Trans-Pacific View | Security | Southeast Asia

US Official Reassures Asia of Commitment, Calls for Greater Burden Sharing

Undersecretary of War Elbridge Colby told an audience in Manila that U.S. interests are “more engaged than ever in the Indo-Pacific.”

U.S. Under Secretary of War Elbridge Colby speaks at the Ananta Centre in New Delhi, India, Mar. 24, 2026.

The United States remains strongly committed to Asia but wants its partners to bear more of the burden for their own defense, a senior Pentagon official said in the Philippines yesterday.

Seeking to counter concerns about Washington’s reliability, given the capricious character of U.S. foreign policy under the second Trump administration, Undersecretary of War Elbridge Colby said that U.S. interests were “more engaged than ever in the Indo-Pacific.”

“America is definitely not disengaging from Asia,” Colby said in a speech in Manila. “We are not leaving; in fact, we are digging in to ensure a favorable balance of power where it matters most.”

Colby made the remarks at a forum in the Philippines, his first stop on a Southeast Asian tour that will also take him and Assistant Secretary of War John Noh to Indonesia, Thailand, and Cambodia. In a statement, the Department of War said that trip, which will involve meetings with senior officials in each country, “reaffirms the Department’s commitment to build a durable peace in the region through strength.”

During the trip, Colby said in his Manila speech, he intended to “deliver a clear message that is at once both realistic and perhaps bracing but also reassuring: That America’s interests are more engaged than ever in the Indo-Pacific, and that we at the Department of War are concentrated on ensuring those interests are stoutly defended.”

Colby said maintaining a favorable balance of power in the Indo-Pacific required a “posture of deterrence by denial along the First Island Chain,” the barrier of islands that stretches from Japan down to Taiwan, the Philippines, and the northern coast of Borneo.

He pointed to what he said was a growing U.S. military commitment in the region, which has involved the deployment of additional troops, ships, aircraft, and missile systems throughout the First Island Chain. Colby described this as “a formidable, resource-backed posture calibrated to actual structural realities,” contrasting it with the “hollow, merely symbolic engagement of previous decades.”

However, he said that Washington could not manage this itself, and that local partners would need to shoulder more of the burden for their defense.

“When we ask our allies and partners to step up, to invest more in their own defense, and to take responsibility for their own sovereign security, we are not signaling abandonment,” Colby said.

He added, “We are looking for partners, not........

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