Europe bristles at US proposal to stay off Asia
SINGAPORE—The annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore has long been marked by US-China rivalry, but Beijing’s relative retreat exposed a new faultline—tensions between the United States and Europe over Asia.
Even as he warned in a speech on Saturday that China posed an “imminent” threat, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made clear he wanted Europeans to concentrate on European security as they boosted military budgets.
“We would much prefer that the overwhelming balance of European investment be on that continent… so that as we partner there, which we will continue to do, we’re able to use our comparative advantage as an Indo-Pacific nation to support our partners here,” he said.
Hegseth also noted the absence of his Chinese counterpart Dong Jun, as Beijing instead dispatched a low-level team of military scholars to the forum.
China has objected to Hegseth calling it a threat to the Indo-Pacific, with its foreign ministry saying he “touted the Cold War mentality for bloc confrontation [and] vilified China with defamatory allegations.”
At least some European nations signaled they would not be swayed by the US exhortations.
France’s Asian ties
They insisted they would try to stay in both the Asian and European theaters, noting their deep links and vital trade flows as well as the global nature of conflict.
“It is a good thing we are doing more [in Europe], but what I want to stress is that the security of Europe and the security of the Pacific [are] very much interlinked,” said Europe’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas.
French President Emmanuel Macron insisted that his nation remains an Indo-Pacific power, alluding to its enduring colonial presence in New Caledonia and French Polynesia and the basing of over 8,000 soldiers across the region.
A report last month by London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies—the organization that runs the Shangri-La Dialogue—highlighted European companies’ long-standing defense ties to Asia, even with competition particularly from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
