In Pete Hegseth’s words, the Trump administration would end what he called ‘four years of deferred maintenance under the Biden administration’ that led to the world seeing, ‘unfortunately, a feckless and weak America.’
The Annual Threat Assessment 2025 of the U.S. Intelligence Community contends that “Russia, China, Iran and North Korea—individually and collectively—are challenging U.S. interests in the world by attacking or threatening others in their regions, with both asymmetric and conventional hard power tactics, and promoting alternative systems to compete with the United States, primarily in trade, finance, and security.”
So, the threats and adversaries remain the same, those that the Biden administration intended to confront with “integrated deterrence.” Last August, in the last leg of the Biden presidency, his top foreign policy and national security team writing a joint op-ed in the Washington Post lauded Biden’s Indo-Pacific legacy for making America’s future more secure, while upgrading the “hub and spoke” model to an “integrated, interconnected network of partnerships”.
The advent of Trump’s second innings at the White House has introduced another catchphrase in U.S. strategic dictionary “re-establishing deterrence”, that aims to bring “peace through strength” in a world passing through one of its more profound phases of rapid geopolitical, geo-economic and technological transitions.
The serving U.S. Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth garnered global attention, speaking at the recently concluded 22nd edition of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, a primary platform for IndoPacific affairs where the top military leaders and defence ministers of the leading Indo-Pacific powers congregate.
In Hegseth’s words, the Trump administration would end what he called “four years of deferred maintenance under the Biden administration” that led to the world seeing, “unfortunately, a feckless and weak America.” Secretary Hegseth, managed to strike a conciliatory and reassuring tone to allies and partners of the Indo-Pacific, but at the same time made it crystal clear that U.S. defence strategy in the coming days, would unabashedly wear an “economic” lens, and be categorical in asking allies and partners to increase their defence share in regional security, irrespective of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies or America’s Asian allies and partners.
“We’re pushing our allies in Europe to own more of their own security—to invest in their defence, things that are long overdue,” Hegseth said. Aiming at Indo-Pacific stakeholders, he commented, “…it doesn’t make sense for countries in Europe to do that while key allies in Asia spend less on defence in the face of an even more formidable threat, not to mention North Korea.”
The economic framing of America’s security expectations and obligations is quite profoundly prominent in the Trump second administration, most clearly reflected in Washington’s almost constant call, often with a metaphorical megaphone, for allies and partners to pick up the slake and become more aggressive in burden sharing their own regional security priorities.
“Our defence spending must reflect the dangers and threats that we face today. Because deterrence doesn’t come on the cheap, just ask the American taxpayer,” Hegseth told the audience in Singapore.
History of the new great power competition between the U.S. and China has just about started, and is unlike anything that the U.S. has encountered in contemporary geopolitics. The Biden era National Security Strategy (NSS) had emphasised that “the post-Cold War era is definitively over and a competition is underway between the major powers to shape what comes next.”
More than three years into the Russia-Ukraine war, and the tumultuous turns of West Asia’s volatile security landscape, the Trump administration has an uphill task of wielding American power, while shaking and stirring the post World War II security and economic architecture that has undergirded America’s alliance framework in the transatlantic and transpacific theatres.
While the threats perceived from the band of anti-Western powers across the Indo-Pacific and Eurasian space remain the same across different presidencies, who can deal them a body blow and sustain American primacy, or in Trump’s words, “Make America Great Again” remains the matter of debate. As Washington and Beijing negotiate their highstakes tit-for-tat trade war, China will continue to remain the most primary challenger to U.S. global primacy or what is called a “pacing threat” and the threshold of this new Cold War, remains extremely consequential for the shape of things to come in U.S. defence strategy.
The case of Taiwan will be central to how Beijing perceives the credibility of Trump’s intent to “re-establish deterrence” in the Indo-Pacific, given China’s strong resolve to use its comprehensive national power to tilt the balance of power in its favour in the region. “…any attempt by Communist China to conquer Taiwan by force would result in devastating consequences for the IndoPacific and the world,” Hegseth contended. China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson retorted back, “The U.S. must never play with fire,” on the Taiwan question.
The U.S., as the Defence Secretary fleshed out in Singapore, aims to “re-establish deterrence” in the Indo-Pacific region by improving “forward posture”, by “helping allies and partners strengthen their defence capabilities” and by “rebuilding defence industrial bases.” The U.S. defence spending is projected to see a 13 per cent jump in the next year in this regard, and India is being seen as an important partner in growing military-to-military interoperability plus co-developing and co-producing defence equipment.
That the U.S. cannot and does not intend to face the growing strategic challenges alone, is quite clearly expressed, with Washington claiming that “America First” does not mean “America Alone”. China’s national power, unlike that of the erstwhile Soviet Union, is much more comprehensive and complex, and its ability to coerce America’s allies and partners is evidently effective.
Moreover, unlike the old Cold War, when Washington navigated a more strictly structured ecosystem of alliances and counter-alliances, the new Cold War and the international system in the 21st century is populated with more loosely held partnerships with lesser obligations, complex hedging strategies and new shifts affecting traditional alliances in the wake of Trump’s tariff policies.
Therefore, as the Trump team and concerned agencies work on their national security and national defence strategies, the question of how best to manage the growing tendencies even among America’s staunchest allies, to practice autonomy while balancing their interests between Beijing and Washington, will be crucial.
Monish Tourangbam is a Senior Research Consultant at the Chintan Research Foundation (CRF), New Delhi.