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He said that is the “biggest misunderstanding” of his work, but added that he is just trying to rebalance a global debate dominated by Western powers telling everyone else how the world should be.
“You never hear the Asian voices and so you get a very distorted perspective of how the world thinks,” he told The Straits Times in Singapore on the sidelines of the launching of his 10th book, Living The Asian Century: An Undiplomatic Memoir.
“I have learnt that unless you speak aggressively and boldly, your views don’t get heard, so I hope that by being incredibly strong and aggressive in my views, I am rectifying a global imbalance in the debate between East and West,” Kishore, 75, said, adding that it is counter to Asian culture to speak out so strongly.
“To my Asian friends I come across as being very cocky, and self-confident and assertive, and they say: ‘This guy talks too much’.”
Kishnore believes that China’s position in its current trade war with the US is not opposed to that of Singapore.
He said it is not in Singapore’s interest to see the US become more aggressive in trying to bring down China, which would be globally disruptive and not good news for trade-dependent Singapore.
“What I’m doing is effectively defending Singapore’s national interests. The people whom I’m debating are the people who misunderstand China in the West, but of course in Singapore, since you don’t see the other side, you think, ‘Kishore is being very pro-China’.”
He said he has been misunderstood many times but has not been damaged by the flak.
Kishore said that at the Singapore foreign affairs ministry, a boss called him a “deeply insecure person”, which he initially resented but later accepted that there was some truth to it, given his impoverished childhood, and his father’s gambling and alcohol addiction.
He said it later came to light other managers had written “pages and pages of negative comments” about him over the years, and that he had clearly upset a lot of people during his tenure at the ministry from 1971 to 2004.
“I must have come across as being very cocky and self-confident, and when you are cocky and self-confident, you invite detractors,” he said.
Kishore’s earlier postings included Cambodia, Malaysia and the US. Then, from 1993 to 1998, he held the position of permanent secretary at the ministry.
Later, he served as Singapore’s permanent representative to the United Nations. In that role, he served as president of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in January 2001 and May 2002.
He said that chairing the council opened his eyes to world affairs and the conduct of diplomacy. He concluded that power trumped principles, and saw at first hand the US domination of the UNSC.
Kishore returned to Singapore in 2004 to become the founding dean of the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, later retiring in 2017.
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