RELATED STORY:North Korea’s actions may provide impetus for Asian unity against common threat

SINGAPORE – Secretary of Defense Robert Gates brought a message of building multilateral unity, widening strategic cooperation and increasing military capacity to a conference of Asian defense ministers in Singapore on Saturday, delivering a speech long on assurances but brief on the topic on everyone’s minds: North Korea.

That country, he said, was "on a reckless and ultimately self-destructive quest for nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles."

And while President Obama’s administration has offered diplomacy to America’s enemies, the secretary said of his commander-in-chief: "He is hopeful, but not naive."

"North Korea’s latest reply to our overtures isn’t exactly something we would characterize as helpful or constructive. We will not stand idly by as North Korea builds the capability to wreak destruction on any target in the region – or on us,” said Gates.

“At the end of the day, the choice to continue as a destitute, international pariah, or chart a new course, is North Korea’s alone to make.The world is waiting."

Lending weight to that message, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dispatched Deputy Secretary James B. Steinberg to join the U.S. delegation here before continuing to Tokyo, Beijing and Moscow for bilateral talks focused on North Korea.

On Friday, Gates told reporters traveling with him that the Obama administration did not consider the tests a “crisis” and said the U.S. had no intention of a military response. Instead, he called for tougher targeted U.N. sanctions against the Pyongyang government.

But in his speech to the Shangri-La Dialogue on Saturday, Gates’ comments on North Korea came six pages into a seven-page transcript, reflecting an intention to stifle heated commentary about the actual threat and take control of the message on greater Asian security.

The speech was his first to the annual event as a member of the Obama administration, and in it Gates called for reformulating outdated security relationships among Pacific countries still relying on Cold War-era bilateral agreements.

Additionally, Gates, who worked under several presidents in the Central Intelligence Agency and on the National Security Council before succeeding DonaldRumsfeld as secretary of defense,closed his remarks with an apologetic tone for his Asian counterparts saying that he recognized the U.S. had committed wrongs in its pursuit of the greater good.

"Throughout more than two centuries, the United States has been a beacon of freedom.In our efforts to protect our won freedom – and that of others – we have, from time to time, made mistakes, including at times being arrogant in dealing with others.But we always correct our course. Our willingness to do so is one of our most enduring strengths.In the end we know that our own democracy’s strength ultimately depends on adhering to our nation’s values and ideals – and on the strength and independence of other democracies and partners around the world.."

The overall message was true to form for Gates, who has spent the past several months in Washington and abroad demanding a U.S. defense budget prioritized to meet current threats and requirements – Gates calls it “strategic reality” – over threats based on outdated or overwrought assumptions of enemy capabilities and intentions.

“Consider our relationships with long-standing treaty allies Japan and South Korea – cornerstones of our foreign policy.We entered into these alliances in the early years of the Cold War when both nations were impoverished and virtually destroyed,” he said. Those countries, he added, “have since become economic powerhouses with modern, well-trained and [well-] equipped armed forces.”

And so the U.S. is adjusting, by transitioning “wartime operational control” back to the South Korean government in 2012, which he said would be “a historic moment when the Republic of Korea will take the lead role in its defense.”

At the same time, while the U.S. is increasing its military presence in the region, Gates called for a new "security architecture" around powers such as China, Russia and Indonesia, but one that includes nonmilitary components.

The U.S., he explained, has engaged for a several years in helping shift Asian militaries away from conventional forces and toward, he said, “a rebalanced mix of the so-called "hard" and "soft" elements of national power – where military, diplomatic, economic, cultural, and humanitarian elements are integrated seamlessly.”

Gates said he was “heartened” by international responses to piracy off the coast of Africa, maritime security and transit routes through Asian waters, and transnational issues including environmental degradation, climate change, drug trafficking, infectious diseases and cybersecurity.

On Friday, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told the conference that Singapore’s decisions in the last century to be a multilateral player were reason for its current economic and security successes.

Rudd then renewed his own call for a single Asian security organization.

“The center of global geostrategic and geo-economic gravity is shifting to our region,” Rudd said, according to a transcript.

“We need mechanisms that help us cope with strategic shocks and discontinuities. We need a body that brings together the leaders of the key nations in the Asia-Pacific region – including Indonesia, India, China, Japan, the United States and other nations – with a mandate to engage across the breadth of the security, economic and political challenges we will face in the future.

“Absent such a body, I am concerned in the long term about the possibility of strategic drift within our region – or even worse strategic polarization; polarization which I believe serves nobody’s interests,” Rudd said.

China, notably, has not sent a minister-level representative to the Shangri-La Dialogue, but Gates will meet with their senior official, a lieutenant general.

“It is essential for the United States and China to find opportunities to cooperate wherever possible,”Gates said.