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On a visit to Asia, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signaled the U.S. will reorient its policy in the region toward, as he put it, quote, "deterring aggression by communist China." NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports from Singapore.
ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: This was Secretary Hegseth's first appearance at the Shangri-la Dialogue, the region's main annual defense forum. He came with a stark warning about China.
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PETE HEGSETH: China seeks to become a hegemonic power in Asia. No doubt. It hopes to dominate and control too many parts of this vibrant and vital region.
KUHN: But at the same time, he said, the U.S. does not seek war.
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HEGSETH: We do not seek to dominate or strangle China, to encircle or provoke. We do not seek regime change.
KUHN: Chinese Air Force retired Senior Colonel Zhou Bo has been to many of these forums. He's now a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He says Hegseth's speech was more hostile to China than previous U.S. defense secretaries who spoke at the forum, and he seems to be pushing other countries to pick a side in the U.S.-China rivalry.
ZHOU BO: China would not ask anyone to pick sides. And even if China does, nobody would pick Chinese side if they know that the other side is the United States.
KUHN: And yet, Zhou says, instead of rushing to take the U.S. side, many countries in the region are hedging their bets. Malaysia's Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim told the forum his country intends to remain staunchly nonaligned.
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ANWAR IBRAHIM: What Southeast Asia needs is a dynamic equilibrium that enables cooperation without coercion and balance without bloc politics.
KUHN: What worries some U.S. allies is that the U.S. may prioritize confronting China over protecting them. South Korea, for example, is concerned that the U.S. could draw down forces based on the Korean Peninsula or repurpose them to defend Taiwan in case of an attack by China. South Korea sees its main security threat coming from its nuclear armed neighbor to the north.
ZACK COOPER: I think the message from the Trump administration is that all that matters is what Korea does on China.
KUHN: Zack Cooper is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
COOPER: And the reality is that U.S.-Korea interests go far beyond what South Korea does on China.
KUHN: The Pentagon denies it's planning to pull soldiers out of South Korea, but it continues to insist that it must have the strategic flexibility to put troops where it needs them. Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Singapore. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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