Donald Trump wants America’s Asian allies to spend more on their own defense, much more. The problem, analysts warn, is that the demand may push those same allies closer to China.
At the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in May, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered the message bluntly, stating that the era of the United States subsidizing the defense of wealthy nations is over. He set a target of 3.5 percent of GDP for defense spending. Behind the scenes, some reports suggest Washington’s real floor is closer to 5 percent.
The numbers tell the gap. Singapore currently spends 2.8 percent of GDP on defense. South Korea 2.6 percent. Taiwan 2.1 percent. Australia 1.9 percent. Japan 1.4 percent. The Philippines 1.3 percent. Poorer Southeast Asian states spend even less. Closing those gaps to 3.5 percent, let alone 5 percent, would require budget increases on a scale most of these economies cannot manage, especially with the fiscal shock of the 2026 Iran war still reverberating.
But the problem is not just about money.
At the Shangri-La Dialogue, Vietnamese President To Lam, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, and Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi all pushed back against Hegseth. Their argument: the region’s problem is a shortage of trust in Washington’s commitments, not a shortage of hardware.
They have reason to question American reliability. Trump has taken a strikingly soft line toward Beijing, holding off on arms sales to Taiwan, downplaying China’s military buildup, and declining to mention Taiwan at all in his Shangri-La remarks. Hegseth told the forum there was rightful alarm about China’s military expansion but added that the US respected their ambitions.
This combination, demanding more from allies while signaling less commitment to their security, is creating exactly the opening China has long sought.
Asian governments conduct enormous volumes of trade with China. They cannot afford to be seen as part of an anti-Beijing coalition, especially when Washington’s posture looks transactional. If allies buy more weapons, the main beneficiaries may not be US defense contractors but local arms makers, who are better positioned to meet their own countries’ needs at lower political cost.
The Council on Foreign Relations warns that the US approach risks deepening Asian instability. A regional defense buildup on a scale unseen since the Cold War could trigger an arms race that China would simply match. The CFR’s Joshua Kurlantzick notes that without clear US leadership, the dynamic could produce the kind of miscalculation between powers that led to World War I.
The most dangerous outcome would be a nuclear one. If Japan or South Korea concludes that the American security guarantee is hollow, the pressure to develop their own nuclear deterrents would become almost impossible to resist. No one knows how China or North Korea would respond to that.
Trump’s demand for burden-sharing is not unreasonable on its face. Rich allies should pay more. But the way Washington is making the demand, in a tone that sounds like an ultimatum while simultaneously softening toward Beijing, is producing the opposite of the intended effect. Instead of strengthening the alliance network, it is eroding it.