Macron will kick off Singapore security conference with Hegseth in attendance

The Star

a day ago

SINGAPORE (AP): French President Emmanuel Macron and US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth are among the world leaders, diplomats and top defense 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 US 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.
The Trump administration has threatened China with triple-digit tariffs, and there's some uncertainty in the region over how committed the US is to the defense of Taiwan, which also faces possible 32% 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, sent a much lower level delegation instead, represented by Maj. Gen. Hu Gangfeng, the vice president of the People's Liberation Army National Defense University.
The delegation was expected to speak Saturday on a panel on "cooperative maritime security' alongside representatives from Japan, Vietnam, Chile and the U.K. - notable in that China's aggressive global fisheries tactics have been a regular topic of concern not only in the Indo-Pacific but as far away as Latin America and the Arctic.
Defense officials traveling with Hegseth, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, called the absence of a higher-level Chinese delegation an opportunity for the U.S. to make inroads.
"We can't account for whether China engages or not. All we know is that we're here. And we will be here,' Hegseth said as he met with Philippine Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro.
Hegseth's trip to Singapore is his second to the region since becoming defense 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 U.S. 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.
Following a meeting Friday with Singapore's Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, Macron told reporters there was room in the region for more than just the two superpowers.
"We are neither China nor the U.S., we don't want to depend on any of them," he said. "We want to cooperate with both as far as we can, and we can cooperate for growth and prosperity and stability for our people and the world order, and I think this is exactly the same view of a lot of countries and a lot of people of this region.'
Wong underscored Macron's point, saying that Singapore and the greater region were not looking for exclusive arrangements with any single power.
"We want to embrace comprehensive engagement with all parties and embrace win-win arrangements rather than zero-sum competition,' he said.
In his speech later, 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 neighbors 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 before a truce was declared. -- Associated Press writer Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed to this report.