SINGAPORE — Secretary of War Pete Hegseth used the closing weekend of the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue to recast Washington's approach to Asia as a quieter, more transactional one, telling delegates the United States will reward allies that raise defense spending to 3.5 percent of gross domestic product and step back from those that do not. He paired the pitch with a measured warning to Beijing that left out the harder edges of recent Pentagon rhetoric.
The message lands as Asian capitals try to read how far the second Trump administration will go in pulling back from the region, and as Beijing weighs whether a lower-profile delegation to Singapore has cost it influence. By framing alliances as a marketplace of burden-sharing rather than a values project, Hegseth offered governments from Manila to The Hague a concrete metric, and a concrete penalty, on which to plan their next budgets.
What Hegseth said
"The bedrock of partnership is alignment on national interests," Hegseth told the gathering Saturday, describing a "strong, quiet, clear" approach to alliances. He singled out the Philippines, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore for stepping up, and pressed Vietnam and India to improve military readiness.
On China, Hegseth said Washington seeks "a favorable but durable balance of power in which no state, including China, can impose its hegemony and hold the security or prosperity of our nation and our allies in question," framing the relationship with Beijing as the strongest it has been in a long time while flagging "rightful alarm" in the region over China's military buildup. "While a decent peace is our goal, make no mistake, America is a Pacific nation, and we insist that China respect our longstanding position in the region," he said.
Hegseth was sharper with Europe, which he accused of failing to pull its weight. Alliances, he said, should run "without the drama and the moralizing," adding: "Europe should take note." The same logic, he warned, applied in Asia: "for too long, the security of this region has rested disproportionately on American military power, while many of our allies and partners allowed their own defense capabilities to atrophy."
The 3.5 percent test
The 3.5 percent of GDP threshold has become the operational benchmark for who gets U.S. weapons and intelligence first. Hegseth promised front-of-line treatment to qualifying allies: "For those nations, we are moving them to the front of the line: expedited arms sales, deep industrial-based collaboration, expanded intelligence sharing, the list goes on that benefits many." Allies that refuse, he added, "will face a clear shift in how we do business."
Most governments at the summit publicly accepted the premise. Japan, the Philippines and the Netherlands are planning increases. New Zealand, which falls below 3.5 percent, is also raising its allocation. Dutch deputy prime minister Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius said the U.S. is "right" to ask countries to spend more, citing Russia's invasion of Ukraine as the shift in Dutch public opinion.
Canadian chief of the defense staff Gen. Jennie Carignan framed the same point through capability rather than dollars. "No one country can do it all alone," she said, calling the ability to complement each other's capabilities "incredibly important" but conditioned on each member having "your own defense."
Beijing's empty chair
China's defense minister, Dong Jun, skipped the summit for a second straight year, with the delegation led instead by Major General Meng Xiangqing of the People's Liberation Army National Defence University. Hegseth said he wished his counterpart were present: "I wish my counterpart was here at this conference," he said, adding that he hoped to meet in other settings. Japan's defense minister Shinjiro Koizumi said he was "feeling sad" Dong did not attend.
Manila was less diplomatic. National defense minister Gilberto Teodoro told CNBC that "as a value proposition their [China's] presence here is reduced to a minimum ... which is to promote the party line rather than to engage constructively, so insofar as I'm concerned, it's no major loss for me." He called Beijing "unrepentant with their expansionism and unrelenting" in remarks reported by CNBC.
The Chinese delegates pushed back. Meng questioned Japan's defense spending increases and arms exports given Tokyo's wartime history. Former Chinese vice minister of foreign affairs Cui Tiankai restated Beijing's position on Taiwan: "No one cares more about stability in Taiwan Strait than we in China, because on both sides of the Taiwan Strait it's Chinese territory." Koizumi accused Beijing of a "lack of transparency" in its military buildup.
The Ukraine overlay
Ukraine ran as a second thread through the conference. Former Ukrainian foreign minister Pavlo Klimkin told CNBC there is "a very keen interest in lessons from Ukraine and around Ukraine, it's a kind of understanding that first asymmetric deterrence and asymmetric fighting is something which matters," pointing to a shift in how planners think about smaller-state defense. Dutch chief of defense Gen. Onno Eichelsheim said his service has Ukrainian advisers embedded to help allocate spending.
The counterpoint
The sharpest pushback from Washington came from Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois who traveled to Singapore. She said the Trump-Hegseth national defense strategy "downgrades the primacy, the importance, of the Indo-Pacific" and described the secretary's "strong, quiet, clear" formulation as "a euphemism for no top-level interests other than cozying up to [China]." Broader partisan reaction — from congressional Republicans defending the speech and from progressive critics beyond Duckworth — was not available by press time, with several outlets that typically carry that commentary unreachable Saturday.
Saturday's address followed Hegseth's Friday remarks pressing wealthy partners to shoulder more of the bill, reported in this paper, and extends rather than reverses that line. The Shangri-La Dialogue closes Sunday. The next test of the 3.5 percent benchmark comes when the affected governments submit their 2027 defense budgets later this year.