Jakarta. The US has proposed forming a defense framework with “serious partner” ASEAN for more concrete cooperation that includes having their navies team up, as Washington wants to seeks to grow its influence in the region.

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth floated the plan at a live-broadcast gathering with his Southeast Asian counterparts in the Philippine province of Cebu on Wednesday.

According to Hegseth, it’s about time to set “even more ambitious” goals, citing that they will mark their 50th anniversary of US-ASEAN relations next year.

“We propose that we work together to develop a US-ASEAN framework for defense cooperation, a practical framework that guides our cooperation over … the critically important next several years,” Hegseth said, as seen on the ASEAN Philippines 2026 YouTube channel.

It is unclear how ASEAN responds to the idea as of writing. If the group accepts, Washington is expected to work with Singapore, which is set to helm the bloc in 2027. The opening session also saw Hegseth admitting that the US and ASEAN “are not going to nor need to agree on everything”.

“But an agreement on the fundamentals is enough to support practical cooperation where our shared interests are overlapping and are clear,” Hegseth said.

By “practical”, Washington meant partnerships on maritime domain awareness, interoperability, and between their navies. 

“These are not symbolic things. They are concrete demonstrations of what serious partners do. Serious partners train together, learn together, plan together, and build the confidence and competence necessary to prevent conflict.”

Hegseth repeated Washington’s calls for its ASEAN allies to be “self-reliant”. In other words, it wants countries to spend greater amounts of money to upgrade their military hardware to prevent them from having to depend too much on the US. Earlier this year, Hegseth praised Indonesia for making “important strides” in modernizing its army amid fighter jet purchases and defense budget hikes.

The Cebu talks followed the bloc’s chair Philippines’ repeated standoffs with Beijing in the resource-rich South China Sea, where they share overlapping claims. A readout of Hegseth’s meeting with his Filipino counterpart Gilberto Teodoro showed they had agreed to “launch an alliance command and control modernization sprint” for better real-time bilateral coordination. In a social media post, Hegseth admitted that they had talked about “deterrence in the South China Sea”.

Add as a preferred source on Google +