The burning questions Hegseth left unanswered on the China challenge

The US defence secretary’s speech has helped to address, but will not silence, lingering questions about the Trump administration’s commitment to Asia.

There can be no balance of power in Asia without the United States. This was one message from Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles at this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue on Saturday.

This basic fact – that Asia’s security depends on US commitment and focus – is what made US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s speech at the same meeting a hotly anticipated and closely scrutinised event.

Because, while the Trump administration has focused its energy during the past four months on challenges in Europe and the Middle East, it has been relatively quiet on Asia.

Hegseth’s speech helps to answer, but will not silence, questions about the Trump administration’s commitment to Asia.

His remarks – in which he declared the Indo-Pacific to be the “priority theatre” for the United States – hit key messages for his audience of Asian security officials. He criticised China’s coercive and destabilising actions, but emphasised that the US did not seek conflict. And he outlined US efforts to boost its military presence in Asia and strengthen defence industrial competition (although curiously he did not reference AUKUS in this context, instead referring to another less prominent example of US-Australian defence industrial co-operation through the Guided Weapon and Explosive Ordnance Enterprise).

So far, so good. Defence officials from staunch US allies such as Australia, Japan and South Korea probably breathed a sigh of relief. Hegseth’s comments that China could invade Taiwan “imminently” were slightly unorthodox, but not hugely destabilising. This was not a repeat of US Vice President J.D. Vance’s tear-down of European alliances at the Munich Security Conference in February.

But Hegseth’s speech left some important questions unanswered.

First, what does the administration see as the legitimate role of China in Asia? Hegseth’s dire warnings about China’s desire to establish itself as a hegemonic power that could dominate and control the region focused not just on China’s coercive tactics in the South China Sea but also highlighted the risk of economic co-operation with Beijing. Hegseth warned regional countries to “beware the leverage the CCP [Chinese Community Party] seeks with this entanglement”.

If even traditional trade and investment ties are seen as a vector for malign influence, it’s unclear what Hegseth sees as the acceptable regional role for China. Where does his logic ultimately lead? Australia, with its massive sales of commodities including iron ore to China – as well as South-East Asian countries – should ask itself this question.

“Hegseth himself is in a weak political position, which may lead some observers to dismiss his reassurances.”

Second, how much, ultimately, will US allies and partners be expected to contribute to their own defence? In some ways, Hegseth’s emphasis on allied burden sharing in Asia is no different to the Biden administration’s efforts to build a “latticework” of co-operation that would knit partners together more closely in pursuit of collective defence.

But the defence secretary also said, perhaps slightly offhand, that if European countries were to spend 5 per cent of gross domestic product on defence then Asian allies should as well, given that they face a more formidable threat from China. This number – far higher even than the 3 per cent proposed by one of Hegseth’s key staff, Elbridge Colby – appeared to be a throwaway line, rather than a serious request.

Third, will the United States really drive prioritisation of Asia? In recent months, the United States has moved a battalion of patriot missiles and an aircraft carrier from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East, and reassigned Coast Guard cutters on patrol in Asia to the southern border. Given that successive administrations – going back to Barack Obama – have failed to drive a real prioritisation of Asia, the continued diversion of resources from Asia to the Middle East will make many observers ask, what’s different this time?

France and Malaysia respond

Hegseth himself is in a weak political position, which may lead some observers to dismiss his reassurances. But he was notably deferential to US President Donald Trump during his speech, even saying, “My job is to create and maintain decision space for President Trump, not to purport to make decisions on his behalf”.

This caution suggests that we can take Hegseth’s words as a reasonably authoritative statement of US policy.

This year, China chose not to send its defence minister to the Shangri-La Dialogue, meaning there was no riposte from Beijing to Hegseth’s vision.

But two contrasting perspectives were set out by French President Emmanuel Macron and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. In different ways, each saw opportunity in the current period of geopolitical uncertainty.

In Macron’s vision, Europe and Asia can work together to achieve strategic autonomy: a principled approach avoiding dependence on the United States but responding robustly to revisionism from China and Russia.

In Anwar’s vision, strategic autonomy means South-East Asian countries working together more and avoiding confrontational major power politics through flexibility and pragmatism.

Hegseth promised his audience that he would come “back, and back, and back again” to the Indo-Pacific. He will need to if his message is to stick.