Europe's Top Envoy Rejects Pentagon Chief's Call That It Limits Role in Asia

Security of Indo-Pacific, Europe are linked and 'everybody needs everyone', she says

- Li Xueying

Europe's top diplomat Kaja Kallas has rejected calls from the United States that the continent should limit its role in Asia, saying that the security theatres of the Indo-Pacific and Europe are intimately connected.

US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth had suggested at the Shangri-La Dialogue that allies in Europe focus on security in Europe, so that Washington could focus on Asia.

In response to a question at the security forum organised by the International Institute for Strategic Studies on what role Europe's militaries should play in Asia, Mr Hegseth said initially that it could be "useful" that China takes into account the presence of other countries in the region.

But, he added, the US "would much prefer that the overwhelming balance of European investment be on that continent". This, he said, will allow the superpower to use its "comparative advantage as an Indo-Pacific nation to support our partners here".

Speaking to The Sunday Times on May 31 hours after the Pentagon chief's speech, Ms Kallas pushes back against this notion.

"It's an illusion that these security theatres of Indo-Pacific and Europe are not interlinked," the vice-president of the European Commission says, citing North Korea's involvement in Russia's invasion of Ukraine through its soldiers and weaponry, and China's "enabling" of the Russian war effort through the provision of critical dual-use goods — something that the Asian power denies.

"Great powers maybe think that they don't need anybody; everybody needs them instead.

"But I think in these times, everybody needs everyone. We need to work together — the big powers too," she adds, saying that she had made her views known to Mr Hegseth after his speech.

It is six months to the day that Ms Kallas became Europe's top diplomat.