Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr Vivian Balakrishnan’s Remarks at the Launch of “Not so Little Red Dot: 60 Years of Singapore’s Diplomacy”, 19 November 2025

Excellencies, my colleagues, ladies and gentlemen,

1      A very warm welcome to our launch of “Not So Little Red Dot: 60 Years of Singapore’s Diplomacy”, a book to commemorate our 60^th anniversary.

2      First, let me reassure Mr Peh Shing Huei that you are a permanent friend of the staff of MFA. I want to make that point that delivering under pressure and having to improvise along the way is the story of MFA. We were born together with Singapore 60 years ago on 9 August 1965, we faced an uncertain and daunting future. Our founding fathers understood that if we were to survive, let alone thrive, we would have to reach out to the world – to seek international recognition and yes, to make friends as widely as possible. In fact, after independence, our first Foreign Minister Mr S Rajaratnam embarked on a series of overseas visits, I believe he visited 12 countries in just over two months.

3      There was plenty of improvisation along the way. Mr Rajaratnam described it as, “the conduct of foreign policy was arranged from scratch on an ad-hoc basis”. MFA was allocated a few rooms in City Hall and a small team of officers, an eclectic crew drawn from other ministries and professions. Looking back at 2008, when Mr S R Nathan, who later became our Permanent Secretary and subsequently our President, he described the Ministry as “struggling to learn about diplomacy through practical exposure” but which ultimately “survived [its] mistakes and improvisations”. 

4      Mr Nathan was being characteristically modest. What our early MFA colleagues may have lacked in experience, they made up for it with dedication, ingenuity and an unshakeable sense of mission. They set the foundations for Singapore’s foreign policy, they established the principles that still hold true today and the protocols that guide us.

5      MFA has grown from those cramped rooms in City Hall. We now have a much larger team of officers, working within Singapore and across a growing network of Overseas Missions – last count 53 Overseas Missions. We draw inspiration from these trailblazers and hope that we embody the same qualities of integrity, courage, resilience, teamwork and, above all, a sacred sense of duty to our nation, Singapore. It is the not-so-secret sauce that has helped us, as the book puts it, to be a not-so-little Red Dot.

6      Personally, I came to MFA in 2015 - that was 10 years ago. It has been a deep privilege working closely so closely with so many of you here in this room and to advance Singapore’s foreign policy in turbulent and volatile times. I am glad this book that we are launching today tells and shares these stories to a wider audience. Diplomacy is hard work, and a lot of it, in fact most of it, is unglamorous and occurs behind the scenes in rooms with no windows. Often months and months and sometimes years and years in the making before anything emerges, before cameras start rolling and an event apparently unfolds seamlessly. 

7      For instance, this book devotes a chapter to the Summit between US President Trump and North Korean leader Chairman Kim Jong-un which we hosted in Singapore in 2018. Actually, we did not have a role in the negotiations itself; then-Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong joked that our job was to pour coffee and tea. What he did not say was that even ‘pouring coffee and tea’ in those circumstances required intense preparation, plenty of last minute improvisation and quick thinking on the part of MFA officers. The book details it so I will not go through all the details. 

8      These and many other stories are worth telling and retelling. I want to thank Mr Peh Shing Huei, for putting together this book, making it easy to read and accessible in a way which I do not think any of us could do in your own inimitable style. I hope that Singaporeans would enjoy reading “Not So Little Red Dot”, and in the process, learn a little bit more about Singapore and what MFA does and how Singapore protects and advances its foreign policy. 

9      Thank you.