The 3rd IISS Shangri-La Dialogue was successfully concluded on 6 June 2004.
Since 2002, the IISS has hosted Asia’s premier defence conference – the Shangri-La Dialogue. Over the first three years of this unique IISS experiment in multilateral defence diplomacy, defence ministers from the following countries have attended and participated: the US, UK, France, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Cambodia, the Philippines, Mongolia and, of course, Singapore. Deputy defence ministers or senior defence/security officials have participated from Thailand, Vietnam, Burma and Russia. In 2003 we introduced chiefs of defence staff and permanent under secretaries of ministries of defence to the delegations. This year we additionally invited other officials such as those with responsibility for intelligence, police and national security matters.
The result has been the growth of the Shangri-La Dialogue into the richest collection of defence professionals in the Asia–Pacific region. As the Asia–Pacific has no formal defence organisation, we believe that the Shangri-La Dialogue
serves as the best available vehicle for developing and channelling astute and effective public policy on defence and security in the region.
The presence of the United States at this year’s conference in the person of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld perhaps inevitably focused the attention of delegates on America’s strategic presence in Asia.
Delegates from South-east Asian countries, many of which have large Muslim populations and are beset by various forms of Islamic militancy, sought to evaluate the cost of the Iraq war to Washington’s reputation, and whether the diversion of attention and resources it has required has hindered rather than advanced the campaign against terrorism. Meanwhile, at a time when burgeoning military commitments in the Middle East and parallel defence-technological advances have stimulated the Pentagon’s appetite for sweeping changes to the size and shape of its global deployments, participants from North-east Asian countries sought clarification – and reassurance – about America’s continuing material commitment to their region’s security.
