SINGAPORE: French President Emmanuel Macron and US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth are among the world leaders, diplomats and top defence officials in Singapore this weekend for a security forum that will focus on China’s growing assertiveness, the global impact of Russia’s war on Ukraine and the flare-up of conflicts in Asia. Macron opens the conference with a keynote address Friday night that is expected to touch on all of those issues, as well as the pressure the hefty tariffs announced by President Donald Trump’s administration is putting on Asian allies. It’s Hegseth’s first time to the Shangri-La dialogue, hosted by the International Institute for Security Studies, which is taking place against the backdrop of heightened rhetoric between Beijing and Washington due to the Trump administration’s threat of triple digit tariffs on China, and some uncertainty in the region over how committed the US is to the defence of Taiwan, which also faces possible 32 per cent American tariffs. China claims the self-governing democracy as its own, and Chinese President Xi Jinping has not ruled out taking it by force. China sends military aircraft, ships and spy balloons near Taiwan as part of a campaign of daily harassment, and currently has an aircraft carrier in the waters southeast of the island. Hegseth told reporters before he boarded his plane for Singapore that Washington’s policies were meant to deter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “We seek no conflict with anybody, including the Communist Chinese,” he said. “We will stay strong for our interests. And that’s a big part of what this trip is all about.” China, which usually sends its defense minister to the Shangri-La forum, appears to be sending a lower-level delegation this year but has not said why. Hegseth’s trip to Singapore is his second to the region since becoming defence secretary, following a March visit to the Philippines, which has seen escalating confrontations with China over competing territorial claims in the South China Sea. That trip, which also included a stop in Japan, brought a degree of relief over growing concerns from the Philippines and others in the region about US support from a president who has taken more of a transactional approach to diplomacy and seems wary of foreign engagements. The US has been pursuing a “free and open Indo-Pacific” policy, which includes regularly sailing warships through the Taiwan Strait and in the South China Sea, which is claimed almost in its entirety by China. The European Union has adopted a more economics-driven approach, but several European nations have also regularly taken part in the freedom of navigation exercises, including France which sent a carrier strike group on a five-month mission through the Indo-Pacific that concluded in April. In its published Indo-Pacific strategy, France has underscored the need to “preserve a rules-based international order” in the face of “China’s increasing power and territorial claims” and its global competition with the United States. France’s own ties to the Indo-Pacific are strong, with more than 1.6 million of its citizens living in the region in French overseas territories. In his speech, Macron is expected also to stress that the war in Ukraine is having a worldwide impact and that Russia seeks to destabilize Asia, the French president’s office said. While democracies from the region, including Australia, South Korea and Japan, have been aiding Ukraine, China has been growingly supportive of Russia and North Korea has sent troops to fight for Moscow. The conference comes as civil war continues to rage in Myanmar, creating a massive humanitarian crisis that has only been compounded by the effects of a devastating earthquake that hit in March. It also follows the outbreak of violence this week on the Thai-Cambodian border, in which a Cambodian soldier was killed in a brief exchange of fire between the two sides. Thailand and Cambodia have a long history of land disputes, though Thailand said after the short skirmish that the situation had been resolved. Of greater concern, nuclear-armed neighbours India and Pakistan came to the brink of war earlier this month in their most serious military confrontation in decades. The two armies exchanged gunfire, artillery strikes, missiles and drones that killed dozens of people, and Pakistan shot down several Indian planes before the a truce was declared.
