Donald Trump did not nominate Pete Hegseth as defence secretary for his knowledge of global affairs, but the lapse highlights two concerns for Southeast Asian countries, says RSIS’ Kevin Chen.
Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump 's choice to be defence secretary, appears before the Senate Armed Services Committee for his confirmation hearing, at the Capitol in Washington, on Jan 14, 2025. SINGAPORE: Confirmation hearings for United States political appointees are normally mundane domestic affairs - until a clip from one such hearing went viral halfway around the world in Southeast Asia.
The more serious flub was Mr Hegseth’s inability to name a single ASEAN country, even countries with whom the US has a defence alliance that commits it to offer military assistance in a conflict, such as the Philippines and Thailand. Taken together, these two unanswered questions undermine previous claims by Mr Trump’s first administration that ASEAN is the “geographical centre of the Indo-Pacific” for the US.
If observers wanted an informed picture of US foreign policy, they should have watched Senator Marco Rubio’s confirmation hearing for secretary of state instead.Even so, Mr Hegseth’s lapse has brought at least two concerns about US-ASEAN relations to the fore: That the US will increasingly prioritise bilateral ties over ASEAN ties, and that it will compartmentalise defence and economic ties in its approach to the region.
From left to right, Foreign Ministry Permanent Secretary Aung Kyaw Moe, Philippine's President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
A second concern would be how US officials are ostensibly separating defence and economic ties, which would exacerbate existing imbalances in US engagement. On one hand, US strategic documents such as the 2019 Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy highlight the important role of economic development in achieving regional stability and security.
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