French President Emmanuel Macron, in a swipe at China and Russia, urged Europe and the Indo-Pacific to form a new alliance to hold off big powers seeking to build “spheres of coercion.”
Macron’s remarks at the 2025 Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore came as Russia defies diplomatic pressure for a ceasefire in Ukraine and concerns mount about Beijing’s growing assertiveness toward Taiwan and the South China Sea.
“We have a challenge of revisionist countries that want to impose — under the name of spheres of influence — spheres of coercion,” Macron said. “Countries that want to control areas from the fringes of Europe to the archipelagos in the South China Sea … that want to appropriate resources, whether fishing or mineral, and crowd out others for their benefit.”
Defense chiefs and officials from around the world attend the annual forum that has in recent years become a barometer of China-U.S. relations. Unusually, China did not send its defense minister but was represented by a senior officer from its People’s Liberation Army’s National Defense University.
Macron’s speech came at the end of a tour of Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam. He urged leaders at the forum to “build a positive new alliance between Europe and Asia, based on our common norms, on our common principles.”
“Our shared responsibility is to ensure with others that our countries are not collateral victims of the imbalances linked to the choices made by the superpowers,” he said.
Macron urged China to stop its ally North Korea from sending forces to help Russia’s war in Ukraine if Beijing “doesn’t want NATO being involved in Southeast Asia or in Asia.”
He warned Indo-Pacific leaders against seeing the war in Ukraine as a distant problem.
“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?” he asked. “What would you do the day something happens in the Philippines?”