Japan-Philippines ties strengthen Free and Open Indo-Pacific

FORUM Staff

The strengthening bond between Japan and the Philippines is expected to soon produce an agreement allowing the countries’ defense forces to train in each other’s territories as part of efforts to ensure a Free and Open Indo-Pacific.

Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. recently acknowledged the “very strong possibility” of finalizing the pact during a senior-level bilateral meeting in July 2024, the Kyodo News agency reported. Teodoro and Philippine Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo are scheduled to meet with Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara and Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa in Manila.

The agreement also will enable Japanese defense forces to participate in the annual large-scale Balikatan exercise conducted by the Philippines and the United States, Teodoro said. Japan previously attended as an observer.

Also in May 2024, Japan agreed to provide the Philippines with a low-interest loan of about $412 million to acquire five Japanese patrol vessels amid the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) aggressive actions toward Philippine vessels in the South China Sea. Japan has provided 12 patrol ships to the Philippine Coast Guard since 2016, including two 97-meter vessels that are the largest in Manila’s fleet.

Five more of those large vessels are expected to be delivered by 2028 and will bolster the Coast Guard’s “maritime surveillance, response and enforcement capabilities, ensuring safer and more secure seas for our people and those who traverse our waters,” Manalo said at a signing ceremony in Manila.

Japan’s ambassador to the Philippines, Kazuya Endo, pledged support for the Coast Guard’s capacity-building initiatives. “As the situation surrounding the Philippines has continuously been serious, [the Coast Guard] is standing in a frontline for protecting our common interests and rules-based maritime order.”

PRC maritime militia and coast guard vessels continue attempting to block Philippine vessels on resupply missions to a military outpost at Second Thomas Shoal. In March 2024, PRC coast guard ships fired water cannons, injuring two Philippine Sailors and damaging a supply boat. Another Philippine vessel was rammed by the Chinese coast guard and in May, PRC inflatable boats intercepted an aerial resupply drop destined for the outpost, the Philippine military said.

The provocations are part of Beijing’s expansive and arbitrary claims to the waters around Second Thomas Shoal. An international tribunal ruled in 2016 that the PRC had no lawful claims to the area, which falls within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

The Philippines is Japan’s most important strategic partner in Southeast Asia given the nations’ shared maritime borders in the South China Sea, Urs Schöttli, an Asian affairs advisor, wrote in a February 2024 essay for Geopolitical Intelligence Service, a Liechtenstein-based think tank.

“The two neighbors’ policy responses to the challenges they face are remarkably similar,” he wrote, noting Japan signed a pact with the Philippines in 2016 to supply defense hardware and that the Philippines is the first recipient of Japan’s Official Security Assistance, which aims to reinforce the defense forces of like-minded countries.

The Japan-Philippines security agreements come on the heels of the April 2024 trilateral summit among Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington, D.C. The leaders said their nations are “united by the vision we share of a free and open Indo-Pacific and international order based on international law — a vision we pledge to advance together for decades to come.”