In his call for greater burden-sharing at the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue, US Secretary of War called on Asia-Pacific states to achieve a defence-spending level of 3.5% of GDP. However, as Dr Lucie Béraud-Sudreau, Shangri-La Dialogue Senior Fellow for Indo-Pacific Defence Policy, Economics and Industry, explains, no regional state is currently achieving this level. Defence-spending decisions lie at the crossroads between threat perceptions and economic considerations, and the war in the Middle