Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth continued his tour of Hawaii on Tuesday, meeting with troops, touring bases and giving a speech in Waikiki in which he made overtures to American allies in the Pacific and called on them to help the U.S. confront China.

“Our relationships and our teamwork form the foundation of achieving peace through strength,” Hegseth said. “President Donald Trump has made it clear that we will achieve peace through strength through an ‘America first’ approach. But America first does not mean America only or America alone, ignoring allies and partners. It means that our military-­to-military relationships must make sense for the United States and for our friends. Where there are imbalances, we will fix them.”

He added that pursuing that vision “will require even greater attention to the partnerships that matter the most. And our alliances and partnerships in the Indo-Pacific matter a great deal to the United States. They matter because the Indo-Pacific is the region of consequence.”

Hegseth, who arrived in Hawaii on Monday to meet with top U.S. commanders, delivered the remarks at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies. His speech was broadcast to the center’s alumni network, which includes senior military officers, diplomats and law enforcement professionals in countries around the Pacific and beyond.

Hegseth told them, “We will work with our allies and our partners to deter the Communist Chinese and their aggression in the Indo-Pacific, full stop, by standing shoulder to shoulder with you, our allies and partners. We will put our enemies, our adversaries, those who stand against us, on notice.”

His stop in Hawaii is part of the first leg of a Pacific tour that also will take him to Guam, Japan and the Philippines.

The Pacific has long been considered the Pentagon’s top-priority theater of operations amid tensions with China and concerns about North Korea’s nuclear missile program. Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it also has stepped up joint operations with the Chinese military and solidified ties with Pyongyang, forming what Adm. Samuel Pa­paro — the top American commander in the Pacific — in February called a “triangle of troublemakers.”

Paparo introduced Hegseth before he made the remarks at APCSS, describing him as “handpicked by the president of the United States and ruthlessly focused on warrior ethos, on lethality, on defending the homeland.” Hegseth praised Paparo as a “fighting admiral.”

Hegseth has pledged to “rebuild” the U.S. military while simultaneously cutting costs. He has said he intends to cut down on bureaucracy to allow the military to more quickly acquire weapons and equipment. He also has pledged to eliminate most cultural and environmental programs, which he has derided as “woke.”

“I’m here today because the president has given me — and the American people gave him — the mandate to achieve peace through strength,” Hegseth said. “By restoring the warrior ethos, U.S. forces assigned to the Indo-Pacific will be the best trained and best equipped in the world.”

The Trump administration has said it intends to cut the military’s massive budget by 8% each year, but Hegseth asked that U.S. Indo-Pacific Command — which is headquartered at Camp Smith — be exempt from the cuts.

“We’re going to rebuild our military by optimizing the Department of Defense and the U.S. defense industrial base, to rapidly and responsibly deliver the right tools to our war fighters in real time,” he said. “And we will also deliver those tools rapidly and responsibly to our allies and to our partners. There are many opportunities for our defense industries to collaborate, and I’m going to press hard to expand capacity and accelerate deliveries.”

Countries around Asia have sought to arm their forces amid tensions with China — including those on Hegseth’s itinerary.

The Chinese military has stepped up operations in the South China Sea, a critical waterway that more than a third of international trade moves through and that Beijing claims as its exclusive sovereign territory against the objections of its neighbors. In particular, Chinese forces have clashed with the Philippines, harassing fishermen and building bases on disputed reefs and islands.

Japan has reported an increase in Chinese activity near a disputed island chain that Japan calls the Senkaku Islands and China calls the Diaoyu Islands, and the Chinese and Russian militaries have begun regular joint maneuvers around Japan.

Chinese forces also have stepped up operations around Taiwan, a self-ruled island democracy that Beijing regards as a rouge province. Paparo has said these maneuvers aren’t exercises, but “rehearsals” of a blockade or all-out invasion of Taiwan.

At a news conference Tuesday evening at Marine Corps Base Hawaii — which was restricted to media traveling with Hegseth and not made available to local media — Hegseth said, “The campaigns we’re doing in and around the first island chain are not meant to be the precursor to an attack. We’re here to deter. We’re here to show strength with our allies, and that includes ensuring that in every possible way, American force is projected forward.”

As Hegseth addressed members of the national media in Kaneohe, several different groups of picketers gathered outside the Pacific Fleet headquarters.

One was a groups of veterans calling for him to resign in the wake of controversy after Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffry Goldberg was apparently accidentally added to a group chat on the app Signal in which Hegseth allegedly discussed sensitive operations against Houthi militants in Yemen. Others were anti-military activists calling for the U.S. military to leave Hawaii.

Another group was made up of members of the Red Hill Community Representation Initiative, an elected community board formed as part of a federal consent decree regarding the closure of the Navy’s Red Hill fuel facility. In 2021, fuel from the facility tainted the Navy’s Oahu water system, which serves 93,000 people. The facility sits just 100 feet over the aquifer most of Oahu relies on for clean water.

Members of the CRI said they were calling on Hegseth to ensure that the Navy keeps its promise to close Red Hill and clean up the area of pollution.

Mai Hall, a military spouse and local woman born in Kalihi who was among the affected residents, said she hopes Hegseth’s plans to cut environmental and cultural programs don’t extend to promised efforts to clean up Red Hill. Hall said that “environment and health does play absolutely a huge role in the readiness of the service members. You can’t send people off to war if they’re sick.”

Tara Sutton, another affected resident who serves on the CRI, said that “clean water makes strong soldiers.”