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SINGAPORE: With geopolitical fragmentation and rapid technological change driving new security threats, countries must rethink national security beyond traditional military defence, said Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan on Tuesday (Apr 21).
He warned that the world is becoming more volatile and unpredictable, with risks emerging across multiple domains, demanding a broader and more integrated approach to security.
“(National security) used to be primarily about defence. But actually, the evolution of geopolitics and the technological revolution since then have meant that national security has to go far beyond the traditional focus purely on conventional defence," he said.
Dr Balakrishnan was speaking at this year’s Asia-Pacific Programme for Senior National Security Officers, which was attended by more than 70 national security practitioners, experts and scholars from 21 countries.
"Today, because globalisation is being repudiated, because interdependence is being weaponised, it means the attack surface area has expanded into multiple domains – whether it is climate change, public health, frontier technologies, geoeconomics, supply chains, trade; all of these have become the concern of national security," he said.
"In sum, the concept of security now encompasses defence against a full spectrum of disruption, division and coercion."
In the military domain, countries have to deal with grey-zone tactics, which fall below the threshold of a traditional attack but are designed to have an impact.
"They are designed to be difficult to attribute, and similarly, to cause dilemmas in how to respond proportionately," he said, pointing to the example of drone incursions over civilian airports last year, which resulted in significant economic costs.
TECH ENABLING TOXIC TRIBALISM
Turning to the technological revolution, he said the rapid evolution of digital technologies has transformed how information spreads.
Rather than creating a more unified global community, the internet has instead enabled an opportunity for the “global mobilisation of toxic tribalism”.
"No matter how crazy or repugnant your views today, you will find someone else on the internet to affirm you. You will find avenues to mobilise people who believe wrongly in those crazy, repugnant ideas,” he said.
Dr Balakrishnan took aim at social media companies’ role in promoting outrage, anger and emotionally charged content.
"These companies know that what drives eyeballs is not highfalutin, inspired ideas. The easiest way to drive eyeballs is outrage, incitement to anger, triggering tribalism," he said.
He added: "It is a bit like smoking and the fact that the tobacco companies knew long ago the harm, but they also knew they had an addictive medium, and they were optimised to maximise revenue.
"Actually, the same phenomenon has occurred now, and governments all over the world are still struggling to come to terms with how you regulate, rationally and sensibly, a new technology which is addictive, which is mediated by companies who are motivated by profit maximisation, and yet has got such pernicious effects on our social cohesion."
“VANDALISING OUR OWN LIFEBOATS”
Dr Balakrishnan also warned of a deeper structural contradiction in the global system: amid the repudiation of globalisation, nations are still deeply interconnected and interdependent.
“We are, in a sense, vandalising our own lifeboats,” he said, adding that institutions such as the United Nations, World Trade Organization and other multilateral bodies have been weakened, while rules-based cooperation is giving way to unilateral actions.
“This domestic repudiation of globalisation has, in fact, been most acute in a major power – a major power which, in fact, formerly used to underwrite the system of globalisation which, despite its exceptions, generally provided a formula for peace and prosperity, especially for us in Southeast Asia," he said.
"Institutions, rules, laws, which previously were viewed as essential and helpful to prosperity and peace, are now viewed as constraints on the state’s ability to exercise freedom of action and, in fact, give leaders in many states a licence to disrupt using every tool, every lever, every crowbar available.
"The global zeitgeist has become more inward-looking. States are pursuing a more narrow conception of national interest, over a shorter time horizon, and often at each other’s expense."
Drawing parallels to the period before World War I, he said states may be putting in place “tripwires” intended as deterrence, which could eventually end up tripping themselves or locking them into courses of action they may not actually want.
At the same time, rapid advances in technologies such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and quantum computing are outpacing the ability of countries to agree on rules and standards to govern their use, due to heightened contestations and a lack of trust.
"We are going to be in this danger zone for many years to come," he warned.
To tackle these challenges, Dr Balakrishnan stressed the need for both external cooperation and internal resilience.
Internationally, countries must continue to support open, rules-based systems and strengthen partnerships, even amid geopolitical tensions.
Domestically, governments need to address inequality, social cohesion and public trust to build resilience.
"We have to take the concept of national security in a far broader sense, work across silos, understand politics, economics, technology, defence in the broader sense of the word," he said.
