Transcript of Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr Vivian Balakrishnan's Remarks at the Foreign Service Scholarship Award Ceremony, 12 August 2024

Minister Dr Vivian Balakrishan: Good afternoon friends, colleagues, distinguished guests, parents, teachers, and of course our four scholarship recipients. We are gathered here to congratulate our MFA scholarship recipients En Xi, Laiyla, Gautam, and Ethan.

I believe En Xi is headed to France, Laiyla to the US, Gautam and Ethan to the UK. You are going to get a chance to experience a very different life, not just because you are going to be away from your parents, but also because joining MFA will give you a mission and a sense of purpose. Your mission is to help, together with the rest of the MFA Family, to safeguard Singapore’s independence, our sovereignty and to ensure that our tiny, unlikely nation state has the political and economic space to be relevant and to pursue opportunities, not just for you and your generation, but for generations to come. There are many reasons to choose a career ranked right at the top that has a purpose and a mission that is larger than yourself, and the ability to make a real difference.

After today, no one is going to be asking for your “A” Level results. That is a given. The question is how are you going to spend the next three, four years becoming a better, more rounded person, and a person who is able to deliver on your mission and on the duties that will be assigned to you. What that means is it is not just in the books, but also about building your networks, getting to understand the people, especially people who are not like you - people who are different, who view the world differently, from different creeds, different backgrounds. You need to put yourself in their shoes and to try to understand how they think, what they are afraid of, what their hopes, their dreams, and their aspirations are.

I hope you will use the next few years to truly expand your horizons, expand your brains, expand your perspectives, and your mindsets.

The world today is uncertain, complex, and, frankly, a more dangerous place. We have tensions between the superpowers, we have a war in Ukraine. We have a war in Gaza and in the Middle East, and no one can give you any assurances that all this is going to end quickly, or that the world will live happily thereafter. This is a difficult and complicated world.

Nevertheless, Singapore, somehow needs to find a way to navigate through these difficult and challenging circumstances. It is not just a matter of the intellectual challenge, negotiations, understanding and getting things done, but also the fact that increasingly foreign relations will also play out in other domains, which frankly, your predecessors did not have to deal with.

You need to understand climate change, energy, technology, especially the technological advances in the digital field including AI, biotechnology and energy transformation. You need both arts and science, and both philosophy and pragmatism. So you really need to stretch your mind.

For Singapore and Singaporean diplomats, because we are small, because we are vulnerable and because the world is dangerous, we always have to look outwards. We need to remain an open society. We need to be keenly aware of what is happening around us, both the threats and the opportunities, so keep your eyes open and oriented outwards. That is the first point.

The second point, is that increasingly and especially in the future, foreign policy begins at home. We need to be able not just to convince the diplomats from other countries, but we need to convince our own people on the stance we take. We need to maintain national unity and a sense of (Singaporeans) coming first, so a lot of your diplomatic skills will also have to be employed in the domestic arena.

The third point is, diplomacy is not just about foreign policy and negotiating, but also understanding that we need to persuade people and so that everyone understands what Singapore is, what we stand for, what and how we communicate and advance our interests, in an enlightened way.

So this calls for a larger mindset, and related to this, is also the fact that because we are small and every Singaporean matters, it means consular matters have become critical.

We saw this during COVID-19, when we made sure we left no Singaporean behind. Even today, and sometimes even during times of war, tension and conflict, you will be surprised how widely disseminated Singaporeans are in the world. So do not forget that it is not just the intellectual challenge, but also do not forget the opportunity to look after individual Singaporeans wherever they are in the world. So three things to remember: look out, hold the ground domestically, and make sure that no Singaporean gets left behind wherever he or she is in the world. If you can sign on to that, you can sign on and be a full-fledged member of our MFA Family.

Congratulations, I wish you all the very best.

.         .         .         .         .