Amid a growing number of security challenges, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida outlined his vision for a more secure Indo-Pacific region in a keynote speech Friday night to kick off this year's IISS Shangri-la Dialogue — a major international security summit — in Singapore.
Speaking before defense ministers and senior officials from 42 countries, Kishida divided his approach into five main pillars. These include maintaining the rules-based international order, enhancing national defense capabilities and regional security cooperation, promoting a world without nuclear weapons, reforming the U.N. Security Council, and strengthening international cooperation in new areas such as economic security.
“With the very foundations of the international order being shaken by Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, the international community now stands at a historic crossroads,” said Kishida, adding that no country or region in the world “can shrug this off as someone else’s problem.”