Shangri-La: As generals made small talk and polite debate, both China and Trump loomed large
Any tourist wandering through the glitzy lobby of Singapore’s Shangri-La Hotel this weekend would have stumbled on a rather bizarre scene.
Military officers from around the world thronged the halls of the luxury hotel, their shoulders dripping with gold braids and epaulets, complicated colored bars lined up on the chests of their dress uniforms like some martial game of Tetris.
Every few minutes a defense minister strode purposely through the mix, surrounded by a phalanx of aides and escorts.
This gathering is an annual spectacle that to the uninitiated might seem surreal. But the topics being discussed here are deadly serious.
The annual Shangri-La Dialogue is one of the few places in the world where you can watch warriors who spend their careers preparing for armed conflict, engaged in polite, carefully-moderated debate.
The stakes this year could hardly be higher.
War rages in both the Middle East and Europe. Meanwhile China’s increasingly assertive moves has much of the Asia-Pacific on edge.
The Singapore summit brought key players together.
Where else would you have the President of the Philippines, a nation whichdo has seen its vessels increasingly targeted by Chinese coast guard ships in the disputed South China Sea, deliver a keynote address on the same stage that, two days later, Beijing’s new Defense Minister makes his debut appearance?
There was even a surprise appearance from Ukraine’s embattled president Volodymyr Zelensky – and a first face-to-face meeting between US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and his Chinese counterpart Adm Dong Jun.
Given its location in the city-state of Singapore, events in Asia – and in particular China’s behavior in the region – stalked the conference.
In his keynote speech, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. issued a stark warning about the ongoing confrontations between Philippine and China Coast Guard vessels in a contested part of the South China Sea.
“If a Filipino citizen is killed by a willful act,” he said, “that is I think, very, very close to what we define as an act of war.”
Two days later, China’s Adm Dong fired back from the same stage, accusing the Philippines of “blackmail” in the maritime dispute.
“There is a limit to our restraint,” said Admiral Dong Jun.
“I saw that as a threat,” said Dewi Fortuna Anwar, a research professor at Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Center who has been attending the Shangri-La Dialogue since its founding twenty-one years ago.
“In decades past, the Chinese only came in a small number and they were extremely quiet,” she said. “Now they’re very self confident…they intervene in all the sessions.”
The open nature of the Shangri-La Dialogue provides delegates with a unique opportunity to ask blunt questions of speakers.
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