[News] 'We are preparing for war' with China 'threat', says US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Mon Jun 9 10:36:55 EDT 2025
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered a hawkish speech at the
Shangri-La Dialogue 2025 summit, demonizing China as a “threat”, saying,
“We are preparing for war” in the Asia-Pacific region.
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'We are preparing for war' with China 'threat', says US Defense
Secretary Pete Hegseth
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US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered a hawkish speech at
the Shangri-La Dialogue 2025 summit, demonizing China as a
“threat”, saying, “We are preparing for war” in the Asia-Pacific
region.
Ben Norton <https://substack.com/@benjaminnorton>
Jun 9, 2025
<https://substack.com/@benjaminnorton>
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US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered an extremely hawkish
speech in which he demonized China as a "threat" and said, "We are
preparing for war".
"Those who long for peace, must prepare for war. And that's exactly what
we're doing. We are preparing for war, in order to deter war — to
achieve peace through strength", Hegseth stated.
The top Donald Trump administration official made these aggressive
remarks at the Shangri-La Dialogue 2025
<https://substack.com/redirect/b0d59fa8-fd7f-4a28-b80d-ac75a882e920?j=eyJ1IjoibHZwcGIifQ.9RIwWbE6EVIB7Jy8lfazxZKfps8R18neRGMKwOiqnRM>,
a summit held in Singapore on 31 May.
"The threat China poses is real, and it could be imminent. We hope not,
but it certainly could be", Hegseth claimed, indicating that the
Pentagon was preparing for a war over Taiwan
<https://substack.com/redirect/4df5cec5-e52f-49cf-ae6a-ba7393ffafff?j=eyJ1IjoibHZwcGIifQ.9RIwWbE6EVIB7Jy8lfazxZKfps8R18neRGMKwOiqnRM>.
"Beyond our borders and beyond our neighborhood, we are reorienting
toward deterring aggression by Communist China", he stressed.
<https://substack.com/redirect/ce5ff592-7109-4412-947c-f58a3b4f5845?j=eyJ1IjoibHZwcGIifQ.9RIwWbE6EVIB7Jy8lfazxZKfps8R18neRGMKwOiqnRM>
The message of Trump's Pentagon: war is peace
The Trump administration's Pentagon has essentially pushed the message
"war is peace".
Hegseth has incessantly reiterated the slogan "peace through strength".
"President Trump said it himself [in May] in Riyadh – and will never
hesitate to wield American power swiftly and decisively if necessary.
That is re-establishing deterrence", the defense secretary emphasized in
Singapore.
Hegseth is a war hawk and a religious fundamentalist. He made his name
as a former host on the conservative TV network Fox News, where Trump
discovered him.
In 2020, Hegseth published a book called “American Crusade”, in which he
proudly identified as a “crusader” and wrote that the US right wing is
waging a “holy war” against China, the international left, and Islam
<https://substack.com/redirect/b8bcd8b8-aff1-439b-9cbf-88723987ef2d?j=eyJ1IjoibHZwcGIifQ.9RIwWbE6EVIB7Jy8lfazxZKfps8R18neRGMKwOiqnRM>.
“Communist China will fall—and lick its wounds for another two hundred
years”, he promised in the extremist book.
Trump admin pressures Asia-Pacific countries to minimize "economic
cooperation with China"
In his speech in Singapore in May 2025
<https://substack.com/redirect/d5b196c7-91a8-4e19-ae87-c0326be2da61?j=eyJ1IjoibHZwcGIifQ.9RIwWbE6EVIB7Jy8lfazxZKfps8R18neRGMKwOiqnRM>,
Pete Hegseth noted that it was his second time in his four months
serving as secretary of defense that he had visited the Asia-Pacific
region (which Washington has sought to rebrand as the "Indo-Pacific").
In March, Hegseth traveled to Japan and the Philippines, where he
threatened China and boasted of US “war-fighting” preparations
<https://substack.com/redirect/4df5cec5-e52f-49cf-ae6a-ba7393ffafff?j=eyJ1IjoibHZwcGIifQ.9RIwWbE6EVIB7Jy8lfazxZKfps8R18neRGMKwOiqnRM>and
“real war plans”.
At the Shangri-La Dialogue conference, Hegseth half-jokingly threatened
the Asia-Pacific region with his endless presence.
"I'm certainly proud to be back into the Indo-Pacific for the second
time as the secretary of defense. And I'm going to keep coming back, and
back, and back again. You're stuck with me", he said.
The US defense secretary pressured nations in the region to minimize
their economic relations with China.
The Trump administration essentially told countries that they must
choose between either the United States or China -- that they can't have
good relations with both sides, because a war could be coming soon
<https://substack.com/redirect/4df5cec5-e52f-49cf-ae6a-ba7393ffafff?j=eyJ1IjoibHZwcGIifQ.9RIwWbE6EVIB7Jy8lfazxZKfps8R18neRGMKwOiqnRM>.
Hegseth said (emphasis added):
Facing these threats, we know that many countries are *tempted by
the idea of seeking both economic cooperation with China and defense
cooperation with the United States*. Now that is a geographic
necessity for many. But *beware the leverage that the CCP seeks*with
that entanglement. *Economic dependence on China*only deepens their
malign influence and *complicates our defense decision space*during
times of tension.
China opposes hegemony, while the US empire seeks it
Defense Secretary Hegseth claimed in his May speech in Singapore that,
supposedly, "China seeks to become a hegemonic power in Asia. No doubt".
This is false. China has consistently emphasized, over decades, that it
does not seek hegemony. In fact, Beijing does not want any country to
have hegemony.
Principled opposition to hegemony has been a constant since the founding
of the People's Republic of China (PRC) under Mao Zedong in 1949,
through the Reform and Opening Up initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978,
and into the New Era launched by President Xi Jinping in 2012.
The Chinese government has always stressed what it calls its
"unequivocal commitment to supporting other developing countries in
their efforts to defend national sovereignty, develop national economy
and fight imperialism, colonialism, and hegemonism
<https://substack.com/redirect/279b81f2-ac3d-44b5-8cf9-ab05a4cf043a?j=eyJ1IjoibHZwcGIifQ.9RIwWbE6EVIB7Jy8lfazxZKfps8R18neRGMKwOiqnRM>”.
In a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in 1974, Deng
Xiaoping stated, "If one day China should change her color and turn into
a superpower, if she too should play the tyrant in the world, and
everywhere subject others to her bullying, aggression, and exploitation,
the people of the world should identify her as social-imperialism,
expose it, oppose it, and work together with the Chinese people to
overthrow it".
In fact, when the PRC normalized diplomatic relations with the United
States and Japan in the 1970s, a source of diplomatic tension was
China's insistence that, in the joint statements signed by Beijing and
Washington and Beijing and Tokyo, there had to be an "anti-hegemony"
clause
<https://substack.com/redirect/887752e7-23c4-4f6f-9f4e-8b98e5f9213a?j=eyJ1IjoibHZwcGIifQ.9RIwWbE6EVIB7Jy8lfazxZKfps8R18neRGMKwOiqnRM>.
It is actually the United States that has consistently sought to impose
its hegemony on the rest of the world.
This was spelled out clearly in a 1992 document published by the US
Department of Defense, known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine (because it was
co-written by Paul Wolfowitz, who then served as US under secretary of
defense for policy, before later returning as secretary of defense under
George W. Bush).
The Pentagon's Wolfowitz Doctrine stated
<https://substack.com/redirect/aa33cf49-9e6b-45ec-a203-38eec02c0f1c?j=eyJ1IjoibHZwcGIifQ.9RIwWbE6EVIB7Jy8lfazxZKfps8R18neRGMKwOiqnRM>(emphasis
added):
*Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival*.
This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense
strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power
from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated
control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions
include Western Europe, *East Asia*, the territory of the former
Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia.
The Trump administration's foreign policy is still consistent with much
of the Wolfowitz Doctrine. Although Trump has de-prioritized Western
Europe and the territory of the former USSR, he has dedicated
significant resources to US military operations in East Asia and
Southwest Asia (also known as the Middle East).
In fact, the main theme of Hegseth's speech was that the Pentagon will
not accept China challenging US dominance in the Asia-Pacific region.
"We will not be pushed out of this critical region", Hegseth said, in a
clear message to Beijing.
This was the US empire stating clearly that it seeks to impose its
hegemonic control over East Asia.
Bipartisan warmongering in Washington
This aggressive anti-China stance is bipartisan in Washington.
A former top Joe Biden administration official said he agreed with the
thrust of the anti-China policy pursued by Pete Hegseth, a right-wing
extremist and religious fanatic.
Ely Ratner, who served as the assistant secretary of defense for
Indo-Pacific security affairs in Biden's Pentagon, wrote approvingly on
Twitter/X, "Rhetoric aside, on actual defense policy Secretary Hegseth's
speech was near total continuity with the previous administration
<https://substack.com/redirect/af29cdc2-7a48-4053-8a8c-0880b5898501?j=eyJ1IjoibHZwcGIifQ.9RIwWbE6EVIB7Jy8lfazxZKfps8R18neRGMKwOiqnRM>”.
"That's good, but we'll need heightened urgency, attention, and
resources to address the China challenge", Ratner added.
<https://substack.com/redirect/c74f6a7e-a234-4e84-811d-814912173172?j=eyJ1IjoibHZwcGIifQ.9RIwWbE6EVIB7Jy8lfazxZKfps8R18neRGMKwOiqnRM>
Biden's neoconservative Secretary of State Antony Blinken had also
maintained a hardline anti-China position.
In a speech in 2022, Blinken announced what was essentially a
containment policy targeting China
<https://substack.com/redirect/a1ab41e0-48e8-4dea-915a-17b9c8fbaa6b?j=eyJ1IjoibHZwcGIifQ.9RIwWbE6EVIB7Jy8lfazxZKfps8R18neRGMKwOiqnRM>.
“We cannot rely on Beijing to change its trajectory. So we will shape
the strategic environment around Beijing”, he said.
Blinken added, “The scale and the scope of the challenge posed by the
People’s Republic of China will test American diplomacy like nothing
we’ve seen before”.
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Comment
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© 2025 Benjamin Norton
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
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