Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Southeast Asia Brief.

It’s been a very busy week in the region. We’re covering the highlights from the Shangri-La Dialogue, Myanmar junta leader Min Aung Hlaing’s first overseas trip, and the arrest of a Philippines senator (not the one you’re thinking of).

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Southeast Asia Brief.

It’s been a very busy week in the region. We’re covering the highlights from the Shangri-La Dialogue, Myanmar junta leader Min Aung Hlaing’s first overseas trip, and the arrest of a Philippines senator (not the one you’re thinking of).

Hegseth’s Praise of Asia Falls Flat

It’s always interesting when a compliment misses the mark. At last week’s Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s attempted flattery of Asia prompted snorts in sections of the audience, the Straits Times reported.

“Our partners in Asia have long understood that the bedrock of a durable partnership is not based on idealistic values, but on the concrete alignment of national interests,” Hegseth declared at the massive international security establishment gathering. “When our interests align, we act together with focused resolve. When our interests diverge, we adjust pragmatically without the drama or the moralizing. I think Western Europe might take note.”

Alongside the European Union, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a bastion of believers in endless multilateral summitry and international law.

Hegseth saying, “We don’t need more conferences. We need more combat power,” is not reassuring for the region’s many small- and medium-sized states.

Shangri-La’s keynote speech by Vietnamese President To Lam (see next section) stood in near-direct contradiction to Hegseth’s. The latter’s contention was also dubious.

The U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, which Hegseth boasted about at the start of his speech, prompted near-universal condemnation and invocations of international law across Southeast Asia. The U.S. strikes on Iran also sparked public consternation, which has only grown as the war takes a cruel toll on local economies.

Meanwhile, key European NATO allies were often much more equivocal about U.S. actions in Venezuela and Iran.

Hegseth singling out various countries as good allies and partners (the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam) also likely discomfited, rather than reassured, many.

His definition of a good partner entails moving toward spending 3.5 percent of GDP on defense and/or doing more on regional security. Spending 3.5 percent is a high bar that few will want to meet, except maybe Singapore. And in a region where great-power interference is viewed warily, few will be keen on a deeper entanglement with U.S. security. (Note the trepidation that greeted Indonesia’s proposed concessions to the United States on airspace overflight........

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