Why Asia’s Not Buying What Hegseth’s Selling

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Southeast Asia Brief. It’s been a very busy week in the region. We’re covering the highlights from the Shangri-La Dialogue, Myanmar junta leader Min Aung Hlaing’s first overseas trip, and the arrest of a Philippines senator (not the one you’re thinking of). Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Southeast Asia Brief. It’s been a very busy week in the region. We’re covering the highlights from the Shangri-La Dialogue, Myanmar junta leader Min Aung Hlaing’s first overseas trip, and the arrest of a Philippines senator (not the one you’re thinking of). It’s always interesting when a compliment misses the mark. At last week’s Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s attempted flattery of Asia prompted snorts in sections of the audience, the Straits Times reported. “Our partners in Asia have long understood that the bedrock of a durable partnership is not based on idealistic values, but on the concrete alignment of national interests,” Hegseth declared at the massive international security establishment gathering. “When our interests align, we act together with focused resolve. When our interests diverge, we adjust pragmatically without the drama or the moralizing. I think Western Europe might take note.” Alongside the European Union, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a bastion of believers in endless multilateral summitry and international law. Hegseth saying, “We don’t need more conferences. We need more combat power,” is not reassuring for the region’s many small- and medium-sized states. Shangri-La’s keynote speech by Vietnamese President To Lam (see next section) stood in near-direct contradiction to Hegseth’s. The latter’s contention was also dubious. The U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, which Hegseth boasted about at the start of his speech, prompted near-universal condemnation and invocations of international law across Southeast Asia. The U.S. strikes on Iran also sparked public consternation, which has only grown as the war takes a cruel toll on local economies. Meanwhile, key European NATO allies were often much more equivocal about U.S. actions in Venezuela and Iran. Hegseth singling out various countries as good allies and partners (the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam) also likely discomfited, rather than reassured, many. His definition of a good partner entails moving toward spending 3.5 percent of GDP on defense and/or doing more on regional security. Spending 3.5 percent is a high bar that few will want to meet, except maybe Singapore. And in a region where great-power interference is viewed warily, few will be keen on a deeper entanglement with U.S. security. (Note the trepidation that greeted Indonesia’s proposed concessions to the United States on airspace overflight access.) The Philippines has spent under 2 percent of GDP on defense for nearly 30 years. In 2024, its spending was 1.3% percent. This is consistently less than France and, until recently, about on par with Germany—until the latter committed to massive new defense spending. Most other Southeast Asian nations have similar track records. Some now worry that failing to meet these benchmarks could mean worse treatment from the United States on the trade front. And as Hunter Marston pointed out, Hegseth’s softer line on China at the summit stands in tension with his call on countries in the region to step up on security: “Washington is fuelling an arms race at a time when doubts about its commitment to the region continue to grow.” One final note: It was odd to see Thailand, a treaty ally like the Philippines, bracketed into the “partners” section of the speech. China’s Japan warning. Turns out the United States isn’t the only superpower failing to convince others at Shangri-La. China had its own its own solipsistic message at the dialogue: Beware of “militarism” from Japan. “Can it earn the trust of the international community, especially the Asian countries that once suffered under its aggression? I have serious doubts,” Gen. Meng Xiangqing, head of China’s delegation, said about Japan. As Japan ups its security role in the region, China hopes invoking the shared suffering of occupation by Japan during World War II will deter Southeast Asia. Reporting on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s outburst on the matter when he met with U.S. President Donald Trump in May suggests China really means it. Yet official historical memories, which are important as those who actually lived through the war die, are different in China and Southeast Asia. For China, the struggle against Japanese invasion has been promoted as the birth of the modern nation. In Southeast Asia, the significance of the Japanese invasion is often much more ambiguous: especially cruel for overseas Chinese communities but also heralding independence. Key nationalist figures like Sukarno in Indonesia and Aung San in Myanmar collaborated, lo

Why Asia’s Not Buying What Hegseth’s Selling

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