US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered the keynote address at the 2026 Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Saturday, warning against any power seeking to impose “hegemony” on Asia and demanding that allies spend at least 3.5 percent of GDP on defence. According to Channel NewsAsia, Hegseth praised South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand, while calling on Japan to “pull its weight” in the US-Japan alliance. He touted a US$1.5 trillion defence budget request and reaffirmed that “no freeloading” would be tolerated from wealthy partners. Notably absent from his remarks: any mention of Taiwan. The omission was stark given that his 2025 address had included explicit warnings against a Chinese invasion. China’s defence minister declined to attend the summit for the second consecutive year.
The received wisdom
Defenders of the administration’s approach argue that the Taiwan omission is tactical rather than strategic, a deliberate de-escalatory gesture following President Trump’s May state visit to Beijing that produced an agreement on what both sides called a “constructive relationship of regional stability.” On this reading, Hegseth was calibrating his tone to preserve the diplomatic opening while maintaining the substance of US commitment. The $1.5 trillion defence budget, the emphasis on the “first island chain,” and the explicit rejection of Chinese hegemony all signal that Washington has not abandoned its core Indo-Pacific posture. Retired PLA Colonel Zhou Bo, now a senior fellow at Tsinghua, told reporters that Hegseth had struck “a much better tone” than in 2025. Even American critics of the Trump foreign policy concede that keeping military-to-military communication channels open with Beijing is more prudent than the freeze that preceded several near-incidents in recent years.
A different read
The problem with the tactical-silence explanation is that it requires Taiwan — a self-governing democracy of 23 million people whose security has rested on studied ambiguity and reliable arms transfers — to absorb the costs of American diplomatic manoeuvring without any corresponding assurance.
Hegseth’s silence on Taiwan came paired with an admission that a pending US$14 billion arms sale to Taipei remains frozen, with any decision deferred entirely to the president “depending on the nature of that relationship” — meaning the US-China relationship, not the US-Taiwan one. That formula, however diplomatically convenient, breaks from the framework that has governed US Taiwan policy since Ronald Reagan’s Six Assurances of 1982, which explicitly stated that Washington would not consult Beijing about arms sales to Taipei or set conditions on them. The assurances were not a treaty, but they were a durable norm whose erosion matters.
The deeper historical parallel is the pre-1950 pattern of strategic ambiguity hardening into perceived abandonment. In January 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson delivered a speech outlining America’s Pacific “defensive perimeter” that appeared to exclude South Korea. Whether Acheson intended to invite a North Korean invasion is still debated; what is beyond dispute is that ambiguity, once perceived as indifference, invites miscalculation. The question for Xi Jinping’s strategists is whether Hegseth’s silence signals the beginning of a retrenchment or merely a rhetorical adjustment. If Beijing concludes the former, the deterrent logic of the first island chain begins to fray regardless of what the defence budget appropriates.
Hegseth’s burden-sharing demands are entirely legitimate in themselves. The era of wealthy Asian allies free-riding on US security provision is genuinely unsustainable, and Japan’s defence spending has historically lagged far behind the threat environment it faces. But burden-sharing and deterrence credibility are separable questions. You can demand that allies spend more while still being explicit about what America will and will not defend. Collapsing the two — treating Taiwan silence as part of the same package as defence-spending pressure — confuses the audience the deterrent message needs to reach, which is Beijing, not Tokyo or Canberra.
There is also a specific asymmetry worth noting: China’s defence minister chose, for the second year running, to boycott Shangri-La. The US secretary of defence showed up, spoke at length, and said nothing about Taiwan. If you are the PLA’s planning directorate, that differential is not nothing.
What to watch
- The $14 billion Taiwan arms package: Whether it moves before or after the June 21 Colombian runoff is less important than whether it moves at all this year. Further delay calcifies the precedent.
- Japan’s defence budget response: Tokyo has been moving toward 2 percent of GDP under the Kishida-era buildup; the Hegseth demand of 3.5 percent creates domestic political complications that the LDP has not resolved.
- Hegseth’s anticipated Beijing visit: If a visit to China materialises in the next quarter, the Taiwan question will need to be addressed explicitly — or the silence will have become official policy by default.
- Taiwan’s own defence posture: Taipei has accelerated indigenous defence production; how quickly it can reduce its reliance on US platform sales as leverage may determine its ability to survive strategic ambiguity without strategic abandonment.
— J