Sen. Tammy Duckworth on Tuesday grilled Trump Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth about his knowledge of ASEAN, a Southeast Asian alliance.
“Can you name the importance of at least one of the nations in ASEAN, and what type of agreement we have with at least one of those nations? And how many nations are in ASEAN, by the way?” the Illinois Democrat asked Hegseth during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“I couldn’t tell you the exact amount of nations in that,” Hegseth said, “but I know we have allies in South Korea, in Japan, and in AUKUS with Australia, trying to work on submarines with them, and data transfers with them.”
“None of those three countries that you've mentioned are in ASEAN,” Duckworth said. “I suggest you do a little homework before you prepare for these types of negotiations.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, created in 1967, is a political, economic, and security alliance that consists of ten member countries:
• Brunei
• Cambodia
• Indonesia
• Laos
• Malaysia
• Myanmar
• The Philippines
• Singapore
• Thailand
• Vietnam
East Timor is slated to soon join the alliance, which has a combined population and GDP of more than 650 million people and $3 trillion, respectively. The United States has a treaty partnership with Thailand and the Philippines.
While the foreign relations are left to the State Department, the Secretary of Defense usually attends ASEAN defense meetings. And while ASEAN officially stresses noninterference, tensions have increased in recent years as several member nations have maritime disputes with China, which claims ownership of almost the entire South China Sea — not far from Taiwan, which foreign policy experts fear could be invaded by China in the future.
