Macron calls on Europe and Asia to ‘unite against bullies'

Times

2 days ago

President Macron has called on the countries in Europe and Asia to build a 'new coalition of independence' united in refusing to choose between the United States and China.
In a rebuke seemingly directed as much to President Trump as President Xi, Macron issued a 'call to action' to reject coercion, greed, bullying and 'negative passions', warning that a failure to resolve crises in Ukraine and Gaza would be 'a killer for our credibility' of the rich countries of the world.
'The main risk today is the risk of division of the world, and a division between the two superpowers, and the instruction given to all the others: 'You have to choose your side,'' he said at the Shangri-La Dialogue, a gathering of defence ministers and experts in Singapore.
'If we do so, we will kill the global order, and we will destroy methodically all the institutions we created after the Second World War in order to preserve peace.'
Macron said that the war in Ukraine had direct implications for east Asia, and that a victory for President Putin would embolden Xi to take military action against Taiwan or the islands occupied by southeast Asian countries in the South China Sea.
In a clear reproach to Trump, he criticised the idea of 'equidistance between Ukraine and Russia and the [idea] that this is a European conflict and that we are … spending too much energy, too much time, and creating too much pain for the rest of the world'.
He told the gathering: 'This is a total mistake, because if we consider that Russia could be allowed to take a part of the territory of Ukraine without any restriction, without any constraint, without any reaction of the global order … what could happen in Taiwan? What would you do the day something happened in the Philippines?'
He added: 'What is at stake in Ukraine is our common credibility to be sure that we are still able to preserve territorial integrity and sovereignty of people.'
The annual Shangri-La Dialogue, organised by the British think tank the International Institute for Strategic Studies, frequently includes exchanges of criticism between the US and Chinese defence ministers.
Before Trump's re-election, leaders of western European countries could reliably have been expected to line up behind the US. It is a sign of the huge changes that have occurred in the past six months that a French president now speaks of the US and China with almost equal wariness.
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'France is a friend and an ally of the United States … and we do co-operate, even if sometimes we disagree and compete, with China,' Macron said. 'We want to co-operate, but we don't want to be instructed on a daily basis what is allowed and what is not allowed, and how our lives will change because of the decision of a single person.'
Macron was explicit in his wish to convene a third bloc dedicated to 'strategic autonomy', bringing together Nato governments and Asian countries as diverse as Vietnam and Indonesia, both of which he visited before his arrival in Singapore.
He concluded his speech with a 'call for action for Europe and Asia to work together on a coalition of independence. A coalition of countries that won't be enrolled and won't be bullied. And finally, a coalition of countries determined not to yield to the whims of the greed of others, but to chart a peaceful way to bring balance in trouble and to affirm negative passions can be opposed.'
Like Britain, France in recent years has sent military forces, including aircraft carriers, to east Asia in an assertion of the region's strategic importance. Macron said he had formerly been cautious about 'being enrolled in someone else's strategic rivalry', but that the deployment of North Korean troops to fight for Russia against Ukraine in a European war had changed the situation.
He said: 'If China doesn't want Nato being involved in southeast Asia or in Asia, they should prevent clearly [North Korea from being] engaged on the European soil.'
On Saturday morning Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, will speak from the same stage. China's defence minister, Dong Jun, will not attend, however, sending in his place a relatively junior admiral from China's National Defence University.