US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's demand at the recent Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore for Asian allies and partners to spend 3.5% of GDP on defence sounded alarm bells across Southeast Asia and beyond. His brow-beating call to arms will likely lead to a regional defence build-up not seen in decades. It bodes ill for regional security in Southeast Asia and does not seem to add up for America's own debt and defence concerns.
Under the 11-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), the regional neighbourhood south of China and east of India has succeeded in securing peace and security for the past six decades as the anchor of broader Asia by design and by default. No other organisation can convene Indo-Pacific countries, large and small, the way Asean has done through its annual meetings, such as the East Asia Summit. Notwithstanding its shortcomings and internal divisions, Asean has had to be in the driver's seat of security promotion and maintenance because no other entity is as widely trusted to fulfil this function. Asean's role as the buffer, bridge and broker in keeping the bigger powers connected and away from confrontation and conflict is Southeast Asia's name of the geostrategic game in the Indo-Pacific.
Southeast Asia's approach to peace and security has been to prioritise and promote words over weapons and dialogues over muscles. It has been about "jaw-jaw" over "war-war", a Churchillian quip often repeated in Asean contexts. Mr Hegseth, in fact, chastised this approach at the Singapore gathering. As he put it, "We don't need more conferences. We need more combat power … less Shangri-La, more ships, more subs." As he likens himself as the "Secretary of War", who oversees a gargantuan war-fighting government department, Mr Hegseth's call for a defence build-up risks spiralling into an arms race in Southeast Asia, a region with historical enmities and overlapping territorial claims.
