When French President Emmanuel Macron delivered the keynote address at the three-day Shangri La Dialogue hosted by the London-based International Institute of Security Studies (IISS) in Singapore, he used the opportunity to call for closer ties between European and Asian countries. He called for an alliance against “spheres of coercion” – a veiled reference to China and Russia – and greater cooperation against “revisionist countries” that wanted control from “the fringes of Europe to the archipelagos in the South China Sea.”
However, Macron’s desire to position France and the European Union as reliable defense partners to Asian countries facing threats from China and Russia is at least as much a response to U.S. unreliability. Macron made this point after meeting with Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, when he said, “We are neither China nor the U.S., we don’t want to depend on either of them.”
Macron also sought to warn Asian countries of complacency given the ongoing war in Ukraine. He asked: “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, how would you phrase what could happen in Taiwan? What would you do the day something happens in the Philippines?”
It was a fitting setting for such questions, given that it was former Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio who popularized the phrase “Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow” at the keynote address for the 2022 Shangri-La Dialogue. The reminder of the challenge that the war in Ukraine poses to the international order was also directed against the United States, with U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in attendance. As the U.S. shifts its focus to the Indo-Pacific, the Trump administration has shown a desire to cut back on aid to Ukraine.
Macron also called on China to restrain North Korea from sending troops to aid Russia in the war in Ukraine. Macron warned, “If China doesn’t want NATO being involved in Southeast Asia or in Asia, they should prevent DPRK [North Korea] to be engaged on European soil.” However, it is a vague threat at best, given the uncertainty over NATO’s future.
France is expected to announce a new Indo-Pacific strategy in the coming weeks, and Macron also visited Indonesia and Vietnam before Singapore and speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue.
While Macron is an outspoken champion for European engagement in Indo-Pacific, the United States would prefer that European countries focus on European security. Hegseth, at the Shangri-La Dialogue, said: “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.”
Crafting a common EU position on any issue is difficult (including a common EU position on China), and determining how to respond to the U.S. preference will be no exception.
Kaja Kallas, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, is more aligned with Macron’s way of thinking. She noted, “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 is very much interlinked.” More bluntly, Kallas said, “If you are worried about China, you should be worried about Russia.”
German Chief of Defence Carsten Breuer agreed: “We have to do both [focus on the Asia-Pacific and threat from Russia].” He continued, “It’s in Germany’s interest to support the rules-based international order and protect freedom of navigation in the Asia-Pacific region.”
However, threat perceptions are undoubtedly shaped by geographic proximity. Countries like Finland – which shares a border with Russia and only joined NATO in April 2023, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – share Hegseth’s perspective. According to Finnish Defence Minister Antti Hakkanen: “When Europe’s defense is in a good shape, then you will have resources to do something more… But now all the European countries must do their main focus on European defense so that the United States can do a bigger share in the Indo-Pacific area.”
Even at the height of U.S. power and credibility, realist scholars would have expected any sovereign state, including European states, to be averse to relying on another country to defend their interests, even in a faraway theater like the Indo-Pacific. However, with U.S. credibility in freefall, it is even less likely that European states will abstain from greater engagement the Indo-Pacific based on U.S. promises that if Europe just focuses on Europe, the United States will defend European interests in the Indo-Pacific.
Although how large of a role Europe can play in the Indo-Pacific remains an open-ended question, U.S. unreliability all but guarantees that major European powers will want to maintain their own connections, relationships, and ties to and capabilities in the Indo-Pacific region.