Latest news with #worldorder
Arab News
26-05-2025
- Business
- Arab News
France's Macron calls for world order ‘based on law' in Vietnam
HANOI: France's Emmanuel Macron called in Vietnam on Monday for the preservation of a world order 'based on law,' as he started a tour of Southeast Asia, a region caught up in the confrontation between the United States and China. During a press statement alongside his Vietnamese counterpart Luong Cuong in Hanoi, Macron said a rules-based order was necessary at 'a time of both great imbalance and a return to power-driven rhetoric and intimidation.' The president presented France as a reliable alternative for Vietnam, caught between Washington, which is threatening to impose enormous levies on its exports to the United States, and Beijing, an important trade partner with which it is also embroiled in territorial disputes in the South China Sea. After his arrival in Hanoi late Sunday, the first stop of a six-day trip that will take in Indonesia and Singapore, Macron emphasized a shared vision with Vietnam, a country of 100 million people experiencing stellar growth. On Monday, around a dozen agreements were signed between the two countries, including in the field of nuclear power, which Hanoi is keen to develop as it seeks to meet soaring energy demands. Budget airline Vietjet also announced an order for 20 widebody Airbus A330-900 planes, doubling its purchases of the model from the aviation giant in a deal worth an estimated $8 billion. 'It is truly a new page being written between our two countries... a desire to write an even more ambitious page of the relationship between Vietnam and France, between ASEAN and the European Union,' Macron said. After paying tribute at a Hanoi war memorial to those who fought against French colonial occupation, Macron met his counterpart Cuong. The president later had lunch with Communist Party General Secretary To Lam at the capital's star attraction, the Temple of Literature. Lam is considered the most powerful leader in Vietnam, a one-party state which tolerates no dissent and moves quickly to suppress any criticism. Ahead of Macron's first official visit to the country, Human Rights Watch pressed him to voice concerns about 'the Vietnamese government's worsening rights record.' Vietnam has more than 170 political prisoners who have been charged and convicted under 'draconian laws' that criminalize free expression and peaceful activism for human rights and democracy, HRW said. A public appeal would be out of character for the French president, who regularly says he prefers to raise sensitive issues behind closed doors. Macron hopes to sell Hanoi his offer of a 'third way' between Washington and Beijing. 'Vietnam is really on the front line of all the tensions that are growing in the South China Sea,' a senior French diplomatic official told AFP. Hanoi shares Washington's concerns about Beijing's increasing assertiveness in the contested waterway, but it has close economic ties with its giant neighbor. Vietnam has also been threatened with a hefty 46 percent tariff by US President Donald Trump as part of his global trade blitz. Macron's 'Indo-Pacific strategy' — which proposes a third way to the countries of the region — has gained new relevance due to Trump's trade war, according to the aide. He said the president was 'defending the idea of international trade rules, we don't want a jungle where the law of the strongest prevails.' Vietnam has been careful to follow its own balancing act between China and the United States. It has adopted a 'bamboo diplomacy' approach of seeking strength through flexibility, or looking to stay on good terms with the world's major powers.
Daily Mail
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Putin and Xi's show of force: 'Old friends' Moscow and Beijing vow to take on global order together as Chinese leader arrives for Victory Day parade in Russian capital
Despots Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have pledged to take on the world order together as 'old friends.' Seen today in Moscow to celebrate Victory Day with Putin, China 's president Xi said that his nation was 'ready to work with Russia to promote an equal, orderly, multiolar and inclusive economic globalisation.' He said Beijing would stand with Moscow in the face of 'hegemonic bullying', adding: 'in the face of the international counter-current of unilateralism and hegemonic bullying behaviour, China will work with Russia to shoulder the special responsibilities of major world powers.' He added that he was 'visit Russia against at the invitation of my old friend president Putin.' President Xi is the most high-profile guest at Vladimir Putin's Victory Day celebrations, in which Russia is celebrating victory over the Nazis during the Second World War. The Russian leader said today: 'The victory over fascism, achieved at the cost of enormous sacrifices, is of lasting significance. 'Together with our Chinese friends, we firmly stand guard over historical truth, protect the memory of the events of the war years, and counteract modern manifestations of neo-Nazism and militarism', making a thinly veiled reference to his own justification to his invasion of Ukraine. Xi said they would 'jointly promote the correct view of the history of World War Two, safeguard the authority and status of the United Nations, resolutely defend the rights and interests of China, Russia and the vast majority of developing countries, and work together to promote an equal, orderly, multipolar, and inclusive economic globalisation'. Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) during their meeting at the Grand Kremlin Palace, on May 8, 2025 in Moscow, Russia The two leaders spoke after approaching each other along a red carpet from opposite ends of one of the Kremlin's most opulent halls and shaking hands in front of the cameras. Each greeted the other as 'dear friend'. Though Russia was allied with the West in the fight against the Nazis, its celebrations are totally out of step with Europe's celebrations. While almost all of Europe is today celebrating VE Day, Russia is holding its own ceremony tomorrow with a huge military parade on Red Square in central Moscow to mark the massive Soviet contribution to defeat Nazi Germany. Even if the end of World War II in Europe spawned one of the most joyous days the continent ever lived, Thursday's 80th anniversary of V-E Day is haunted as much by the specter of current-day conflict as it celebrates the defeat of ultimate evil. Hitler's Nazi Germany had finally surrendered after a half-decade of invading other European powers and propagating racial hatred that led to genocide, the Holocaust and the murdering of millions. That surrender and the explosion of hope for a better life is being celebrated with parades in London and Paris and towns across Europe while even the leaders of erstwhile mortal enemies France and Germany are bonding again. Germany's new foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, paid tribute to 'the enormous sacrifices of the Allies' in helping his country win its freedom from the Nazis and said that millions of people were 'disenfranchised and tormented by the Nazi regime.' 'Hardly any day has shaped our history as much as May 8, 1945,' he said in a statement. 'Our historical responsibility for this breach of civilization and the commemoration of the millions of victims of the Second World War unleashed by Nazi Germany gives us a mandate to resolutely defend peace and freedom in Europe today.' His comments underscore that former European enemies may thrive - to the extent that the 27-nation European Union even won the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize - but that the outlook has turned gloomy over the past year. Bodies continue to pile up in Ukraine, where Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion started the worst war on the continent since 1945. The rise of the hard right in several EU member states is putting the founding democratic principles of the bloc under increasing pressure. And even NATO, that trans-Atlantic military alliance that assured peace in Europe under the U.S. nuclear umbrella and its military clout, is under internal strain rarely seen since its inception. 'The time of Europe's carefree comfort, joyous unconcern is over. Today is the time of European mobilization around our fundamental values and our security,' Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said at a Dutch memorial event in the lead-up to the celebrations. It makes this unlikely stretch of peace in Europe anything but a given. 'This peace is always unsure. There are always some clouds above our heads. Let's do what we can, so that peace should reign forever in Europe,' Robert Chot, a Belgian World War II veteran, told a solemn gathering of the European legislature. European Parliament President Roberta Metsola sounded gloomy. 'Once again war has returned to our continent, once again cities are being bombed, civilians attacked, families torn apart. The people of Ukraine are fighting not only for their land, but for freedom, for sovereignty, for democracy, just as our parents and our grandparents once did,' she told the legislature on Wednesday. 'The task before us today is the same as it was then to honor memory, to protect democracy, to preserve peace,' Metsola said. Commemorations have been going all week through Europe, and Britain has taken a lead. Here too, the current-day plight of Ukraine in its fight against Russia took center stage. 'The idea that this was all just history and it doesn't matter now somehow, is completely wrong,' U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said. 'Those values of freedom and democracy matter today.' In London later Thursday, a service will be held in Westminster Abbey and a concert, for 10,000 members of the public, at Horse Guards Parade. In Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to oversee a ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe. And in Berlin, Chancellor Friedrich Merz will again highlight how Germany has remodeled itself into a beacon of European democracy by laying a wreath at the central memorial for the victims of war and tyranny.
Sky News
10-03-2025
- Politics
- Sky News
50 days of Donald Trump: How the world order turned upside down
President Donald Trump has upended the world order in just 50 days in office. Sky's international affairs editor Dominic Waghorn has travelled around the world, meeting the people who have been directly impacted by Trump's second term in the White House. Monday 10 March 2025 05:11, UK
