At last year’s Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore, held a week after the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) “Joint Sword-2024A” military exercises to “punish” Taiwan’s newly inaugurated president, Chinese Minister of National Defense Dong Jun (董軍) attempted to persuade the audience that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the PLA stood for peace and dialogue. He managed to do it with a straight face.
Then-US secretary of defense Lloyd Austin referenced “bullying or coercion” by certain regional players, but he did not mention China by name. Neither did Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr when he spoke of the South China Sea maritime disputes. They were trying to reduce regional tensions, not exacerbate them. Yet the maritime disputes continue, as does the PLA’s military intimidation in the Taiwan Strait and around the first island chain.
In an editorial about last year’s forum (“China’s Shangri-La diatribe,” June 6, 2024, page 8), the Taipei Times said it was time that China was called out more explicitly for its behavior. Speaking on Saturday at this year’s forum, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth did just that.
Dong was absent, so he would not have heard in person Hegseth call China out for its “gray zone” activities in the region, or how every day the PLA harasses Taiwan. He would not have heard Hegseth say how the US is “reorienting toward deterring aggression by communist China,” how it is closely monitoring China’s destabilizing actions or how “any unilateral attempt to change the status quo in the South China Sea and the first island chain by force or coercion is unacceptable.” He would not have heard Hegseth say that US President Donald Trump has determined that “communist China will not invade Taiwan on his watch.”
Dong last year called for the US to withdraw from the Indo-Pacific region. On Saturday, Hegseth went to great lengths to establish the US as an Indo-Pacific nation. He noted Dong’s absence from the forum this year, saying that “as a matter of fact, we are here this morning, and somebody else isn’t.” The comment was not a cheap shot, it was used to contrast his presence with Dong’s no-show, and that, as an Indo-Pacific nation, the US is committed to maintaining a presence in the region, an obvious reference to Dong’s comments about the US leaving the region to China and ASEAN.
Far from painting a copacetic picture of complacency, Hegseth was outlining the practical costs of preparation as a bulwark against the unthinkable human costs of potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific region. He was building a theme of the need to work together with regional allies to ensure a stable, prosperous and peaceful world. He was also crystal clear about who the neighborhood bully was and of the evidence of its malevolent intent.
Pushing back against accusations of US abandonment of allies in Europe, Hegseth reframed the widely shared perception of abandonment as “tough love, but love nonetheless.” That was a necessary, if rather unconvincing, device to lead into his theme of bolstering cooperation with allies in the region. To push back against concerns over US isolationism, he qualified “the Indo-Pacific” with the phrase “our priority theater,” not once, but twice.
Insisting that Trump and the US have “an immense respect for the Chinese people and their civilization,” his use of the adjective “communist” was telling. Taiwanese, too, should be aware of the importance of distinguishing between Chinese and Chinese civilization, on one side of the equation, and the CCP on the other, especially today, the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre of June 4, 1989.
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