New Japan-Philippine defense pact pushes back at China

MANILA –The Philippines is looking beyond the United States and toward Japan to counter China’s rising threat in the South China Sea.

After years of negotiation, Manila and Tokyo finally inked a Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA), a high-stakes defense pact that will dramatically enhance bilateral defense cooperation through joint military drills and equipment transfers.

Touting an “independent” foreign policy, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr is building a broad and diversified network of security partnerships to hedge his country’s reliance on mutual defense treaty ally the US.

No country is as central to the Philippines’ foreign policy diversification strategy as Japan, which has positioned itself as a significant regional and global security player in recent years. Both sides have shared concerns over China’s maritime assertiveness, especially across the so-called “First Island Chain” that extends from the East China Sea to the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea.

The Philippines is now only the third country, after Australia and the United Kingdom, to sign an RAA deal with Japan. The new defense pact falls well short of a full-fledged mutual defense treaty.

Nor is it a visiting forces agreement deal similar to the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) Manila shares with and has recently expanded to allow US forces greater rotational access to its military facilities.

Instead, the new RAA provides “procedures for the cooperative activities that are conducted by forces of Japan and the Philippines while the force of one country is visiting the other country and defines a legal status of the visiting force.”

Moreover, the RAA will “facilitate the implementation of cooperative activities, such as joint exercises and