Singapore
CNN
—
Tourists wandering through the glitzy lobby of Singapore’s Shangri-La Hotel this weekend were likely greeted with a rather strange sight.
Military personnel from all over the world crowded into the halls of a luxury hotel, gold cords and epaulettes draped around their shoulders, their dress uniforms covered in intricate rows of colored bars like a Tetris fighting game.
Every few minutes the defence minister strode through the chaos, surrounded by aides and guards.
This annual gathering is a spectacle that may seem surreal to those unfamiliar with it, but the topics discussed there are deadly serious.
The annual Shangri-La Dialogue is one of the few places in the world where you can see career warriors preparing for armed conflict engaging in civil and carefully moderated debates.
This year the stakes could not be higher.
Wars are raging in the Middle East and Europe, while China’s increasingly assertive moves are causing tensions across much of the Asia-Pacific region.
The Singapore summit brought together key stakeholders.
Where else would a Philippine president, facing increasing attacks by Chinese coast guard vessels on shipping in the disputed South China Sea, deliver a keynote address on the same stage where Beijing’s new defense minister will make his debut two days later?
Ukraine’s embattled President Volodymyr Zelensky also made a surprise appearance, and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chinese Navy Admiral Dong Jun held their first face-to-face meeting.
As the conference was being held in the city-state of Singapore, events in Asia, and in particular China’s actions in the region, were the focus of the meeting.
In his keynote address, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. issued a stern warning over the ongoing standoff between Philippine and Chinese coast guard vessels in disputed areas of the South China Sea.
“When Filipino citizens are killed through deliberate acts, I think that comes very close to what we would define as an act of war,” he said.
Two days later, China’s Admiral Dong fired back from the same arena, accusing the Philippines of “intimidation” in the maritime dispute.
“There are limits to our restraint,” Admiral Dong Jun said.
“I saw it as a threat,” said Dewi Fortuna Anwar, a research professor at Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Center, who has been involved in the Shangri-La Dialogue since its inception 21 years ago.
“In the past few decades, only a few Chinese came and they were very quiet,” she said. “Now they are very confident and they intervene in every session.”
The open nature of the Shangri-La Dialogue provides delegates with a unique opportunity to ask honest questions of the speakers.
After his speech on Sunday, Dong was unapologetic in answering a number of questions from the audience about growing Chinese threats to Taiwan’s autonomy and territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
He said “separatists” in Taiwan’s new government “will be nailed to history’s pillar of shame.”
But Chinese military officers also used the question-and-answer sessions to express their views on other key occasions.
Chinese People’s Liberation Army Senior Colonel Cao Yan asked U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin whether the United States was seeking to build a NATO-like alliance in the Asia-Pacific region, claiming that “NATO’s eastward expansion led to the Ukraine crisis.”
“I respectfully disagree,” Austin replied, to a rare round of applause from the audience.
“The Ukraine crisis clearly arose because Putin decided to illegally invade a neighboring country,” Austin continued. “It was brought about by Putin’s decision.”
Later that day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a surprise appearance at the meeting in his trademark overalls and black T-shirt and received a rock-star welcome.
“We stand with you,” Singapore’s Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen later told Zelenskiy.
But Chinese military officers were conspicuously absent from Zelenskiy’s speech while they were present in large numbers at other meetings, and Zelenskiy said he was unable to secure one-on-one meetings with Chinese officials during his visit to Singapore.
He also accused Beijing of backing Ukraine’s arch enemies.
“If China supports Russia, the war will be prolonged. That is bad for the whole world, and also for China’s policy which professes to support territorial integrity and sovereignty. That is not good for them,” Zelenskyy told reporters.
It is not clear whether Zelenskiy has succeeded in securing new support for Kyiv from non-aligned Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia.
Instead, Indonesia’s president-elect, retired military veteran Prabowo Subianto, the new leader of the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, spent much of his speech calling for an end to the ongoing massacres in Gaza and an investigation into the recent Israeli attack that killed dozens of displaced civilians in Rafah.
Another political question is what direction the United States will take.
The rally in Singapore began just hours after a 12-judge jury in a New York City courtroom found former U.S. President Donald Trump guilty on all 34 charges of falsifying business records in his hush money criminal trial.
Asia is watching very closely to see whether President Trump returns to the White House in November and how that will impact the world’s most populous continent, and a region already rife with very real geopolitical fault lines.
The news clearly upset US Congressman Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who abruptly canceled a planned interview with CNN.
Fellow Republican Senator Dan Sullivan also asked reporters not to talk about Trump during meetings, referring them instead to press releases.
“This is a very sad day for America and the rule of law,” Judge Sullivan said in a statement, calling the sentence a “gross abuse of our justice system.”
But the Alaska senator told reporters he praised America’s “commitment to freedom and democracy” and said it represented a competitive advantage against “authoritarian aggression led by China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.”
Sullivan was part of a bipartisan delegation that sought to demonstrate Congress’ commitment to U.S. allies in Asia.
“The dictators we’re allied with are the poor we’re allied with,” Sullivan said.
But there are obvious concerns about the credibility of the United States.
A Japanese academic, America’s closest ally in Asia, asked the defense chiefs of Singapore and Malaysia about the possibility of President Trump being re-elected, which he called a “nightmare” scenario.
This elicited nervous laughter from the audience and onstage.
Dr Ng Eng Hen of Singapore courageously responded: “We will work with any government in any country where we can find common ground.”
I vividly remember the tension at the 2017 Shangri-La Dialogue, held just a few months after President Trump took office.
Trump’s then-Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, was clearly trying to reassure America’s defense partners worried about the mercurial new president.
Asked whether an “America First” commander in chief would contribute to the destruction of the post-World War Two order, Mattis told the audience: “Please be patient.”
“After exhausting all possible options, the United States will do the right thing. We will still be there.”
Seven years later, uncertainty about America’s political future is just one of many challenges facing policymakers.
Army and Navy leaders shared a succession of concerns about climate change, nuclear proliferation, war in Europe and the Middle East and the possibility of U.S. military miscalculation spiraling out of control.
Singapore’s Defence Minister Ng warned that “the world cannot survive a third geopolitical shock”, referring to the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine.
In this tense geopolitical environment, it is far better for commanders to suit up and huddle together in the halls of a five-star hotel than to point guns at each other on the battlefield.
