Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting.
Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed.
One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country that would not allow tyranny such as colonial control to be replaced by another form of tyranny.
Photo: Bloomberg
Now “the image has changed from liberator to great disruptor to a landlord seeking rent,” according to a prepared text of his remarks posted on a government Web site over the weekend.
The remarks came after US President Donald Trump’s administration blindsided historic NATO allies with plans to directly negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the future of the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine.
The fear for many officials gathered for the conference in Germany is that by dialing back support for Ukraine, Trump is inviting Putin to probe NATO’s willingness to defend the alliance’s eastern borders.
Meanwhile, US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz said the US deserves “payback” from Ukraine for its support against the Russian invasion and Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy would be “very wise” to accept a minerals deal offered by the Trump team.
Zelenskiy has rejected a US draft agreement that would give Washington access to critical minerals in the war-battered nation, because it did not offer investments and sufficient protections.
Former British prime minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday urged so-called middle powers to become a “poisonous shrimp” to carve out strategic economic leverage in a more turbulent global environment. Sunak drew from a metaphor by former Singaporean prime minister Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀): A big fish will eat a smaller fish, and the smaller fish will eat the shrimp. Lee made the point a year after the Asian nation’s independence in 1966 that the city-state needed to build up its defense mechanisms — like a shrimp that stings — so it would be left alone by predators. “He was thinking about what Singapore’s
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