Biden vows ‘ironclad’ defense of Philippines and Japan as China tensions rise

By Gabriel Dominguez

On April 12, 2024

In his first-ever trilateral summit with the leaders of Japan and the Philippines, U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday reiterated Washington’s commitment to defending the Philippines from any armed attack in the South China Sea, in what was seen as a warning to Beijing and an effort to reassure allies worried about Chinese activities in disputed waters.

“The United States’ defense commitments to Japan and to the Philippines are ironclad,” Biden said as he began three-way talks at the White House with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The three agreed on a flurry of defense, security and economic initiatives, including joint naval patrols, increased coast guard cooperation and large infrastructure projects.

“Any attack on Philippine aircraft, vessels or armed forces in the South China Sea would invoke our mutual defense treaty,” Biden said amid concerns about the numerous incidents between Chinese and Philippine vessels in recent months, particularly around Second Thomas, a submerged reef also claimed by Beijing that is home to a Philippine garrison sitting atop a grounded warship.

China’s coast guard has sought to prevent Philippine ships from resupplying the garrison, including through the use of lasers and water cannons. Beijing’s so-called gray-zone activities both in the South and East China Seas have raised fears that tensions could escalate into a larger crisis, including one that draws in Washington and possibly even other U.S. allies such as Japan and Australia.

In a joint vision statement marking the start of a new U.S-led minilateral Indo-Pacific grouping, the three leaders accused Beijing of engaging in “dangerous and destabilizing conduct” by disrupting the supply lines to Second Thomas Shoal and preventing Manila from exercising “high seas freedom of navigation.”

They also criticized China for seeking to “undermine Japan’s longstanding and peaceful administration of the Senkaku Islands,” which are also claimed by Beijing, where they are known as the Diaoyu.

The Philippines’ proximity to both Taiwan and key sea lanes in the resource-rich South China Sea makes it an attractive staging point for the U.S. and its allies that could boost their ability to respond to regional crises. This has made reinforcing defense relations with Manila a critical element in both Tokyo and Washington’s plans to both deter and counter Beijing.

While each country has been separately strengthening ties with Manila, Washington has recently worked to bring the countries closer to deepen trilateral cooperation and build up what it calls “collective capacity” amid shared regional security concerns.

By doing this, the Biden administration hopes to reduce redundancies and coordination challenges in bilateral security ties in a grouping that experts say could follow a similar format to U.S.-Japan-South Korea trilateral relations.

The strategic importance of these groupings was highlighted by Kishida when he described multilayered cooperation as “essential” to bolstering a “rules-based free and open international order” amid a number of crises facing the global community.

For his part, Marcos, who held bilateral talks with Biden earlier in the day, described the trilateral partnership as “born not out of convenience nor of expediency,” but as a “natural progression” of their deepening relations and “respect for democracy, good governance and the rule of law.”

Brian Harding, a Southeast Asia expert at the United States Institute of Peace, said the three partners want to “institutionalize collaboration as quickly as possible” and make it part of the fabric of how each country’s national security establishments do business, with maritime security being the natural place to start.

Adding weight to the new construct, the leaders agreed Thursday to several trilateral security initiatives, including stepping up combined naval training and exercises, not only among themselves but also with other partners. These activities could look similar to a joint patrol of the South China Sea last week that also included Australia. Another such patrol is planned to be conducted around Japan in 2025.

The partners will also boost coast guard cooperation, with Washington and Tokyo pledging to continue supporting Philippine Coast Guard capacity-building.

Other initiatives include holding more trilateral coast guard exercises and patrols this year to improve interoperability, including plans for Philippine and Japanese coast guard members to patrol aboard a U.S. Coast Guard vessel.

In addition, there are plans for more three-way maritime talks and increased humanitarian assistance and disaster relief training activities, as Washington aims to use locations in Japan and the Philippines as relief hubs to respond to natural disasters and other crises in the region.

The moves come as Tokyo and Manila aim to sign a bilateral visiting-forces agreement in the coming months that will not only facilitate joint military exercises but potentially also allow rotational deployments by the Self-Defense Forces.

“Once Japan and the Philippines conclude this agreement, trilateral defense cooperation will advance as Tokyo will become more integrated into the U.S.-Philippines alliance activities,” said Harding.

While security issues topped the agenda, the trilateral summit also focused on boosting economic cooperation as the partners seek to redirect key supply chains and reduce their economic reliance on China.

As the Marcos administration tries to redefine ties with Beijing and move away from the latter’s Belt and Road initiative (BRI), Washington and Tokyo have stepped in to offer alternatives to Chinese investments and infrastructure projects.

The best example of this was Thursday’s announcement that the partners will launch the Luzon Economic Corridor infrastructure project in the Philippines to boost connectivity between Subic Bay, Clark, Manila and Batangas by building or modernizing rail, ports, clean energy facilities and semiconductor supply chains.

The corridor will be the first in the region carried out under the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment — Washington’s answer to China’s BRI.

The leaders also pledged to support the creation of “resilient and reliable global supply chains for critical minerals,” particularly for the production of batteries and other energy storage systems, including a U.S. grant to Philippine company Eramen Minerals to develop an ore-to-nickel and cobalt processing plant.

The Philippines is the world’s second-largest nickel producer after Indonesia, and much of its reserves remain untapped.

Trilateral deals were also announced in the areas of semiconductors, clean energy and combating climate change.

Nate Fischler, Asia-Pacific analyst at intelligence firm RANE, described the meeting, which followed a highly anticipated summit between Biden and Kishida, as “multilateralism reaching new heights in the region.”

The success of Thursday’s three-way meeting points to U.S. efforts to consolidate bifurcated alliances into multilateral blocs to manage shared challenges, Fischler said, including freedom of navigation, insulating supply chains from disruptions, enhancing systems interoperability and addressing challenges posed by an increasingly assertive China.

Beijing has reacted strongly to these announcements, criticizing Washington and Tokyo for “seriously violating the basic norms governing international relations” and calling on Manila to “stop provocations” while pleading to take undefined steps to “uphold China’s sovereignty.”

But with Beijing viewing these U.S.-led defense constructs as aimed at countering its rise, the risk of escalation is rising, warned Sarang Shidore, director of the Global South Program at the Quincy Institute.

While the goal, from the U.S. perspective, is deterring Chinese behavior, “other types of joint patrols, freedom-of-navigation operations and minilaterals haven’t changed the security dynamic in the region, so it is questionable if the latest one will,” Shidore said.

By adding deterrence without taking into account potential responses — and with only minimal diplomatic efforts being made to address the worsening relations — “the risks of a confrontation probably increase,” he said.

This piece was republished from The Japan Times.