Hegseth Heading to ‘Shangri-La Dialogue’ With Middle East Strife High on the Agenda

War Secretary Pete Hegseth will head to Singapore for the “Shangri-La Dialogue” to talk this weekend about war and peace the day after the president of the regime with which America fought its longest war opens the conference. Mr. Hegseth is expected to touch on Iran and the Middle East after having reassured America’s allies at the same conference last year that America would defend them against Communist China.Mr. Hegseth’s speech is set for Saturday morning in Singapore, after Vietnam’s leader, To Lam, keynotes the conference Friday. Mr. Lam, general secretary of Vietnam’s communist party and president of the country, is likely to work around the threat posed by Communist China and North Korea and the search for peace in Asia.For Mr. Hegseth, the summit, staged by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London in the ultra-luxe Shangri-La Hotel, provides the chance to link the dangers of the closing of the Strait of Hormuz to the crying need of Asian countries for oil from Iran and the other Persian Gulf countries. China gets oil and natural gas from Russia, but Japan and South Korea are still more dependent on oil from the Gulf.The choice of Mr. Lam as the keynote speaker comes despite his harsh repression of political opposition in modern Vietnam. Mr. Lam rose to power as security minister and ruled as party general secretary before becoming the first Vietnam leader to take up the dual post of president.Mr. Lam’s remarks should offer a remarkable perspective on moving from a tragic war in which at least 1.2 million people, both military and civilian, by minimal estimates, were killed. Among them were 58,220 Americans, the first of whom died when the Americans had an advisory group in Saigon in 1956. The last two Americans were killed shortly before the fall of the American-backed “South” Vietnam regime in Saigon and the victory of “North” Vietnam in April 1975.The IISS director-general, Bastian Giegerich, defended his selection of Mr. Lam saying that Mr. Lam had “made a commitment to share Vietnam’s perspectives as an emerging powerhouse and to engage with leading global defense policy-makers.” Ironically the keynote speaker last year was the French president, Emmanuel Macron, whose country had ruled Vietnam before surrendering to the communists in 1954.Both Mr. Hegseth and Mr. Lam will tread carefully around China. Mr. Hegseth is not likely to detract from the aura of cooperation with China as engendered during President Trump’s summit with China’s President Xi Jin Ping earlier this month. Mr. Lam has fostered cordial ties with China, which supported Hanoi with massive arms shipments throughout the Vietnam War but then fought the Vietnamese in a border conflict in 1979 before normalizing relations in 1991.Mr. Hegseth goes to Singapore in the aftermath of a meeting in New Delhi at which America’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, joined the foreign secretaries of the other three nations of the so-called “Quad Four”: India, Australia, and Japan. They came out with agreement on the need for a “free and open Indo-Pacific,” the Press Trust of India reported. They also talked about sharing intelligence on Chinese aggression and cooperating on oil and natural gas while the Strait of Hormuz remains closed.The Quad, in their statement, also vowed to “support the development of secure critical minerals supply chains, which are essential for advanced technologies, economic growth, and the resilience of our industrial bases.” They will, they said, “mobilize up to $20 billion in government and private sector support through new and existing efforts to strengthen critical minerals supply chains” from mining to processing and recycling.China was not happy about the Quad Four meeting. PTI quoted a Chinese spokesman as saying “countries should do more to contribute to regional mutual trust, peace and regional stability.” The spokesman, said PTI, reaffirmed Beijing’s “oft-stated opposition to Quad” as “an exclusive bloc aimed at containing China’s rise.”

Hegseth Heading to ‘Shangri-La Dialogue’ With Middle East Strife High on the Agenda

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