Asian perspectives of the U.S. have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singapore’s defense chief said on the sidelines of an international security meeting.

Ng Eng Hen said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed.

One example is that from the time of then-U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the U.S. was of a country that would not allow tyranny such as colonial control to be replaced by another form of tyranny. Now “the image has changed from liberator to great disruptor to a landlord seeking rent,” according to a prepared text of his remarks posted on a government website over the weekend.