Every year, in a glittering hotel room in Singapore, the Indo-Pacific strategic order is put on public display. This does not happen through the signing of communiqués or conventions, but through those who appear, at what level and what they dare to say in front of a “unwritten” audience.
This is what makes the Shangri-La Dialogue, now in its 23rd year, the most talked about. Barometer of Asia’s regional power equations. And the 2026 edition this weekend is unfolding this story of an unequal triangle – with radically different levels of trust, comfort and clarity guiding their engagement.
The United States is at its peak – not because anyone voted for it, but because no one has successfully challenged it yet. China occupies the second peak: militarily formidable, economically indispensable, and yet diplomatically uncomfortable in the very room where it should be safest. India holds the third point – sticky, consequential, and only now, after two decades of neglect, is it beginning to understand the strategic importance of this forum.
A collective reading of these three trajectories reveals much about the security dynamics of the Indo-Pacific.
American constant
Since 2002, most of the acting secretaries of defense of the US – Rumsfeld, gates, Panetta, Hagel, Carter, Mattis, Shanahan, Austin – have given plenary speeches at this forum, and now Pete Hegseth is returning for its second consecutive edition.
The forum is Washington’s annual pilgrimage to explain its strategic vision for the Indo-Pacific and reassure US allies – before an influential audience of defense ministers, military chiefs and strategic thinkers from more than 40 countries that no other platform brings together in quite the same way.
This is not routine multilateralism. It is an institutional expression of hegemonic commitment—the deliberate, annual signal that the United States regards the Indo-Pacific as its primary strategic theater and intends to remain its defining security provider.
Even as Washington’s domestic politics shakes and successive administrations violently disagree on trade and grand strategy, their Shangri-La addresses continue. Given their discursive nature, these speeches are often more revealing than National Security Strategy documents: strategies can be rewritten, but the show costs the political capital the US chooses to continue to invest.
This sustained American presence creates the gravitational field in which others such as China and India must choreograph their presence. The test of the forum’s credibility is implicitly set by Washington: show up with your defense minister, discuss and take those open questions. Countries that meet this benchmark signal confidence. Countries that cannot discover something about themselves stand aside.
The Chinese paradox
Nothing about China’s relationship with Shangri-La is simple. China’s military spending has been increasing every year for 31 consecutive yearsreaching $336 billion in 2025, the second only in the United States. The People’s Liberation Army takes the field the largest navy in the world by troop count, it has the most advanced ballistic missiles of any country in the region and a nuclear triad that it has spent a decade modernizing.
By any material measure, China is the Indo-Pacific’s preeminent military power. And yet it cannot sit comfortably in the Shangri La Dialogue. The most immediate reason is its institutional decay.
Dong June is the third consecutive minister of defense to face the corruption investigation, after Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfuboth of whom were subsequently expelled from the Communist Party. In October 2025, Xi Jinping removed the general That Weidongthe PLA’s second-highest officer, in addition to the earlier suspension of Admiral Miao Hua – respectively Vice Chairman and senior members of China’s seven-member Central Military Commission (CMC). January this year saw Xi remove the second vice chairman of the CMC Zhang Youxia.
It is not possible to send a defense minister who is under investigation to face unscripted questions from the military leaders of forty countries.
The deeper problem is structural, not merely personal. There is one growing sense within Beijing’s political elites, the Shangri La Dialogue has become nothing more than a forum to highlight and shame China’s perceived rule-breaking behavior. The South China Sea, Taiwan, the Quad, AUKUS – none of these are topics Beijing can address in an open question-and-answer format.
Unlike his own Xiangshan Forum in Beijing, where China controls the agenda and the guest list, the Shangri-La Dialogue belongs to no one—which, in practice, makes it vulnerable to Washington’s agenda.
general Meng Xiangqing – a professor and strategist at the National Defense University of China – is leading the delegation for the 2026 Shangri La Dialogue.
This decision for OFF attendance for the second year in a row, after four consecutive years (except for the 2020 pandemic year) of ministerial engagement during 2019-2024, is not a weakness in the conventional sense. It is more like a calculated retreat from terrain that does not favor China’s ascension. The world’s second largest military power has decided that speaking up is more dangerous than remaining silent.
India’s account, long overdue
If China’s Shangri-La story is a paradox—great power, thin presence—India’s is a long-lost opportunity that is being remedied at an accelerating pace. For most of the forum’s history, New Delhi’s engagement was, charitably speaking, ugly. She sent the ministers of state. She sent military officials. In 2024, it sent effectively no consequences.
Only in the entire 23-year history of the forum Manohar Parrikar in 2016 he was presented as the full minister of defense. Modi celebrated 2018 Shangri-La main – still cited as India’s Indo-Pacific manifesto – resigned as prime minister, not defense minister, representing a diplomatic once. This had coincided with his bilateral visit in Singapore.
What has changed is complex and fluid. of India Defense Budget 2026-2027 grew 15% to 7.85 trillion rupees ($91 billion), making it the world’s fourth largest military spender. Defense exports have reached an all-time high of 240 billion rupees ($2.8 billion), with a target of 500 billion rupees ($5.8 billion) set for 2029-30.
Operation Sindoor – India’s precision strikes in May 2025 against terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan – has changed something fundamental in India’s strategic self-confidence. The last one Nilgiri class frigates now boasts over 75 percent local content, incl BrahMos supersonic missilesand India now operates three indigenously built nuclear powered ballistic missile submarines.
However, India’s arrival in 2026 does not change the fundamental asymmetry of the India-China military balance. China’s defense budget remains more than three times India’s. Rajnath Singh walking into the Shangri-La ballroom this weekend doesn’t change that equation.
But what is certainly changing is something more subtle and yet not insignificant: the narrative contest over who speaks for a rules-based Indo-Pacific order. In that contest – fought in plenary halls and corridors rather than in the high Himalayas – India is present and China is absent.
The Triangle Verdict
This uneven triangle in Shangri-La is not a simple story of American dominance and India rising to challenge China. This framing underestimates China’s capabilities. This is a story about a forum defined by America that produces an uncomfortable truth; that multilateral security dialogue in the Indo-Pacific still flows mostly through Washington-anchored frameworks; that China is militarily supreme but diplomatically retreating; and that India – for all its newfound confidence – is still finding its footing on a stage it should have claimed long ago.
The forum that doesn’t lie is speaking again this weekend. With renewed hostilities threatening a fragile truce between the US and Iran, China’s Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has the microphone. China, for the second year in a row, is only in the whispers of the corridor. And India, for only the second time in 23 years, is taking its place at the table.
But this is not a story of India’s triumph, not yet. At best, it’s a start. But in this uneven triangle, startups—correctly calibrated—can also change the game.
