New Japan-Philippine defense pact pushes back at China

MANILA –The Philippines is looking beyond the United States and toward Japan to counter China’s rising threat in the South China Sea.

After years of negotiation, Manila and Tokyo finally inked a Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA), a high-stakes defense pact that will dramatically enhance bilateral defense cooperation through joint military drills and equipment transfers.

Touting an “independent” foreign policy, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr is building a broad and diversified network of security partnerships to hedge his country’s reliance on mutual defense treaty ally the US.

No country is as central to the Philippines’ foreign policy diversification strategy as Japan, which has positioned itself as a significant regional and global security player in recent years. Both sides have shared concerns over China’s maritime assertiveness, especially across the so-called “First Island Chain” that extends from the East China Sea to the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea.

The Philippines is now only the third country, after Australia and the United Kingdom, to sign an RAA deal with Japan. The new defense pact falls well short of a full-fledged mutual defense treaty.

Nor is it a visiting forces agreement deal similar to the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) Manila shares with and has recently expanded to allow US forces greater rotational access to its military facilities.

Instead, the new RAA provides “procedures for the cooperative activities that are conducted by forces of Japan and the Philippines while the force of one country is visiting the other country and defines a legal status of the visiting force.”

Moreover, the RAA will “facilitate the implementation of cooperative activities, such as joint exercises and disaster relief between Japan and the Philippines and improve interoperability between the forces of the two countries.”

The two sides have stated that the new pact is the upshot of an “increasingly severe” security environment in the region and is part of a broader joint effort to further “promote security and defense cooperation between the two countries and firmly support peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region.”

It’s widely expected that the Philippine Senate and the Japanese Diet, both under the sway of current administrations, will ratify the RAA soon, paving the way for large-scale joint exercises and defense equipment transfers. A major driving force is shared concern over a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

Both the Philippines and Japan have military facilities close to Taiwan’s shores. It is thus likely that the two sides’ future joint exercises will revolve around enhancing interoperability to respond to contingencies in the Taiwan Strait as well as Bashi Channel.

Japan is also expected to step up maritime security assistance to the Philippines with an eye on countering China’s maritime moves. In exchange, the Philippines is set to host larger contingents of Japanese Self-Defense Forces for bilateral as well as multilateral exercises involving like-minded powers such as Australia, South Korea, Canada and the US.

While the RAA is for now largely about greater interoperability and deterrence capacity development, it could also serve as a springboard for a full-fledged alliance should the prospect of a major Asian conflict arise.

Perhaps no foreign power enjoys as much “bipartisan support” in the Philippines as Japan. Japan had the most favorable rating (81%) among the Philippines’ Asian partners in one recent poll, well ahead of other key partners such as South Korea (68%) and India (48%).

Japan has served as a leading export destination, development aid source and foreign investor, especially in public infrastructure, in the Philippines in recent decades.

From reformist presidents such as Fidel Ramos and Benigno Aquino to authoritarian populists such as Rodrigo Duterte, all contemporary Filipino presidents have sought tighter strategic cooperation with Tokyo.

However, bilateral defense cooperation only began to gain momentum in the 2010s amid growing uncertainties over America’s commitment to the region and fears about China’s expanding military capabilities.

As Beijing has pressed its claims in both the South China Sea and the East China Sea, Tokyo and Manila rapidly upgraded their maritime security cooperation. The late prime minister Shinzo Abe, in particular, played a crucial role in this regard by overseeing the transfer of coast guard vessels and radar systems to the Philippines across the Aquino and Duterte administrations.

In exchange, the Philippines, especially under the Aquino administration, became the leading regional champion of a more proactive Japanese defense policy in the Indo-Pacific region.

Abe’s successors have doubled down on his legacy, with current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida making a historic speech before the joint congress of the Philippines last year where he called for a new “golden age” of strategic cooperation just short of a full-fledged defense alliance.

Under Kishida, Japan has adopted a doctrine of “realism diplomacy”, vowing in the process to double Japan’s defense spending over five years. Crucially, Japan has also launched a new Official Security Assistance (OSA) program to aid like-minded nations like the Philippines in the region.

Accordingly, the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), which has already been a recipient of multiple Japanese-made patrol vessels in the past decade, is expected to acquire a new and modern multi-role ship.

The newly signed RAA is central to the fruition of Kishida’s  “new vision of cooperation” . Back in 2022, the Philippines and Japan held their first-ever “2+2” meeting that saw then-Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin and then-Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana flying to Tokyo to “strengthen defense cooperation in light of the increasingly harsh security environment.”

Despite Duterte’s generally warm ties with Beijing, his top diplomat and defense chief expressed “serious concern” over  China’s increasingly assertive position in adjacent waters while broadly echoing the concern of Japan and major Western nations over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Crucially, the two sides discussed a new defense pact as well transfer of new radar systems to the Philippine military.

Japan’s status as an “all-weather ally” to the Philippines has been further solidified under Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who rapidly fortified defense ties with traditional partners following his fruitless visit to Beijing in January last year.

Marcos’ defiance of China’s actions is anchored by broad-based public support, with more than nine out of ten Filipinos favoring a tough and non-compromising stance in the disputed waters.

Crucially, the Filipino president has also pushed for closer trilateral security cooperation under the Japan-Philippine-US (JAPHUS) framework. During their 2+2 meeting last year, foreign and defense ministers from both sides explicitly “underscored the importance of each country’s respective treaty alliance with the United States and that of enhancing cooperation with regional partner countries.” 

The RAA’s announcement comes amid surging tensions in the South China Sea, seen most recently in Beijing’s deployment of one of its two “monster” coast guard ships in the disputed waters.

According to latest reports, China Coast Guard (CCG) ship 5901 – a humongous ship three times larger than the US Coast Guard’s National Security Cutters and five times larger than the Philippines’ flagship vessel BRP Teresa Magbanua – is now anchored at the Sabina Shoal in the contested  Spratly Islands, parts of which fall within the Philippines’ 200 nautical miles exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

Philippine Coast Guard spokesperson Jay Tarriela characterized the deployment as an “intimidation” tactic and insisted that “[w]e’re not going to pull out and we’re not going to be intimidated [by China].”

At the same time, Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief General Romeo Brawner has maintained that, despite constant harassment and intimidation by China’s maritime forces, the Philippines has turned down US offers of direct assistance for resupply and patrol missions in the disputed waters. It can afford to do so knowing it now has greater tacit Japanese support.

Follow Richard Javad Heydarian on X at @Richeydarian