Rajaratnam’s speech was meant to be not only a statement on foreign policy, but a blueprint of sorts. “If we cannot expand outwards, we will contract inwards. And if we contract inwards, we will wither,” he declared. In a world then divided by Cold War tensions, he insists that “Singapore must remain relevant to the needs of the world,” or it would go ignored and marginalised.
When Singapore’s first foreign minister, S Rajaratnam, gave his now-famous Global City speech in 1972, the idea that the small Southeast Asian outpost could matter on the world stage was an ambitious one.
“Were we a self-contained regional city and nothing more,” he warned, “we would today be in serious trouble.” The world, he argued, had to become Singapore’s hinterland.
