For years, the main stage at the Shangri-La Dialogue (SLD) has given US defense secretaries an annual opportunity to describe US strategy in the Indo-Pacific, highlight important initiatives with allies and partners, and call out emerging challenges to regional stability—and all before an audience of senior defense and military officials convened by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore.

This Saturday’s speech by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth—his first appearance at the SLD since being confirmed—will be unusually important for two primary reasons.

First, Hegseth’s remarks will likely survey the Department of Defense’s latest, most comprehensive public laydown of US defense priorities in the region, and for the first time since the second Trump administration took office.

In March, the Washington Post claimed that the secretary has issued interim strategic guidance for the Pentagon. While that document reportedly discussed US defense priorities in the Indo-Pacific, an unclassified version has not been released publicly. That same month, Hegseth traveled to the Indo-Pacific for the first time as secretary of defense, but his public remarks primarily affirmed the US alliance with each host country. Finally, earlier this month, the Pentagon announced that Hegseth has directed the development of a new National Defense Strategy that, among other priorities, should emphasize “deterring China in the Indo-Pacific” and “increasing burden-sharing with allies and partners around the world.” However, Hegseth established August 31 as the department’s deadline for providing him with a final draft.

As a result, Hegseth’s remarks should give observers their clearest window yet into how the Pentagon under his leadership is thinking about the Indo-Pacific.

More importantly, Hegseth’s plenary speech in Singapore will also probably clock in as the longest public pronouncement so far by any cabinet official in the second Trump administration about US objectives in the Indo-Pacific.

By the time Hegseth’s predecessor, Secretary Lloyd Austin, visited Singapore in July 2021 to deliver the Fullerton Lecture (the 2021 SLD was cancelled due to concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic), the Biden-Harris administration had already released its Interim National Security Strategic Guidance document, which provided a basic outline of its approach to the Indo-Pacific. Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken had each traveled to the region once before. So far this year, Hegseth has traveled to the Indo-Pacific, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio has not (although both leaders have each met and spoken by phone with several regional counterparts).

Therefore, Hegseth’s audience in Singapore may not only be looking for insights into the Pentagon’s approach to the region; they might also draw wider conclusions about the second Trump administration’s Indo-Pacific priorities from his remarks.

What to Watch For

There are three overlapping lenses that Indo-Pacific watchers can use to anticipate what Hegseth might say from the plenary stage at the dialogue: (1) an emphasis on major themes in the speech, (2) a focus on more specific details, and (3) how Hegseth’s remarks interact with the atmospherics at this year’s SLD.

Setting a Frame

The first important lens for evaluating Hegseth’s remarks focuses on key themes he may include. Traditionally, a US defense secretary’s plenary remarks at the dialogue include more than just a laundry list of pointillist policies and initiatives; they also feature more sweeping rhetoric about the US government’s strategic thinking and priorities in the Indo-Pacific. These themes can cover several areas, including how the United States views threats to regional security, how the US government situates the region in the context of its broader foreign policy goals, how the Pentagon views cooperation with Indo-Pacific allies and partners as part of its regional approach, and the role of shared interests and values in those alliances and partnerships.

In his plenary remarks at the 2024 dialogue, Austin introduced a new theme intended to describe the region’s unfolding response to mounting security threats, to celebrate the Biden administration’s achievements with Indo-Pacific partners, and to foreshadow future opportunities to strengthen regional security—the theme of a “new convergence”:

Likeminded countries across this region have deepened our ties—and delivered real-world results for the people of the Indo-Pacific. In fact, our achievements together over the past three years reveal something even more fundamental about this region’s future. Today, we are witnessing a new convergence around nearly all aspects of security in the Indo-Pacific. And this new convergence is producing a stronger, more resilient, and more capable network of partnerships. . . . [I]n the past, our experts would talk about a “hub-and-spokes” model for Indo-Pacific security. Today we’re seeing something quite different. This new convergence is not a single alliance or coalition, but instead something unique to the Indo-Pacific—a set of overlapping and complementary initiatives and institutions, propelled by a shared vision and a shared sense of mutual obligation.

Hegseth should not be expected to embrace the exact phrase used by his Biden-era predecessor. However, his remarks in Singapore still provide an opportunity to share the second Trump administration’s perspective on deepening ties among America’s Indo-Pacific allies and partners, as well as what future measures to strengthen those ties could look like.

When he has addressed this topic in the past, Hegseth has connected the importance of regional security networking to the Trump administration’s consistent emphasis on greater burden-sharing by US allies and partners. Speaking alongside his Philippine counterpart in March, he told reporters that “we’ll encourage our other partners and allies in the region to step up their efforts and their cooperation to increase defense capabilities and strengthen deterrence.” On a bipartisan basis, many national security experts point to the Biden administration’s work to advance multilateral security ties in the region—especially with Japan and South Korea, with Australia and the United Kingdom, with the Indo-Pacific Quad, and with Australia, Japan, and the Philippines—as one of its most important foreign policy achievements. But as Ely Ratner argued this week in Foreign Affairs, “In the face of continued Chinese military modernization, true deterrence requires the will and capability that only a collective defense arrangement can deliver.” When he speaks in Singapore this weekend, therefore, Hegseth can not only underscore the US government’s continued commitment to supporting closer ties among its regional partners; he could also reveal how the new administration is thinking about what comes next.

Because the second Trump administration’s public statements about its priorities in the Indo-Pacific have been sparse to date, Hegseth’s speech in Singapore could break new ground across a range of other strategic themes. First, he could describe at greater length how the US government currently views the scale and scope of the China challenge. Second, as other actors like Russia and North Korea also menace the regional order, Hegseth can discuss whether the administration sees these states as parts of the so-called Axis of Upheaval or as separate security challenges that should primarily be addressed as such. Third, Hegseth can expound upon his claim in the Philippines this March that the second Trump administration will “truly prioritize” the Indo-Pacific region, especially against the backdrop of continued conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East. Fourth, because President Emmanuel Macron of France is slated to deliver the dialogue’s keynote address, Hegseth can use his own speech to talk about whether the US government still seeks stronger military ties between European and Indo-Pacific partners. Finally, Hegseth can emphasize the leading role of America’s Indo-Pacific allies in strengthening regional security—or he can double down on his statement in Japan this March that “peace through strength with America in the lead is back.”

Making a List

While most regional observers will look for key strategic themes in Hegseth’s plenary remarks at the dialogue, many defense officials and experts will also bring a second, more detailed lens to his speech.

For example, the SLD plenary speech is every American defense secretary’s most significant annual opportunity to publicly highlight the importance of US-Singapore defense cooperation, which saw significant advances under the Biden administration. As a result, Hegseth could deliver a strong message of support from the US government for its partnership with the dialogue’s Singaporean hosts. More broadly, Southeast Asian states—after initially experiencing the brunt of President Trump’s April tariff announcements—will be looking for Hegseth to affirm the centrality of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in the Indo-Pacific’s security architecture. On a related note, against the backdrop of ongoing coercive activity by Beijing in the South China Sea, Hegseth may also discuss the Pentagon’s ongoing work to support regional partners’ maritime domain awareness and resilience in the face of China’s gray-zone pressure.

Hegseth could also use his plenary remarks to continue highlighting initiatives he touted during his first trip to the Indo-Pacific region. When he visited Japan in March, Hegseth announced that the Pentagon had begun “phase one” of upgrading US Forces Japan to a joint force headquarters, an important line of effort that the Biden administration painstakingly advanced throughout 2024. Then in Manila, Hegseth discussed ongoing US efforts to deliver historic foreign military financing to the Philippine military, as well as the deployment of “additional advanced capabilities to the Philippines.” In his speech at the dialogue, Hegseth may provide updates on these and other specific US initiatives with regional allies and partners.

Reading the Room

Hegseth’s remarks in Singapore will also be interpreted in light of speeches by other officials at the dialogue, meetings on the margins of the event, and other regional headlines. As with the Munich Security Conference, the SLD takes on a unique context each year, and Hegseth’s speech can be expected to both shape and respond to that context.

In particular, many observers will contrast Hegseth’s remarks with those made by the leader of the official Chinese delegation—an increasingly prominent trend in media coverage of the dialogue. Over the last three years, China’s minister of national defense has attended the SLD, though each year has seen a different minister due to high turnover in the role. This year will see more of the same unpredictability from the Chinese side, as the Financial Times reported last week that Admiral Dong Jun will not attend.

In recent years, plenary speakers from Beijing have directed harsh rhetoric toward the United States and its allies and partners in the region. Last year, Reuters described Dong’s remarks as “acerbic” after he claimed that members of Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party “will be nailed to the pillar of shame in history.” In 2023, Dong’s predecessor, General Li Shangfu, ominously invoked “a well-known Chinese song,” saying, “When friends visit us, we welcome them with fine wine. When jackals or wolves come, we will face them with shotguns.”

For this reason, Hegseth may use his speech (currently scheduled before the plenary remarks by Beijing’s representative) to anticipate and rebut longstanding Chinese critiques of US activities with regional allies and partners—or even to call out coercive Chinese military activity in the Indo-Pacific. In 2024, for example, Austin took a thinly veiled swipe at the Chinese military for claiming that its drills around Taiwan were a form of “punishment.”

The US and Chinese remarks will also be closely scrutinized for any references to the state of military-to-military communication between Washington and Beijing, especially if representatives from the two sides meet on the margins of the dialogue. To date, the Pentagon has not publicly announced any conversations between Hegseth and any senior Chinese defense officials since the US defense secretary took office.

In recent years, the SLD has also provided a venue for the US secretary of defense and China’s minister of national defense to speak to each other, not just about each other. The fact that Dong and Hegseth will not have a chance to meet in Singapore within Hegseth’s first several months as defense secretary is not unprecedented, but it still marks a missed opportunity for important high-level communication between both countries’ defense establishments. In June 2022, more than one year into his time as secretary of defense, Austin met face-to-face for the first time with General Wei Fenghe on the margins of the dialogue, and the two leaders preceded their first in-person meeting with a phone call in April 2022.

Additionally, weeks after the Financial Times reported that General He Weidong, a vice chair of the Central Military Commission, has been removed from office, Dong’s failure to appear in Singapore will send the region a negative signal about the Chinese military’s willingness and ability to engage with Indo-Pacific counterparts at senior levels. Regardless of who leads China’s delegation, however, Hegseth’s plenary remarks could shed new light on the US military’s latest thinking about its ability to communicate with the Chinese military to avoid potential miscalculation, as well as underscore the importance of consistent, reliable channels of communication at every level, especially the senior-most levels.

Interactions between US and Chinese officials tend to draw the greatest attention from members of the press covering the dialogue, but recent years have also seen the US defense secretary sit down with other regional counterparts in a range of bilateral, trilateral, and multilateral settings. If, for example, Hegseth meets together with the defense ministers from Japan and South Korea, or from Australia and Japan, or from Southeast Asian states, his plenary remarks could either preview or unveil significant announcements from those meetings. Finally, if a robust bipartisan delegation from Congress attends the dialogue, Hegseth could meet in Singapore with American lawmakers and use his plenary remarks to underscore the depth of America’s commitment to the Indo-Pacific.

Conclusion

In the end, there are several useful lenses for interpreting Hegseth’s first plenary remarks at the Shangri-La Dialogue—and rightfully so, because this year’s speech will be unusually important. Of greater importance than the words on the teleprompter, however, will be whether the new administration can ultimately deliver on its stated commitments to allies and partners across the region. Hegseth’s speech in Singapore will matter most when it can reveal the most in this regard. 

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

Image Credit: US Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Julian Elliott-Drouin