Lee Kuan Yew - Charlie Rose Interview (24th Sep 2004)

[Music] from our studios in new york city this is charlie rose joining me now is lee kuan yew as singapore's founding fathers served as prime minister for more than 30 years until 1990. he now serves as a minister mentor to the current prime minister his son i am pleased to have him back on this program several years ago we recorded an hour program at harvard where he was being honored and we got such a remarkable response that i am pleased to have him back to talk about how he sees the world and especially how he sees his region but let's begin talking about the world the most important issue facing an american president i suspect is the battle against terror and national security what would you tell the president or the next president we need to do i think it's not just he was facing this problem of terror we are all facing in i'm facing it in singapore we got to understand what this is all about it's not about fallujah or iraq or best land this thing has been in the brew for some 30-plus years in retrospect i used to watch my muslims and in southeast asia the muslims are different they're relaxed easy to get on with but over the last 30 odd years since the oil crisis and petrodollars became a major factor in the muslim world they have been proselytizing building mosques religious schools madrasas where they teach wahhabism an austere brand of islam and sending out preachers and having conferences globalizing networking and slowly they have convinced the southeast asian muslims and indeed muslims throughout the world that the gold standard is arabia saudi arabia that that is the real good muslim and the result is but that's not what osama bin laden teaches because he in fact wants to overthrow the regime in saudi arabia but let me explain why what the saudis and the other arab countries did in raising the religious or religiosity the level of fervor throughout the world has done for osama bin laden having worked it up to a fine pitch and everybody feels yes we are closer to god he then scouts for the vulnerable those who feel they need redemption that they have sinned they need to redeem themselves and recruit them to become jihadists and that's where the world's problems begin why have they done this well this is because americans have supported the israelis who have been crueled and oppressive to the palestinians partly true they say the russians have killed the chechens also true they say the serbs killed the muslims in bosnia also true but they killed the albanians the kosovo's the russians in afghanistan and so on and so on what we have we didn't realize i did not know this at the beginning i thought this all is very hard until we found that we are enveloped in this same relentless drive to assert islam's right to supremacy this particular ban of islam radical fundamentalists yes yes they don't consider all these separate incidents to be disparate events connected with each country as every act of cruelty every astrocity every massacre of any muslim anywhere in the world is a crime to all muslims anywhere in the world so let us all join together and hit out at those who hit us and who is the ring leader america so let's kill americans because it's the strongest nation and because it's a close friend of israel because because its armies have occupied have been on our soil i mean osama bin laden was most offended for example by the fact that american troops were in his form or his nation saudi arabia but you're not out of it but he's not satisfied what he wants is to get hold of the oil of the gulf states have taliban type regimes then he's gone all the industrial countries christian europe america japan china and a lot by the road then they have their muslim caliphate across the world now what have i done in singapore to offend him that he wanted to he and his affiliates the g.i jamal islami and southeast asia were planning seven huge car bombs of two tons of nitrates each each one of them twice the size of the oklahoma city bomb in singapore yes yes for december 2001 one for the american embassy another for the israeli the british the australians the american school the club where the americans have their sports an underground railway station where the americans the bus to go to this sports center seven of them would have caused enormous damage what have we done nothing all we have done is to have allowed american aircraft and american ships to use our harbor and our airports so we are luckiest of the americans we deserve to be punished so the question is first do you think the iraqi war has aided in the conflict with terrorism and with radical fundamentalists wherever they come from or do you think it has served to distract from the primary battle it's a bit of both suppose you had not attacked iraq would the world be a safer nicer place i don't think so well the argument is not that it would be a safer nicer place but that in fact the battle against terrorism might have been more been been prosecuted with more focus and perhaps they would have been able to uh to carry the battle in afghanistan deeper and perhaps they would not have given radical fundamentalists a recruiting message more than they had before the war in iraq began well that was the view of a terrorist expert who is now based in singapore who sat at this table with me yeah how was that he came here and talked to me oh rohan yes yes several years ago after just before 9 11. no after 9 11 and before the barley bomb he decided to move from saint andrews to singapore so i read about it in the newspaper so i said why is he coming here yes i asked to see him he said because he thinks from all the signs show southeast asia will be next field of operations after afghanistan now that they were disrupted and he said this to me two weeks before the bali bomb went off i met him again recently he was against going into iraq he said this is a distraction i wasn't sure i'm not an expert so before i left on this journey to paris and here i wanted to update myself have no i've read all the reports so i said what's your take and they said well they have been disrupted in southeast asia but they are multiplying new recruits the actual perpetrators are being punished but the people who are producing this jihadis are still going on doing so so i said why are there not more terrorist attacks which you thought was coming he said because of iraq so i said but you told me iraq what makes things worse he said yes but it's made things better for us because they've concentrated all their is there so they have no time for southeast asia because here's a chance lots of americans to be killed let's go there there's a good training ground so i said is that another reason why they have not hit successfully in europe america i said it could well be but it says they are planning something big they like big spectacular events for the united states or for europe or for asia or and for singapore and for singapore but though what's the argument you met with sharok when you were in paris what is his argument when you have this conversation with him where is europe in opposition clearly there was a difference about the war but is there a difference about how to fight terrorism i can't uh i can't reach confidences which i share with other leaders but i'll put it in a general way thus the europeans believe british french germans even the italian spanish that if we are going to tackle this terrorist problem and win over the moderates or not put them on the defensive we've got to settle the israeli palestinian problem because as long as that's festering it's very difficult the whole thing gets confused but but then that raises the question are you suggesting that they believe because you you visit israel as well yeah uh that brings the question that they believe that only the united states can play the kind of role that will with israel that will bring about a solution and that the united states has to take the lead and exert some real leadership and make sure that there's progress towards that and the united states finally is not doing it yes right so that means they are not going to come on board until the united states takes a more stronger role in settling the israeli palestinians that's my that's my understanding of that position and it's a basic position yeah the british i think that's tony yes it's also his position right let me move to a whole nother area of concern which is it's not concerned this happens to be economic reality prime minister of india was here he hopes that his economy will grow at seven to eight percent that's what he's trying to do and push it you know him believes in the market uh china is growing at eight to nine percent most people believe that china will replace japan in 2020 as the second largest economic nation in the world they may differ with the time but it they see it as an inevitability secondly that india if it continues to grow at five or six percent seven and 50 years will be the strongest economic power in the world we're talking about this century and the great span of time 50 years is not a long time tell me how you see what everybody assumes to be a shift from the west to the east power economic power and the consequences of having economic power is coming your way yes let me put it in even starker terms in 50 years china will be at least five times the gdp of japan just taking the coastal provinces they ignore the inland provinces it's got a population of 1.3 at the moment japan has won 120 million so it's about 11 times 1.3 billion plus 120 million right there's nothing that's going to stop that they have decided to join the market members of the wto yes it's not full observance of international property and all the rest of it but they're going to go that way because it's in their interests india seeing what's happening in china decides that it's got to change course 40 years of planning had left them way behind they made that decision about 10 years ago i made that decision manmohan singh was a fine finance minister when he found he had to go to the imf cap in hand right in other words we are going back to the kind of balance of world productive capacity say in the 1700s when china say just before the industrial revolution became full-blown was the biggest economy in the world and before america was even properly founded does it mean that we are going back to that period in history no because the world has moved on there's america there will be a united europe but it does mean that the center of economic gravity will move from the pacific from from sorry from the atlantic to the pacific and what are the consequences of that enormous enormous enormous i mean the chinese i know hari you know there's a talk that they'll be invited to g7 finance ministers and so on they're not worried whether they're invited that they're not invited they already know that what they do with the redmi np or their un is a matter of great import to the rest of the world and it doesn't matter whether their economy temporarily overheats or not or whether they make temporarily decisions about the economy there's an inevitability having to do with the population having to do with some wise decisions about the marketplace and the future and the fact i'm making a point i want you to respond to it and the fact that they understand the significance of technology and science no i think as you did in singapore i visited china in 1976 when they were still blue ants or grey ants everybody dressed the same everybody gave the same answers in the last days of the mao era even then talking to them i had a premonition of their tremendous brain power and the challenge they will pose singapore let me tell you what you have said and this was in a speech you made i think that the last time you visited china this was not in the 70s but you were struck by the entrepreneurial zeal the entrepreneurial zeal of the chinese and you wondered if your country singapore had made a mistake because the best and the brightest in singapore went into government into the bureaucracy and therefore you didn't have the same kind of entrepreneurship that made the chinese so potentially powerful well yes and no so you worry go ahead what first we had to get the state going supposing we had had a weak government and lots of bright young people running around making money we would not have cohered as a nation and never have been so one had to precede the other we had to have before you can have a country a society there must be a sense of common destiny that we share a certain obligation to each other otherwise everybody for himself why should i if i'm a loser be part of the part of the game but once that is established that i have learned watching europe watching japan and watching america that the robustness of the american economy is this ability to meet unexpected challenges adapt downsize change revamp revive start new industries and flourish move ahead more than any other economy more than any other economy that is the strength of the american economy the ability to adapt to change circumstances i did not start off with a deal because i was bought brought up by the british and i thought a certain stability was necessary i was wrong i watched them and i decided that margaret thatcher was doing the right thing but could not complete the job because she never got the unions around the chinese share the same culture as we do and in that culture for thousands of years scholarship was highly prized so in the hierarchy of things you have scholarship the mandarin right the farmer no the worker the merchant the middleman the middleman is not productive he is just parasitical that was the chinese shooter society we had that they still have that so when you say china is entrepreneurial i say yes but the top the cream of the crop still goes into government but they have so many bright people yeah that they can do it you once said to me that the the person you most admire that you have known in your life was don chappen because he single-handedly put china on that course yes because at the age of 70 plus having been a lifelong communist he spent just over a week visiting bangkok kuala lumpur and singapore in november of 1978 and saw three backward countries that had turned around doing better than china i got a lot to talk about so let me go back to singapore for a moment without any perfect order um your son is the new prime minister yes the former prime minister is now the senior minister your old job and you're the mentor minister or minister of whatever what's the title mentor minister yes a title you created no my title my son gave me because he wanted to make quite sure that he's the boss i don't central policy i'm just the mentor but you know what the conventional wisdom is it with all with great respect for your son is that that if you feel strongly about an issue that you have veto power or you have overwhelming power to make an ultimate decision in singapore that you have not so come back to come some advisory place you would be surprised to know just how strong a will he has otherwise he wouldn't be there and now would he be there if he was not your son is the question that some as with respect for his talent and the fact that he served ably in the military in political life was educated i think at harvard in part where was he cambridge london cambridge england and harvard right let's put it simply like this if he was not up to the job i would worry for him and your country yes if you were not my son i had a medium prime minister a long time ago really yes he's held him back he's 52 now yes i held him back he was young well you made him prime minister no he said volumes about i could have made him prime minister you could have made him your successor yes i was i was in charge totally but i said no and i said this is a party conference it is not good for singapore and it's not good for him to succeed me singapore needs a break and then it be it'll be able to judge him for what he is worth when you look at this process from the time you became prime minister when you had the freedom from britain yes would you look back and do anything significantly different were you too rigid were you too autocratic were you too uh not respectful of human rights human rights and criticism and the privilege of the individual to order his life the way he wants yes well done this parlor game myself i would say for the first five to ten years of extreme crisis when the country could just fall apart in racial strife religious hatreds and old feuds without a strong hand we could have come apart in those first 10 years we established certain firm ground rules i mean we we redeveloped the city in the process of redevelopment we broke up all the ghettos and all the enclaves the chinese were in one place indians and other places the malays another place they balloted for their neighbors so i created a completely different milieu they went to the same schools they went to the same shops there are no ghettos there's nowhere in singapore you go and say oh this is a slum why are there so many poor people they're all scattered but we have a chinese section here an italian section here no more normal you may have it here we don't have it just in the city but it's a different we don't have that they all go to different schools and same schools but they're all mixed but where they're differentiated is by income the higher your income the better your apartment or your house with a piece of land attached and across the standard of living if deng xiaoping was influenced by his trip in 1978 to bangkok singapore and wherever she said what would you most influenced by that gave you the insight to make those hard decisions you made at the beginning because you now look back and you believe that whatever ought to be the circumstance today whatever modification we might make it was essential to be as tough as we were and as disciplined as we were together right to get the mix right so where did you learn that i learned that by watching what went wrong with singapore the constant rise the sense of deprivation of certain sections of the community the fact that if you live separately in a in a hubble in a poorer part of the city and you're a malay and with weaker jobs then you sort of feed on each other's misery and you break up from time to time in anger so i said that will not do it'll ruin us and today what changes you think are necessary because i you know i laughed in a previous interview about the bubble gum yeah or chewing gum you now allow a chewing gum of a certain variety to come back yeah there's more relaxed attitude about movies in in singapore there have been other changes are you approving of this i think the world changes those are the people certain kinds of examples of which they're more fundamental the people of singapore have become much more traveled uh they're more tolerant of uh quirks of other people we we have seven million tourists a year almost twice the population of singapore sixty percent of singapore traveled by air every year to foreign places so we are very much traveled and very cosmopolitan but here's what you're preaching to go ahead you are preaching the following thing as far as i can tell which is that china is coming on strong with a very high growth rate so is india singapore is in between but if singapore is to maintain its place and maintain its it's got to be very tough very competitive and it's got to res has got to reassess let me put it in a broader framework in china and to alexa extend in india we have such an enormous land mass with such massive populations and high quality that if they had joined the free trade world right from the beginning after the war hong kong and singapore may never have been economic miracles places like hong kong and singapore on the periphery of this huge land mass became places of excellence because we arbitraged on their inefficiencies we became their contact points with the outside world you're an attractive alternative to their efficiencies now they have decided they're going to do likewise so it's going to be a different ball game for you in hong kong in 50 years they're going to be five times japan not with the same technology they'll still be way behind and maybe in 100 years they'll equal japan's technology but they'll be pretty high up then they like the japanese will be investing in singapore and through singapore into the region so the roles are reversed why is that because they will never be able to find a better place in the region than singapore to launch their enterprise yeah but you're the projection of your own growth rate is is five or you know four to five percent over the next several years now i mean you're sort of but you think you'll be sort of to ride your ride on the japanese i mean on the chinese yes of course and the indian economies these are two huge locomotives and you're there for the ride not just singapore we are at the center of southeast asia but the whole of southeast asia will be lifted up should america fear this shift from west to east this rise of china and india i think fear would be the wrong reaction here is an opportunity for you to take advantage of your long connections with the region and your high technology your patents values values and your products democracy uh no i would i would i know i'd say what yeah they they would want to buy all the things you have right but they would not like you to order them right how to lead their natural lives and they don't want to they want to say that it may work for you but that's not the model we may or may not choose yeah but i i have a feeling that they are changing anyway whether whether we like it or not they know they have to change politically yes because today as against 1976 when i first went there they are more urban than rural when i went there they were about 20 percent urban 80 rural now they are about 25 percent to 30 percent urban and 70 rural in another 20 years they're going to be about 50 percent urban and as you become urbanized you're on the internet you're on cable tv you're well informed you're going to govern them differently exactly now is singapore in your judgment the model city of the future not singapore i'm sorry shanghai uh shanghai model city of the future shanghai as a modern contemporary contemporary avant-garde culture and life styles lifestyle maybe but in political styles no because that's set in beijing patient cannot afford okay the power is in beijing yeah but look in in america the powers in washington but also new york is what's your highest city in the world you are differently constituted they are definitely constitutional if you were 20 today yeah it's hard to make this work but so you're a young man of 20 in singapore what would you do where would you go would you move to china and create businesses would you go into politics in singapore probably not because there are so many opportunities to do well in life and that's the problem for singapore choice the ample choice what would i do i want a good education in english because that's a world language i want to have enough chinese not just language but an understanding of their politics and culture to interact with them because i think they are going to be the biggest growth story of the 21st century so if in fact you're a smart young man at 20 your second language ought to be a command at least a conversational command of mandarin yes absolutely in america we say you if you're wise your second language ought to be spanish politically you know politically but i mean they're saying on a global basis mandarin yeah but english is first yeah because the english is worldwide that's worldwide and it is that for a long time it will be the key to new knowledge did you tell jack sharok that i don't have to tell you he knows it all right so you're 20. you would look at something other than i mean would you go would you move to china no not just yet i would have a base in singapore i'd build some company i'd go to china i go into the region i come to europe i come to america you say you live in singapore singapore no you start off in singapore i always start off in singapore my base will be in singapore i'll bring my family up in singapore yes but i think they'll grow up with what i would call orthodox all world values to begin with before they get beaten up by all these new lifestyles and so on would you send your children when they came of age to as your son went to oxford cambridge harvard yes i would because a quality education is the best thing that you can get now you make the point here that you can get quality education a lot of other places than those three universities for sure yeah and some would believe in different places better yeah i would say more than that i think for the next 50 hundred years the most dynamic economy in the world is america for the next 50 years 50 or 100 years so this century is still going to be the american century for economics definitely and military power absolutely technological power then what should i'm changing this what should we worry about what ought to be beyond terrorism and that the fact that people wish us badly yeah and we're going to decide people who are sure some i in a second but what should be the primary concern of american leaders looking to the future beyond terrorism i would say to try and get the world not just to envy you which they do your wealth your dynamics more than that your lifestyle your your abundance your affluence our culture you know your ability to have a good life yeah but i mean they also admire movies and address and things like that i think more important to try and be less apprehensive really yeah because at the end of the day many parts of the world many people say look they're overwhelming us they the americans yes that would used to be the rallying cry against globalization globalization is another word for american hegemony yeah i mean you know it's your your pop culture right right so i think that's not difficult your fast foods you know all about this big mac and how the obesity and all that right i do and your cigarette companies all those things give you a bad name with thinking people and so important bad food and and exporting problems for people drugs addiction yeah but i think what is important is that if you really want to sort of have the icing on the cake don't be apprehensive don't be apprehensive of american power and preeminence we are friendly we are not out to kill your culture we are prepared to live and let live yeah let me add something to that and then just to test it and we want to engage you and listen to you and hear what do you think that in your judgment being the experience you've had you do you believe that the idea of of saying as george bush said in the campaign in 2000 but didn't many criticize him because they didn't follow through to to adopt a more humbler attitude do you think that the united states today in terms of future leadership of the world has got to be more aware of an engagement with the rest of the world and and be sensitive to their apprehension yes but i put it in another way you have a lifestyle that's causing everybody to wonder how long we can protect the environment if we all aspire to your lifestyle right so you got to try and be more move the paradigm you know that we from time to time there's going to be we're ratcheting up of oil prices as approaching 50 as we speak and you know coming to see all these huge automobiles and suvs in america there's a complete unconcern with the rest of the world the amount of energy consumption that our lifestyle and and our wealth enables us if you start cutting down it will make a significant impact worldwide okay a lot of smart friends of mine are arguing that that american leadership ought to be in the forefront of one energy independence and energy alternatives now some of the people i know in the oil business will tell you that's not likely to happen not so much because they're trying to sell their product but simply that you know it's not going to happen well you look at the japanese they import everything they import everything and when the oil crisis struck every single way they minimize consumption and it made a difference to the economy so today per unit produce they use less energy than america in your region what's the likelihood that china and south korea and japan and are all going to be at each other's throat but they are going to be there's going to be such rivalry among them in such competition among them no i don't see that for 10 20 30 years i don't know what it's going to be once the china is already big and powerful the chinese more that the moment is let's grow let's have peace quiet yeah and grow let's get there first and talk about other things later and but you see they want to make they want to play a role of a significant role they want respect yeah they've always wanted respect but they won't respect more so today they want to be a they have to be a critical player in trying to deal with north korea have to be friends it's in their neighborhood and the fear of atomic atomic weapons of mass destruction in the hands of someone who might not be but you also have to look at it from uh the north korean point of view the north koreans have decided that the chinese put their interests first because when it became obvious to the chinese that the south koreans could bring benefits they then made friends with the south so the north no longer believed that this fellow communist is a perpetual friend right right well the south doesn't believe there and there's some sense that the south does not fear north korea as much as america fears north korea no that's a different story i know but at the same time without china the north koreans may well have staffed the death the chinese have helped them to survive because they don't want them to implode if they implode the south takes over you have a pro-american career yeah and that brings american troops up to the yalu river so what they want is a north korea still extinct but without the bomb but why should the north koreans listen to chinese guarantees and give up the bomb that's a problem well it even there's a bigger problem too is is that the world watches north korea with a bomb and they says gee you know if you get a bomb you win the world's respect they're all trying to deal with you i mean yes i put it more crudely all right they know that if they collapse kim jong-il and quite a number of his generals will be in the dock where milosevic now is for war crimes crimes against humanity they blew up a korean airliner they killed half the korean cabinet in rangoon with a bomb and they'll end up in the hague so you see it ending so they keep the bomb they keep the bomb yes so what would you do last night i had the foreign minister of iran here yes for a long conversation says that they're ready to be engaged about the bomb that they don't really want the bomb you don't believe that do you be willing it would be impolite for me to express my disbelief but i think anybody who says he doesn't want a bomb if he can get one isn't really being honest because because the pakistanis have the bomb so why not they the israelis have a problem why not they and saddam hussein nearly got the bomb pre-95 yeah so why not they of course they'd rather bring honey yeah no it's a dangerous word how's that what do you think the likelihood is that a bomb will fall in the wrong hands and it'll be set off i once wrote a fanta fantasy piece for the economist they asked me that was some 150th anniversary whatever 50 years from now so i had one little paragraph in which i said and finally the bomb was used and it was in the middle east because in a conflict between israelis and arabs and muslims rationality dissolves and fear takes over yes but they didn't publish that they decided it was too provocative they cancelled it but i still believe that's the highest risk north koreans will sell the bomb or parts of it they won't use it because they know that's the end of them so they want to they want the fear that they have it yes rather than the fact that they but they will sell it because they give them money yeah the currency they're broke much has been said about america's reputation as a result of the iraqi war and that if in fact there was a need for preemptive action at some point because of iraq amer the respect for america that willing to follow america is less likely is it that severe are these a hypothetical questions uh no benefit can come out of this kind of speculative questions and answers you are in iraq and if you do not handle iraq in a way that does not make people despise you then you've got real worries not whether they're going to follow you in the next preemptive action you handle iraq and come out of iraq in one piece you may not achieve what you set out to achieve a functioning democracy in iraq but at least you leave it more stable than it was in a better shape than it was may take you some time i think you will overcome it as you overcame vietnam and vietnam was a messy business at you know 50 000 deaths and 150 000 casualties one of the strange things about america is this obsession with casualties which again makes the world feel that only american lives are important casualties have crossed the 1000 mark so it's a disaster tens of thousands of iraqis have died they're killing each other and they'll continue to kill each other i think you have to look at it in the long term all this will be forgotten but how did you at the end of the day hold your head up and said i came to do good and i did good you did not go as conquerors but alas for various reasons you didn't get the blessings of the u.n otherwise it would have been much easier and you had to carry the burden of being an occupying force you go through with this leave it in better shape and you'll still be a leader of the world there's also this lesson whether it's singapore or china or vietnam or iraq you have to learn from history or you will repeat it yeah but you are what you are right the most powerful country in in in economics and politics and cultural in october of 2002 i was in london and i met the advisor to the british prime minister they facilitated me because we were all so interested in iraq so i discussed what were the options and what were the chances and victory over saddam's forces was assured now the worries were what happens after that and i had read excerpts of what happened with the british in the 1920s they had 250 000 british indian troops and they suffered many casualties over 20 000 casualties so i asked this advisor i said this is your history if you were in charge what would you do he said i go in get rid of saddam get the strongest man who can hold the country together and get out but americans cannot do that they go in with noble and noble high-minded objectives to bring democracy to change the nature of the society that's not easy and that's a long-term goal and the question is have americans have patience for that well that's the question it's great to see you pleasure to have you here i hope you'll come back and we are still friends with america yes indeed um lee kuan yew as i said is the mentor minister of singapore thank you for joining us see you next [Music] time foreign [Music]

Channel: Harry1923

Views: 38,528

Keywords: Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore, Marina Bay Sands, Merlion, Lee Hsien Loong, Charlie Rose, Obama, Trump, Mahathir

Id: ngtDgPmzLbM

Length: 54min 7sec (3247 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 28 2020