Posted to the Japan Times (Apr 6, 2023): The Japan-Philippine-U.S. trilateral alliance in the making (By RICHARD JAVAD HEYDARIAN-Contributing Writer)
A new 'cold war' with China is leading to the emergence of trilateral security groupings in the Indo-Pacific
The Philippines lacks the operational capacity of other U.S. regional allies such as Australia, Japan and South Korea. But what makes the island country special is its geography and location. | REUTERS
With a so-called new cold war between the United States and China now in full swing, new geopolitical alignments are emerging across the Indo-Pacific.
Predictably, the recently announced Australia-U.K.-U.S. (AUKUS) nuclear-powered submarine deal dominated the headlines. After all, long-term deployment of state-of-the-art submarines to the region are clearly targeted toward China, which has steadily expanded its naval footprint across adjacent waters.
For the first time in recent memory, the U.S. is also expected to share cutting-edge military technology with a foreign partner: Australia is expected to receive at least three Virginia class nuclear-powered submarines within a decade, while waiting for its own share of the next-generation nuclear attack Astute-class submarines by the middle of the century. Meanwhile, South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk-yeol, took a major step in his hopes of revitalizing frayed ties with Japan following a warm meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo.
Just recently, Yoon announced the creation of a new government-sponsored compensation fund in order to address a major sticking point in bilateral relations with Japan, namely the issue of wartime forced labor. Recognizing the significance of such steps to a stronger U.S.-Japan-South Korea trilateral partnership, American President Joe Biden welcomed Seoul’s efforts.
Just as important, however, is a less talked about trilateral strategic grouping, which can prove just as — if not more — consequential. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s fateful decision to grant U.S. troops expanded access to prized bases and his subsequent visit to Tokyo in February have paved the way for the emergence of a new Japan-Philippine-U.S. (JAPHUS) alliance.
Given the geographic proximity of Tokyo and Manila to festering disputes over Taiwan and the South China Sea and deepening defense ties among the three nations, the JAPHUS alliance will be central to the Pentagon’s efforts to implement its “integrated deterrence” strategy against a resurgent China.
The emergence of new trilateral security groupings in the region has been driven by a combination of three interrelated factors.
To begin, the past decade has exposed the inherent limitations of Asian multilateralism, most prominently in the case of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Following the end of the Cold War, the regional organization consciously positioned itself as the driver of a more inclusive and stable order. Notwithstanding the merits of initiatives such as the ASEAN Regional Forum, a platform for institutionalized dialogue among major powers, the regional body has largely failed to “socialize” a resurgent China.
If anything, China has managed to exploit internal differences in ASEAN by leveraging its strategic patronage of less developed members (i.e., Cambodia) and more authoritarian leaders (i.e., Rodrigo Duterte) in the region. Since contemporary ASEAN largely operates on “consensus,” namely unanimity, all China can seamlessly lean on the weaker links in the regional body to achieve its strategic goals.
The upshot is the failure of ASEAN to, inter alia, categorically condemn China’s militarization of adjacent waters as well as its inability to finalize the long-drawn Code of Conduct negotiations in the South China Sea.
Moreover, the much-vaunted Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, better known as “the Quad,” has also lost much of its initial luster. Once dubbed as a potential “Asian NATO,” the power grouping has been openly divided over the Ukraine crisis. On one hand, India has not only maintained, but even expanded trade ties with Russia over the past year. In stark contrast, the U.S., Australia and Japan have imposed unprecedented sanctions against the Eurasian power. In response to criticism, top Indian officials have often lashed out at the West, with the country’s top diplomat recently accusing Europe of “hypocrisy,” while extolling the virtues of a post-American, multipolar order.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is no longer in a position to unilaterally dictate the regional security order. China has rapidly closed the gap with the U.S. and the Asian superpower has achieved virtual strategic parity with the U.S. military in an event of conflict. In response, the Pentagon has developed an “integrated deterrence” doctrine, which seeks to leverage ad-hoc, issue-specific “minilateral” cooperation among America’s network of alliances in the Indo-Pacific, most especially across the so-called First and Second Island Chains.
The AUKUS will be crucial to America’s ability to project power across and preserve a liberal international order in the Western and South Pacific. The U.S.-Japan-South Korea trilateral alliance, meanwhile, will be crucial to managing threats emanating from North Korea and Russia, as well as from China in the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea.
Most experts, however, believe that any major armed conflict between the U.S. and China would likely center on Taiwan and the South China Sea.
And here enters the Philippines, which straddles multiple flashpoints in the region. Clearly, the Southeast Asian nation lacks the operational capacity of other U.S. regional allies such as Australia, Japan and South Korea.
But what makes the Philippines special is its geography.
On one hand, the Southeast Asian nation is an active claimant state in the South China Sea, where it has been at loggerheads with Beijing over the past three decades, beginning with China’s creeping occupation of the Mischief Reef in the early-1990s. Moreover, the Philippines’ northernmost naval facilities in the Mavulis and Fuga islands are just over 100 nautical miles away from Taiwan.
Unlike its ASEAN neighbors, the Philippines has increasingly aligned itself with the West over the China question. In fact, it’s the only Southeast Asian state to openly back the AUKUS, while welcoming closer defense ties not only with the U.S., but also all fellow U.S. treaty allies of Australia, Japan and South Korea in recent years.
Under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the Philippines has granted U.S. troops expanded access to key bases across the country, including those near the South China Sea, as well as Taiwan’s southern shores. As the island nation’s president put it, “(given) our geographical location, should there in fact be conflict in (Taiwan) … it’s very hard to imagine a scenario where the Philippines will not somehow get involved.” His cousin and top adviser, the Philippine’s ambassador to the U.S., Jose Manuel Romualdez, has made it clear that “neutrality” is not an option for the country.
Accordingly, the Philippines is not only doubling down on its alliance with the U.S., but also seeking closer defense ties with Japan, which is also located close to Taiwan. The Sakishima Islands and Yonaguni Island are just around 100 kilometers away from Taiwan’s northernmost shores, while the Senkaku Islands are just over 160 km away. No wonder then, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe once declared, “A Taiwan emergency is a Japanese emergency, and therefore an emergency for the Japan-U.S. alliance.”
Currently, the Philippines is negotiating an Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreements and a Visiting Forces Agreement deal with Japan in order to facilitate military interoperability, arms transfers and potentially even deployment of Japanese troops to Philippine bases in the future. The ultimate aim is to enhance the Philippines’ defensive capabilities as well as jointly prepare for and potentially deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan and in the South China Sea.
As the U.S. ambassador to Tokyo, Rahm Emanuel, bluntly argued, closer security cooperation among regional allies such as the Philippines and Japan is “a major contribution to the strategic alignment in the area from a deterrence standpoint.” Deepened bilateral security cooperation is part of a broader effort to establish a robust Japan-Philippine-U.S. trilateral alliance, which will be extremely crucial to checking China’s worst instincts across the First Island Chain, extending from the East China Sea to the Taiwan Straits and the South China Sea.
[Richard Javad Heydarian is a senior lecturer at the University of the Philippines, Asian Center and author of, among others, “The Indo-Pacific: Trump, China and the New Struggle for Global Mastery.”]
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2023/04/06/commentary/world-commentary/asia-pacific-trilateral-alliances/
