BANGKOK ¨C At the recent Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pressed America¡¯s Asian allies to spend 3.5% of their gross domestic product on defense, fueling anxiety across the region and beyond. His brow-beating call to arms may well bring about a regional defense build-up on a scale unseen since the Cold War¡¯s end.
Such an outcome will actually do little to bolster regional security or address U.S. defense concerns. For one thing, China may very well respond in kind, thus delivering limited to no benefits from the increased spending.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the 11-member bloc south of China and east of India, has been a mostly peaceful region since the brief 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War. Notwithstanding ASEAN¡¯s shortcomings and internal divisions ¡ª the group comprises democracies like Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore, autocracies like Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, as well as military juntas like Myanmar ¡ª it has long been the only entity with enough credibility to oversee regional security.
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