Emmanuel Macron says the US and Europe risk “losing all credibility” when it comes to maintaining global security if they fail to put a stop to wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
Speaking at the Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore, the French president said divisions between the US and China was the main risk confronting the world, as he urged for a new coalition between Paris and partners in the Indo-Pacific.
Mr Macron and US defence secretary Pete Hegseth are among the world leaders, diplomats and defence officials in Singapore this weekend for a security forum that will focus on China’s growing assertiveness, the global impact of Russia’s war on Ukraine and the flare-up of conflict in Asia and the Middle East.
The French president said if Russia could take Ukrainian territory “without any restrictions, without any constraints… what could happen in Taiwan?”
“What will you do the day something happens in the Philippines?” he asked. “What is at stake in Ukraine is our common credibility, that we are still able to preserve territorial integrity and sovereignty of people,” adding: “No double standards.”
China views democratically-governed Taiwan as its own territory and has stepped up military and political pressure to assert those claims, including increasing the intensity of war games. Beijing has not ruled out the use of force, if necessary, to bring the island under its control.
At the same summit, Mr Hegseth warned on Saturday that the threat from China was “real and potentially imminent” and that China launching an invasion of Taiwan would have devastating consequences.
Mr Macron said any shifts to developing a more hard-line deterrent stance in the region were tied to how the world views critical issues such as the climate crisis and Israel’s ongoing military operations in Gaza.
He point out the West risked “losing all credibility with the rest of the world” if Israel was allowed “a free pass” in Gaza. “… even if we do condemn the terrorist attacks, we kill our own credibility in the rest of the world,” he said.
Mr Macron has moved closer to signalling French recognition of a Palestinian state ahead of a conference at the UN aimed at laying out a roadmap for a two-state solution. He threatened to “harden the collective position” of the EU against Israel if there were not a response to the humanitarian situation in the next few hours.
Israel’s foreign ministry criticised the French leader, saying “facts do not interest Macron”.
Under growing international pressure, Israel partially ended an 11-week aid blockade on Gaza last week, allowing a limited amount of relief to be delivered under a new system that has been heavily criticised and is not endorsed by the UN.
Israel said the assertion that there was a humanitarian blockade of Gaza was “a blatant lie”. It claimed nearly 900 aid trucks had entered the Gaza Strip since the blockade was eased and the new US-backed system had distributed 2 million meals and thousands of aid packages.
“But instead of applying pressure on the jihadist terrorists, Macron wants to reward them with a Palestinian state,” Israel added.
So far, Israel’s war in Gaza has killed around 54,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the the health ministry in the Hamas-run Strip. The offensive began with Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, which killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and saw some 250 taken hostage.
