Trump shoots up our cortisol level: Former Singapore minister

New Delhi, Jan 14 (PTI) A former Singapore minister on Wednesday said US President Donald Trump "shoots up our cortisol level" as he referred to White House's moves in Venezuela and other countries, including Iran.

George Yong-Boon Yeo, former cabinet minister in Singapore government, made the remarks while delivering the C D Deshmukh Lecture here.

"...Trump, I think, for many of us, shoots up our cortisol level," he said.

The last two weeks, he noted, were all about Venezuela.

"And hot on Venezuela's heels, Greenland, Cuba, and now Iran. What's happening? I think Trump's accelerating trends, which were already underway for some time, which is the crystallization of a multipolar world," the former minister said.

Yong, who is also a visiting scholar at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, said Trump's is the first US administration to admit that this is a multipolar world.

"You know, Secretary (Marco) Rubio said recently, apropos the war in Ukraine, this is not a war. It is on a different continent. Can you imagine the shock to the Europeans, who since February 2022, were being led on the charge against Russia by the US?" he observed.

The special operation, to use Russia's phrase, in Venezuela, was brilliant, stunning, but it could not have been accomplished without collaboration inside Venezuela, he opined.

"And it's still not clear who collaborated and how. The initial nationalistic outpouring confuses the picture," Yong told the gathering.

He felt when Trump talked about taking control of Venezuela, "I don't think it's that simple". "Because this is where Simon Bolivar, who liberated large parts of South America from the Spaniards 200 years earlier, came from." He wondered how the US is going to manage this.

"There's no full regime change. There is a leadership change," he pointed out.

"And they can't go back, because too much has been invested. This will be an entanglement. Trump's objective from the first days of his second administration has been very clear," the Singapore leader said. PTI GJS NAB KVK KVK