At the end of May and beginning of June this year, another annual forum on the generalized theme of ensuring regional security was held in the luxurious Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore. A number of notable events took place, both in the plenary sessions and “on the sidelines”.
Singapore hosted this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue from May 31 to June 2, the general theme of which is usually formulated as “regional security challenges. Under the auspices of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, this platform has convened yearly for over two decades, this meeting being the 21st of its kind.
Although the Raisina Dialogue, a similarly oriented forum, has been operating in recent years at the initiative of the Indian Foreign Ministry (with an already established “branch” in Japan), the IISS platform has not lost its established authority in terms of the quality of expertise in all significant processes developing in the Indo-Pacific region.
This credibility is supported by the composition of its participants, which include current and retired statesmen of the highest rank from leading nations across the world. Bilateral contacts between the participants are the most interesting events in the field of activities which take place during the Shangri-La Dialogue.
US and PRC Defense Ministers Meet
This very fact is noteworthy, because during a similar event last year, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin only managed to shake hands with then-Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu. This apparently happened because the heads of both delegations found themselves in the same corridor, and it was awkward to part without acknowledging each other. Nevertheless, the discomfort of last year’s contact between the two leading world powers’ defense chiefs reflected quite accurately the state of relations between them: a dangerous level of tension, when there seems to be nothing left to talk about.
That tension was lowered somewhat during a meeting between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and US President Joseph Biden six months later in San Francisco on the sidelines of the APEC Summit. Since then, bilateral talks have been held more or less regularly, with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken acting as the main participants from the US side. American business leaders who are very........