United States Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will attend the Shangri-La Dialogue Asian security summit scheduled to be held in Singapore next month, organisers said, following the annual meeting was cancelled last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This year’s event arranged by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), is scheduled to take place from Jun 4 to 5.
“It marks the secretary’s first trip to Southeast Asia, and as well as delivering his on-the-record speech, he will also conduct bilateral and multilateral meetings on the sidelines of the summit,” IISS said in an emailed statement.
The Shangri-La Dialogue has typically attracted top-level military officials, diplomats and weapons makers from around the globe since its inception in 2002.
In his first significant policy speech, Austin said this week that the US needs to prepare for a potential future conflict bearing little likeness to “the old wars” that have long consumed the Pentagon.
Austin called for harnessing technological advances and better integrating military operations globally to “understand faster, decide faster and act faster”.
Singapore is also planning to host the World Economic Forum’s annual summit in August following it was moved from its usual home in the Swiss ski resort of Davos over virus safety fears.
The Shangri-La Dialogue (SLD) is a “Track One” inter-governmental security forum being held annually by an independent think tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and attended by defense ministers, permanent heads of ministries and military chiefs of 28 Asia-Pacific states. The forum acquires its title from the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore where it has been held since 2002.
The summit serves to cultivate a sense of community among the most important policymakers in the fields of defence and security in the region. Government delegations have made use of the meeting by holding bilateral meetings with other delegations on the sidelines of the conference. While primarily an inter-governmental meeting, legislators, academic experts, distinguished journalists and business delegates take part in the summit.
