In President Donald Trump’s second term, the United States has called on allies and partners in Europe and Asia to hike defence expenditures to 5 per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP).
Vigorous debate on the merits of such a target has ensued, among top-ranking government officials and faceless social media commenters alike.
Those in favour point to countries embroiled in long-running tensions in their neighbourhood, such as South Korea; and cite Western countries spending close to the 5 per cent figure during the Cold War.
In the opposing camp, some note the US itself spending 3.4 per cent of GDP on defence last year, even if it was the top spender globally in absolute terms.
One particularly well-received online remark stated: “Why should someone tell you how and how much to spend for (your) defence?”
Asia was drawn into the conversation at this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue, when US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Indo-Pacific allies in particular should spend more on their defence needs to deter the likes of China and North Korea.
The Pentagon chief said China was a real and imminent threat seeking to “fundamentally alter the region’s status quo”.
He said it did not make sense for key Asian allies to spend less than European and American countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), whom he claimed were pledging to spend 5 per cent of their GDP on defence – a figure first floated by Mr Trump in January.
In the president’s first term, he said NATO members should raise their defence spending to 4 per cent of GDP.
The need to match Europe’s pace and level of defence spending was brought up again by the US Defense Department in June.
Last week, NATO agreed to more than double its defence spending benchmark from 2 per cent to 5 per cent of GDP by 2035 – with the exception of some countries like Spain.
The historic decision by the 32-member alliance comes amid a war in their backyard – the deadliest since World War II – prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
But it is a different picture in Asia despite Korean tensions, the China-Taiwan issue, friction between India and Pakistan as well as Thai-Cambodian clashes along a shared border.
And in Southeast Asia, the posture of most countries towards China is markedly different from the US’ assessment of Beijing as a threat, experts say.
BALANCING OR LEANING?
To be sure, Southeast Asian ties with China are not entirely without strain. Most prominently, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia have overlapping claims with Beijing in the South China Sea.
Issues over the vital waterway for global trade topped a list of geopolitical concerns in the region according to a study by Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute (ISEAS) think-tank.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China have long been in the process of negotiating a code of conduct to keep peace and security in the South China Sea.
The ISEAS survey, published in April, polled over 2,000 thought leaders across the region. Asked who they would side with if forced to, 52.3 per cent picked the US while 47.7 per cent chose China.
The narrow margin reflects the “delicate balancing act” ASEAN must maintain between the two superpowers, with economic dependence on China and security interests with the US, ISEAS noted in its report.
The think-tank concluded that China remains perceived as the most influential economic and political-strategic power in Southeast Asia, outpacing the US by “significant margins”.
In a Jun 24 piece for American magazine Foreign Affairs, veteran Singapore scholars Khong Yuen Foong and Joseph Chinyong Liow observed that Southeast Asia was “clearly leaning towards” Beijing.
This was based on their assessment of interactions between ASEAN countries and China and the US, though they also added that “alignment patterns are not set in stone”.
REGIONAL CONSIDERATIONS
In 2024, the defence budgets of Southeast Asian countries ranged between 0.78 per cent (Indonesia) and 4.09 per cent (Myanmar) of their respective GDP.
The US is concerned that Southeast Asian states are not contributing sufficiently to deterring or dissuading Beijing from using force to settle political disputes, said Mr Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University.
Defence spending is one measure of political will to contribute to deterring China, but in the absence of will to confront China’s aggression, the US still seeks capable allies who can independently and competently contribute to maintaining peace and stability regionally, he added.
This would require adequate spending on military procurement as well as training, to build up the capability to jointly address threats beyond individual state borders.
