The Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore provides an annual snapshot of evolving regional security concerns.
At the 2024 forum, then-US secretary of defense Lloyd Austin spoke of a “new convergence,” envisioning a network of alliances incorporating Japan, South Korea, India, the Philippines, Australia, Indonesia, Thailand and Papua New Guinea, as well as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) and ASEAN member states. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr spoke at length about the need to adhere to international law. Neither mentioned China by name, seeking to avoid increasing tensions.
At last year’s forum, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth jettisoned the cautious approach, forcefully stating that “communist China will not invade Taiwan” on US President Donald Trump’s watch.
Many commentators have noted Hegseth’s conspicuously softer tone on China on Saturday last week, as well as his apparent decision not to mention Taiwan by name. Those assessments miss a greater point.
Talking about the importance of burden-sharing in the region, Hegseth name-checked South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Australia, Indonesia, Vietnam and India, as well as Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. That is virtually every country in the region except China. Austin’s vision of convergence and a “network of alliances” holds. Hegseth did not need to mention China by name to imply its centrality to his message.
Hegseth also said that the US’ approach in the Pacific “centers on deterrence by denial along the first island chain.” The First Island Chain consists of Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia. Without Taiwan, there is no First Island Chain.
However, the big story at this year’s forum was the evolution of the idea of regional convergence and industrial, security and supply-chain resilience, which, for practical reasons, now centers more on the efforts of the Philippines and Japan.
For Taiwan, the debate in the past has centered on whether nations such as Japan and the Philippines, in addition to South Korea, Australia and India, would aid a US military intervention in a crisis in the Taiwan Strait. This year involves the pre-emptive development of deterrence against the eventuality of such a crisis.
Moreover, in the past three years there has been a discernible increase in the willingness of forum participants to name China as the bad actor in the region, and as the source of danger and instability.
Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro began his speech on Sunday last week by noting that this year marks the 10th anniversary of the 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling that found China’s claims of sovereignty in the South China Sea had no basis under international law, a ruling Beijing has consistently rejected.
Teodoro said that the Philippines “has emerged as a hub for convergence for those committed to a rules-based order in the maritime realm,” and that “none of the ASEAN countries has ever claimed that these maritime cooperative activities are destabilizing to regional peace and security.”
Teodoro was very clear about who was responsible for destabilizing the region. While saying that convergence by many different countries with their own security concerns was challenging, he emphasized a “growing concern over a certain actor’s behavior against its much smaller neighbors.”
He also pushed back on China’s “improper use of history, including the unfair vilification of Japan” to obscure China’s own “misbehavior at present.”
In his own address to the forum on the same day, Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi framed Japan’s recent expansion of regional defensive capabilities as part of its revised National Security Strategy as being necessary given China’s “opaque military buildups and action without clear intensions.”
Far from being a unilateral buildup of its own military capability, Japan’s vision, Koizumi said, is to enhance the preparedness and resilience of like-minded nations in the region, with initiatives including defense industrial cooperation in the 16-member Indo-Pacific Partnership for Indo-Pacific Industrial Resilience and the Official Security Assistance, devised to strengthen the security and deterrence capabilities of partner countries’ armed forces through Japan’s provision of financial assistance, military equipment and supplies.
He dismissed the accusations of a “new militarism” with the sarcasm such hypocrisy deserves.
This year’s security forum, then, represents the maturation of convergence, with more participation from regional actors, to enhance deterrence and resilience, together with a willingness to name China as the reason these efforts are necessary.
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