“Shangri-La Dialogue 2026”: Escalation in Southeast Asia and New Geopolitical Developments

The annual Shangri-La Dialogue took place in Singapore from May 29-31, serving as an important platform for exchanging views on the situation in the Indo-Pacific region.

The Shangri-La Dialogue is enhanced by its high-level participants, which include not only authoritative experts but also defense ministers from leading regional countries. This year’s event was attended by defense ministers from the United States, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and other countries in the region, who spoke at sessions and met with their counterparts bilaterally.

A long-standing ritual of the Shangri-La Dialogue is the invitation of a sitting head of state as a guest of honor. Last year, that guest was French President Emmanuel Macron – a first for Europe. However, at this year’s event, everything returned to normal, and the guest of honor was Vietnamese President To Lam, whose country is significant in the Southeast Asian subregion to which Singapore also belongs.

This last circumstance highlighted the main concern of the Shangri-La Dialogue 2026: rising tensions of the situation in Southeast Asia.

Tensions in Southeast Asia began to rise at the beginning of the last decade and have been steadily increasing since then. It is in this sub-region that the focus of the global struggle between the two leading global players, the United States and China, is shifting. As for the involvement of the United States in armed aggression against Iran, a more or less rational explanation for this fact (if there........

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