At the Seoul Defense Dialogue, Philippine Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro gave voice to an anxiety that runs beneath much of contemporary Asian geopolitics: that reductions in American military commitment, however diplomatically motivated, create openings that rival powers are swift to enter. His warning about China's opportunism arrived alongside Trump's decision to shorten joint US-South Korea exercises, a move justified through the language of diplomacy but interpreted across the region through the lens of vulnerability. In a landscape where the same military gesture can simultaneously s