THE 7th IISS ASIA SECURITY SUMMIT
SHANGRI-LA DIALOGUE
Singapore
Friday 30 May 2008
OPENING REMARKS
Dr John Chipman, Director-General and Chief Executive, IISS
Welcome to the 7th IISS Asia Security Conference, the Shangri-La Dialogue. The IISS is delighted again to convene this trans-regional gathering of the defence establishments of the Asia-Pacific and key outside powers.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies was founded 50 years ago. We are therefore very proud that this year’s event helps us to mark the 50th anniversary of the birth of the IISS in such grand style, in such distinguished company, here in Asia.
When we were created and in our early years, we were preoccupied with the question of how civilised international relations could be conducted in the nuclear age. We helped to measure and analyse the balance of power between East and West, proposed ideas on how that balance of power could be maintained through arms control, influenced governments to take sensible steps towards conflict resolution and sometimes quietly brought the relevant parties together to help them do what they could not do alone. The reputation for independence, factual authority, useful originality and practical action in the service of good public policy built up in the early days sustains us today.
From the 1980s, we made a very concerted effort to extend our individual and corporate members to nearly 100 countries and our strategic focus seamlessly shifted with the changes in the strategic scene. We operate word-wide: involved with every continent and concerned with all the key strategic themes that animate governments and other actors.
Now, for example, when many of the great geopolitical challenges of the day are thrown up by conflicts, latent, active, or still to be resolved in areas such as Asia and the Middle East, the IISS is vitally active in these regions, marshalling facts, producing policy research, sustaining the art of strategic thinking, and engaging in that special brand of para-diplomacy of which this Dialogue is such a prime example.
Many of you here who are part of our 50th anniversary celebrations will, I trust, also be part of our growth and development in the challenging period ahead.
At this Shangri-La Dialogue we have brought together the largest group ever, with more ministers from more countries than before. We hope that the dialogue between defence ministers and security establishments that this event both inspires and facilitates can lead to practical understandings on defence collaboration and improved transparency about strategic goals. At past Shangri-La Dialogues, for example, new inter-governmental arrangements for maritime security in the Malacca straits have been agreed, and the conditions improved for the establishment of a hotline between the US Pentagon and the Chinese government.
This year’s agenda reflects the subjects and themes with which strategic actors in Asia are now involved. There remain concerns about the commitments and ambitions of major powers in the region. Defining security in such uncertain times is difficult. Hedging against failures of the current security dispensations is leading to greater arms procurement. The problems of terrorism remain acute. The need for navies to collaborate to secure the sea lanes is vital. The issue of WMD proliferation remains of genuine strategic significance.
Of more immediate note, and reflected in our agenda, are the security consequences of competition over energy sources and the social impact of high energy and food prices. The long-term effects of climate change, covered by the IISS in the latest issue of our journal Survival are also part of these discussions. The security impact of environmental disasters and the need for strategic innovation and political flexibility in acting quickly in response to these emergencies has been brought into tragically sharp relief by the horrible effects of the cyclone in Myanmar and the earthquake in China.
Finally, the quality of the security environment is much affected by the nature of the regional security architecture. If Asia is not quite yet a unified security community, it is certainly a vibrant security market-place. Security here is regularly being bought, rented, leveraged, reinsured merged and acquired through a dizzying array of strategic partnerships, ad hoc co-operative relationships and formal defence alliances, some reflected, others less so, in existing institutional structures.
The Shangri-La Dialogue has a very special place within the present architecture in helping to inter-mediate these distinct and emerging defence relationships as it includes the national security establishments of all the key states.
We would like to thank the Government of Singapore and all of our sponsors for the splendid support provided. You deserve at the start the best possible overview of the themes that we will discuss. To introduce the person to provide that survey, let me invite to the podium, the Chairman of the IISS, Francois Heisbourg.
