Pete Hegseth’s Shangri-La Dialogue speech revealed the contradictions at the heart of Trump’s foreign policy: demanding allied military obedience while claiming to defend sovereignty, stability and freedom of choice.
Of all the chumps in the Trump Administration, Pete Hegseth, the self-styled Secretary for War, is a strong contender to be the most ridiculous and implausible.
He has no qualifications for his job and he’s probably only been saved from losing it by the reflected glory (sic) of the kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro and, much more importantly, his willingness to be the most ardent of all of Trump’s toadies. In an administration full of toadies, Hegseth croaks the loudest.
So when he recently stood at the lectern at the Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore, his hair matted in gel and bursting from a suit about one and half sizes too small for him, to minimise disappointment sensible people should have kept their expectations low. Certainly Hegseth’s speech was not the earthly paradise of Shangri-la but a mess of fake analysis, inconsistency and on-stilts hypocrisy.
The Secretary is burdened by the warped view of his leader that other countries have been bludging off US military spending. In the Pacific, he says, “security…has rested disproportionately on American military power”. He forgets his country’s military extravagance has not so much been what others have asked it to do, as what the US has wilfully taken on in pursuit of what it sees as the exceptionalism of its self-imposed “manifest destiny”. It’s fundamentally wanted to order the world in ways that best serve its national interests.
Now, while boosting its defence (or “war” if you will) expenditure to US$1.5 trillion, Hegseth parrots Trump’s “demand” that American allies lift military spending to 3.5 per cent of their GDPs. Nothing could be more gumptionless, as any country’s defence expenditure should be based on a calm assessment of its strategic risks and if and how they could be minimised by military means.
Yet while Albanese has rebuffed the 3.5 per cent buffoonery, Hegseth is charmed by Australia’s collaboration with the US for, he says, “a high end fight” with unspecified opponents. He reckons Australia will “integrate more deeply with the US joint force” – that’s code for, among other things, giving the US vast amounts of money for the AUKUS subs and putting the ADF more under US direction.
Riddled by befuddling rhetoric about an “unprecedented threat environment” and claims “the world today is unforgiving”, Hegseth wants to “unleash America’s arsenal of freedom and expand America’s military dominance for decades to come…We need more combat power…. less Shangri-la, more ships, more subs.”
At the same time Hegseth says that in the Pacific Trump wants a “genuinely stable equilibrium” in which “no state, including China, can impose its hegemony..”. How that is consistent with the wish to “expand America’s military dominance for decades to come” is anyone’s guess, hegemony and military dominance being more or less synonymous.
Hegseth’s take, expressed in lurid, aggressive and unbecoming language, is that if conflict is to be avoided military expenditure needs to be vastly increased. Well, the significant contribution of massive military expenditure made to turning the 20th century into one of the worst in human history should cause souls more prudent and perceptive than the Secretary of War to wonder about his willingness to learn from of experience. Maybe he’s not a great learner
Of course all countries will need to spend on military defence but when the amounts are calculated on the basis of proportions of GDP, the risk of conflict will be likely to increase. If countries end up with big militaries there will be a temptation to see get a return on the investment by letting them loose. As the former US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright is said to have asked General Colin Powell “What’s the point of having this superb military…if we can’t use it?”
When that happens things can quickly get out of hand as Trump has shown with his and Netanyahu’s catastrophic attack on Iran that thus far has caused world-wide wreckage and demonstrated, yet again, the grave limits of American military power to do what Hegseth wants. In Iran, his “arsenal of freedom” has been exposed while the lot of the Iranian people has been made worse, circumstances to which he gives no prominence in the wasteland of his Shangri-la oration. Hegseth’s guff about “Trump’s visionary and realistic diplomacy” only deserves a few bitter horse laughs.
The War Secretary says the US’s “focus is strong, quiet and clear”. Yet American influence in the wider world is now weaker than it’s been for a long time. Quiet? Has there been a noisier President than Trump? Clear? Trump is a master of obscurity, confusion and strategic imperception. His perpetual refrain is “we’ll see what happens”. We sure do and it’s never attractive.
Finally, Hegseth says he wants a world in “which sovereignty is respected, commerce flows freely, and nations retain the freedom to make their own choices” seemingly forgetting that Trump has trampled all over the sovereignty of other countries, including allies, impeded commerce with arbitrary tariffs and threatened an ally like Oman with bombing if it didn’t toe his line. Thus, the scum of hypocrisy rises to the surface of US foreign policy exposing itself for what it is.
Yet there may be one good thing in Hegseth’s speech. He doesn’t mention Taiwan. Could it be that Trump has realised that he would most likely lose a war with China over Taiwan and leave those still standing eating its ashes? It’s to be hoped so even if the President is likely to change his mind at the drop of a hat and for no reasons he could clarify.
But to end on a less optimistic note, virtually nothing Trump, Hegseth or the MAGA convert Marco Rubio say can be believed as the President has brought Gothic levels of mendacity, corruption, explosive egomania and stupidity to United States government. It’s getting worse and even after Trump has gone, repairs will take a long, long time. In the meantime those who climb into bed with the Trump and his acolytes can be assured of desperately unpleasant experiences as far away from Shangri-la as is imaginable.
Paddy Gourley is a superannuated Commonwealth public servant.