Transcription
And I got to be also very careful here is that the quality of the major world quality of the leaders of some of the major countries in the world is deteriorating. This is a very serious problem we have in the world today.
In the UK, for example, you've gone from Margaret Thatcher to Boris Johnson. I mean, he's a joker. I'm not exaggerating. He's just a complete joker. And then after this joker left, he was succeeded by a joke. Listen as long as the head of lettuce as they say, you know. I mean, so how can a country like UK go from you know Winston Churchill Margaret Thatcher to Boris Johnson List Trust? But it's not about personalities. There's a structural game here.
What you just heard was a segment from a dialogue titled America Through the Eyes of Kishor Mak Bubani, which took place in November of 2024. In the content that follows, this top Asian thinker who has lived in the United States for over 15 years will offer a candid America today. He will begin by pointing out how America, the very country that once taught the world the gospel of free trade, has shifted its stance on this core principle. Next, he will dive deep into two specific issues within the American system, the operational model of its diplomatic bureaucracy and the structural challenges in leadership selection faced by the entire Western world. Finally, he will offer his most profound concerns and counsel for America's future. This is an external observation report on the United States from Asia. Let's continue.
The country in which I've spent the most years of my life obviously is Singapore. The second country in which I've spent the most years of my life is the United States of America. I trying to work out I've either spent 15 or 16 years alto together in the US. two and a half years in Washington DC, 10 and a half years in New York, twice as uh Singapore's ambassador to UN, one year in Harvard uh as a visiting fellow and then I've gone back countless times uh to spend times at so many different universities in United States. So in a sense um clearly United States is a country second country in which I've interacted interacted with the most most uh after uh Singapore and I have I must say a tremendous number of friends uh in the US. I mean it's just amazing every time I go back that was always such pleasure catching up and I'm actually going to go back and uh you know you mentioned my book uh after launching it in Singapore KL and Hong Kong I'm going to launch it in uh New York at Asia society and at Harvard University and Harvard University has organized a whole day program for me to meet so many different people so it's it is for me like is going going back to United States in some ways almost like also like going back home to meet so many friends.
So as you were writing you the there's so many parts of the book that I highlighted and I guess um you know one of the earliest things that one of the first things that we've been talking about during this conference continuously through the two days has been about trade and as you might be aware earlier today we had Ralph Ives and Tommy Co with us talking about the US Singapore free trade agreement and so I suppose just to connect what we've been talking about over the two days and what um the conversation we had earlier today in the process of writing your book and reflecting upon the interactions that you've had with certain US leaders in thinking about free trade. Um what is your opinion how successful the US Singapore free trade agreement has been over the last 20 years since we're celebrating the 20th anniversary today?
Uh well I'm glad you had the real expert uh Tommy Co in this room because Tommy as you know negotiated the US Singapore uh FDA but I'm going to take a sort of a larger philosophical view of the trade issue because one of the highlights in my life was that uh I accompanied Mr. Lee Kwanu uh when he addressed a joint session of Congress. That's the only time when a leader of Singapore has been invited to address the joint session of Congress and I felt very proud uh to be there in the room because we had some difficulty nailing down whether or not it would happen or not happen. And so since I was ambassador to the UN and since George Schulz, the secretary of state was going to come to New York for the UNGA, I got instruction from Singapore government saying, please try and find a way of going straight for George Schulz and asking him, you know, can you let us know whether the joint session is on and George Schulz said to me, I guarantee you it'll be done. So I conveyed the message that the joint session speech would happen. Now the reason I mention that is that one of the most powerful speeches that Lee Kuanu ever gave was a speech that he gave to the joint session in Congress and it was all about trade and it was at the end of the day it was a love letter from Mr. Leewanu to the United States of America saying thank you very much for telling us about the principles of free trade. Thank you very much for telling us to open up our economies and thank you very much for stimulating this tremendous growth in East Asia. Right? So that's 1986 or 87. You fast forward almost 40 years and I think if Mr. Lee Kuwanu were alive today, he would have great difficulty giving the same speech on trade because I know I mean I have many good friends in the US and there's a tremendous backlash against free trade in the United States and the paradoxical moment the what the great paradox about the moment that we are living in today is that the countries that are succeeding in the world are succeeding ucceeding because their leaders learned some brilliant lessons on the importance of free trade from American universities. So they take all their learning from American universities. They applying it and they're doing well. They're thriving and in the previous session you already saw I didn't time talking about the excitement in Malaysia and so what what's driving that American ideas again about opening up trade and so on so forth. So the paradox is that while the most of Asia is embracing these ideas of free trade, United States sadly is walking away from it. And and and that the reality is that for example, if you take the Trans-Pacific Partnership that was very much something that was designed to ensure that the United States had a long-term vested interest in staying in this region. there was sound geopolitical trade reasons for the you know CPP but then boom United States decided to leave and I think that's that's very sad and if there's anything we can do and I know it's going to be very difficult I'm ex extremely aware of the political complexity within the United States today it'll be extremely difficult to get any presidential candidate to say hey if you vote for me join CPP. That's a vote loser, right? We know that. So the question therefore for us in Asia is against this political backdrop where there's incredible backlash against trade in the US. How do we ensure that the United States remains engaged in this region?
Well, we are down in the countdown to the presidential elections in November. And one thing is certain, we're going to have a new administration. However, one of the candidates we kind of know. The other one is kind of new, but it's not all Nobody's really new, are they? What advice or what would you say to whichever the new administration comes to be? And we're not in the game of doing predictions, although we did try to get Deputy Chief of Mission Casey Maize to predict the election earlier. He didn't play, so I think he's very smart. Uh, so I'm not going to ask you to predict who's going to win, but I would like to understand what advice you would give to who whichever administration is elected on what the potential path to trade to to reinvigorating trade in the region might be if they were even a little bit open to it.
Uh, well, you're right. It's impossible to make uh predictions. I remember 2016 very well. I remember the the US embassy organized a gala event in some big hotel. I don't know whether it was this hotel or some other hotel, some other place. Uh, probably near Santex City, I think if I'm not mistaken. And as I walk into this room as big as this, normally in the elections results are coming out, everybody's very happy. There was doom and gloom in the room. So I kept going around saying, "What's going on? Why are you why is everyone looking so gloomy? They said, well, it looks as though Trump is going to win. And it was a big shock, you know, huge shock. And I know that my friends obviously you can I'm sort of indicating where my most of my friends are were very very disappointed and certainly Kaga was the ambassador then was also very disappointed. So we I think we have to in this part of the world acknowledge the reality that Donald Trump may win. I mean that's you have to prepare for that. It' be irresponsible not to prepare for it. Okay. Then the question is what do we do? How do we handle it? And at the end of the day, I do believe that you have to appeal to long-term national self-interest. I at the end I may sound very cynical, but geopolitics is a very cold cruel game. It's not about being nice. It's about appealing to hard core long-term interests. And at the end of the day, the United States has got to assess whether its presence in East Asia is a major asset for America's long-term interest. And remember that what's unique about Southeast Asia and seriously you go there not many other parts of the world can replicate this. the huge reservoirs of goodwill towards the United States in Southeast Asia. It's partly the cold war history. ASEAN is a pro-American creation denounced by Russia and China, Soviet Union and China when it was created. And there's a long history of happy engagement between the United States and Southeast Asia. But the sad part is this. Most Americans are not even aware that Southeast Asia exists. And most Americans are certainly not aware that there are huge pools of reservoir you know u reservoir goodwill towards the United States in this region. So you have a precious asset here that can go to waste. And similarly even within East Asia and and certainly in Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, there's a lot of goodwill towards the United States. But at the end of the day, if you want to preserve that, it requires long-term commitment. It cannot go up and down on the basis of election cycles. And so I hope that you can create a constituency within the United States, a bipartisan constituency that says, "Hey, American presence in this region is important and we must be part of it." And of course at the end of the day frankly also I'm sure we're going to discuss it at some point in time how you manage China is equally important right as you can see from the countries in this region they want to be friends with United States and they want to be friends with China okay and they have to be because if United States is going to be around for 100 years China will be around 1,000 years so Southeast Asians dealt with China a thousand years ago they have to deal with China thousand years from now. So they have to preserve those links also. So managing that very delicate change requires a a certain degree of political sophistication within Washington DC which frankly as of now doesn't exist yet. So that's what we need to build in Washington DC.
Yeah. I'm going to bridge over to the China thing in a second, but I do want to ask our members in the audience. For Amchan members, we represent a great diversity of American companies and American business interests. And this is where our job would be to carry the message of what's happening in Southeast Asia, the complexity of the region, the opportunities here back to the United States. And every time you get a chance to do that with your corporate headquarters, with people that you meet who are coming through, I highly encourage you to do so. And if you're not comfortable doing it, I'll do it for you. So, so that's something that I do hope you take very seriously because we do need to help people understand what is Southeast Asia. I think they know what Singapore is now and we all know crazy rich Asians, but generally Singapore's profile has risen, but Southeast Asia, they still think of it as a block of countries without realizing how incredibly different Indonesia is from Vietnam, etc. So, please let's all work together to communicate that back home to the United States.
Um, on the China one, I'm going to quote a little bit of your book because I did make a bunch of highlights, but one one which I thought was super interesting was when you said, "For great powers such as the United States, their influence doesn't depend on the quality and ability of their ambassadors. Power speaks more eloquently than personality in generating influence." And I actually thought, given that you mentioned China, when I read that, I thought, "Okay, great powers such as the United States." And I thought, well, same for China, right? Can you talk a little bit more about the fact that power speaks more and has more influence than individuals or individual personalities cuz it doesn't really feel like that right now when you have leaders of these huge countries who are such strong personalities that it almost rides out any kind of policy conversation.
Well, I can tell you that, you know, I was an ambassador for many years and but I was never actually what I call a bilateral ambassador although I was head of mission in Cambodia in 7374 uh when the war was taking place and that's when I learned a lot about geopolitics because every day the city will be shelled and then I realized hey war is a serious business. Uh but I can tell you once you become an ambassador and you arrive at a capital the one of the first questions you ask yourself is who's the most important ambassador in this capital because there's a hierarchy among ambassadors clearly and quite often the ambassador of a neighboring country would be very important because they they would have to understand their their neighbor very well clearly but also you also realized that the whoever the great power of the day was also that ambassador will be very very important and I actually you give a concrete example throughout the cold war if you went to Bangkok right very clearly the most powerful ambassador in Bangkok by far was the American ambassador right because you know Thailand was a treaty ally Thailand was a very important staging post for operations in Indo-China China and there had always been a certain degree of closeness between the Thai uh establishment and and the American establishment. So the American ambassadors number one and frankly in those days the Chinese ambassador was not very consequential. I mean important but not that consequential. But today I think if you go to Thailand and you ask yourself which ambassador is more important, it would depend also on which country does for example does Thailand do more trade with United States or China? And the answer is China. And which country is engaged in new projects in China? All right. again in in Thailand and I suspect the answer again is is China. So progressively you find that the the standing of the Chinese ambassador is slowly going up and the relative standing of the US ambassador is going down and also in terms of visits for example Chinese leaders have more visits in Thailand than American leaders do. In fact, I can tell you this one American diplomat base in Southeast Asia one day called me up. Mik Shaw, help me. This was in a year when there was another crisis in the Middle East and the Secretary of State Condisa Rice was debating whether or not to come for an ASEAN meeting and this American diplomat help me help me persuade Kandi she must come for the Assean meeting you know. So that's that's the kind of consistency of attention that China gives to Southeast Asia then becomes a plus whereas the inconsistency of United States becomes a minus and then that affects the ranking uh of ambassadors too. So it's it is it is a reality but it keeps changing all the time. It's dynamic. So for example, let's say if the United States decides to mount a major ASEAN initiative, which to some extent Joe Biden tried to do by inviting the ASEAN ambassadors to the US and so on so forth. Let's say if the United States proposes a new uh working arrangement with um uh ASEAN, then things can change. But the at the end of the day, it's partly a reflection of your power and your commitment to the region and not personality. And that that's a that's a reality of international relations.
Well, speaking of how the United States ambassadors are perceived outside of in in various countries around the world and even just the different ambassadors and the shifting of importance. Um there's something else you wrote in the book that I thought was when I read I thought ouch. And we do have some folks from the US foreign service in the room so you all brace yourself if you haven't read this already. But in the book, uh, Professor Mabubani wrote, "American foreign service is demoralized and much less effective. Something has clearly gone wrong." And I've only taken two sentences out of about 8 to 10 sentences in that vein. And just out of curiosity, because we talked about the importance of having ambassadors be engaged in the country that they're in. And we do have also other ambassadors in the room, including my good friend, Ambassador McGrath from Ireland. um you know this idea that the foreign service in the United States and possibly you can help us compare and contrast a little bit with other countries foreign service are we as Americans do do we really have a foreign service that is demoralized and clearly gone wrong.
Well, I mean I as you know I I've dealt with American diplomats from the time I joined the foreign ministry in 1971 so that's about 53 years and I can I tell you when my when I was in when I was in Cambodia, I became very good friends with my American counterparts there and they were brilliant uh diplomats. Some of them got awards from the state department like Tim Carney did and Tom Anders and and um then when I went to Koala Lumpo my next posting I had an extremely close relationship with Ambassador Miller and then with uh Frank Bennett and uh um another diplomat whose name will come to me in a second. But I can tell you that for example uh some of you may know I'm married to a girl born in New Jersey called Anne Marquy. The person who introduced me to Anne Marky was Frank Bennett, an American diplomat. So you know I had very close ties with them. But at that time you know the American diplomats were engaged, happy, confident about their future in their service. quite a few of them would advance and become ambassadors. Now this is this is data that is available by Google. Just ask yourself a simple Google question. How many ambassadorial appointments in the US foreign service had political appointees and how many had career foreign service officers? If I'm not mistaken, don't hold me to this. The longtime long-term ratio used to be about 70% for career foreign service officers and that's very important because when you join the foreign service your aspiration is to become an ambassador right you want to reach the top and so if you have a large pool of ambassadors to choose from your your statistical odds of becoming an ambassador are much higher because only 30% are political appointees don't hold me to this but I think now the ratio is reversed. Now it's 70% political and 30% uh please Google and check this okay this is let me know but it's it's moving in that direction so as a result of it if you join the state department this sadly this is true you if you are lucky you can become ambassador to Mali to Congo to Guinea Bisau but London Paris Tokyo Soul Singapore you know you name all the major capitals is all political appointees. And of course that it is good that you have political appointees. I'm not saying it's bad. In fact, Singapore appreciates having political appointees because political appointees give us access to the White House. So we like having political appointees. I'm not saying go towards zero political appointees. That would be wrong. But at the same time you must create enough opportunities for your career foreign service officers to also succeed and do well. And I think some of the ones who became what there's a special term you have uh in the state department I think it's a career ambassador post that those posts are very important as aspirational post for diplomats rising up the ladder and I met you know most successful diplomats like Tom Pickering for example who's a legend right it was he's a good friend of mine and and he's a career foreign service officer but he could rise to the very top right now that's what you need to create also within the foreign service and which is what we have done for example in the Singapore foreign service we used to have lots of political appointees too but now uh they're almost all careerbased ambassadors right.
Thank you so much for that candid assessment uh there's always room for improvement right so I wouldn't feel too bad about it but it's something to think about especially as we represent ourselves on the foreign stage I'm about to open this up to the floor. And I think um I just want to close off with something I read that I think is worthwhile for us to remember because there are many leaders in the audience who are currently working in public affairs. Folks who are we have some students in the audience too who are thinking about a career in public service and you mentioned that as you were thinking about it for the LKY School of Public Policy and working with a consult consulting firm actually I should just say the name because they're a member too. McKenzie, the four areas you thought were important were economics, politics, leadership, and management, which is kind of an interesting mix for school of public policy to educate its leaders on. Before we transition to opening up to questions, um would you like to comment on how you envision the leaders of tomorrow in public service?
Uh well I mean the the one of the saddest things about our world today and I got to be also very careful here is that the quality of the major world quality of the leaders of some of the major countries in the world is deteriorating. This is a very serious problem we have in the world today. And of course, I mean, this this I can say openly because I've said so publicly many times. You know, the UK has traditionally produced some of the greatest leaders in the world. Winston Churchill clearly was one of them. I mean, Margaret Thatcher was another. I can tell you when Mr. Lee Kwanu was stepping down in 1990, I accompanied him on his farewell tour of Europe. So, we met Margaret Thatcher in London. incredibly impressive woman and we were having dinner at number 10 Downing Street. She stood up and without any notes, you know, nothing in front of her, gave a wonderfully beautiful, eloquent speech about what a great man Lie Kuwanu is and what he has done. Then Lie Kwanu stood up equally spontaneously and responded. So these were two great leaders interacting with each other, you know. Similarly, when he went to Paris, Francois Metron came to the door of Elisa Palace to receive him, which is a breach of protocol because he's head of state. Dwani is only head of government, head of state coming to receive head of government at the entrance. Very unusual. And then when he went to Germany, we met Helmwood Cole, another impressive, thoughtful leader. But you know now in the UK for example you've gone from Margaret Thatcher to Boris Johnson. I mean he's a joker. I'm not exaggerating. He's just a complete joker. He's actually history will regard him very unkindly because he destroyed his country by engineering Brexit. Brexit is by any reasonable calculation a disaster for the UK. And Boris Johnson lied his way in the campaign for Brexit. And then after this joker left, he was succeeded by a joke. Le trust she didn't last as long as a head of letters as they say, you know. I mean, so how can a country like UK go from you know Winston Churchill Margaret Thatcher to Boris Johnson list trust? But it's not about personalities. There's a structural game here. Politics is becoming more difficult and you really got to have it's very difficult to find people who are on the other hand very ethical, you know, very committed to doing the right thing and yet are cunning enough to succeed in the field of politics cuz politics is not easy. If you're not shrewd, if you're not cunning, if you're not ruthless, forget it. You and and and it's very rare to find people who are both good human beings and also shrewd human beings. And now with politics becoming more difficult, it's harder and harder to get good people into politics. And that leaves the way the field open to all kinds of populists and others who come in and and sadly that's going to be one of the structural problems uh for our world and it's a common problem that many countries are facing around the world.
What we have just heard was a complex external observation report on the United States delivered by Professor Kishor Makbubani. He began by pointing out the shift in America's stance on global trade ideology, a former champion of free trade that is now experiencing a strong domestic backlash. He then delved deeper, diagnosing some issues in America's systemic operations, highlighting how its diplomatic elite cores is being challenged by the prevalence of political appointments. Finally, he broadened his analysis to the entire western world and arrived at a disturbing observation that a decline in leadership quality is becoming a widespread structural problem. This candid analysis from an Asian intellectual leaves us with several topics worth discussing. Why would a superpower that once led globalization experience such a strong anti-trade sentiment internally? How should a nation's diplomatic system strike a balance between professionalism and politics? And what are the structural reasons behind the decline in leadership quality that Makubani observed in the west? We are eager to read your thoughts on these questions in the comments below. If you believe this candid observation report from Asia has provided you with valuable insight, please like, share, and subscribe to our channel. Thank you for watching.