To Lam warns of ‘big fish swallowing small fish’ at Singapore summit

Vietnam’s top leader opened Asia’s premier defence summit with a warning that cut far beyond rhetoric: distrust and a disregard for established rules had created a culture of “the big fish swallowing the small fish.” In Singapore, To Lam delivered the keynote address at the 23rd IISS Shangri-La Dialogue, turning Vietnam’s appearance at the region’s most watched security forum into a clear signal that middle powers did not want to be treated as collateral in a superpower contest.

The message landed at a moment of heightened uncertainty across the Asia-Pacific. The summit, held from May 29 to 31, brought together defence ministers, military leaders, senior defence officials, business leaders and security experts from across Asia, Europe and North America. Its agenda was dominated by war in Iran, strained U.S. commitments in Asia and rising tensions over Taiwan, all of which sharpened the stakes for countries trying to preserve room for diplomatic maneuver.

To Lam’s role at the opening session underscored how seriously Hanoi wanted that point heard. The IISS said his speech came amid “enormous global turbulence” and framed Vietnam as an “emerging strategic powerhouse” seeking to share its perspective from the center of regional anxiety. That positioning mattered in Singapore, where the South China Sea remained an unspoken but constant backdrop to the security discussions and to Vietnam’s own long-running territorial tensions with Beijing.

China, meanwhile, stayed away from the summit’s highest-level stage. Defence Minister Dong Jun skipped the gathering for a second straight year, and Beijing instead sent a delegation of People’s Liberation Army experts and scholars. The absence reinforced the sense that the forum was taking place in a region where states were watching each other’s moves closely, even as they tried to avoid being pulled into open confrontation.

The Shangri-La Dialogue had previously served as a marquee platform for leaders including Emmanuel Macron, Narendra Modi, Fumio Kishida, Anthony Albanese and Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Vietnam’s turn in that spotlight highlighted a broader regional pattern: Asian middle powers were increasingly asserting their own interests, warning that trade routes, military balance and diplomatic autonomy could not be reduced to a binary choice between Washington and Beijing.