France's Macron calls for Asian coalitions as he warns of US-China divisions
By Fanny Potkin, Xinghui Kok and Idrees Ali
SINGAPORE (Reuters) -French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that division between the two superpowers, the United States and China, is the main risk currently confronting the world as he emphasised the need for building new coalitions between Paris and partners in the Indo-Pacific.
Macron is visiting the region as France and the European Union aim to strengthen their commercial ties in Asia to offset uncertainty over U.S. President Donald Trump's sweeping global tariff measures.
"I will be clear, France is a friend and an ally of the United States, and is a friend, and we do cooperate - even if sometimes we disagree and compete - with China," said Macron, who was speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia's premier defence forum, alongside a two-day state visit to Singapore.
"You have to choose a side. 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 and to have cooperation on health, on climate, on human rights and so on," Macron added.
The French president said Asia and Europe have a common interest in preventing the disintegration of the global order.
"The time for non-alignment has undoubtedly passed, but the time for coalitions of action has come, and requires that countries capable of acting together give themselves every means to do so," Macron said.
Macron is following leaders of China, Japan and other European countries in visiting the region in recent weeks, in a sign of Southeast Asia's strategic importance amid uncertainties on global supply chains and trade.
The French leader also warned that if the United States and Europe were not able to bring an end to Russia's war in Ukraine, it would impact their credibility in the Indo-Pacific region as well.
"If the United States of America and the Europeans are unable to fix in the short term the Ukraine crisis, I think the credibility of the U.S. and Europe to fix any other crisis in this region will be very low," he said.
Putin ordered tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops.
Russia currently controls just under one fifth of the country. Though Russian advances have accelerated over the past year, the war is costing both Russia and Ukraine dearly in terms of casualties and military spending.
Macron also warned of risks to Asia if a precedent was created by allowing Russia to take control of part of Ukraine territory unopposed.
"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?"
China views democratically-governed Taiwan as its own territory and has stepped up military and political pressure to assert those claims, including increasing the intensity of war games, saying the island is one of its provinces with no right to be called a state.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
an hour ago
- New York Post
10 Ukrainian civilians killed in Russian air strikes, while Zelensky slams Russia for ‘not serious' peace talks
A barrage of Russian drone and missile attacks killed at least 10 civilians in Ukraine Saturday — including a 9-year-old girl — as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sowed new doubt whether Monday's peace talks in Istanbul will even take place. At least 32 people were injured in the attacks, as Russian troops launched more than 109 drones and five missiles across Ukraine overnight into Saturday, the country's air force said. The young girl was killed by a Russian strike on the frontline village of Dolynka in the Zaporizhzhia region — a 16-year-old boy was also injured, regional officials confirmed. Advertisement 5 Rescuers work to put out a blaze at the site of a Russian drone strike in the Odesa region. via REUTERS Moscow said Saturday it had gained control of a village in the Donetsk region and one in northern Sumy, leading to mandatory evacuations in 11 Ukrainian settlements near the Russian border – bringing the total number of Sumy settlements under evacuation orders to 213. 5 Ukrainian rescuers worked to extinguish a fire in a trolleybus depot following a drone strike in Kharkiv overnight. AFP via Getty Images Advertisement Zelensky also warned this week that Moscow was amassing more than 50,000 troops nearby in a sign of a possible offensive. In the southern region of Odesa, the attacks hit the town of Izmail, Ukraine's biggest port on the Danube River — infrastructure critical for the war-torn country's imports. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian leader cast uncertainty Saturday whether the planned peace talks scheduled for Monday in Istanbul, Turkey will happen, saying Kyiv is now preparing for 'new diplomatic steps' with Europe and the US. 'There is no clear information about what the Russians are going to Istanbul with. We don't have it, Turkey doesn't have it, the United States doesn't have it, and other partners don't either,' Zelensky said on Telegram. Advertisement 'It doesn't look very serious,' he said of the talks. 5 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is still uncertain Ukraine will attend the talks Monday. Getty Images Zelensky also rebuked Russia for failing to turn over negotiating documents ahead of the Monday meeting – a nonstarter for Kyiv. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov unilaterally announced the talks Wednesday, saying Moscow would present a memorandum towards a cease-fire then. Advertisement But Zelensky countered that the Kremlin's plans should be offered up ahead of time — and accused Moscow of 'doing everything it can to ensure' the meeting is 'fruitless.' 5 Police officers carry a part of a Russian drone after the overnight air strike in Kharkiv. REUTERS 'For a meeting to be meaningful, its agenda must be clear, and the negotiations must be properly prepared,' he wrote on X Friday after hosting Turkey's foreign minister in Kyiv, Ukraine's capital city. Moscow had previously promised to present the document after last week's prisoner's exchange. Ukraine has sent its proposals to the US and Russia, which centers on 'a full and unconditional ceasefire.' 5 Growing increasingly impatient, President Trump gave Putin two weeks to prove he's serious about ending the war. POOL/AFP via Getty Images President Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and on Wednesday gave the Russian leader two weeks to prove he's serious about ending the war. Advertisement The Kremlin's sweeping demands, according to sources, remain unchanged from even before Putin launched his brutal invasion in 2022 — barring Ukraine, and any country east of it, from joining NATO as well as lifting Western sanctions on Russia. Delegations from the two countries last met in Istanbul on May 16 but the session yielded little other than an agreement for the war's largest prisoner swap.
Chicago Tribune
an hour ago
- Chicago Tribune
US defense secretary warns Indo-Pacific allies of ‘imminent' threat from China
SINGAPORE — U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reassured allies in the Indo-Pacific on Saturday that they will not be left alone to face increasing military and economic pressure from China, while insisting that they also contribute more to their own defense. He said Washington will bolster its defenses overseas to counter what the Pentagon sees as rapidly developing threats by Beijing, particularly in its aggressive stance toward Taiwan. China has conducted numerous exercises to test what a blockade would look like of the self-governing island, which Beijing claims as its own and the U.S. has pledged to defend. China's army 'is rehearsing for the real deal,' Hegseth said in a keynote speech at a security conference in Singapore. 'We are not going to sugarcoat it — the threat China poses is real. And it could be imminent.' The head of China's delegation accused Hegseth of making 'groundless accusations.' 'Some of the claims are completely fabricated, some distort facts and some are cases of a thief crying 'stop thief,' said Rear Adm. Hu Gangfeng, vice president of China's National Defense University. He did not offer specific objections. 'These actions are nothing more than attempts to provoke trouble, incite division and stir up confrontation to destabilize the Asia-Pacific region,' he said. China has a stated goal of ensuring its military is capable of taking Taiwan by force if necessary by 2027, a deadline that is seen by experts as more of an aspirational goal than a hard war deadline. China also has built sophisticated, artificial islands in the South China Sea to support new military outposts and developed highly advanced hypersonic and space capabilities, which are driving the United States to create its own space-based 'Golden Dome' missile defenses. Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue, a global security conference hosted by the International Institute for Security Studies, Hegseth said China is no longer just building up its military forces to take Taiwan, it's 'actively training for it, every day.' Hegseth also called out China for its ambitions in Latin America, particularly its efforts to increase its influence over the Panama Canal. He urged Indo-Pacific countries to increase defense spending to levels similar to the 5% of their gross domestic product European nations are now pressed to contribute. 'We must all do our part,' Hegseth said. Following the speech, the European Union's top diplomat Kaja Kallas pushed back at Hegseth's comment that European countries should focus their defense efforts in their own region and leave the Indo-Pacific more to the U.S. She said that with North Korean troops fighting for Russia and China supporting Moscow, European and Asian security were 'very much interlinked.' Hegseth also repeated a pledge made by previous administrations to bolster the U.S. military in the Indo-Pacific to provide a more robust deterrent. While both the Obama and Biden administrations had also committed to pivoting to the Pacific and established new military agreements throughout the region, a full shift has never been realized. Instead, U.S. military resources from the Indo-Pacific have been regularly pulled to support military needs in the Middle East and Europe, especially since the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. In the first few months of President Donald Trump's second term, that's also been the case. In the last few months, the Trump administration has taken a Patriot missile defense battalion out of the Indo-Pacific in order to send it to the Middle East, a massive logistical operation that required 73 military cargo aircraft flights, and sent Coast Guard ships back to the U.S. to help defend the U.S.-Mexico border. Hegseth was asked why the U.S. pulled those resources if the Indo-Pacific is the priority theater. He did not directly answer but said the shift of resources was necessary to defend against Houthi missile attacks launched from Yemen, and to bolster protections against illegal immigration into the U.S. At the same time, he stressed the need for American allies and partners to step up their own defense spending and preparations, saying the U.S. was not interested in going it alone. 'Ultimately a strong, resolute and capable network of allies and partners is our key strategic advantage,' he said. 'China envies what we have together, and it sees what we can collectively bring to bear on defense, but it's up to all of us to ensure that we live up to that potential by investing.' The Indo-Pacific nations caught in between have tried to balance relations with both the U.S. and China over the years. Beijing is the primary trading partner for many, but is also feared as a regional bully, in part due to its increasingly aggressive claims on natural resources such as critical fisheries. Hegseth cautioned that playing both sides, seeking U.S. military support and Chinese economic support, carries risk. 'Economic dependence on China only deepens their malign influence and complicates our defense decision space during times of tension,' Hegseth said. Asked how he would reconcile that statement with Trump's threat of steep tariffs on most in the region, Hegseth he was 'in the business of tanks, not trade.' But Illinois Democrat Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who is part of a congressional delegation attending Shangri-La, objected to pressuring regional allies. 'The United States is not asking people to choose between us and the PRC,' Duckworth said, in reference to the People's Republic of China. Australia's Defense Minister Richard Marles welcomed Hegseth's assurance that the Indo-Pacific was an American strategic priority and agreed that Australia and other nations needed to do their part. 'Reality is that there is no effective balance of power in this region absent the United States, but we cannot leave it to the United States alone,' he said. Still, Marles suggested the Trump administration's aggressive trade policies were counterproductive. 'The shock and disruption from the high tariffs has been costly and destabilizing.' China usually sends its own defense minister to the conference, but Dong Jun did not attend this year in a snub to the U.S. over Trump's erratic tariffs war. His absence was something the U.S. delegation said it intended to capitalize on. 'We are here this morning. And somebody else isn't,' Hegseth said. Asked by a member of the Chinese delegation how committed the U.S. would remain if Asian alliances like ASEAN had differences with Washington, Hegseth said the U.S. would not be constrained by 'the confines of how previous administrations looked at this region.' 'We're opening our arms to countries across the spectrum — traditional allies, non-traditional allies,' he said. He said U.S. support would not require local governments to align with the West on cultural or climate issues.
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
In Poland, presidential hopefuls battle for young voters who don't like them
In a first round of voting on May 18, voters aged 18 to 29 overwhelmingly supported antiestablishment candidates who failed to make it to the runoff. They mostly shunned the candidates competing Sunday, who represent Poland's two dominant political parties -- Civic Platform, led by Tusk; and Law and Justice, the former governing party led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski. The runoff pits Rafal Trzaskowski, the liberal mayor of Warsaw who is backed by Tusk's party, against Karol Nawrocki, a nationalist historian and former boxer supported by Law and Justice. Advertisement Coming only two weeks after a presidential election in Romania in which voters chose a centrist over a hard-right admirer of President Trump, Poland's vote is being closely watched in Europe and the United States as a test of right-wing populism's staying power. 'Don't let the globalists and unelected bureaucrats steal your elections, as they did in Romania,' George Simion, the defeated hard-right candidate in Romania, told a gathering in Poland this past week of the American Conservative Political Action Conference. Kristi Noem, Trump's homeland security secretary who also spoke at the event, endorsed the Law and Justice candidate. Advertisement What American and European fans of Trump see as a climactic battle between left and right is seen by many young Polish voters as an infuriating rerun of a decades-old struggle. 'You only get angry looking at system politicians,' said Jan Stachura, 20, a student in Tychy, a town in Poland's former industrial heartland in the southwestern region of Silesia. He said he had voted for neither of Sunday's contenders in the first round on May 18 and did not know whether he would even bother to vote in the runoff. His brother, Wojciech, 24, an IT manager, said he did not vote in the first round and probably would not on Sunday. Given the grip of the two main parties, he said, 'I don't believe my vote can change anything.' Tusk, 68, and Kaczynski, 75, first entered politics more than 40 years ago when Poland was still a Soviet satellite. After Poland joined the European Union in 2004 -- 15 years after communism collapsed -- they emerged as leaders of two hostile camps: one committed to embracing the values and rules of the European Union, the other infused with nationalism and fealty to the Roman Catholic Church. They have rotated in and out of power since, leaving Polish politics in a repetitive loop. Kaczynski accuses Tusk of being a 'German agent' more interested in serving Berlin and Brussels than ordinary Poles. Tusk has attacked his rival as a populist reactionary intent on dismantling democracy and withdrawing Poland from the European Union. Advertisement Trzaskowski won the first round barely ahead of Nawrocki. Whether Trzaskowski can prevail on Sunday depends heavily on how young voters who backed the far right and leftists in the first round cast their ballots. A widespread plague-on-both-your-houses feeling among younger Poles has brought unusual volatility to politics, said Tomasz Slupik, a political-science professor at the University of Silesia. Only 22 percent of voters under 30, according to exit poll data, cast their ballots in the first round for the two candidates competing on Sunday. Nearly 70 percent voted instead for far-right candidates and fringe leftists, with more than half of them supporting Slawomir Mentzen, a libertarian who is hostile to Ukrainian refugees, taxes, and the European Union. 'This might be the beginning of the end of Poland's party duopoly,' Slupik said. Young voters' disillusionment, he added, was partly the rebellious spirit of youth amplified by social media. But, he added, it also reflected a deeper erosion of trust across generations, despite Poland's booming economy and its emergence as a diplomatic and military player in Europe. The Polish presidency has no say in setting policy, but its veto power over legislation passed by the government allowed the departing president, Andrzej Duda, an ally of Kaczynski, to thwart much of Tusk's agenda. Victory for Nawrocki on Sunday would probably mean more trench warfare between the rival camps, hobbling Tusk's ability to govern and clouding his party's prospects in the next parliamentary election in 2027. Speaking at a rally for Trzaskowski in Warsaw last weekend, Tusk warned this would bring disaster, describing Nawrocki as a 'gangster' unfit for the presidency. 'Poland, wake up! This cannot be!' he said. Advertisement Anna Liebner, 29, a Tychy resident who manages fiber optic networks, said she voted in the first round for Adrian Zandberg, a leftist who came in sixth in the first round. Liebner liked some of his policy ideas, including higher taxes on the wealthy. Kamil Poczta, 30, an IT worker, said he, too, had voted for Zandberg in the hope of breaking the Civic Platform-Law and Justice cycle. Nonetheless, Poczta and Liebner both said they would vote for Trzaskowski. More uncertain is which way Mentzen's voters, mostly young men, will jump, though a recent opinion poll indicated that around 65 percent of them would vote for Nawrocki. If that turns out to be accurate, Nawrocki could well win. This article originally appeared in
