US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth yesterday at a defense conference assured Pacific allies that Washington remained committed to the region, but toned down previous comments calling China a threat.
Speaking to a group of world leaders, diplomats and top security officials at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Hegseth said the region “has profound implications for US security and prosperity,” and that Washington’s priority was to “achieve a lasting and favorable balance of power in the Pacific.”
The meeting comes about two weeks after US President Donald Trump visited Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing.
Photo: EPA
NO CHINA DOMINATION
Hegseth, who was with Trump in Beijing, said the two leaders had agreed that China and the US should “build a constructive relationship of strategic stability, based on fairness and reciprocity, reaffirming that while our nations will vigorously protect our respective interests, we can secure practical, mutually beneficial agreements where our interests align.”
However, he said it was still a US priority to ensure that China is not allowed to dominate the Indo-Pacific region.
“There is rightful alarm regarding China’s historic military buildup and the expansion of its military activities in the region and beyond,” he said. “We share a clear-eyed assessment of that security environment and a mutual understanding that a Pacific dominated by any hegemon would unravel the regional balance of power and undermine the equilibrium we all seek to preserve.”
Chinese Major General Meng Xiangqing (孟祥青) praised Hegseth’s remarks about the meeting between Xi and Trump, saying that the consensus the leaders reached “should provide strategic guidance for China-US relations over the next three years and beyond.”
“During his meeting with President Trump, President Xi Jinping made it clear that such constructive strategic stability should be a positive form of stability centered on cooperation, a healthy form of stability in which competition remains within reasonable bounds, a normal state of stability in which differences are managed and kept under control, and a lasting form of stability that offers the prospect of peace,” he said.
US Senator Tammy Duckworth, part of a congressional delegation to the conference, accused the Trump administration of “cozying up” to China.
“I worry that this administration is being distracted into wars that they’ve started in other parts of the world at the expense of our commitment here in the Indo-Pacific,” she said. “I am concerned that it seems like our president is entering into, you know, policies where he’s doing what Beijing wants him to do.”
After his meeting with Xi, Trump raised questions about the US’ willingness to defend Taiwan, calling a new US$14 billion arms package that he has yet to greenlight “a very good negotiating chip for us” with China.
Hegseth told the forum that there was “no change in our status” toward Taiwan, but would not comment on the arms deal.
“Any decision about future Taiwan arms sales, as the president said, will rest with him,” he said.
MORE DEFENSE SPENDING
He underscored the Trump administration’s insistence that allies increase defense spending, saying “we need partners, not protectorates.”
He lauded several countries in Asia for their efforts, while reiterating criticism of European allies, who he suggested got “distracted by empty globalist rhetoric about the rules-based international order.”
“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,” he said.
“When our interests diverge, we adjust pragmatically, without the drama or the moralizing,” he added. “I think Western Europe might take note — this is a mindset we fully embrace.”
Australian Minister of Defense Richard Marles, whose country was among those Hegseth praised for increased military spending, said that while the international rules-based order is not perfect, the “task before us, all of us, including the great powers, is the renovation of that order, not its dismemberment.”
“When the rules apply, smaller states have agency,” Marles said. “When the rules yield to power, sovereignty becomes, as others have put it, the purview of the powerful, and no state in this room today, whatever its size, is well served by that outcome.”
