page_title: Mahathir Mohamad
section_title: United States
hierarchical_section_title: Mahathir Mohamad / First term as prime minister / Foreign relations / United States
caption_attribution_description: Prime Minister Dato' Seri Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad greets U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the secretary's first stop.
context_page_description: Mahathir bin Mohamad is a Malaysian statesman and author who served as the 4th and 7th Prime Minister of Malaysia from July 1981 to October 2003 and from May 2018 to March 2020. He has been the Member of Parliament for Langkawi since May 2018. Mahathir's political career has spanned more than 70 years starting with his participation in protests against non-Malays gaining Malaysian citizenship during the Malayan Union through to forming his own political parties, the Malaysian United Indigenous Party in September 2016 and the Party of Homeland's Fighters in August 2020.
  Born and raised in Alor Setar, Kedah, Mahathir excelled at school and became a physician. He became active in the United Malays National Organisation before entering parliament in 1964. He served one term before losing his seat, subsequently falling out with Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman and being expelled from UMNO. When Abdul Rahman resigned, Mahathir re-entered UMNO and parliament, and was promoted to the Cabinet, where he served as Minister of Education from 1974 to 1978 and Minister of Trade and Industry from 1978 to 1981. He became Deputy Prime Minister in 1976.
context_section_description: Mahathir has been publicly critical of the Foreign Policy of the United States from time to time, particularly during the George W. Bush presidency. and yet relations between the two countries were still positive and the United States was the biggest source of foreign investment, and was Malaysia's biggest customer during Mahathir's rule. Furthermore, Malaysian military officers continued to train in the US under the International Military Education And Training (IMET) program. The BBC reported that relations with the United States took a turn for the worse in 1998 when Al Gore, Vice President of the United States, gave a speech at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference hosted by Malaysia. Gore stated that:
  Democracy confers a stamp of legitimacy that reforms must have in order to be effective. And so, among nations suffering economic crises, we continue to hear calls for democracy, calls for reform, in many languages – People Power, doi moi, reformasi. We hear them today – right here, right now – among the brave people of Malaysia.
  Gore and the United States were critical of the trial of Mahathir's former deputy Anwar Ibrahim, going so far as to label it as a "show trial". US News and World Report called the trial a "tawdry spectacle." Also, Anwar was the preeminent Malaysian spokesperson for the economic policies preferred by the IMF, which included interest-rate hikes. An article in Malaysia Today commented that "Gore's comments constituted a none-too-subtle attack on Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and more generally on governments, including Japan, that resist US demands for further market reforms."
  During the ASEAN meeting in 1997, Mahathir made a speech condemning the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, suggesting its revision. He said that in Asia, the society's interests are more important than an individual's interests. He added that Asians need economic growth more than civil liberties. These remarks did not endear him to US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who was a guest at the meeting and paid a visit to Anwar's wife following his firing and subsequent imprisonment.
  The United States government has previously criticised the Malaysian government for implementing the ISA, and Mahathir has not hesitated to point to the United States for justification of his own actions. In speaking of arbitrary detention without trial of prisoners of conscience in Malaysia, he said: "Events in the United States have shown that there are instances where certain special powers need to be used in order to protect the public for the general good." In 2003 Mahathir spoke to the Non-Aligned Movement in Kuala Lumpur. He blamed Western nations and Israel for a global rise in terrorism: "If innocent people who died in the attack on Afghanistan and those who have been dying from lack of food and medical care in Iraq are considered collaterals, are the 3,000 who died in New York and the 200 in Bali also just collaterals whose deaths are necessary for operations to succeed?" He also said: "If we think back, there was no systematic campaign of terror outside Europe until the Europeans and the Jews created a Jewish state out of Palestinian land." A 2003 house hearing by the Subcommittee on East Asia and the Pacific of the U.S. House International Relations Committee (now called the House Committee on Foreign Affairs) summarises the relationship between the United States and Malaysia as follows: "Despite sometimes blunt and intemperate public remarks by Prime Minister Mahathir, U.S.-Malaysian cooperation has a solid record in areas as diverse as education, trade, military relations, and counter-terrorism."
caption: Mahathir greeting US Secretary of Defense William Cohen in Kuala Lumpur in 1998 during Pacific Dialogue Conference
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