New Delhi : Amidst China’s hegemony in the Indo-Pacific region and disputes with Southeast Asian nations in the South China Sea, the Philippines is exploring the potential of a trilateral alliance with India and Japan.
Philippines Foreign Affairs Undersecretary for Policy Theresa Lazaro highlighted the potential of such an alliance during a conference in Makati City earlier this week organised by Stratbase ADR Institute, an independent international research organization.
Lazaro said that such an alliance “presents enormous opportunities for these countries and the broader Indo-Pacific region, not only on the prospect of new ‘strategic partnerships’ and security architecture, but also on economic and development ventures”.
“The prospect for triangular cooperation between the Philippines, India and Japan falls neatly into this narrative,” the Inquirer.net news website quoted her as saying. “This partnership can help drive the economic engines of these countries towards shared economic prosperity in the region.”
Lazaro said that the confluence of the Indian and Pacific Oceans “can be construed as a natural connection that paves the way for the intersection of interests and goal congruence among the varied actors in the Indo-Pacific”.
Interacting with the media later, she said that such a trilateral alliance with Japan and India still needed to go through a series of negotiations and processes before it could be formalised.
The Philippines already has two trilateral alliances in place, one with Indonesia and Malaysia and the other with the US and Japan. While the one with Indonesia and Malaysia is to deal with piracy and terrorism in their common maritime borders, the one with the US and Japan is to enhance each country’s capabilities for maintaining stability in the Indo-Pacific region.
According to Indian geopolitical expert Jagannath Panda, who also participated in the conference, there is a need for cooperation between the Philippines, India and Japan to resist China’s “revisionist” agenda.
“The background note that will really bring this trilateral into a success is the revisionism resistance that these three countries are actually holding against China and against the authoritarian powers,” Panda, who is Head of Stockholm Centre for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs at the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Sweden, was quoted as saying.
India, Japan and the Philippines have separate territorial and maritime disputes with China.
When India launched the Look East Policy and intensified partnership with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1992, this also resulted in stronger relations with countries in the region including the Philippines, both bilaterally and in the regional context. With the Act East Policy initiated in 2014, the relationship with Philippines has diversified further into political-security, trade and industry and people-to-people realms.
India and the Philippines also share a strong defence cooperation relationship. The main stay of this cooperation continues to be capacity building with training exchanges and visits of delegations. Defence ties were significantly enhanced with the signing in January 2022 of a contract worth $374.9 million for supply of the BrahMos missile system by India to the Philippines. In fact, the Philippines is the first country to which India has exported the BrahMos missile system.
In June last year, when Secretary for Foreign Affairs of the Philippines Enrique Manalo visited New Delhi, a joint statement was issued following a meeting with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar which highlighted the importance the two countries attached to defence and maritime security cooperation.
“On defence cooperation, both ministers expressed keen interest to continue to work together in this sector, including through the regular or upgraded official level interaction among defence agencies, the opening of the resident defence attache office in Manila, consideration of India’s offer for a concessional line of credit to meet Philippines’ defence requirements, acquisition of naval assets, and expansion of training and joint exercises on maritime security and disaster response, among others,” it stated.
“Acknowledging the growing importance of the maritime sector for both countries, both ministers welcomed the bilateral maritime dialogue and the increased cooperation on hydrography. Both ministers emphasised the utility of maritime domain awareness and in this context called for early operationalisation of the standard operating procedure (SOP) for the White Shipping Agreement between the Indian Navy and the Philippines Coast Guard. They looked forward to the signing of the MoU on Enhanced Maritime Cooperation between the Indian Coast Guard and Philippines Coast Guard.”
Then, in August last year, Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr released his country’s third National Security Policy for the period 2023-2028. The new policy has identified the following as the country’s national security interests: national sovereignty and territorial integrity; political stability, peace, and public safety; economic strength and solidarity; ecological balance and climate change resiliency; national identity, harmony, and culture of excellence; cyber, information, and cognitive security; and regional and international peace and solidarity.
The Philippines is among those nations in Southeast Asia that have territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea. In 2016, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague ruled that China violated the Philippines’ rights in the South China Sea, one of the busiest commercial shipping routes in the world. The court accused China of interfering with the Philippines’ fishing and petroleum exploration, building artificial islands in the waters and failing to prevent Chinese fishermen from fishing in the zone. The tribunal held that fishermen from the Philippines had traditional fishing rights in Mis-chief Reef and Scarborough Islands in the South China Sea and that China had interfered with these rights by restricting their access. The court held that Chinese law enforcement vessels unlawfully created a serious risk of collision when they physically obstructed Philippine vessels in the region.
However, the 2016 verdict of the ICJ in favour of the Philippines has been blatantly ignored by China leading to further expansion of differences between Beijing and Manila.
Meanwhile, with Japan, India shares a Special Strategic and Global Partnership. Japan is one of only two countries with which India holds annual bilateral summits, the other being Russia.
India-Japan defence and security partnership forms an integral pillar of bilateral ties. India-Japan defence exchanges have gained strength in recent years due to growing convergence on strategic matters and its significance is growing from the common outlook on issues of peace, security and stability of the Indo-Pacific Region. India and Japan are both part of the Quad, also comprising the US and Australia, that is working for a free and open Indo-Pacific in the face of Chinese hegemony in the region that stretches from the east coast of Japan to the east coast of Africa.
Japan too has a maritime dispute with China. The Senkaku Islands dispute, or Diaoyu Islands dispute, is a territorial dispute over a group of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan and the Diaoyu Islands in China. Aside from a 1945 to 1972 period of administration by the US, the archipelago has been controlled by Japan since 1895. The territory is close to key shipping lanes and rich fishing grounds, and there may be oil reserves in the area.
China started taking up the question of sovereignty over the islands in the latter half of the 1970s when evidence relating to the existence of oil reserves surfaced. Japan argues that it surveyed the islands in the late 19th century and found them to be terra nullius (Latin for “land belonging to no one”); subsequently, China acquiesced to Japanese sovereignty until the 1970s.
The islands are included within the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the US and Japan, meaning that a defence of the islands by Japan would require Washington to come to Tokyo’s aid.
Meanwhile, the border conflict between India and China is only well known. While the latest flashpoint has been the confrontation between Indian and Chinese troops at Galwan valley in eastern Ladakh in 2020, Beijing also claims India’s northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh to be China’s territory calling it South Tibet.
It is in the light of all these, that the potential of a trilateral alliance between the Philippines, India and Japan is being explored. However, such a proposed alliance is not without its challenges.
“The main structural challenge is the ASEAN grouping of which the Philippines is a member,” K Yhome, Fellow at the Shillong-based Asian Confluence think tank and whose area of interest is the Indo-Pacific, told ETV Bharat.
“The ASEAN is very clear about its position,” Yhome explained. “It does not want to entertain one major power against another in the region. The whole idea of ASEAN centrality is that the bloc is open to all major powers.”
He said that the ASEAN sees itself only as a weak link between the major powers. But that allows it to engage with all major powers. “ASEAN would rather prefer to discuss issues with the major powers by sitting across the table,” he said.
Yhome further pointed out that the Philippines’ trilateral alliance with Indonesia and Malaysia is within the ASEAN grouping itself while the alliance with Japan and the US is understandable given that both Manila and Tokyo are allies of Washington. However, the ASEAN will have a problem in letting India and China, both Asian giants, play out their major power rivalry in Southeast Asia.
So, can efforts to forge a trilateral alliance between India, the Philippines and Japan fructify? Watch this space.
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