(SeaPRwire) –
By: Julian Holbrooke
The most overhyped narrative in Asia-Pacific security right now is strategic autonomy. Every few weeks, another capital announces a new defense spending hike, a domestic missile production line, or a regional diplomatic pact. Pundits rush to declare the slow end of U.S. hegemony in the region. They’re dead wrong. The recent Chinese submarine-launched ballistic missile test didn’t push allies away from Washington. It exposed just how little they can do without U.S. support. I spoke to a mid-ranking Australian defense official at a Sydney security roundtable last month. He put it plainly: all their new weapons won’t matter if the U.S. doesn’t show up. That’s the quiet truth no official press release will say out loud. Allies across Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific are treading more carefully than ever around Donald Trump’s White House. They’ve been labeled freeloaders, hit with steep tariffs, and even had their sovereignty questioned by outlandish presidential claims. None of that has pushed them to seek an alternative security guarantor. It’s made them double down on keeping Washington close, even as they build up their own defenses to hedge against U.S. absence. Nowhere is this dynamic starker than in the Asia-Pacific, where the stakes of a U.S. retreat are highest.
The official record paints a picture of growing allied self-reliance and unified pushback against Chinese assertiveness. On July 6, the day before the NATO summit began in Ankara, China test-fired a long-range ballistic missile from a nuclear submarine. The missile landed in the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone, and has the range to reach the continental U.S. Washington and several Asia-Pacific allies quickly criticized the test as “irresponsible.” The region’s security architecture is still formally rooted in the post-WWII hub-and-spoke system Washington built. The U.S. has alliance treaties with the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and Thailand. It has a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan, though Taiwan is not classified as a formal ally. The spokes of the hub have no formal defense obligations to one another.
Official defense spending pledges across the region paint a picture of growing military capacity. Japan has scrapped its longstanding 1% of GDP defense spending cap, in place since 1967. It is on track to hit 2% of GDP ahead of the 2027 target set by a previous government in 2022. It has purchased American missiles capable of reaching the Chinese mainland, the first such weapons it has owned since 1945. It plans to spend up to $100 billion over five years on ammunition stockpiles, maintenance, and hardening military bases across its archipelago. South Korea has vowed to raise its defense spending from 2.3% of GDP to as much as 3.6%, earning public praise from Washington as a “model ally.” It has become one of the world’s largest arms exporters, with its tanks and howitzers refilling European stocks drained by the war in Ukraine. Australia has made its largest-ever defense investment in nuclear-propelled submarines through the 2021 AUKUS partnership with the U.K. and U.S. It has pledged to raise defense spending from 2% of GDP to 3% by the mid-2030s, expand guided weapons production lines, and allow the U.S. to build a war-ready weapons store on its east coast, out of range of Chinese missiles. It will also invest in naval facilities capable of servicing allied nuclear submarines. Australia tested its first domestically built guided rockets at a test range in April. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are all setting up new production lines for missiles of their own. Japan has also stepped up its official diplomatic outreach. In recent months, it has hosted leaders from Canada, France, India, Italy, the United Kingdom, and South Korea. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has traveled to Vietnam, Australia, and other countries to promote an upgraded version of Shinzo Abe’s “free and open Indo-Pacific” strategy. The strategy emphasizes pragmatic economic security, strategic supply chains, energy resilience, and proactiveness to counter China. The Trump administration has made its own official moves clear. The Pentagon renamed the Indo-Pacific Command by dropping “Indo” from its title. The U.S. has also redeployed missile-defense interceptors from South Korea to the Middle East amid the Iran war.
Beneath all the official statements of self-reliance and unity lies a far more anxious reality. Nearly every Asian capital has grown less certain Washington will honor its defense commitments if put to the test. Trump does not tend to rant against Asian allies the way he does against NATO partners. This offers little comfort to regional capitals. Many read it as a sign Washington does not care enough to even get worked up over them. These anxieties have grown as the Trump administration signals a pivot away from the region, prioritizing U.S. homeland security and the Western Hemisphere. The Pentagon’s decision to drop “Indo” from its regional command name is seen as a quiet confirmation of this shift. The Iran war has deepened these fears. The redeployment of missile-defense interceptors from South Korea to the Middle East stung Seoul. Allies worry promised arms shipments may not arrive on time, as the war burns through U.S. stockpiles and Washington prioritizes its own military requirements. This dual strategy of arming up while clinging tightly to the U.S. is not new. A series of reports by the International Crisis Group on regional military modernization traces the playbook back several years. Recent events have just given allies far stronger incentives to accelerate it. The rearmament push is not an attempt to replace U.S. support. It is an attempt to make allies more useful to Washington, so the U.S. has more reason to intervene in a crisis. Japan’s purchase of Tomahawk missiles, along with its new indigenous long-range munitions, still relies on U.S. targeting data to be used effectively. Tokyo cannot deploy these weapons independently, no matter how many it builds. Japan’s regional diplomatic push is not an effort to form a rival security bloc. It is a way to patch together extra layers of security, to fill gaps left by potential U.S. retrenchment. South Korea’s arms export sales fund its own defense modernization and give it global influence, but the government shows little appetite for a wider regional diplomatic role. Discussions of South Korean nuclearization, once nearly taboo, have entered mainstream discourse. But the prospect remains theoretical in the medium term, leaving Seoul fully reliant on the U.S. nuclear umbrella to deter North Korea. Australia’s AUKUS submarine deal is not a step toward strategic autonomy. It is a bet on even closer integration with U.S. and UK military structures. Canberra recognizes Washington is recalibrating its ally commitments, but sees no substitute for American military support. Its 2026 National Defense Strategy states plainly that the American security umbrella remains “fundamental.” The Philippines has a far smaller defense budget as a share of its economy. It does not even have the luxury of pretending to pursue self-reliance. It is fully dependent on U.S. support to push back against Chinese pressure in the South China Sea. Every ally’s response to growing Chinese power points in the same direction: a stronger, not weaker, American role in the region.
The geopolitical pendulum in the Asia-Pacific is not swinging toward a post-American order. It is swinging toward a more expensive version of the existing hub-and-spoke system. Allies will keep raising defense spending, building their own weapons, and hosting more U.S. military assets. They will keep pursuing regional diplomatic pacts to fill small gaps in U.S. coverage. But none of that changes the fundamental reality. No ally has a viable alternative to U.S. military support. They can’t afford to quit America, no matter how much frustration they feel toward the current White House.
Author bio: Julian Holbrooke, an international relations analyst who regularly contributes to leading European daily newspapers on Indo-Pacific security affairs.