US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth reassured allies in the Indo-Pacific that they will not be left alone to face increasing military and economic pressures from China.
He said Washington will bolster its defences overseas to counter what the Pentagon sees as rapidly developing threats by Beijing, particularly in its aggressive stance toward Taiwan.
China has conducted numerous exercises to test what a blockade would look like of the self-governing island, which Beijing claims as its own and the US has pledged to defend.
China's army "is rehearsing for the real deal," Hegseth said in a keynote speech at a security conference in Singapore. "We are not going to sugarcoat it — the threat China poses is real. And it could be imminent."
China has a stated goal of having its military be able to take Taiwan by force if necessary by 2027, a deadline that is seen by experts as more of an aspirational goal than a hard war deadline.
But China also has developed sophisticated man-made islands in the South China Sea to support new military outposts and built up highly advanced hypersonic and space capabilities, which are driving the US to create its own space-based "Golden Dome" missile defences.
Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue, a global security conference hosted by the International Institute for Security Studies, Hegseth said China is no longer just building up its military forces to take Taiwan, it's "actively training for it, every day".
Hegseth also called out China for its ambitions in Latin America, particularly its efforts to increase its influence over the Panama Canal.
He repeated a pledge made by previous administrations to bolster US military capabilities in the region to provide a more robust deterrent. While both the Obama and Biden administrations had also committed to pivoting to the Pacific — and even established new military agreements throughout the region — a full shift has never been realised.
Instead, US military resources from the Indo-Pacific have been regularly pulled to support military needs in the Middle East and Europe, especially since the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. In the first few months of President Donald Trump’s second term, that’s also been the case.
In the last few months the Trump administration has taken a Patriot missile defence battalion out of the Indo-Pacific in order to send it to the Middle East – a massive logistical operation that required more than 73 military cargo aircraft flights – and removed Coast Guard ships to return them to the US to help defend the US-Mexico border.
Hegseth was asked why the US pulled those resources if the Indo-Pacific is the priority theatre for the US. He did not directly answer but said the shift of resources was necessary to defend against Houthi missile attacks launched from Yemen, and to bolster protections against illegal immigration into the US.
The Indo-Pacific nations caught in between have tried to balance relations with both the US and China over the years. Beijing is the primary trading partner for many, but is also feared as a regional bully, in part due to its increasingly aggressive claims on natural resources such as critical fisheries.
Hegseth cautioned that playing both sides, seeking US military support and Chinese economic support, carries risk.
