The Philippines is rapidly expanding international defense partnerships amid escalating tensions in the South China Sea. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) illegally claims most of the economically vital and environmentally significant waterway.
Beijing has become increasingly aggressive inside Manila’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) — and other nations’ maritime territory — despite an international tribunal’s nearly decade-old ruling that invalidated the PRC’s vast arbitrary claims. Its tactics include ramming vessels and using water cannons, lasers, acoustic weapons, flares and violence to disrupt military patrols, fishing, oil and gas surveys, and environmental research in Philippine waters and airspace. Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam have reported similar incursions and harassment, including in the East China and South China seas.
In the Philippines, the sea is a lifeline of “livelihood, security and national identity,” Orlando Oxales, of the Manila-based think tank Stratbase Albert Del Rosario Institute for Strategic and International Studies, wrote for the Manila Standard newspaper.
“With thousands of islands scattered across strategic trade routes and teeming with marine biodiversity, our nation has much to gain — or lose — depending on how well we navigate the complex and often turbulent waters of international geopolitics,” he wrote. “The good news? We don’t have to do it alone.”
Recent defense talks with New Zealand highlight the Philippines’ moves toward expanded cooperation, with an agreement expected by late 2025 to allow bilateral security exercises in each nation.
“We are now on a phase of alliance-building, strengthening alliance,” Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. said in early February 2025. “So, the SOVFA [Status of Visiting Forces Agreement] is an important part of both countries and multilateral countries’ initiative to resist China’s unilateral narrative to change international law.”
Such agreements also bolster disaster risk mitigation, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief measures. The archipelago needs “as much mobility assistance as possible” in times of crisis, Teodoro added.
IMAGE CREDIT: PETTY OFFICER 2ND CLASS MONICA WALKER/U.S. NAVY
Japanese and Philippine leaders in mid-2024 signed a reciprocal access agreement that facilitates combined defense force training in each nation. Manila’s National Security Council called the pact “a clear statement of intent to safeguard our national interests while fostering trust between two nations who stand for regional stability and peace.”
The Philippines also has visiting forces agreements with Australia and longtime treaty ally the United States, and it is pursuing similar arrangements with countries including Canada and France.
“We need to interoperate,” Teodoro said, according to The Philippine Star newspaper. “The Philippines Armed Forces needs to train with other armed forces because the dimensions of conflict are changing.”
Meanwhile, Manila’s Navy and Air Force joined Australia, Japan and the U.S. for a sixth multilateral maritime cooperative activity in the Philippines’ EEZ in early February 2025. The operation demonstrates a collective commitment to a Free and Open Indo-Pacific and “upholding the right to freedom of navigation and overflight, other lawful uses of the sea and international airspace,” said Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr., Armed Forces of the Philippines chief of staff.
