politely, complicated at the moment and not likely to get any less complicated for the foreseeable future. And so what we can do is limited, but in its fundamental purpose of managing relations it does pretty well.

But a humanitarian tragedy is not necessarily automatically of geopolitical consequence. And Myanmar is an example of a humanitarian tragedy that is geopolitically irrelevant.

The [United Nations] veto, which the five permanent members have, is like a fuse in your electrical system. It prevents the whole thing from blowing up. Right? So is it better to have some United Nations than no United Nations? I think it's quite obvious some is better than nothing unless you are a complete idealist and you want perfection. There is no perfection to be found on earth.

That's the nature of democracy. First you do every other thing which is irrelevant.Then you do the right thing because the right thing is usually the hard thing. And democracies find it hard to make hard decisions but eventually you can get that right.

There are two disastrous situations. One is of course, if the US and China go to war. Then there's no room to maneuver. But the other equally disastrous situation is if they cooperate perfectly, then there's also no room to maneuver. So some level of competition is not a bad thing if you have your wits about you you can try to take advantage of it.

The opposition in Singapore has two fundamental problems. Singapore is a small place. The fact is policy options for small countries are only within a very narrow range and that range has been occupied by the PAP. So if you are opposition, you are finding it very difficult to come up with credible alternative policies because in small countries there are only a limited number of things that can work. And mostly the government has already captured those things for themselves.

The other problem is that the PAP is actually a very broad church. You know, as long as you believe in a few very fundamental things like first, don't be corrupt, which even if you are corrupt, you will say, “I believe in not being corrupt”. Don't be corrupt. I believe in multiracial meritocracy. You can join the PAP. All kinds of political currents in the PAP.

There are at least four ministers whose fathers were detained under the Internal Security Act. And they are ministers today. And one minister who was convicted for leaking official secrets. So as long as you believe in certain fundamental things you can join. The PAP is a very broad church, so they absorb quite a lot of the political talent.

I think you should have these ideals, but you should pursue these ideas in a realistic way. Things are not going to happen just because wish sincerely that they will happen. You have to make them happen. And to make that happen, you have to work with what you have and what you have in this Vale of Tears we call the earth, is imperfect material, imperfect information, and so partial successes. Many steps forward, many steps backwards, sideways. But don't give up. Don't give up because you may not get 100%. But, you know, even say 10% of what you set out to do is better than 0%. Right? So keep trying. Don't give up.