The Secretary of Defense of the United States, Pete Hegseth (C), the gestures together with the Minister of Defense of Malaysia, Mohamed Khaled Nordin (R) and other defense officials of the Association of Nations of Southeast Asia (ASEAN) during a multilateral meeting ahead of the Shangri-La dialogue dialogue in Singapore on May 30, 2025.
Mohd Rasfan | AFP | Getty images
Singapore – The head of the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, warned on Saturday that the United States was prepared to “fight and win” against China if deterrence efforts failed, while they urged Asian allies to strengthen military coordination and increase defense spending.
Speaking in the annual dialogue of the Shangri-La Defense Summit in Singapore, the United States Secretary of Defense, Hegseth, emphasized Washington’s resolution to strengthen defense capabilities at a time when the regional war has increased throughout the world, including Russia’s war in Ukraine and the military conflict in Gaza.
While playing with the United States commitment to the Indo-Pacific region, Hegseth hit in the absence of China’s Minister of Defense. “We are here this morning. Someone else is not,” he said.
Hegseth urged political and defense leaders to the audience to act urgently to retreat against the growing military pressure of China in the South China Sea and around Taiwan.
“China has shown that the status quo of the region wants to alter fundamentally. We cannot look the other way and we cannot ignore it. China’s behavior towards his neighbors and the world is a call of attention and urgent,” said Hegseth.
“We ask, and in fact, we insist that our allies and partners do their part in defense,” said Hegesh, and added that “our defense expense must reflect the dangers and threats we face today, because deterrence is not at a low price.”
Acute rhetoric is presented in the context of growing commercial frictions between Washington and Beijing as optimism on an agreement after a temporary tariff truce secured earlier this month decreases.
The commercial conversations of Us-China “are a bit stagnant”, and would guarantee the bosses of the two countries to regret, said Treasury Secretary, Scott Besent, Fox News Thursday.
China’s activities at the South China Sea undermine sovereignty and threaten the freedom of navigation and overflow, while their ongoing military operations near Taiwan indicate a clear intention to increase the pressure on the island, said the leader of the Pentagon.
He also promised to intensify the security closer to the United States, eliminating China’s “evil” influence on the Panama Canal. “It is a key land, after all, China did not build that channel. We did it, and we will not allow China to arm it or control it.”
In March he said in March that he was prepared to fight “any kind of war” with the United States, since President Donald Trump increased economic and political pressure on the country. “If war is what the United States wants, be it a tariff war, a commercial war or any other type of war, we are ready to fight until the end,” said the Chinese embassy in the United States in a publication.
China Top Official Absent
China’s Minister of Defense, Dong Jun, was absent from this year’s summit: the first time that Beijing’s senior military officer skipped the event since 2019. Beijing sent a delegation of lower rank, directed by Major General Hu Gangfeng, vice president of the Army of the National Defense Defense Army.
Major general Hu is expected to participate in a special session later on Saturday on Cooperative Maritime Security in Asia-Pacific.
The absence of China’s senior military official has put doubts about whether there will be a bilateral meeting between Chinese defense officials and the United States.
Last year, the then Secretary of Defense of the United States. UU. Lloyd Austin and Dong held a bilateral meeting outside the Security Forum, where both parties agreed to maintain military dialogue.
The absence of Beijing’s Minister of Defense could be an attempt to avoid commitment and conflict with the United States at inflammation points such as Taiwan and the South China Sea, experts said.
“Beijing always wants to control the narrative and speech. Shangri-La does not allow that,” said Drew Thompson, the main member of the School of International Studies of S. Rajaratnam and former American official in the Department of Defense.
“When I was in the Department of Defense, my counterpart of the Pla once explained what they did not like. He said: ‘We do not like to be gladiators who fight each other for the entertainment of others. We want to deal with our differences bilaterally, in channels, not in public forums,” he added.
Beijing sees limited strategic benefits by sending his senior defense officials to the annual summit, on the other hand, he focuses on deepening ties through alternative forums without the presence of the United States, Wu Xinbo, director of the Center for American Studies at the University of Fudan, told CNBC earlier this month. That is according to the translation of CNBC of your comments in Mandarin.
Taiwan problem
The United States government plans to increase weapons to Taiwan to a level beyond $ 18.3 billion authorized during Trump’s first mandate, exceeding $ 8.4 billion approved under President Biden, according to Reuters.
Proposed weapons packages will focus on profitable systems such as missiles, ammunition and drones, as part of an effort to improve Taiwan deterrence, since Beijing increases the pressure on the democratic island.
The United States has been an important supplier of Taiwan allies and weapons for decades, with Beijing asking Washington to stop such actions and stop creating tensions in the Taiwan Strait.
Beijing states that Taiwan is his territory and has promised to “meet” with the island governed democratically, by force if necessary. The Taiwan government rejects Beijing’s sovereignty statements.
For years, China has been constantly increasing its military pressure to affirm its sovereignty claims over Taiwan, regularly sending naval airplanes and boats near the island.
Dong warned in the Shangri-la Last year dialogue that any force aimed at separating Taiwan from China would face “self-destruction” and emphasized Taiwan’s theme as “the core of our central interest.”
The concerns have also mounted Trump’s commitment to the island. On the path of the electoral campaign, Trump had suggested that Taiwan should pay the protection of the United States and accused her of diverting the United States semiconductor industry, increasing the alarm in Taipei.
