The United States has set clear expectations for its allies and partners in the Asia-Pacific to increase their defense spending. This comes after U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s remarks at the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual security conference in Singapore that drew in delegations from 47 countries.
“Asian allies should look to countries in Europe as a new-found example. NATO members are pledging to spend 5 percent of their GDP on defense,” said Hegseth.
As of 2024, U.S. allies and partners in East and Southeast Asia spent an average 1.85 percent of GDP on defense, with countries like Indonesia spending less than 1 percent of GDP. This remains far from the 5 percent benchmark recently set by NATO members, let alone the 3 percent target Donald Trump, then a presidential candidate, set in the fall of 2024.
“It doesn’t make sense for countries in Europe to do that while key allies in Asia spend less on defense in the face of an even more formidable threat,” Hegseth claimed.
According to the current U.S. administration, Beijing, the “more formidable threat,” seeks to be a hegemonic power in Asia. As such, the priority for Washington is to reorient its Indo-Pacific strategy to face perceived threats from China.
Current geopolitical pressures and expectations set by Washington raise the question of whether Asia is ready to pay more on defense in the face of domestic challenges. Already, the United States is reportedly considering withdrawing 4,500 troops from South Korea, relocating them primarily to Guam.
“This measure derives from a stated objective of the Trump administration to reposition and augment its forces in the Indo-Pacific to focus on prevailing in a conflict with China over Taiwan and within the First Island Chain,” said Victor Cha who serves as Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
While Seoul is expected to take up an increased share of the burden in deterring an invasion from Pyongyang, South Korea’s demographic realities project a challenge that many other developed Asian states share. With a birth rate of 0.78, well below the average 2.1 replacement rate, South Korea’s military manpower could shrink to nearly half its current size of approximately 600,000 active military personnel within the next two decades.
In 2023, Japan’s Self-Defense Force fell 50 percent short of its recruitment target. The following year, the number of babies born fell to a record low for the ninth consecutive year.
“Japan’s shrinking population is complicating the country’s efforts to develop a larger indigenous defense sector and decrease its reliance on U.S. weapons and munitions,” Tom Le, an associate professor of politics at Pomona College, wrote in Foreign Affairs. “The country is facing engineering shortages in the vital chip industry, a shrinking college-age population, and a falling number of doctoral degree recipients.”
In his Shangri-La speech, Hegseth highlighted the Trump administration’s priority to revive the United States’ defense industrial base and endorsed the Partnership for Indo-Pacific Industrial Resilience (PIPIR), a multilateral forum of 14 U.S. allies and partners.
For Asian allies like South Korea and Japan, such integration will be a necessity when military manpower and skilled labor is dwindling. Yet, the expectation for allies to pay more on defense only to increase reliance on the United States perpetuates a dependency that could additionally create supply chain vulnerabilities.
While the United States takes up 43 percent of the global share of exports of major arms, not all Asian countries purchase solely from the “arsenal of democracy.” For the Philippines, 33 percent of its arms imports originate from South Korea, followed by Israel at 27 percent. Singapore, an important partner for the United States in the Asia-Pacific, imports 40 percent of its arms from Germany.
Even though the United States makes up 33 percent of Indonesia’s arms imports, Jakarta has signed agreements to purchase French fighter jets and submarines. The archipelagic island nation, known for its non-alignment policy, is also considering acquiring Chinese and Russian fighter jets.
The purchasing, producing, and procurement of military arms is a lengthy process that can take years to complete. Hegseth may hope for a more robust and integrated flow of arms in Asia anchored by Washington’s military industrial base, but countries in the Asia-Pacific, particularly in Southeast Asia are known to diversify partnerships even on defense matters.
According to Hegseth, Trump does not seek war with Beijing. “We do not seek to dominate or strangle China,” he reassured. But in the same speech he reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to “deterring aggression by Communist China.”
The art of deterrence is fundamentally different from that of defense. Defending something from an adversary is to deny them the ability to achieve their goals by making the cost of doing so vividly clear. This can be done by laying mines, building forts, and digging trenches. But deterrence is a psychological game. A country deters its adversary by causing them to doubt themselves in the face of rising stakes or the possibility of war.
Hegseth stated that “those who long for peace, must prepare for war.” The Trump administration may be clear eyed with whom it is preparing for such an adventure, but Asian allies and partners might need a little more than platitudes to convince them of the benefits of war when its preparation costs are already so high.