President Tharman calls for resilience and optimism to shore up an unravelling world

He urges bold actions to reorient ways in which multilateralism, democracies function

- Bhagyashree Garekar

The central task in an unravelling world is to build resilience and optimism, President Tharman Shanmugaratnam said while delivering the Gabriel Silver Memorial Lecture at Columbia University’s World Leaders Forum in New York on Nov 28.

To do this, the ways in which multilateralism and democracies function will have to be reoriented, Mr Tharman said during his first major international event since taking office. 

“There are no perfect solutions, but there are bold actions which are still within our reach,” he told the audience of nearly 300 university students and faculty who packed the high-domed Low Library rotunda on a chilly evening in New York. 

He was speaking on the second day of his ongoing working visit to the United States.

The event was co-sponsored by the Institute of Global Politics at the School of International and Public Affairs.

The lecture was established in 1949 to foster greater international understanding. Singapore’s then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew spoke at the same forum in 1968. Other eminent speakers have included West Germany’s first chancellor, Mr Konrad Adenauer, and former US treasury secretary Larry Summers.

“The world we knew is gradually unravelling, and there’s no telling where this will end,” Mr Tharman said, in a reference to the war in Europe, the bloody conflict in the Middle East and US-China tensions, all of which have shaken up the international order that has underpinned the world’s security and prosperity for decades. 

“But it’s not just about bad events and bad actors,” he said.

“We have to look deeper; look at the powerful destabilising undercurrents in the world we are in – geopolitical, ecological, and even the domestic undercurrents within our societies.”