Hegseth heads to Cebu for ASEAN defence talks as Teodoro lines up bilateral and Squad meetings

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth will travel to the Philippines this week to attend the ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting-Plus, the Department of War announced in an advisory dated 25 October. The department said he would use the visit to reaffirm the US commitment to what it calls peace through strength in the Pacific, and would hold bilateral and multilateral meetings meant to strengthen deterrence, advance alliances and partnerships, and widen burden-sharing across the region.

The advisory did not list individual meetings. A day later, Philippine Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. told reporters in Makati City that he would hold both a bilateral meeting with Hegseth and a meeting of the so-called Squad, and that he expected to meet almost every visiting minister one on one, according to the Philippine News Agency.

The 20th ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting and the 13th ADMM-Plus are being held in Lapu-Lapu City in Cebu, with the main ministerial sessions on 28 and 29 October. The ADMM-Plus format, launched in 2010, brings ASEAN defence ministers together with eight partners: the United States, Australia, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Russia and China.

What Manila wants from the talks

Teodoro said his talks with Hegseth would focus on improving defence relations and on reviewing whether the two allies should add to their current cooperation or change its pace, the news agency reported. He said the ASEAN ministers' own sessions would cover regional security and humanitarian and disaster response, and he stressed that peace and security among ASEAN members themselves was the foundation of wider regional security for the Philippines.

The Squad is an informal grouping of the United States and three of its treaty allies, the Philippines, Australia and Japan. Its defence ministers first met on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in June 2023, and the most recent meeting of defence chiefs took place alongside the ASEAN meetings in Kuala Lumpur last November, according to a report carried by The Star. Manila's ambassador in Washington, Jose Manuel Romualdez, signalled in that report that another Squad meeting was likely around the ASEAN gatherings the Philippines is hosting.

A crowded diplomatic calendar

The South China Morning Post reported that the Pentagon announced the trip on Sunday as Washington pushes to tighten security ties in the Indo-Pacific before President Donald Trump's expected meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen, which would be their third meeting this year. The paper said the Quad, which groups the United States, Japan, Australia and India, is also due to meet on the sidelines of the ASEAN leaders' summit in Manila next month.

Neither Beijing nor Manila had confirmed whether Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun, who attended the previous two ADMM-Plus meetings, would travel to Cebu, the newspaper reported. The visit also comes against the background of repeated confrontations between Philippine and Chinese vessels at disputed features in the South China Sea, which have pushed Manila to deepen its security ties with Washington and other partners.

Why it matters

For the Philippines, which holds the ASEAN chair this year, the Cebu meetings offer a chance to put its alliance network on display while China's defence minister may or may not be in the room. The Pentagon's stated focus on burden-sharing points to talks about how much each ally contributes to deterrence, a question the Squad format brings the four governments together to discuss. Any readouts from the bilateral and four-way meetings on 28 and 29 October will show whether the talks produce new commitments or mainly confirm existing plans.