Chan Chun Sing, Singapore's Minister for Defence, gave a speech at the 13th Xiangshan Forum in Beijing on September 16 built around a single question: "The true test of statecraft is this: how do we strengthen our own security without weakening the security of others, or without aggravating the insecurity of others?"

That is the security dilemma, a longstanding problem in international relations theory - one country's efforts to make itself safer make its neighbours feel less safe, and the reaction leaves everyone worse off. Chan called it "a spiral of insecurity that benefits no-one".

Commentator Arnaud Bertrand called the speech "basically the polar opposite of a Hegseth speech - immensely wise and a refreshing proof that thoughtful statecraft still exists".

Delivered in Beijing, the speech also invites scrutiny of the host's conduct.

What 'winning' means

Chan's opening move is to attack the definition of victory. Winning defined as outgunning or outlasting a rival, he argues, is not winning at all. The real measure is what he calls "the 'power of our example'" rather than the example of our power.

He reached for Mencius to make the point, which in Beijing is not a neutral choice of authority: "Power may compel others to comply. But in the end, it is trust that truly wins others over."

The full passage, which Chan trimmed, is blunter. Those who subdue others by force do not win their hearts; they submit only because their own strength falls short. Those who subdue others by virtue win hearts that are glad and sincerely submissive.

This is the classical distinction between badao, the hegemonic way, and wangdao, the kingly way - coercion that is brittle and expensive against legitimacy that others follow voluntarily. Bertrand reads the distinction as central to Chinese thinking about legitimate power.

Quoting it back to the room in Beijing, from the podium of a Chinese-hosted defence forum, is a more double-edged act than it first appears. A state that talks about wangdao is accepting a standard it can then be measured against.

Three principles, and who they are aimed at

The first is that countries should stop externalising domestic problems. "Confidence at home enables a country to cooperate with partners and act in its enlightened long-term interest internationally," Chan said. The corollary, which he left for the audience, is that an insecure leadership uses foreign policy for domestic political gain and needs enemies abroad to hold itself together.

The second is that interdependence breeds stability rather than creating vulnerability. Interdependence "expands the pool of common interests between disparate countries", he said, turning competitors into stakeholders in each other's stability.

This is the one that cuts hardest against the prevailing direction of travel in every capital that matters. De-risking, decoupling, reshoring, resilience: the entire post-2022 vocabulary is about reducing exposure. Chan's argument is that cutting exposure does not make conflict less likely, it makes conflict cheaper - and the cheaper confrontation is, the more of it there will be.

The third is "first, do no harm". "Trust is vital but brittle," Chan said. "It is built by being consistent, but lost in a single instant." He put it in proverbial form too: turn big problems into small ones and small ones into nothing, which is what happens when there is trust between states, against turning small problems into big ones and making trouble out of nothing, which is what happens when there is not.

Unnecessary provocations can erode the trust on which Chan’s argument depends.

Strategic patience and the responsible major country

Chan added a fourth idea he called strategic patience, and gave it a definition with teeth: "Not every capability needs to be advertised; not every advantage needs to be immediately pressed; and not every provocation demands an immediate response."

Each clause describes a temptation that great powers routinely give in to, and which small states pay for.

He closed on what China calls itself. Chan welcomed "China's aspiration to be a 'responsible major country'" and its potential for "positive contribution to global stability", adding that the more responsible major powers are, the less concerned small countries will be.

It accepts Beijing's preferred self-description and, in the same breath, makes it conditional and observable: small countries are concerned, and their level of concern is the metric.

Why it lands and what it leaves out

Singapore is the state best placed to give this speech and the least able to enforce a word of it. It is a small, rich, ethnically majority-Chinese city-state with a long-standing defence relationship with the United States and an economy wired into China. Its entire strategic position depends on not being made to choose, which is exactly the position the security dilemma destroys.

Chan is not describing a world he can bring about. He is describing the conditions under which countries like his survive, to an audience of states that are busy dismantling them.

Appeals to trust and restraint are cheapest for whoever is currently ahead, and "first, do no harm" is easier counsel for the strong than for a state that finds its coastline, its airspace or its export markets being tested. There is no mechanism here, no enforcement and no answer to the question of what a small country does when a large one simply declines the advice.

But the diagnosis is sound, and it is being stated more plainly in Beijing by a Singaporean than it currently is in most Western capitals: the security dilemma is not a theory about the past. It is the operating condition of 2026, in the South China Sea, in the Baltic, on Nato's eastern border and in the wreckage of the Hormuz crisis, and almost every actor in each of those theatres is currently making themselves safer in ways that make everyone else less so.

Chan's answer is that confidence is the prerequisite for restraint - that a country secure at home can afford to act in its long-term interest abroad. On that reading the current spiral is not a failure of strategy but a symptom of domestic weakness in the states driving it, which is a considerably less comfortable conclusion than the one the speech's admirers have been drawing from it.