In a speech at the Shangri-La security forum in Singapore, French President Emmanuel Macron addressed several major global crises, seemingly directing a cautionary message towards the United States and China.

“France is a friend and ally of the United States,” Macron stated. “And [France] is a friend, and we do cooperate – even if sometimes we disagree and compete – with China.”

He warned, “The main risk today is the division of two super-powers.”

Macron’s address cautioned that if the U.S. and China force nations to choose sides amid rising tensions, particularly after tariff threats, it would “kill the global order.”

He added, “We will destroy methodically all the institutions we created after the Second World War in order to preserve peace and to have cooperation on health, on climate, on human rights and so on.”

“We are neither China nor the U.S., we don’t want to depend on any of them,” he said. “We want to cooperate. But we don’t want to be instructed on a daily basis what is allowed, what is not allowed and how our life will change because of the decision of a single person.”

Macron also criticized China for its support of Russia during the invasion of Ukraine and its unwillingness to prevent North Korea from supporting Moscow in the conflict.

“If China doesn’t want NATO being involved in Southeast Asia or in Asia, they should prevent DPRK to be engaged on European soil,” Macron stated, referring to North Korea’s official name.

He cautioned that conflicts across Europe, America, the Middle East, and Asia, including those involving Russia and Gaza, are interconnected and that the universal principles linking these conflicts risk being forgotten.

“If we 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…what could happen in Taiwan? What would you do the day something happened in [the] Philippines?” the French president asked.

“What is at stake in Ukraine is our common credibility to be sure that we are still able to preserve territorial integrity and sovereignty of people, no double standard,” Macron said, countering arguments that the war in Ukraine is solely a European issue.

Extending this point to the Middle East, Macron asserted that giving Israel “a free pass” for its military actions in Gaza, which have resulted in a humanitarian crisis, could “kill our own credibility in the rest of the world.”

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