MANILA: The Philippines and Japan have agreed to deepen defense cooperation in an “increasingly severe” security environment in the Indo-Pacific region, their defense chiefs said on Monday.
Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani was on an official visit to Manila, where he held a meeting with his Philippine counterpart, Gilberto Teodoro, to discuss regional security issues, including the maritime situation in the East and South China Seas.
“We are not only to enhance existing alliances in terms of the scale of mutually cooperative activities, but also to the scope of these arrangements by also inviting like-minded partners potentially to join these alliances,” Teodoro said at a joint press conference.
“We share also the common cause of resisting any unilateral attempt to reshape the global order without the consent of the participants of this global order and the attempt to reshape international law by force. And this endeavor we will resist.”
The Philippines, China and several other countries have overlapping claims in the disputed South China Sea, a strategic waterway through which billions of dollars of goods pass each year.
Beijing has maintained its expansive claims of the area, despite a 2016 international tribunal ruling that China’s historical assertion to it had no basis.
Security ties between Manila and Tokyo — both US allies — have strengthened in the past two years over shared concerns in the region, with the two countries signing a landmark military pact in 2024, allowing the deployment of their forces on each other's soil for joint military drills. It was Japan’s first such pact in Asia.
Japan has a long-standing territorial dispute with China over islands in the East China Sea, while Chinese and Philippine coast guard and navy ships have been involved in a series of tense incidents in the South China Sea.
During their talks on Monday, Nakatani and Teodoro agreed to strengthen operational cooperation by establishing a strategic dialogue mechanism, enhanced people-to-people exchange and by promoting collaboration in defense equipment and technology.
“In today's Japan-Philippines defense meeting, first of all, Secretary Teodoro and I firmly concurred that the security environment surrounding us is becoming increasingly severe,” Nakatani said through a translator.
“It is necessary for the two countries as strategic partners to further enhance defense cooperation and collaboration in order to maintain peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific amid such a situation.”
Prof. Renato De Castro, an international studies expert and professor at De La Salle University in Manila, said defense cooperation with Japan is closely linked with the Philippines-US security ties.
“Now Japan is a very vibrant and reliable security partner … You cannot actually separate it from the security relationship with the United States. It’s also the enhancement of what I call the base of the US-Japan-Philippines security partnership that was formed last year,” De Castro told Arab News, referring to a summit of the three countries’ leaders last April.
“It’s really very important in terms of enhancing the capabilities of the three parties to conduct maritime cooperative activities primarily in the South China Sea, and also as preparation for possible contingency in Taiwan.”
