Interview with Lee Kuan Yew

this is Edwin Newman inviting you to Meet the Press with the prime minister of Singapore Meet the Press America's press conference of the air and winner of every major award in its field is brought to you today by fight our guest today on Meet the Press is the prime minister of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew who arrived this week for an official visit to President Johnson will have the first questions now from Pauline Frederick of NBC News mr. prime minister you said in Washington that Americans are powerful all the world is too painfully aware but this power should be controlled United States should be restrained you feel American power is controlled or used with restraint in Vietnam that's up now yes I don't want to engage in your domestic dispute and I'm not a general or a and an admiral but but you're a nation yes I would like to see a great deal more caution a more selective exercise of your enormous range of weapons that you've got and more brains and feet preferably bred Vietnamese brains and feet rather than more power and gadgetry well to be more specific North Vietnam is less than 1/4 the size of Texas it's now being bombed at the level of that the bombing was carried on in World War two and as being bombed has been bombed for almost three years do you believe that this bombing is controlled or restrained a strange use of power that's like asking me whether I stopped beating my wife I mean I'd never beat my wife well let me ask you this 47 heads of delegations in the united nations many of them foreign ministers said in this General Assembly American bombing of North Vietnam should be ended uncle like do you agree with them well that depends who the forty seven heads are but I'm sure are they from Africa from Asia from Western Europe they were from or measles in Europe they were from all over the world well as I understand it they're about what a hundred and twenty members hunt only two ungraded to member so that's forty seven well I wasn't there but I mean my colleague miss Rajaratnam foreign minister is attending the United Nations and I think he's going to say something on dead nom I don't want on the bombing and all the other problems about that I mean I think bombing is one of the minor problems about that Nam but what if I may answer you this he said it is a bothersome question but do you feel the bombing should be stopped would this help to get Hanoi to the conference table I think the bombing could be reduced and even stopped without any decisive change in the course of the war but I think it does not follow that because you stop bumping you'll have the North Vietnamese government to the conference table why should they go to the conference table to help President Johnson win the elections do they love him you know mr. Khrushchev said that he helped President Kennedy win by not seeing mr. Nixon in other words are you saying that if the Vietnamese North Vietnamese should come to the conference table and there would be a settlement that President Johnson would win the next election and by the same token would he lose if there is not a peace settlement I don't think he's as simple as that I mean you're putting words in your putting a form of words in such a tight and and and I think imprecise way really because the word is not so simple it's not black and white if they were to stop bombing or you were to stop bombing and if and I were to meet with your president it doesn't mean that there will be a settlement before the timetable for your presidential election and the things can become very complicated really if it weren't so I really don't want to go into all the intricacies because it can take so many twists and turns as Panmunjeom did so all i would like to say as an outside is well we all in the name of humanity and for the sake of human civilization take great care that there is no miscalculation on the reactions not only of the North Vietnamese but of the Russians and of the Chinese because there must be a point at which they must react Thank You mr. prime minister we'll be back with Meet the Press and more questions for our guests the prime minister of Singapore but first this message now back to Meet the Press and unrehearsed press conference please remember questions of a panel members do not necessarily reflect their own point of view here is our moderator Edwin Newman resuming our interview our guest today on Meet the Press is the Prime Minister of the Republic of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew you've just met Pauline Frederick of NBC News the other reporters on our panel are Roland Evans of the Chicago sun-times Seymour topping of the New York Times and Crosby noise of the Washington evening star Lawrence E Spivak permanent member of the Meet the Press panel we'll be back next Sunday we'll continue the questions now with mr. Evans mr. prime minister you said in a recent speech quote the wrong kind of conclusion to the mess in Vietnam can absolutely unscramble the whole lot of us in Southeast Asia what did you mean by unscramble the whole lot of us well one of the problems in Southeast Asia is that is consists of relatively new and fragile independent nations have just become independent since the Second World War and the great problem is the will to resist and it melts very easily because people particularly in it the world over they want to be on the winning winning side but in Southeast Asia because they are small countries because big armies have come Europeans came the Japanese came you know you've been with the wind like the bamboo as the Chinese saying goes and if it looks as if the east wind is growing stronger than the West Bend and people start bending that away even before the wind comes what you're saying sir if I understand is that the American position of force and resistance to this east wind is essential to give your country and these other newly independent countries a bulwark behind which you can develop your independence is that what you mean may I say what I mean myself in my own form of words I think Americans have I think is a friendly habit of trying to help a person think for himself but I'd rather do my own composition if I may you have adopted this position in Vietnam in 1954 you you never asked the rest of Southeast Asia and we were not consulted you decided again in 1956 that GM should not have free elections because or he didn't want our free elections and you support them because elections couldn't be free and I've read all the semantics about what is free and unfree you decided in 1961 when things got a little bit difficult for GM to put in American advisors and by 1963 you at the end of 62 year 25,000 American advisors in the Kennedy administration oh you have your last chance francium got knocked down by a bus or perhaps it was a tank and you could have got out and said to the generals well we'll help you gardens food uniforms pay for the troops but you decided rightly or wrongly to go in and now this is 1967 and it's no use asking me now for my opinion what you should have done before all I can say is we've got to live with today not with what might have been day before yesterday and as of today the field marshal of Thailand says kadhi Kishan and he's saying it his own people but they are going to fight in Vietnam not in Thailand well I take that to mean that if that is gone he's going to anticipate history and you know the thighs of this great sense of the future and as good anticipators of history if they make the kind of adjustments in their postures arising out of what they think is a failure in Vietnam well I don't think that uncle in West Malaysia has got very many years in spite of all his armed forces and then they've got me by the throat mr. topping well if I may again do it my predecessors here have done recall a speech you have made some years ago you said the Vietnam experience shows that however massive the military cover however enormous the economic assistance if the leaders of the people in whose name and whose behalf military cover and economic aid are being given do not set out to secure their own salvation the end result still is perdition both for the helper and the health especially as an Asian do you think the South Vietnamese are helping themselves enough or are we here in the United States headed for perdition with our our allies well you're asking me a very difficult question I'm not making any direct contribution in debt nom and I think if I were a North Vietnamese I present the prime minister of Singapore a passing judgment on the effort of the the South Vietnamese but I think they wouldn't mind my saying that the world will be a much better place if it's not mr. Rusk explaining what this is all about but either their president or their vice president or better still a new figure in a prime minister you know you're forward-looking South Vietnam forward-looking independent determine and most important sincere and honest mr. topic if I'm a shifter a little here one of the questions in our minds here has been that about the future of China and its relationship to Southeast Asia some people are saying that China is now so divided politically that there is no great danger of a Southeast Asia in the future speaking as a Chinese who understands China can you make an estimate or a guess as to the future of China do you think in the near future it will become again a unified country a strongly unified country that might represent some kind of a danger to Southeast Asia first of all I can't speak as a Chinese because I'm a Singaporean I'm of Chinese ethnic stock and I am this essential I mean if you ask me to speak as a Chinese as an ethnic - yeah well I you know the Chinese People's Republic and Peking will be I think quite rightfully indignant so will the other Spirent in Taipei but speaking as a Singaporean with some of the built-in memory programming of the Chinese people I would say that if you believe that the Chinese people will just splinter up into so many warlord communist committees each governing a province or even part of a province and you will make one of the gravest mistakes about Asia I think I travel around the world often and you know people don't know that I come from Singapore and they treat me as a Chinese or a in the old days as they used to call them and they used to say our Chiang kai-shek in Owen in the middle 40s and nowadays of course our mouths atone I'd say that they are determined as our people to unify and build a modern powerful wealthy Chinese nation and I say good luck to them and I think the moment they get prosperous good luck to me because I'll be much safer I don't believe however you know the simple theory that they're just going to send their armies across and eat up Southeast Asia is too simple and it's too simple for for you for the Americans and for us because then it's naked aggression the whole of South Asia will gel together and meet an incoming invader but you've got this make it yourself kind of revolution Wars of national liberation you know here's the text we got an instructor you teach you how to organize and we'll slip you a few guns and more if necessary and if it gets more difficult well surface-to-air missiles and so on and I think this is the problem that each of the individual governments in that region must use the time that you are buying in South Vietnam for the rest of the world particularly Southeast Asia I'm not saying you're doing this you know just for Southeast Asia you're doing this for yourself but it so happens that I think I believe that it might get a bit difficult for me if there's a sudden evacuation and I am determined to use this time to its fullest advantage and I hope my neighbors will do likewise mr. Noyes Prime Minister what's the effect in Asia of demonstrations such as we had yesterday in washing well you know I get a lot of demonstrations in Singapore and my students are quite out of box and spirited la yeah and I think they ought to be otherwise I think this very little future for Singapore's it's a young community and the young must be idealistic a young must believe that the world should be more just and there should be more moral rectitude in the behavior of shell leaders and they protest often in an end more than just a peaceful manner because the Communist slipped into my demonstrations and you know but windows got got broken so often and cars get overturned but at the end of the day I think decisions have got to be made by adults not teenagers but it's got to be made in such a way that when the teenagers become adults and they look back on these decisions they would be proud of the generation that went before them let me ask you this Prime Minister how confident are you that the United States will continue to supply this underpinning which you consider to be necessary for the non-communist states in Asia over say the next decade or so I don't know and I don't think first of all I'm not an American so how can I know and this is one of the reasons I've come here to try and get a sample of the thinking the feeling I've no doubts that your president has got resolution and determination and restraint and somebody will probably work out a winning line but I've also no doubt that your Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense have got it but what I think in your kind of open democratic society you must demonstrate in which I've really come here to try and understand better to watch the proceedings in your deeper presidential elections next year is whether you other people have got that resolution that stamina that perseverance and most important award infinite patience and a capacity to hold back your desire to settle this quickly and get it over with because this is a very different kind of war the other side is not in uniform you are you believe that in cito the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization in its present framework provides an adequate guarantee to Southeast Asian security well you know when it happened and I think 1954-55 mr. narrow and part a few other leaders like president Sukarno were very vehement in their denunciation and even the Tunku was don't called Rahman of Malaysia was critical and so was I and I think looking back now it really didn't meet the situation because it was so very different from what you did for Europe you know and cito when an attack takes place on a member country is just an attack against a member and the others will take note that this is a breach of peace and a danger to the area but in NATO when an attack takes place an attack on one is an attack on all and they all respond and you know what's happened I mean who has responded in South Vietnam the Pakistanis have not the French have not the British of not I'm probably for very good reasons and until you convince Asia that you consider Asia as important to you as Americans as Europe Worcester America you're gonna find a lot of Asians like me brother critical and really doubting because 90% of you have come from Europe you understand you're better than you understand Asia some of you understand Asia very well because you make specialized studies of the subject but as a people and finally it is the mothers and fathers watching this television screen and seeing what is happening to their sons and all the sweethearts also watching this and will decide and if you want people to take a stand you've got to demonstrate that as a people you've got what it takes that Asia does matter to you this present matter to the free world miss Frederick as you call it mr. Prime Minister an answer to one of my questions I believe you said and I hope I'm quoting him correctly the name of humanity great care should be taken that there be no reaction by the Russians and Chinese they must react would you tell us under what conditions you feel the Russians and the Chinese might react to what is going on in Vietnam and whether there is any possibility of it now as you see the picture I think really you're to put that question to mr. Christophe um mr. mr. mr. Brezhnev mr. Kosygin and their press it probably was to Martha Tillman a to to Marshall didn't our children live I really can't answer this but I'm quite certain that at some point they will decide that their own national interests are at stake and they must respond excuse me gentlemen miss Frederick we have a little more than three minutes left mr. Evans mr. prime minister you made it clear that you are concerned about the resolution particularly beyond the 68 election and into the future of the u.s. in Vietnam and in all of Asia that our interest is stable and long-term would it not help resolve that that difficulty as you see it if your country put a token small token force you only have two million in your population I understand but if you put a small token force into the field to assist in the in the work is being done over there against what we call aggression from the north wouldn't that help the United States to resolve this issue I don't see it as my duty as the Prime Minister an elected prime minister of Singapore and not a client state of the United States I'm not in receipt of your your a nor am I here to seek aid I'm doing all right I hope to do more trade with you and I don't think it is the duty of the elected representative leader of Singapore to go and involve his country in a situation which can end disastrously for his whole people and as I've said if there is no resolution shown and God knows what can happen between now and November 1968 you tell me what happens to all your allies who are guarding with you in South Vietnam mister topping well in connection with what you've just said I remember once you said in fact I believe you said it to me when we're talking about your neutrality you said I am NOT neutral we're the survival of my people are concerned now if your survival does depend upon how well the United States and the South Vietnamese are able to do in Vietnam in the sense of containing Asian communists don't you think you should help more directly I think my survival is not threatened yet I've got the my British friends and my Commonwealth friends in the area up to the middle 70s and that's a very long time in the history of South East Asia but of course it could change fundamentally by decisions you can make in South Vietnam between now and 68 and 69 and as the situation changes we shall be watching it most intensely and of Italy and we shall make contingency plans we have to we have about one minute left mr. Moyes Prime Minister if as you said that treaty the seto treaty were strengthened to be more like NATO with the same guarantees that NATO provides would your country adhere to such a treaty I think eventually what we must try and create in South and Southeast Asia is a community that is economically and socially conscious of what is to be gained by gearing into each other yeasty up the economy and once that happens I think the security aspect the security mutual security interest should lead us to an eight or type situation perhaps with the minimum of underpinning from outside and if we can have a multilateral underpinning you know America Russia and most important China to say yes there shall be no aggression in South and Southeast Asia and boundaries shall not be changed by force I think we got a peaceful world it's much more peaceful world I must interrupt you there our time is up Thank You mr. prime minister for bringing us today on Meet the Press I'll be back with you in just a minute after this message for a printed copy of today's interview sent ten cents in coin and a stamped self-addressed envelope to Merkel press box two one one one Washington DC 200 one three next week on Meet the Press our guest will be another headline figure in the news now this is Edwin Newman saying goodbye for the prime minister of Singapore and Meet the Press get back join us each Sunday for news in the making on Meet the Press America's press conference of the air today's edition of Meet the Press was brought to you by fireman's fund American insurance companies it could be Vietnam or right there in your hometown wherever and whenever the news breaks you can expect the best comprehensive analysis of the news right here on NBC this is Howard rege speaking meet the press has been a public affairs presentation of NBC News and has come to you live from our studios in New York City

Channel: PublicResourceOrg

Views: 1,368,297

Keywords: archives.gov, public.resource.org, singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, Asia

Id: VexrmTacOAA

Length: 26min 31sec (1591 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 29 2011

Reddit Comments

[u/ben81PRO]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VexrmTacOAA&feature=youtu.be&t=444

see how LKY resists when his words are mis-interpreted by the news reporter. LKY then bluntly states how the US decided to interfere in Vietnam's politics by putting 100s of US "advisors" in Vietnam..classic