As the Shangri-La Dialogue drew to a close on Sunday, two issues dominated discussions throughout the event: defence spending and the varying level of commitment of countries to maintain peace in the region after calls by Washington for its allies and others to pull their weight.
Analysts said the 3.5 per cent of gross domestic product for defence spending proposed by US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth was not something that most Asean countries – aside from Singapore – could commit to.
Hegseth on Saturday morning told delegates at Asia’s premier defence forum in the city state that allies that refused to step up and do their part for collective defence would face “a clear shift” in how Washington would do business with them.
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“I’m sorry to say this here: less Shangri-La, more ships, more subs,” he quipped.
Hegseth urged countries to ramp up defence spending to the 3.5 per cent mark and listed several countries that were showing commitment towards the goal. Among the Association of Southeast Asian Nations members, he named the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
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Faizal Abdul Rahman, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), told This Week in Asia on the sidelines of the forum that Hegseth’s speech reflected the thinking of a big and rich power that could afford to use overwhelming military or economic might to influence the behaviour of others.