If you wanted proof that the world has fundamentally shifted on defense policy, look no further than the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore this year. For years, the idea that countries should spend at least 3.5% of their GDP on defense was largely dismissed as American nagging. Now? It’s becoming gospel.
The summit, running from May 29 to 31, brought together top defense officials and world leaders, and the messaging was remarkably unified. Countries that once pushed back against Washington’s calls for increased military spending are now openly embracing it. Japan, the Philippines, the Netherlands, even New Zealand — all are planning significant hikes in defense allocations. Dutch deputy prime minister Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius went so far as to say the U.S. is “right” to ask for more, a remarkable shift from the pushback that defined earlier years. The invasion of Ukraine, she noted, changed the calculus for the Dutch public in a way that no diplomatic pressure ever could.
Canada’s Chief of Defence Staff General Jennie Carignan put it plainly: no country can do it alone, but you need your own capabilities to even begin collaborating effectively. That’s the new consensus —自助 then coalition.
The China Question
But underneath that unifying rhetoric on spending lies a far more fractured picture when it comes to China. For the second straight year, Beijing declined to send its defense minister. Dong Jun’s absence was conspicuous, and it didn’t go unnoticed.
U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth expressed regret that his counterpart wasn’t present, saying he looked forward to “other options” to communicate. Japan’s defense minister Shinjiro Koizumi was more blunt, saying he was “feeling sad” about the no-show and urging more dialogue. Germany’s chief of defense General Carsten Breuer warned that China was losing a valuable opportunity for engagement.
And then there was the Philippines. National defense minister Gilberto Teodoro, speaking to CNBC, was refreshingly unsentimental about China’s reduced presence. He dismissed Beijing’s delegation as being there to “promote the party line rather than engage constructively” and said it was “no major loss.”
That’s not diplomatic language. That’s a government drawing its own conclusions.
China’s lower-level delegation, led by Major General Meng Xiangqing, still pushed back hard. During his session, Meng questioned whether Asian countries would trust Japan’s remilitarization given its World War II history. Former foreign vice minister Cui Tiankai was equally firm on Taiwan, asserting that “no one cares more about stability in Taiwan Strait than we in China, because on both sides of the Taiwan Strait it’s Chinese territory.”
The Ukraine Factor
What really animated this year’s dialogue, though, wasn’t just the geopolitics of China and the spending increases. It was Ukraine. The war there has become a living laboratory for modern conflict, and countries are paying close attention.
Former Ukrainian foreign minister Pavlo Klimkin told CNBC that what’s at stake in the war is nothing less than the “whole sense of security” — whether any security architecture survives in Europe and how to rebuild it. Countries like the Philippines are actively studying Ukraine’s tactics as they ramp up their own defense spending. The Netherlands has taken the unusual step of having Ukrainian advisers work directly with their military to assess which resources are actually worth allocating.
The concept of “asymmetric warfare” has essentially reshaped global defense thinking. Smaller countries watching Ukraine hold off a larger, better-resourced aggressor see a template — and they’re building their strategies around it.
So here we are. Higher defense budgets are in. Dialogue with China, at least at the ministerial level, is out. And everyone — from Tokyo to Ottawa to Manila — is rewriting their playbooks based on lessons from a war thousands of miles away.
The question now is whether all this spending and strategic recalibration will actually prevent the conflicts everyone claims to be preparing for, or whether it’s simply laying the groundwork for more frequent confrontations.
