Macron warns US and the Indo-Pacific not to abandon Ukraine at the expense of focusing on China

https://apnews.com/article/macron-hegseth-china-singapore-shangrila-defense-forum-ab9340e3f7ef562305f1b7359c8da4ea

Posted by Themetalin

4 comments

  1. French President Emmanuel Macron warned the United States and a large audience of Indo-Pacific nations on Friday night that they risk a dangerous double standard as they concentrate on a potential conflict with China, if that shift comes at the cost of abandoning Ukraine.

    Macron’s made the remarks as the U.S. is considering withdrawing troops from Europe to shift them to the Indo-Pacific. He warned that abandoning Ukraine would eventually erode U.S. credibility in deterring any potential conflict with China over Taiwan.

    Macron said that any shifts to developing a more hard-line deterrent stance in the region is still tied to how the world — and particularly the West — treats other critical issues, including climate change and Israel’s ongoing military operations in Gaza.

    “If you 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 would happen in Taiwan, what would you do the day something happened in the Philippines?” he asked in a speech delivered in English.

    Macron told reporters there was room in the region for more than just the two superpowers.

    “We are neither China nor the U.S., we don’t want to depend on any of them,” he said. “We want to cooperate with both as far as we can, and we can cooperate for growth and prosperity and stability for our people and the world order, and I think this is exactly the same view of a lot of countries and a lot of people of this region.”

    In his speech later, he said it was wrong to think of the war in Ukraine as simply a European war, and chided China for its support of Russia and for not doing anything to prevent North Korea from sending weapons and troops to aid Russia’s fight.

    Macron said that he had always been against NATO taking a role in Asia — something China routinely accuses the U.S. of trying to engineer – but suggested that the presence of North Korean soldiers on the front lines in Ukraine might cause him to reconsider.

    “If China doesn’t want NATO being involved in Southeast Asia or Asia, they should prevent, clearly, DPRK to be engaged on the European soil,” he said, referring to North Korea by its formal name.

  3. Maybe Europeans and especially the French can stop buying Russian gas before they lecture the US on removing troops from Europe, especially when they are also simultaneously warming up to the CCP.

  4. No surprise here, Macron, and France more broadly, have a clear affinity for China.

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