At the recent Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth pressed the US’ Asian allies to spend 3.5 percent of their GDP on defense, fueling anxiety across the region and beyond. His brow-beating call to arms might well bring about a regional defense build-up on a scale unseen since the end of the Cold War.
Such an outcome would actually do little to bolster regional security or address US defense concerns. For one thing, China might very well respond in kind, thus delivering limited to no benefits from the increased spending.
ASEAN, the 11-member bloc south of China and east of India, has been a mostly peaceful region since the brief 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War. Notwithstanding ASEAN’s shortcomings and internal divisions — the group comprises democracies like Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore, autocracies like Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, and military juntas like Myanmar — it has long been the only entity with enough credibility to oversee regional security.
To steer large powers like China, the US, India, and Japan away from confrontation and conflict in the Indo-Pacific region, ASEAN has acted as buffer, bridge and broker, prioritizing dialogue and diplomacy over military muscle. As former British prime minister Winston Churchill once put it, “meeting jaw to jaw is better than war.”
However, in Singapore, Hegseth castigated the region’s leaders for this approach, saying: “We don’t need more conferences. We need more combat power… less Shangri-La, more ships, more subs.”
ARMS RACE
What Hegseth fails to realize is that his call for a pan-Asian military build-up risks spiraling into an arms race. This is a dangerous prospect for a region riddled with historical enmities and overlapping territorial claims, particularly as tensions between the US and China mount, and while India and Japan take steps to build up their armed forces. Indeed, the fact that there are open debates in Japan and South Korea about whether to acquire nuclear weapons is the clearest evidence of how dangerous an Asian arms race could become.
There are economic risks, too. With Southeast Asia spending, on average, less than 2 percent of GDP on defense, Hegseth’s 3.5 percent target would require Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand to more than double their current annual military expenditures. Others, such as Singapore and Vietnam, face smaller but still considerable gaps. Myanmar is the only ASEAN member state already above the target, at 6.8 percent, but its arsenal is aimed at its own people, who have fought a fierce civil war against the junta since it deposed Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in February 2021.
Worryingly, militaries have historically played an outsize role in Southeast Asian politics: The Thai military, for example, has staged 22 coup attempts, 13 of them successful, over the past century. In a number of countries, higher defense budgets might embolden an officer corps that only grudgingly accepts democracy and civilian rule.
The implications of acquiescing to Hegseth’s demand could also be far-reaching. In the aftermath of the Cold War’s end, Southeast Asia has shifted its focus from defense to trade and investment, owing to greater economic integration through ASEAN. The region became a manufacturing powerhouse, resulting in rapid economic development that has contributed significantly to global growth.
SAFETY NETS
However, Southeast Asia has come under strain in the past few years, as its export-led growth model faces headwinds from US protectionism and the energy shock caused by US President Donald Trump’s war on Iran. Reallocating resources from critical sectors such as health and education to weapons purchases and constructing a defense industrial base would place these economies in an even more precarious position.
Perhaps most importantly, domestic instability might rise if ASEAN member states are forced to slash social safety nets and welfare services to pay for military equipment and security projects. Such internal turmoil could ignite regional disputes — Thailand and Cambodia fought over their border last year — as governments embrace populist nationalism to divert attention from worsening economic conditions.
The fallout from lower economic growth, higher defense spending, and unmet social needs would likely weaken regional unity. Should ASEAN start to fray further as a result, some of its member countries might come to believe that their interest lies in gravitating toward China’s geostrategic orbit — precisely the opposite of Hegseth’s intention.
Of course, Southeast Asia should not “freeload” under the US’ protective umbrella, a charge Hegseth has also leveled at Europe, but great powers should (and often do) allow some degree of free riding, because they prefer that smaller countries accept their leadership without question.
REGIONAL BULLYING
Moreover, the US should appreciate how effective Southeast Asian countries have been in using diplomacy and cooperation on economic and security matters to counter regional threats. This is part and parcel of their defense strategy, and it has meant engaging China and including it in bodies such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and the ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting-Plus (in which the US also participates).
Ultimately, for all Hegseth’s talk of “burden-sharing,” the numbers indicate that his push is more about regional bullying. If the US wants its allies to bear more of the security burden in Asia, then one would expect the region’s increased defense spending to correlate with a reduction in the US’ military expenditure, but Hegseth’s self-styled “Department of War” seeks to increase its budget from US$1 trillion to US$1.5 trillion in the coming fiscal year. If Congress approves that whopping 50 percent hike, the US would spend more on defense than the world’s next nine largest militaries combined, amounting to some 44 percent of global military spending.
Hegseth’s muddled proposal reveals a shocking ignorance of the real threat. If the US focuses on dominating the Western Hemisphere, as laid out in the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy, and pulls back from its defense commitments in Asia, ASEAN member states would be unable to compete with China on military spending. The resulting imbalance would be in no one’s interest — except, of course, that of China.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a professor at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Political Science, is a senior fellow at its Institute of Security and International Studies.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
A recent report concerning a student who is suing his teacher posed the question in its headline: Does failing a student in two subjects constitute bullying? The college student in Chiayi County apparently sought NT$2 million (US$63,603) in state compensation, but a court dismissed the case. The first reaction of many might have been to ask: What has happened to students nowadays? Some say that teachers have lost their authority, while others say students are overindulged. Some even start reminiscing over the days when “whatever the teacher says goes.” However, the real issue might be overlooked if emotional reactions like that are the
When I visited Taiwan last summer, I called on the nation to use its status as a technology superpower to build superweapons. It is obvious to me as I return a year later that Taiwan is now answering that call. By 2030, Taiwan envisions a domestic drone hub, capable of producing large quantities of drones per year. The nation continues to tighten cooperation across the private sector, scientific researchers and the elected government, on creating new and innovative production avenues for defense, while efforts to become central to the “democratic supply chain” are only increasing. Anduril is seeing all of these positive
Singaporean former Prime Minister and current senior minister Lee Hsien- Loong(李顯龍) last month stood on Chinese soil and told Beijing that Singapore cooperates because of “shared interests”, not because of common “ethnic descent,” a significant statement that has upended China’s cognitive warfare tactics of “ethnic nationalism.” Along with using its military buildup and economic growth to expand its international dominance, China has long deployed ethnic politics to promote the idea that all ethnic Chinese around the world, regardless of citizenship, share a tight bond with the Chinese motherland, by which it means the regime of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)
Taiwan’s economic momentum, driven by demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products, remains strong, with booming demand for advanced semiconductors, servers and key components. In the first quarter, GDP expanded 14.55 percent year-on-year, the second consecutive quarter of double-digit percentage growth and accelerating from the 12.95 percent expansion in the previous quarter, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) reported on Friday. Net exports remained the dominant driver of growth, contributing 10.33 percentage points to Taiwan’s GDP growth in the first quarter. That came as exports rose 35.76 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, outpacing 26.34 percent growth in imports, the
RSS