As part of NRC Foundation Week 2026, the National Resilience College convened an eminent speaker session at NRC Putrajaya featuring Dato’ Sri Mustapa Mohamed, former Minister of International Trade and Industry (MITI) and former Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Economy), who addressed the theme “Making Malaysia Great: Malaysia as a Nation—Opportunities & Challenges.”

The programme strengthened course members’ strategic appreciation of how Malaysia’s nationhood, economic trajectory, and political stability underpinned national resilience, particularly in an era where external pressures and domestic expectations had to be managed in a coherent whole-of-nation approach.

In his remarks, he situated Malaysia’s national agenda within a demanding global context, highlighting how contemporary geopolitical volatility and major-power competition (including recent military posturing and rising defence expenditures) had sharpened the strategic environment, alongside the structural shift in global output associated with the rise of China and changing trade patterns.

He then assessed Malaysia’s economic and political journey by weighing persistent challenges, such as income and regional disparities, cost-of-living pressures, the middle-income trap, institutional strengthening, and succession planning, against key successes and policy milestones (including the NEP, Vision 2020, the New Economic Model, and the MADANI Economy).

The session concluded by outlining “how to be great,” emphasising strong inclusive leadership, mobilising the younger generation, securing the best talent, leveraging universities, adopting new indicators of success, strengthening regional ties, improving fiscal resilience, and addressing practical “small issues” that accumulated into major performance constraints.