Hegseth to attend Asia defense summit, with no China meeting planned

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth will travel to the Shangri-La Dialogue, the largest defense conference in Asia, where he will deliver a speech on the Pentagon’s approach to the region under the second Trump administration.

While in Singapore, though, Hegseth is not expected to meet with his counterpart from China, as his predecessor Lloyd Austin did last year. Beijing normally sends its defense minister to the summit but is unlikely to this year, downgrading its participation to a lower-level official.

The gap would make it a year since an American defense secretary has met in person with his Chinese counterpart, even as the two militaries continue speaking at lower levels.

“It is a signal that they are concerned about the level of engagement,” a U.S. defense official said of the Chinese choosing not to send their defense minister.

Incoming defense secretaries usually take the Shangri-La Dialogue to project the new administration’s policy toward the region, which America’s military has considered the most important in the world for the last decade. Austin visited Singapore all four of his years in office and used his speeches to discuss the value America put on working with like-minded countries.

While there, Hegseth is expected to meet with counterparts from Southeast Asia and U.S. allies, such as the Philippines, Australia and Japan.

Notably, Hegseth still lacks several top advisers on his Asia team. More than five months into the administration, there is no permanent appointee to run the Pentagon’s China office and no nominee to lead Indo-Pacific policy overall.

Hegseth previously visited Asia in March, where he affirmed the U.S. military would keep its focus on the region as some countries worried about an isolationist turn in American foreign policy.

“What the Trump administration will do … is truly prioritize and shift this region of the world in a way that is unprecedented,” Hegseth said in a March press conference in Manila.

Hegseth has pledged to “restore deterrence” to the Indo-Pacific as China continues a massive military buildup and grows more aggressive around U.S. partners in the Philippines and Taiwan.

Members of the Biden administration’s Pentagon team have bristled at the critique, arguing they did just that. The head of Indo-Pacific Command Adm. Samuel Paparo has said that the U.S. military would still win in a fight against China, but that he doesn’t like the trend lines with China’s industrial base outpacing America’s.

This year’s conference will be headlined by French President Emanuel Macron and feature a large group of European countries, also arriving at a moment of doubt in Washington’s policy toward the region.

After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration urged countries in Europe and Asia to grow more involved in each other’s security. To wit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attended the Shangri-La Dialogue last year.

Defense News reported in March that the new Pentagon team has urged Europeans to stay out of the region, though, and focus on defending their own continent alone.

“[There is] no demand signal from the U.S. for the Europeans to be involved in the Pacific,” a European official said at the time.

Noah Robertson is the Pentagon reporter at Defense News. He previously covered national security for the Christian Science Monitor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and government from the College of William & Mary in his hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia.

美国国防部长皮特·赫格塞斯将前往亚洲最大的防务会议——香格里拉对话会，并在会上就特朗普第二任期内五角大楼对该地区的政策发表讲话。

不过，赫格塞斯在新加坡期间预计不会像他的前任劳埃德·奥斯汀去年那样与中国国防部长会面。北京通常会派国防部长出席峰会，但今年不太可能，其参会级别可能降至较低级别。

如果此次会晤时间推迟，那么美国国防部长与中国国防部长将首次举行面对面会晤已经是一年前的事了，尽管两国军队仍在低级别层面进行对话。

一位美国国防官员在谈到中国​​选择不派遣国防部长时表示：“这表明他们对双方的接触程度感到担忧。”

新任国防部长通常会出席香格里拉对话，阐述新政府对该地区的政策。过去十年，美国军方一直将该地区视为全球最重要的地区。奥斯汀在任四年期间每年都访问新加坡，并在演讲中强调美国重视与志同道合的国家合作。

预计赫格塞斯此行将与东南亚国家和美国盟友（如菲律宾、澳大利亚和日本）的同行会面。

值得注意的是，赫格塞斯的亚洲团队仍然缺少几位高级顾问。本届政府执政五个多月以来，五角大楼中国办公室仍未任命常任负责人，印太政策总负责人也尚未提名。

赫格塞斯此前于 3 月访问亚洲，期间他重申，由于一些国家担心美国外交政策走向孤立主义，美国军方将继续关注该地区。

“特朗普政府将要做的……是真正地将世界这一地区置于优先地位，并以前所未有的方式改变这一地区，”赫格塞斯在3月份于马尼拉举行的新闻发布会上说。

黑格塞斯承诺要“恢复”印太地区的威慑力，因为中国正在持续大规模扩充军备，并在美国在菲律宾和台湾的盟友周围变得越来越咄咄逼人。

拜登政府五角大楼团队的成员对这种批评感到不满，并辩称他们恰恰做了那样的事。印太司令部司令塞缪尔·帕帕罗海军上将表示，美国军队在与中国的战争中仍然会获胜，但他不喜欢中国工业基础超越美国的趋势。

今年的会议将由法国总统埃马纽埃尔·马克龙领衔，并有众多欧洲国家参加，而此时正值华盛顿对该地区政策产生疑虑之际。

在俄罗斯2022年入侵乌克兰之后，拜登政府敦促欧洲和亚洲国家加强彼此安全方面的合作。例如，乌克兰总统泽连斯基去年出席了香格里拉对话。

《防务新闻》3 月份报道称，新的五角大楼团队敦促欧洲人不要介入该地区，而应专注于保卫自己的大陆。

“美国没有发出任何要求欧洲人参与太平洋事务的信号，”一位欧洲官员当时表示。

诺亚·罗伯逊是《防务新闻》的五角大楼记者。他此前曾为《基督教科学箴言报》报道国家安全新闻。他拥有弗吉尼亚州威廉斯堡威廉与玛丽学院的英语和政治学学士学位。