"I viewed Americans with mixed feelings. I admired their can-do approach but shared the view of the British establishment of the time that the Americans were bright and brash, that they had enormous wealth but often misused it. It was not true that all it needed to fix a problem was to bring resources to bear on it. Many American leaders believed that racial, religious, and linguistic hatreds, rivalries, hostilities, and feuds down the millennia could be solved if sufficient resources were expended on them. (Some still do. Hence their efforts to build peaceful, multiracial, multire ligious societies in Bosnia and Kosovo.)
Their methods of countering communism in Asia did not impress me...
But America was the only country with the strength and determination to stem this relentless tide of history and reverse the erosion of peopie's will to resist the communists. So I wanted the British, Australians, and New Zealanders to be a buffer. Life would be difficult if Singapore were to become like Saigon or Manila. By themselves, the British in Malaysia and Singapore could not have blocked the communist advance into Southeast Asia. It was the Americans who stopped the Chinese and Vietnamese communists from spreading guerrilla insurgency into Cambodia and Thailand...
Johnson was very direct.Was the war winnable? Was he doing right? I told him he was doing right but the war was not winnable in a military sense. He could prevent the communists from winning.This would allow a Vietnamese leadership to emerge around which the people would rally. That would be a victory because that government would have the support of the people and it would be noncommunist. I had no doubts that in a free vote the people would vote against the communists. He was cheered, if momentarily...
If America disengaged, the tide would go against all non communist countries. Thailand would change sides and Malaysia would be put through the mincing machine of guerrilla insurgency. After that, with fraternal communist parties in control, the communists would cut our throats in Singapore. The Chinese army would not have to march into Southeast Asia...
From October to December 1968, as planned, I took a short sabbatical in the University of British Columbia (UBC) and Harvard and left Goh Keng Swee in charge...
I f ound many other fresh ideas and picked the brains of other highly intelligent people who were not always right. They were too politically correct. Harvard was determinedly liberal. No scholar was prepared to say or admit that there were any inherent differences between races or cultures or religions. They held that human beings were equal and a society only needed correct economic policies and institutions of government to succeed. They were so bright I found it difficult to believe that they sincerely held these views they felt compelled to espouse...
At one dinner, I met Henry Kissinger. It was pure serendipity that at that dinner where many liberal Americans voiced strong criticisms of the Vietnam War, I took the contrary view and explained that America's stand was crucial for the future of a noncommunist Southeast Asia... Before I flew home that December, I met him in New York to encourage him to stay the course in Vietnam, and said that preventing the communists from winning was within America's capability...
Hanoi was fighting the war in Washington and was helped unwittingly by many in Congress, egged on by the media...
Although American intervention failed in Vietnam , it bought time for the rest of Southeast Asia. In 1 96 5 , when the U.S. military moved massively into South Vietnam, Thailand , Malaysia, and the Philippines faced internal threats from armed communist i nsurgencies and the communist underground was still active in Singapore. Indonesia, in the throes of a fai led communist coup, was waging konfrontasi, an undeclared war against Malaysia and Singapore. The Philippines was claiming Sabah in East Malaysia. Standards o f living were low and economic growth slow. America's action enabled noncommunist Southeast Asia to put their own houses in order. By 1 97 5 , they were in better shape to stand up to the communists. Had there been no U.S. intervention, the will of these countries to resist them would have melted and Southeast Asia would most likely have gone communist. The prosperous emerging market economies of Asean were nurtured during the Vietnam War years .
In the weeks before Saigon fell, a huge armada of small boats and ships packed with refugees set out across the South China Sea, many headed for Singapore. Quite a few of them were armed . Keng Swee, acting as prime minister, sent an urgent report to me i n Washington that the number of refugees had reached several thousands in nearly a hundred boats . He wanted an immediate policy decision. I signalled that we should refuse them landing and get them to move on to countries with more space to receive them . A massive exercise started on 6 May. The Singapore Armed Forces repaired , refitted, refuelled, reprovisioned, and sent out to sea a total of 64 vessels carrying more than 8,000 refugees. Many of the captains of these vessels had deliberately disabled their engines to avoid being sent off...
I said congressional intervention to stop the bombing of the communists had contributed to the fall of South Vietnam. If Watergate had not happened and the bombing had continued, the South Vietnamese forces would not have lost heart and the outcome could have been different. Once the bombings stopped and aid was significantly reduced, the fate of the South Vietnamese government was sealed."
--- America : The Anticommunist Anchorman in From Third World to First: A Statesman’s Powerful Story of Transformation from Poverty to National Leadership Hardcover / by Lee Kuan Yew (Author)
