Hegseth Says US Ready to Share Tools to Help Allies Counter ‘Aggressive’ China
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth on Saturday took aim at Beijing over an increase in “destabilizing actions” in the South China Sea and committed to support Southeast Asian countries with technology to help them respond jointly to Chinese threats.
On a second day in Kuala Lumpur packed with meetings that included multilateral talks with allies Australia, Japan and the Philippines, Hegseth proposed to ASEAN defense ministers the building of shared maritime domain awareness and said China had shown a lack of respect and threatened their territorial sovereignty.
“You live it on the threats we all face from China’s aggression and course of actions in the South China Sea and elsewhere,” he said.
“We need to develop our joint capabilities to respond, and this includes being able to monitor maritime conduct and develop the tools that allow us to respond quickly … ensuring that whoever is on the receiving end of aggression and provocation is then, therefore, by definition, not alone.”
“No one can innovate and scale like the United States of America, and we’re eager to share those capabilities with allies and partners,” Hegseth added.
Hegseth’s remarks came a day after the armed forces of Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines and the US held a drill in the South China Sea, a patrol that a Chinese military spokesperson said “seriously undermined peace and stability”.
Beijing claims sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea via a line on its maps that overlaps with parts of the exclusive economic zones of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.
China has deployed an armada of coast guard vessels hundreds of kilometers off its mainland that has repeatedly clashed with vessels of the Philippines and been accused of disrupting energy activities of Malaysia and Vietnam.
