French President Emmanuel Macron used a keynote speech Friday at Asia’s top regional security conference to call on European and Indo-Pacific nations to pursue “strategic autonomy” — avoiding picking sides between China and the United States — and instead forge “coalitions of action” while standing up to “spheres of coercion.”
“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,” Macron said in a keynote speech to kick off this year’s Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore.
Speaking before hundreds of delegates from 47 countries and regions, including the U.S. and Japanese defense chiefs, the French leader urged Europe and Asia to “build a positive new alliance … based on our common norms, on our common principles.”
