News analysis Why US' call for Asia to spend more on defence falls flat

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth's rousing call in Singapore recently for Indo-Pacific countries to ramp up their defence spending and, if one reads his lips correctly, buy more American weapons, is likely to fall on deaf ears across much of Asia.

- Walter Sim

While US allies such as Japan and Australia are natural candidates to heed the call, they have been coy so far in their responses, emphasising instead that defence spending decisions should be based on their own needs assessment.

Most South-east Asia countries are unlikely to be spooked into action by Mr Hegseth's assertion on May 31 at the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum that a security threat from "Communist China" is imminent.

This is not least because their spending priority continues to be butter, not guns.

The US is by far the largest global supplier of arms, exporting almost as much as the next eight largest exporters combined.

Data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute shows that its share of total global arms exports was 43 per cent in the period from 2020 to 2024, up from 35 per cent in the previous five years. This rise was largely fuelled by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which resulted in a spike in US sales or transfers of arms to Ukraine and other European countries.

The US' largest customer in the Asia-Pacific region is Japan. Tokyo relies on the US, its sole security ally, for 97 per cent of its arms imports, such as F-15 and F-35 fighter jets and Tomahawk guided cruise missiles.

A close second-largest buyer of US arms in the Indo-Pacific is Australia, which buys 87 per cent of its arms from the US, including a deal to purchase nuclear-powered submarines.

Although Taiwan is similarly reliant on the US for arms, with 98 per cent of its arms imports coming from the US, its absolute volume of arms imports is only about one-sixth of Japan's and Australia's. Self-ruled Taiwan's primary security threat stems from China's refusal to rule out the use of force to bring the island under its control.