Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks with his Japanese counterpart, Gen Nakatani, at the Ministry of Defense in Tokyo on March 30, 2025. (Madelyn Keech/U.S. Air Force)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will attend the annual Shangri-La Dialogue this week in Singapore, where he is scheduled to deliver a speech and meet with defense leaders from across Southeast Asia, the Pentagon announced Tuesday.
The three-day security summit, beginning Friday at the Shangri-La Hotel, will host more than 550 delegates from 40 countries. It is considered the region’s premier platform for defense diplomacy.
Hegseth is slated to speak Saturday morning, when he is expected to emphasize the theme of “peace through strength” — a central message of his March trip to the Indo-Pacific, his first as defense secretary.
In recent years, defense officials from the United States and China have used the Shangri-La Dialogue to lay out competing visions of a security order in the Indo-Pacific.
However, Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun has not been confirmed as attending this year’s gathering.
Last year, he and then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin wrangled over Beijing’s large-scale military maneuvers around Taiwan and its aggressive patrolling in the South China Sea.
Jun characterized Washington as an outsider poking its nose into the affairs of Pacific nations, while the U.S. and its allies pushed back on what they described as Chinese coercion.
In last year’s keynote address, Philippine President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. slammed China for “illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive actions” that violated his country’s sovereignty.
French President Emmanuel Macron will deliver this year’s keynote speech Friday evening, according to the summit agenda. France has longstanding ties to the Indo-Pacific through overseas territories such as New Caledonia, French Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna, and regularly conducts military exercises in the region with U.S., Japanese, South Korean and Australian forces.
On Saturday afternoon, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim will give a special address.
Hegseth will hold bilateral meetings with newly appointed Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong and other senior leaders, the Pentagon said in a news release. He is also expected to participate in several multinational meetings with defense officials from key regional partners.
During his spring trip to Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines and Japan, Hegseth sought to reassure allies and partner nations in the region that the U.S. will continue to play a leading role in the region — despite the president’s go-it-alone precept.
“President Donald Trump has made it clear that we will achieve peace through strength, through an America First approach,” Hegseth said in a March 25 speech in Honolulu.
“But America First does not mean America only or America alone, ignoring allies and partners,” he said. “It means that our military-to-military relationships must make sense for the United States and for our friends.”
In that same speech, however, Hegseth hinted at the administration’s intent to “right-size the obligations and responsibilities needed for modern deterrence and defense” in the Pacific.
“Where there are imbalances, we will fix them,” he said.
