MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS

We live in vastly a changed world. We are more likely to safeguard what we have all built if we face squarely these changed conditions and make the adjustments, however inconvenient or unpleasant.

The super powers and the major powers have changed their relationships with each other. They were dramatised by President Nixon's visit to Peking in February, and to Moscow in May. The Japanese Prime Minister's visit to Peking in September in which 23 years of dogma that Taiwan was China was thrown overboard showed how swiftly they have changed their policies to meet a changed situation.

But as conflict between the super powers themselves is reduced, so their competition for power and influence will sharpen in third countries, in the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. Singapore is neutral and non-aligned insofar as we are asked to take sides between competing power blocs or competing ideologies. But, where our survival is concerned, we cannot afford to be neutral. We will not stand nonaligned if we are threatened by superior force. However there is no need for the same haste as in 1968, in the build-up of our defence capability.

In conjunction with our neighbours, through ASEAN, we hope Southeast Asia will remain an area of relative peace and stability, so that now we and our neighbours can concentrate our efforts and resources on the reconstruction of our societies and re-development of our economies. Perhaps eventually a neutral Southeast Asia can be agreed upon and guaranteed by the major powers. But let us not forget that the Swiss were neutral but not unarmed in two world wars. It was because they were capable of considerable defence that it was not necessary for them to demonstrate their capacity. Warring parties respected their neutrality because not to do so would have meant large forces being despatched and tied down, entangled with the Swiss military forces.